Paul Hoffman from EditorsWebLog.org asks, “Will local competitors be able to withstand this huge corporation’s invasion or will they fold?”

Patch recently told Bloomberg that as they move forward, they will become “a lot more social.”   The writing is on the wall.   Publishers no longer have the luxury of time and cannot afford to ‘bet the bank’ on guesswork, bad decisions, experimentation, or lengthy and expensive development projects.  The very best option is to partner with a company who has a real and immediate solution—a solution that allows the publishers to focus valuable money and resources where it makes the biggest impact—on sales and marketing.

Tim Armstrong, CEO of Patch lays out their basis for success, “It’s not about who’s local or who’s from out of town, it’s who’s better at serving consumers, both the audience and the advertisers.”

GET PATCH GUARD

In order to beat Patch, the publishers must move quickly, with a sound and innovative solution that will secure their local investment and not put their online business in further jeopardy.  The solution needs to embrace social media and capture local community conversations before Patch can get there.  TotalPaas gives publishers a leap forward with their own local and monetizable geo-social networking solution. With TotalPaas, publishers can focus their energy and resources on serving consumers and generating revenue.

• NO FEES. No startup costs, no service fees, and no recurring fees– NONE, ZERO, NADA.
• NO WAITING.  Turnkey platform with flexible portal design modules ready to launch within a week.
• NO DEVELOPMENT.  TotalPaas has a trained and qualified staff of engineers that innovate to meet industry demands.
• NO HOSTING HEADACHES.  Managed hosting with high security and failover protection!
• BUILT-IN SEO & SMO.  No need to pay the extra SEO and SMO service with a dynamic platform built for backlinks.
• COMMUNITY-MINDED MARKETING PLAYBOOK.  TotalPaas offers a unique grassroots approach to local social marketing that drives new sales leads from local conversations and interactions.

10 BENEFITS OF PARTNERING WITH TOTALPAAS

1. WIN-WIN.  If the publisher doesn’t get paid, TotalPaas doesn’t get paid.  True partnerships mean that everyone is ‘all-in’ and that everyone has an equally vested interest in the success of the site.

2. ADS THAT WORK.  CPM-based ad models are confusing and inneffective at local levels.  TotalPaas’ patent-pending distance-based ad model is designed for local business– simple and effective.

3. SELF-DRIVEN REVENUE. With TotalPaas, local businesses have the power to generate and manage their own subscriptions and ads.  Advertising contracts are automatically charged on a recurring monthly basis.

4. ARMED SALES STAFF.  Provide sales staff with new and competitive online sales options to easily win over local businesses that are being bombarded with daily calls from competitors.

5. INCREASED HANG TIME.  Social platform continuously engages citizens and businesses in local conversations, drives up hang time and results in opportunities for higher ad performance.

6. POWER IN NUMBERS.  Be a part of a local advertising network across multiple-publishers and attract regional and national advertisers.

7. OWN YOUR USER DATA.   With user behavioral data, you can demand the highest local ad dollars through highly relevant and effective ad campaigns.

8. COMMUNITY MARKETING PROGRAM.  TotalPaas participates in developing your grassroot community marketing program to jump start the market launch and drive leads with local engagement.

9. BETTER TOGETHER.  Join together in a network of like-minded people helping each other in a TotalPaas community support forum for building a strong pre-sales and post-sales knowledge base for all partners.

10. FORMULATED FOR SUCCESS.  TotalPaas provides a comprehensive solution, formulated for success.  Throughout the lifecycle of the partnership, TotalPaas is there for each and every partner, providing guidance and support to ensure that the program is optimized for success.

In recent posts I pointed out many of the challenges the newspaper industry is facing:

• Subscription and advertising revenues are on the decline
• Attempts to move to the internet have had lackluster results
• Operations have been cut to bare bones
• Analysts have for the most part abandoned the industry

“…newspapers suffered continued revenue declines last year—an unmistakable sign that the structural economic problems facing newspapers are more severe than those of other media. When the final tallies are in, we estimate 1,000 to 1,500 more newsroom jobs will have been lost—meaning newspaper newsrooms are 30% smaller than in 2000.”

“The newspaper industry is at a strategic inflection point – a period of disruptive changes that threaten its current way of doing business with no clear future path. The threats come from many directions but are manifesting themselves in the form of declining circulation, rising costs and downward revenue pressure. These trends show no sign of reversing themselves. The industry’s very survival is dependent on its ability to reframe completely the way it does business, and find new ways to attract and keep customers.”

