Koroberi Blog

Yesterday, when Reed Elsevier announced the intention to sell off the majority of its RBI publications, while retaining those that “fit well with [their] plans”* we were taken aback. Sure, it’s “happening everywhere” in the print magazine industry, and this is not the first we’ve heard of RBI’s sale but it’s difficult to accept that a major player in the business can just throw up their hands and walk away.

It seems that North American trade press has been hit even harder than mainstream news. What’s the future of B2B communications while print flounders?

For many, the answer is a move to digital media - whether by offering an optional digital format of the magazine or a full-service Web site that includes articles, blogs, comments and news feeds. Content that is consistantly updated in real-time is the lifeblood of these sites and has become integral to the SEO strategies of companies fighting to maintain relevancy in a saturated online market.

The move to all-digital formats makes sense for many of these publications. After all, many of their readers are stationed at a computer or near their Blackberry/Palm/iPhone most of the day, so a digital media form makes sense.**

In order for these endeavors to succeed, these publications will have to become integrated; that is to say, it will likely have to go above an offering of a .pdf version of a magazine.  These sites should become the “hub” for their readers; a place where content is shared, readers become part of the conversation and remain engaged and informed. for digital magazines and Web sites for many of these trade publications.

Among all trade publishers, Reed publications have generated arguably the largest online media presence. Many have adopted not only a digital format (which I’m thankful for, on behalf of trees and my recycling bin), but also blogs, vlogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts. They saw the writing on the wall, got creative and adapted at a breakneck speed, exceeding the expectations of many. These sites do not behave like stereotypical, flat B2B trade pub Web sites – they are dynamic, interesting and content-rich. What more could you ask for?

I have faith that these publications, bolstered by their web-savvy editors, will emerge from the chopping block even stronger than before. I hope that investors can see the value in these publications, the bargain price they’re going for and, moreover, the influence and respect they have in their respective markets. To all of the editors that we have worked with here at Koroberi, we will see you on the flip side – and be sure to comment on your blog.

*(including the construction units Reed Construction Data US & Canada and RS Means, entertainment units Variety, Marketcast, LA411 and Buyerzone)

**I did see a few copies of a familiar B2B software magazine at the gym a few weeks ago, where admittedly reading from a screen is a bit difficult.

I’ve been an advertising and marketing professional for over 30 years, well and truly before Al Gore invented the Internet. Like everybody else, we kept up with technology, and jumped on the Google bandwagon when it was little and red.

So yesterday, when yet another client brought up the idea of spending good money on increasing their adword buy, I had to say it. For a lot of businesses, buying adwords and investing lots of money in their SEO strategy makes about as much business sense as a stripper who would pay an audience to watch her show.

Well, maybe I can parse this using a more PC description.

Imagine yourself in a rock band, performing in front of 10,000 people all of whom have paid good money to see you perform. You bare your soul, do a great show, and take the money. Nice work if you can get it….

Now, imagine yourself in a business. Your business. You’ve just paid for a bunch of adwords, and a brand new SEO-friendly website. In fact, you’ve just paid so much that 10,000 total strangers come and see you open your company kimona. Reveal all about your products and services. But the truth is, unlike the rock band with a fan base of thousands, only about 10 members of the audience you are paying for actually want to see you. Nice work for somebody. The somebodys you just spent a whole bunch of money with to help you pull in an empty net. And the people who really want to see you? Well, they need to sit down and have a conversation with some engineers. And anyway, they were going to call you about setting up an appointment even before you spent all of this money on SEO.

In case after case when we actually get down in the weeds and follow the sales cycle, adwords and SEO very quickly become a non-issue. It simply doesn’t matter. In fact, for most products and services that are: a) specialized; b) expensive; and C) complex , SEO and adwords are totally irrelevant. What matters is that the finite audience that is your target is kept abreast of your enterprise, has easy access to the information they need for buying decisions, and knows where to find you.

This is not to say that parts of a business could not benefit from micro-marketing strategies using SEO and adwords. For example, a manufacturer of industrial machinery may offer an online parts store with spare parts at competitive pricing not only for their own products, but for competitor products as well. In this case, a judicious adword buy to increase spare parts traffic might make sense. But only after looking at all of the options.

All I’m saying is this. Think about your market targets and your sales cycle BEFORE you invest in either your SEO or your adword strategies. SEO and adword buys are not a mandatory component of every marketing initiative. You could save money, and sleep a whole lot easier.

As we are updating our agency web site, we wanted to incorporate more social media tools into the mix. The topic of discussion today was Twitter. I gave an overview of this microblogging tool to some of my colleagues.

We discussed some basic aspects of Twitter, including how to build a network, the importance of being a person rather than a company, and how to engage with others and become part of the Twitter conversation. In showing off some of Twitter’s shininess , especially the very timely election.twitter.com, we discussed the value of scraping the Twitter stream for business marketing related tweets (a 140-character long post on Twitter) and re-posting them on our site.

This is an easy way to provide additional content and knowledge about business marketing, especially in the B2B space, to our site visitors. This blog is one way to present content from industry professionals, but an automatically updated snapshot of thoughts and links from marketers on Twitter is another. The programming of this Twitter stream on our site is easy, since it would just be displaying an RSS feed of a specialized Twitter search.

Since we are all concerned with SEO, especially with our new site, I wondered aloud how tinyurls are handled when the search spiders crawl a site. A tinyurl is compact and permanent reference link to a site address, or URL, to reduce the number of characters needed to provide a link. According to this post about tinyURL SEO, since a tinyurl is a permanent redirect, these posts would gain the benefit of authoritative outgoing links. This would provide additional positive SEO benefits to our site.

Watch this space for more details as we work out the final details of displaying a relevant Twitter search on this site. In the meantime, check out this great post about 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business for more ideas of using Twitter in your business.

Follow me on Twitter @dgtlpapercuts to see what else I am talking about, and let’s start a conversation.

UPDATE: The stream at the right called B2B on Twitter displays all Twitter posts with the term B2B in them.