“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” If department store merchant John Wanamaker were alive today, he would find no shortage of firms wanting to sell him answers. The field of Web metrics (also called Web analytics) is exploding, as data analysts get better at [...]
Author Archives: Suzanne Harris Magnificent Publications Inc.
Trade Magazines: Do You Measure Up?
September 12, 2008Expert reviewers are getting ready to provide their annual critiques for business-to-business publications seeking ways to improve content. The American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) and Trade Association Business Publications International remind b2b editors that only two weeks remain to sign up for an assessment by a panel of peers. Submission deadline is October [...]
Don’t Call Us—We’ll E-Mail You
August 12, 2008Organizational life is full of outdated rituals, from office parties to annual performance reviews that do little to improve the quality of product, process, or personal experience. Technology can do away with many of them. For instance, an organization can do an online survey to find out how staff would really like to socialize. A [...]
Leading the Troops: What Editors Say
July 30, 2008First, the good news. The majority of editors of business-to-business, or B2B, publications think their editor-in-chief demonstrates effective leadership behavior. But what they see isn’t exactly the most effective behavior. Close, but no cigar. This was what Heather Onorati, Chief Editor of Advanstar’s Healthcare Centralized Content Group, concluded in her survey of 211 B2B editors, [...]
News Finds Its Way Home
July 16, 2008As metropolitan dailies shrink and commercial websites struggle to entice advertisers, one news medium is enjoying unprecedented success: free weeklies. Bulging with local ads, they cost practically nothing to produce or distribute. They may provide little intellectual stimulation, but major news media and Web investors find them intensely interesting. How, they wonder, can we do [...]
Where Are the Journalists?
July 10, 2008I wrote a few weeks ago about the tremendous pool of talented journalists coming on the market as newspapers downsize their newsrooms. Since then, I have advertised on the Poynter Institute website, the country’s premier hiring hall for writers, reporters, and editors, and I have searched their résumé database, and guess what? The databases were [...]
A Fire Sale on Editorial Talent
May 19, 2008Is your publication or Web site recruiting experienced writers, editors, graphic designers, or photographers? You couldn’t ask for a better market. As the newspaper industry spirals downward, newsroom downsizing has sent hundreds of talented journalists on job searches. One of the best places to find talent is the Website of the Poynter Institute, the journalism [...]
Why They Call It Web Surfing
May 11, 2008Web content managers: Do you wonder whether it makes sense to manicure your splash pages? Choose every word with care? Well, the jury is in. It makes enormous sense. Web design consultants have long advocated brevity. Many words make for glazed-over eyes and short visits. But now a scientifically reliable study “Not Quite the Average: [...]
A Story She Knew in Her Bones
May 4, 2008Too often, editors regard splendid writing as purely a gift. They think people are born with it. But outstanding reportage, produced on deadline, actually grows out of the writer’s profound understanding of the subject. When we see it — not that often — it reminds us that the editor’s first order of business is always [...]
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Close the Knowing-Doing Gap
April 7, 2008I joined an entrepreneurs’ support group a few weeks ago. Our latest topic of dinner conversation: How to close the gap between what we know and what we do? You know what I’m talking about. We write business strategies that look worth at least a million or two in investments or donations. So why can’t [...]