The war against the newspaper industry is mounting—as are new-media competitors focused on local market share. The threat is real and the competitors are unrelenting.  But all is not lost! There is still time to be disruptive and thrive—that is if the newspaper industry does not let their legacy business model stand in the way of seizing new opportunities.

The following are the 10 strategic changes the newspapers must make to reinvent themselves:

Any ideas you’d like to share?  Comments are encouraged!
]]> http://www.totalpaas.com/10-strategic-changes-the-newspaper-must-make-to-reinvent-themselves.html/feed 0 http://www.totalpaas.com/newspaper-2-0-the-social-newspaper.html http://www.totalpaas.com/newspaper-2-0-the-social-newspaper.html#comments Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:23:03 +0000 Randy Hamilton http://www.totalpaas.com/?p=2463

For the past several years now, people have been claiming that the internet edition of the newspaper is ‘Newspaper 2.0.’    So if we follow that train of thought, moving the newspaper to a mobile device is now ‘Newspaper 3.0?’  Look folks, moving the print edition newspaper onto another medium is not a revelation. It doesn’t justify announcing a next-generation leap–especially when that move resulted in nothing less than cannibalizing the newspaper’s bread-and-butter legacy edition, cutting deep into their revenue base, and putting their sustainability in question.

Newspaper 1.0 is something we’re all very familiar with.  Print technology and content management systems have improved dramatically since the inception of the newspaper, but the newspaper industry as a whole with its subscription/advertising business model has not changed since the 1700’s.  The newspaper industry enjoyed a fat monopoly until radio arrived in 1906.  Radio commercials hit the airwaves in 1922, followed by radio news in 1938.  Television debuted in 1936, followed by television commercials in 1940, and television news broadcasts in 1948.  But the newspaper industry stuck to their guns, finding ways to share market and even work side-by-side with their new local market competitors.  When the internet came along, the old-world newspaper just figured they would embrace this new medium by pushing their print edition online.  Newspaper 2.0?  I don’t think so.  If anything, the online and mobile editions are at best ‘Newspaper 1.5.’  The only thing that’s changed with 1.5 is that the newspaper now competes with a plethora of free information available on the web, as well as their own pay-for print edition.  According to the report “Specifics on Newspapers from ‘State of News Media’ Report:”

The future of newspapers has been widely debated as the industry has faced down soaring newsprint prices, slumping ad sales, the loss of much classified advertising and precipitous drops in circulation. In recent years the number of newspapers slated for closure, bankruptcy or severe cutbacks has risen—especially in the United States, where the industry has shed a fifth of its journalists since 2001. Revenue has plunged while competition from internet media has squeezed older print publishers.

Newspaper 2.0 signifies a shift in the newspaper business model–the dawn of a new age for the newspaper industry.  Newspaper 2.0 is designed to take the newspaper industry to new heights– making it the center of the local community and serving as the public go-to destination for local information and communication. Newspaper 2.0 is The Social Newspaper. Newspaper 2.0 transforms the legacy newspaper into a local super-communications medium, using an online platform as its primary medium, engaging the local community in a continuous online conversation, aggregating locally relevant content from external social media feeds, and then channeling newsworthy community and professional journalistic content out to the traditional print vehicle. In 2.0 the newspaper model shifts—its role, how it generates revenue, and how it serves the local community.

We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts, ideas, and comments on The Social Newspaper!

The newspaper industry continues in a downward spiral, struggling to find new sources of revenue. Subscription rates are falling, and the attempt to harness the online world has resulted in nothing short of lackluster results.

Whether they believe it or not, the newspapers are engaged in an all-out war over their local advertising dollars. Some of it is evolutionary, but much of it is revolutionary– a direct frontal attack by the big online entities.

The numbers released in the FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION STAFF DISCUSSION DRAFT from June 15, 2010 says it all:

• For most newspapers, about 80% of revenues came from advertising and 20% came from subscribers
• Newspapers’ revenues from advertising have fallen approximately 45% since 2000. For
• The vast supply of online sites for advertising reduces the amount that an online news site can charge for advertising at its site.
• With the advent of the Internet, advertisers have many more ways in which to reach consumers.
• Many newspapers still receive approximately 90% of their advertising revenues from print advertising, with somewhat less than 10% coming from online advertising. Print advertising revenues still account for more than half of newspapers’ revenues.
• Existing newspapers have responded to substantial declines in ad revenues by cutting staff.
• Staff downsizing has caused significant losses of news coverage.
• Existing newspapers are struggling to find a sustainable business model for the future.

