SIPA 2008

If evidence were ever needed of the rapid and seismic structural shifts taking place in publishing, just compare Kate Worlock's review of the 2006 NEPA (now SIPA) conference (www.inpublishing.co.uk/kb/articles/uk_nepa_2006.aspx) with this one.

At SIPA in 2006, Web 2.0 for publishers was treated with wariness, if not downright suspicion. Delegates and speakers debated whether technologies like RSS would ever take off, many adamant it was a "geeks-only tool".

Kate noted that "many publishers still seem to have a fear of providing services such as blogs", and that all were uncertain about how to create and make money out of online communities. For many in the room, ‘circulation’ or ‘subscriber’ were terms much more clearly understood and simple to monetise.

Just two years on, it is clear Web 2.0 has changed publishing irrevocably and forever. Debates over the geek value of RSS seem almost quaint in light of the mass ripping up of business models currently taking place. For publishers at SIPA 2008, the main challenges were building profitable communities, understanding new delivery channels, changing business models from print to online, becoming part of a customer’s workflow, and working out what the future is for charging for content.

At the 2008 event, the most interesting debates concerned the relative importance of content vs context vs delivery. Many of the presenters described their experiments and successes at the brave new frontier of publishing. A common thread linked both the 2006 and 2008 events. How do you make money charging for content in the new online world, where news, and increasingly analysis, are commoditised? The difference in 2008 is that people seem to be working out the answer.

The challenge ahead

Tim Weller, CEO of Incisive Media, opened the conference with a stark warning of difficult times to come. Looking at the events of the last couple of months, I doubt even he would have predicted the speed and drama of the current downturn. But I imagine his message would have been the same; tough times require publishers to make tough decisions. This is no time for busy fools. Even business models that seem viable in the medium term need to be ruthlessly reviewed. For everyone who publishes weekly print newsletters and magazines, it is time to change the business model.

Tim ended by reminding us that recession, no matter how bleak, can have a silver lining for those prepared to question "why do we do things this way?", take some risks and use it as an opportunity to re-engineer their businesses.

Euromoney’s successful launch

Throughout the day, delegates heard from a series of businesses who have tackled this challenge head on. The winner of the SIPA Launch of the Year award was Euromoney, who have embraced the principle of narrow and deep, Web 2.0ed it and created niche, high-end online only subscription products.

Their winning entry, www.coveredbondnews.com went from concept to full web product in just six weeks. Publishers scratching their heads about how to make money through online content should take encouragement that the Euromoney model is not rocket science. It's not even fancy Web 2.0 publishing. It's classic newsletter publishing strategy coupled with an understanding of changing customer access needs; using online delivery to reach a niche market, utilising the classic publishing principles of quality editorial, well marketed. Yes, there is a technology component, but it's no more complicated than printing and distributing a newsletter. It's just a different focus of resources.

A simple sentence, but one that strikes at the heart of the issue. Publishing companies will have to reorganise, and it's won't always be pretty. Or fun. But it's not optional. Euromoney have been successful because they have changed their delivery mechanism very quickly, with the same strong editorial concept, just delivered online because that's what their customers wanted.

Many publishers seem to be tying themselves in knots trying to understand the new online paradigm. www.coveredbondnews.com shows that delivering products online is still publishing as we know it. A whole host of smaller publishing companies showed that by applying the classic publishing techniques of knowing their markets inside out, being nimble, experimenting and investing in quality content, it is possible to be the master of your own online destiny.

BMI’s transformation

This was demonstrated by Richard Londesborough, CEO of Business Monitor International (BMI) in his description of how BMI transformed from an individual print subscription business to a mixed print and online site licence model.

Facing the 2002-2003 downturn in the financial markets, BMI reviewed their business model, shifting to a sales-led site licence model. This has given them deep relationships with clients and has helped the company’s growth accelerate over the last four years.

