Leading Your Content to the Money — A New Equation for Selling Content to Consumers

The notion that information wants to be free is absurd when the delivery mechanism is making a fortune and the creators are getting what amounts to zilch. – Peter Osnos, “Will Google Save the News?“

Monopoly by Mikael Miettinen on flickr

In order to focus their attention on big institutional content deals, publishers have traditionally relied on third-party service providers (agents and the like) to conduct business with individual end-users. However, with institutional budgets in decline, content providers are turning their attention to consumer markets as a potential source of business growth. Asserting themselves in the consumer space will require a new type of sales and marketing acumen and visibility into consumer behavior, which recognizes and responds to the many new ways that consumers are seeking to interact with vendors and each other in online environments.

The longstanding business equation in B2B publishing has been:

Quality Content + Brand Recognition + Operational Efficiency + Institutional Usage = Market Share/Financial Success

Publishers have negotiated big deals but have largely let consumers fend for themselves. This strategy will not fly in consumer markets, where visibility and demand are the primary drivers of revenue, and where methods for marketing to consumers have changed dramatically. The best approach for publishers wishing to enter the consumer marketplace is to take a step back, free themselves from preconceptions of what their business is about, and take a look at what is really working in the consumer Web. Only through entrepreneurial thinking will they have a shot at success in consumer content markets.

Consumers are constantly inundated with free content but are rapidly flocking to demand-based, interactive services and are making freemium purchases in that context. Content providers can meet this reality head-on by wrapping content in value-added service layers that address consumer needs and support collaboration …

Continue reading this post on The Scholarly Kitchen.

Web 2.0 Next: Companies Place Bets on Consumer Relationships and Collaboration

Read my complete post on The Scholarly Kitchen. Excerpt:   

A survey of the Web 2.o Next landscape reveals two principal directions in the forthcoming evolutionary cycle — one towards value-added business service and the other supporting more fluid online collaboration by community groups and work teams.   

This post provides a quick rundown of emerging businesses (in and adjacent to scholarly publishing), which are gearing up to generate better service and more collaborative utilities based on social platforms [... read more about Ellerdale, Twazzup, Lithium.com, Glue, Copia, Scribd, Google Wave, and Ushahidi].   

Source: Damien Basile on flickr

 

Given the shifting consumer and technology landscapes, traditional practices are costly and non-agile mechanisms for creating and sustaining this type of engagement. Although publishers may not be fluent in Web 2.0 yet, they may have more reason than ever to explore new applications, technological capacities, and vendor services.   

Content sharing and direct-to-user communication tools will increasingly replace outmoded services that fail to connect publishers/brands with their ultimate consumers of content.   

Web 2.0 services, if used effectively, have the capacity to make content the nucleus of an engaged discussion or work process and to foster two-way communication with key constituents. Publishers who can effectively incorporate Web 2.0 in their programs may be able to reduce their reliance on intermediaries–and will stand apart by harnessing the power of their consumer audiences.