Some say that they’re starting to see more revenue as of late, and everything is seemingly now starting to work. Really? It reminds me of Edelman’s account of the Boiling Frog Syndrome: “If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he’ll jump out. But if you place a frog into a pot of lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, it will boil to death.” You see, nothing has really changed. The newspapers are doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. It’s wishful thinking.

This is a call to all newspapers… change the game… NOW!

To effect real change, the newspaper industry must change their fundamental way of doing business. This doesn’t mean they should abandon their professional journalism. It means that they just need to change their approach and ‘how’ they do business. If they embrace this change, this may very well be their finest hour.

The newspaper industry’s strategy hasn’t changed much since their very inception. It’s still primarily focused on content. Unfortunately, this isn’t sufficient or sustainable in a world where people have access to a plethora of content — at their fingertips– for free. This legacy content-centered approach has given the newspapers tunnel vision, leaving the industry in a state of survival mode now for several years. How much more can the newspapers cut back on budgets, expenses, and resources, and still have a viable business?

It’s Time to THINK DISRUPTIVE

Thinking disruptive means moving beyond the development of a new facade on the newspaper website, creating a Facebook fan page, tacking on comments to the online articles, or erecting a paywall. The newspaper industry needs to embrace and enact real change, with a real strategy. This is about changing the newspaper’s role in the community, and above all changing their business model.

Let’s look at the newspaper’s new framework for success… a framework that will catapult them into a place where they can not only survive… but THRIVE!

1. New Role: The newspaper needs to assume the role of “curator of the local conversation.” The newspaper is the impartial center of their local community. And they have two amazingly powerful assets right in the palm of their hand– their long-time trusted brand, and their relationships in the community. They also have the power of existing advertising channels through print and online to promote their new business paradigm. These are all part of their unfair competitive advantage.

2. New Product: The newspaper now must flip the model upside down. The print edition is no longer the priority. Online is the future, so naturally their online strategy needs to be at the forefront. The flow of content is from online to print. The core of the new online business is no longer a CMS-driven website, but rather a social media marketing platform that is a mix of professional journalistic content with content generated by local people, as well as content pulled from external social media sources. This content mix will drive interest and conversation, which in turn generates more content. In this new paradigm, content begets content. Now rather than a handful of reporters, the local newspaper has an army of reporters from which they can select great content from, to drive both the online and print edition. The print edition now takes on a social media flair. With their new platform, the local newspaper gives their community a trusted place to meet and interact. And since businesses are integral to the fabric of the local community, naturally they become a part of the local conversation and are now viewed as local resources.

3. New Sustainable Business Model: With this new approach and platform, local businesses promote themselves and serve their local community like never before. Now businesses can readily leverage the power of social media in their very own community. The newspaper’s sales people shift from order-takers to active local business partners, promoting commerce in their local area. The most beautiful part is, the money stays in the local community, fostering local economic growth. It isn’t bled out to big online companies that are grabbing local advertising dollars.

The only way for the newspapers to win this war is to wage an offensive attack– employ their assets, use their unfair competitive advantage, and be bold and disruptive!

Big online media giants fear one thing most — that local publishers might one day wake up and realize that their trusted brand and relationships pose a major threat to their plans to dominate in local markets. Well that time is here and now. We’re now starting to observe a sea of change. If 2010 was the year of business waking up and accepting social media, 2011 looks like it might just be the year that local media gets on board and takes steps to resume their leadership role in the local community.

But it ain’t your father’s Buick my friend. The face of the newly remodeled local media company can’t look like the old one. The nation’s newspapers are still in a circulation freefall. The Audit Bureau of Circulation show the average weekday circulation for dailies have fallen over 8.7 percent year-to-year. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Services Survey indicate a year-on-year decline in newspaper operating revenue between 12% and 22%. The legacy subscribe-ad business models of local publishers simply can’t sustain in the rapidly evolving world of socialnomics.

