Why aren't publishers counting clicks?

I had  a nice surprise yesterday that made me realise there are publications that are beginning to see the opportunities in web-based media. In my inbox was a monthly report from Building Talk (part of the Pro-Talk network)giving me the statistics for a press release they published for a client in March. It told me which of my press releases had had the most views and how many views. It also told how many visitors had clicked on the link to visit my clients web site.

It also reminded me that a few months ago I had received a confirmation email from a journalist telling me that he had used the story and here was a link to it on the web.

The fact that these two happenings are pretty remarkable indicates how poor journalists are at dialogue - especially with PR people. (remember the PR blacklisting stories of recent weeks).

Now, as we keep being reminded that advertising revenues are falling, perhaps we could use some of the above to start developing a more workable business model for the publishing industry.

As well as monetising content, how about monetising information about content? There is lots of valuable metadata slopping around publishers, but no-one wants to use it. It was only this week that a vice-president of AP told the World Editors Forum in Gothenburg that metadata should be standard in digital publishing.

As a PR person I have to pay a lot of money to get that information second-hand from companies like Cision. Why aren't the newspapers and other publications gathering together to pool and sell the information they have? Right now if I get a story in the digital edition of Børsen or Berlingske Tidende, the most I can do is send a screendump to a customer and hope for a pat on the back.

For US-based web sites I can run them through Quantcast to see how many visitors a site gets and what demographic they belong to. But still nothing at the story level.

Think how much better it would be if I could have a report showing how many views a story had and where they went afterwards like I get from Building Talk.

Perhaps that's a job for all the ad reps who aren't selling ads?

All copy should be born with metatags that can guide it through its journey to the consumer. Not just to make that journey easier, but to help create a stream of revenue for that content. Think what it could reveal to companies about their potential customers, interests, habits, etc.

Right now publishers are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Journalism.co.uk :: WAN 08: AP calls for metadata as standard in US newspaper's digital content

Shock horror! Stop the presses and hold the front page; journalism moves into the 20th century.

Metadata should be a standard feature of digital news content in the US, a vice president of the Associated Press (AP) told an industry conference today.
The use of metadata, which involves invisible tagging of content with the names of people and places featured in an article, as standard would better serve the audience in their search for news, Jim Kennedy, vice president and director of strategic planning for AP, told the World Editors Forum

 

Er, yes. Of course, financial news wires have been tagging their content for at least 10 years but in plain text rather than html or xml. Perhaps we should see some progress towards decent rich media sites.

Journalism.co.uk :: WAN 08: AP calls for metadata as standard in US newspaper's digital content

The new social order: Trends and opportunities in social software

Interesting figures for corporate useage of social software

The new social order: Trends and opportunities in social software - 30 May 2008

The alternative to PR 'spam'

There's been lots of chat over this long weekend about PR people "spamming" bloggers and journalists with press releases. The kick-off to this was the decision by Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.com to blacklist PR companies because they sent press releases to her personal email, rather than to a specific address at Lifehacker.com Gina has chosen to blacklist whole domains (i.e. stopping emails from the entire company) rather than individuals as Chris Anderson, editor of Wired did.

I panicked when I saw this because only a day or two before I had sent a story pitch to Lifehacker on behalf of a client. I checked the blacklist and I wasn't on it; going back to my email client I could see that luckily I had sent it to the 'right' address.

However, if I had the option, I would have sent it to Gina Trapani on the basis that if it wasn't right for her she would send it on to the other journalists. I did this on the assumption that that's what an editor does.

On the whole, I can appreciate her frustration and to some extent her reaction. But the incident underlines that the rules are changing for both sides. Bloggers, journalists and blogger-journalists also have a duty to make it clear what they will and will not accept and how they will accept it.

I have more or less dropped buying in mailing lists from the usual suspects. That means I have to do a lot of research to hand-pick the right journalists and their publications. Generally that means ringing up beforehand to ask if they want to be part of a mailing list. It is hard and time-consuming work and I don't charge anything more than a flat rate for it because I see it as an investment in my business and my clients' business.

That experience has made me realise how poor most magazine and newspaper web sites are in dealing with their own relations. Few give a clear idea who edits the publication, what they are looking for, their deadlines, upcoming features etc. (Mind you, if I want advertising I have to beat them off with a shitty stick...). No wonder that PR people use mailing lists from Cision and PRNewswire.

On a wiki page Gina gives detailed instructions on how to set up a filter to stop unsolicited emails from PR companies. Perhaps her time would have been better spent setting up an automated response telling PR companies that they should really be sending their releases to the other email address and giving more detailed information on the web page.