Ragan’s changing model

Mark Ragan of Ragan Communications and Ashley Friedlein of E-consultancy described the radical shifts they have made to their publishing models to survive and capitalise on the new online world. Ragan have taken a long established stable of print newsletters and taken them online only. Interestingly and bravely, they made the decision to make the shift in the boom times, while their core subscription revenues were still strong and growing, albeit not as quickly as they wanted. Ragan could see that their print news business was not sustainable in the long-term and made a huge investment in merging their content into a huge portal community site for the marcoms and PR community and investing in new content, delivered using Web 2.0 technologies.

They gave themselves two years to move all print revenues online and switch from a pure subscription model to a membership one. www.ragan.com has largely despatched with the word ‘subscription’ and instead sells ‘memberships’. Their membership model offers users free access to the full site with membership discounts on events, reports, webinars and, yes, subscriptions. Ragan have embraced Web 2.0, launching www.MyRagan.com; a free networking tool, billed as MySpace for the corporate communications market. They have their own TV channel, with users able to upload their own content and host corporate videos and a host of webinars, blogs and e-zines. The model has worked, and they now have over 5,000 members and revenues ahead of plan. Mark urged delegates to embrace the contradiction of giving content that was traditionally paid for (news) away for free, creating free social networks and using the engaged traffic this drives to sell other high end content and services.

E-consultancy’s workflow goal

Ashley Friedlein described E-consultancy’s business model as one that focuses on paid services and paid functionality rather than traditional paid content.

Like Ragan, they sell memberships, not subscriptions and aspire to be part of their customer's workflow. They take a pull marketing approach and believe that people will pay for statistics and data, presented in a helpful way. Their service gives people access to a whole range of template documents. For the IT market, this includes project planners, privacy policies and capex checklists; they also allow people to take clippings from research reports to use in their own presentations. This content is simple to produce and turned their service into part of their customer's daily workflow.

Both Ragan and E-consultancy started by asking their customers different questions to the one I see on almost every survey sent out by traditional publishers. Instead of "how do you use information" and "what other publications do you read", they asked, "what do you spend your day doing?" and "how do you interact with people in your company and industry online?"

The answers to these new questions means publishers undergo a major change in their understanding of the content they need to deliver and how they need to deliver it. The web now gives publishers a chance to deliver services to people throughout the day, not just when they are catching up on the news or what their competitors are doing. With networks, we can be part of their daily conversation; with data tools we can support their daily business decisions; with lead generation tools we can be helping them make sales. The conference certainly gave delegates hope that the questions and the answers are out there, and that now, more than ever, is the time to be asking.

Is content still king?

The most controversial session was the final panel discussion of the day. My fellow panellists, John Whitaker of DMG and David Worlock of Outsell Inc were asked in light of the shifting business models, with publishers as the new shepherds of online communities, "is content still king?"

The panel concluded that, increasingly, community, solutions, SEO, context and delivery have equal claims to a seat at the royal family table. Becoming part of someone’s workflow should be the goal. To achieve this takes more than great articles, and in some cases may not even mean producing articles at all. Publishers need to produce solutions: networks, data products, videos and user generated content to grow their business in the long-term. It’s about more than connecting buyers and sellers, it’s about connecting audiences and helping people do their jobs better. Yes, it's still content and perhaps it is still king, but not content as we have known it.

For me though, the most interesting debate of the conference did not actually happen at the event. It happened afterwards. Online. On a free website not linked (pardon the pun) to the event. The day after the conference, the chairman of SIPA, Rory Brown, posted this question on LinkedIn, "At last week's SIPA UK Congress, there was a debate on whether "Content is still king" when publishing online. Our panel were split on the topic. What are your views?"

This question sparked an intense debate, with over 30 senior industry figures giving their views. Jon Bentley from Incisive commented, "I returned to this thread more times this week than any of the specialist media I pay for."

This begs the question that someone somewhere is missing a trick - potentially both the publishers who serve the media industry and possibly LinkedIn. Who is building a specialised network for media professionals and who at LinkedIn has the time or depth of knowledge to serve targeted ads to this very specialist thread? In this instance, the content was good, was user generated, was delivered online, was part of a network - sounds like the publishing dream we described above. But I am not sure who made any money out of it.