Some will argue that the local publisher has already moved to the internet, and it isn’t working for them. But their move was nothing short of patchwork. Was this a strategic move or a tactical one? Did the business model shift? It’s like when Kodak woke up one day in the late 1990’s and realized that the world was changing around them — the enemy was at the gates and their market share was rapidly eroding. They swiftly took action and in the early 2000’s added digital to their array of products. It failed miserably. Eventually Kodak realized that what needed to change was their business model — their fundamental way of doing business. They had to ‘reinvent’ themselves. The newspapers aren’t much different. Local media companies once thought all they had to do was put a digital facade on their business and voila!, they were web savvy. But their business models didn’t change. And the digital version of the business was treated at best as the bastard child– a ‘necessary evil.’ So they tried erecting paywalls thinking that they could coax people into buying their content. But like the Maginot Line, customers simply walked around, and not through. You see, bolting on short-term fixes without a strategy is not the answer. The newspapers must transform. They must ‘reinvent’ themselves in order to survive and thrive in an ever changing world of hyper-information.

So how should newspapers approach the problem? Quit focusing on content. It’s not about content, it’s about communication. Communication is the key to harnessing the explosive network effect of social media. Sure, great journalism is fantastic and it’s what they do best. We all love great journalism, but today, seemingly everyone is a journalist. Even premium content in this day and age is a commodity. With an ocean of information available at our fingertips, what attracts us is not necessarily premium content. If you haven’t noticed lately, people are very much interested in connecting and communicating with other people, online. And on the commerce side of the equation, people are looking to connect with merchants in a myriad of ways, to save money, or to simply find what they are looking for. But in the local community, people are right now looking for leadership– someone they can ‘trust’ who will give them the means to connect and communicate locally. The local newspaper is the obvious choice for this. The local newspaper has been a long-time friend of the community. They are the Switzerland of the community — the long-time trusted brand who has relationships throughout the land. Would you have more trust for a Facebook or Google brand who doesn’t give a hoot about the individual person, or someone you’ve known and trusted in your very own community for your entire lifetime?

Now let’s talk monetization. The newspapers are the connecting point for the local merchants and the community. This is where newspapers can absolutely dominate. The newspapers are in the advantageous position to give the local community, businesses and consumers alike, a platform from which they can connect and communicate, to create stronger, more meaningful relationships while driving awareness of relevant local products and services. And on the content side, newspapers can still do what they do best, by providing premium journalistic content. But this content will be intertwined with local homegrown journalism and commentary, as well as relevant local content pulled from external social media sources like Oodle, Fwix, Twitter, Yelp, etc. And, since people now live in various and multiple virtual places, the new local newspaper will have to jump on the bandwagon and syndicate their community homegrown content out to social media places like Facebook and Twitter.

In December 2010, the Amador Ledger Dispatch out of Jackson, CA launched the beta of their latest online property, MyACHome.com, running on a social marketing platform developed by TotalPaas, Inc. out of Palo Alto, CA. MyACHome is an example of a local newspaper reinvented. Rather than print feeding the online, they’ve flipped the equation and put their online model first. When someone wants something to go into print, it first has to go online. To make the online property interesting, local relevant content is constantly fed from a myriad of external social media feeds. And, to enhance the legacy newspaper, the Amador Ledger Dispatch pulls great homespun content (pics, commentary, blogs, etc.) from MyACHome.com and publishes it in its newspaper. The Amador Ledger Dispatch believes that the legacy worlds and online worlds work best when you cross publish and cross promote between traditional print and online. As for advertising, local merchants can help themselves to a self-serve online system to create and publish ads and deals. Ads flow both online and back into the print version of the newspaper. But for the latest-greatest local content and up-to-the-minute local deals, people go to MyACHome.com.

The local ad market is lucrative, estimated at over $100B. The threat from local publishers to impact or even derail the big online companies plans is very real. According to an article from The Business Insider, December 2010 “…the real threat to Groupon is coming laterally, from established players (newspapers, magazines, vertical sites, TV shows, etc.) who already have audiences in the millions, established brands and in-house sales staff.” And the last thing big online companies want to see is a vendor with a readily available social marketing platform that supports the local publishers in their quest to reinvent themselves.

The local newspaper still has the eyes and ears of the local community. The big question is — will the local publisher wake up and realize that they have an enormous advantage, before it’s too late. And the bigger question — will they take action?

If you ever wondered why so many people are trying to ‘crack the nut’ on the hyperlocal advertising industry, industry analyst Mary Meeker in her recent report reminds us of just how big the online advertising opportunity is and how fast it’s expected to grow.

According to Meeker, the online advertising industry is on a path to exceed the $50 billion mark over the next few years. Meeker, an analyst at the market research firm Morgan Stanley released her report at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Meeker claims that Americans spend 28 percent of their time on the we, but only 13 percent of ad spending is devoted to the channel. This indicates that the market has an enormous opportunity for growth.

Mobile technologies, especially smartphones will drive advertising spend even further. “It’s the fastest-ramping technology transformation the world has ever seen,” Meeker said. “I’ve been of the view for years that the mobile Internet was the next big thing.” Meeker even expects mobile commerce to replace ecommerce as smartphone penetration continues to grow. Driving this is the fact that wireless connections and geosocial applications enable impulse purchases and allow merchants to deliver coupons and offers to users at the time when they’re most likely to spend. According to a recent report from ABI Research, by 2015 expenditures on location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla are expected to near $2 billion.

Search Engine Optimization continues to be a strong player. According to comScore, more than 16 billion searches are conducted every month by potential clients looking for products and services. This highlights the continued importance of SEO and the role it plays in the online advertising market.

It is evident however that online local advertising is fueling much of the growth in the online advertising market. In 2009 Borrell Associates projected the online local-ad market to be worth $15.5 billion by 2013. According to a new report from Borrell Associates, local online advertising is now forecasted to grow by nearly 18 percent in 2011 from $13.7 billion this year to $16.1 billion in 2011.

These numbers provide further support for local media companies to place an even more emphasis on the development of online hyperlocal strategies. One thing is for certain, with increasing opportunity competitive pressures on the local media companies turf will only increase.

TotalPaas’ hyperlocal social hub PaasGo (http://paasgo.com) has introduced their latest feature – Local Deals. PaasGo’s interactive map gives users the ability to find deals in their local area, by merely rolling their mouse over a golden dollar sign in the map. Deals are aggregated from some of the most popular deal sites on the web — a venerable one-stop shop for local deals.

PaasGo is a hyper-local social site that envelops each user with the most popular social media available on the web, made relevant to each user’s local area. This experience is extended by allowing users (people in the community or businesses) to take ownership of their local area by contributing their own local content. To build a vibrant local community, PaasGo provides the fabric of social networking that allows people to connect and share. PaasGo is your ultimate local online destination.

Hyperlocal Social

There’s been a lot of banter now about this thing we refer to as ‘hyperlocal.’ I figured the time has come to break it down.

According to Wikipedia, “The term hyperlocal… connotes having the character of being oriented around a well defined, community scale area with primary focus being directed towards the concerns of its residents. When used in isolation it refers to the emergent ecology of data (including textual content), aggregators, publication mechanism and user interactions and behaviours which centre on a resident of a location and the business of being a resident.”

The term ‘hyper’ in itself means excessive or jumpy. As it goes with many of the terms we’ve manufactured, the meaning of ‘hyper’ has become something more akin to acceleration– as in hypertext which we typically refer to as a hyperlink, a non-sequential shortcut to another document, or hyperspace, a non-sequential way to traverse the universe, bypassing the conventional space-time relationship. Today when people talk about hyperlocal it’s typically in reference to the delivery of local news and community-based information. In reality, hyperlocal has a lot less to do about news and a lot more to do about people (residents, visitors, merchants, etc.).

In my hyperlocal universe I am the center. Everything happens around me the individual. It’s not simply a neighborhood site. I define the boundaries of my hyperlocal universe by setting the distance from my geo-centerpoint. And when my microcosm overlaps with another, opportunity is created. My microcosm is rich in discovery allowing me to stay on top of things like events, merchants, deals, and people. And when I go mobile, my hyperlocal site keeps me informed of what and who are around me (deals, merchants, events, etc.) at any moment in time, wherever I happen to be.

In my geo-microcosm, I have the ability to get involved– to participate– to be part of my own self-defined hyperlocal ecosystem. The very essence of hyperlocal is not a one-way push, but rather a symbiotic partnership between people (including merchants) all because our geographic hyperlocal boundaries happen to overlap. You see, first and foremost, hyperlocal is about people. This seems to have gotten lost somewhere in the big board rooms of the media giants frothing at the chance of capitalizing on the next big advertising opportunity.

A lot of today’s hyperlocal sites merely push (or in many cases simply regurgitate) news, business directories, and local information to its subscribers. Good hyperlocal sites create awareness of people, places, and things in their hyperlocal universe. Great hyperlocal sites inform and create awareness, and at their very core engage people and merchants in symbiotic partnerships that drive continuous value to each and every individual.