Publishing->Participation

“Publishing->Participation,” This was just one entry in a chart comparing Old Media and New Media in the book, Now is Gone: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs by Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis. But coming on the heels of the AEP Summit: “Publishing in the World of Free,” it seemed to suggest some concepts worth exploring. What could this mean in the context of educational academic publishing? And what keeps me, and I’m sure many others in the industry up at night, is what does this look like as a business model?

I don’t have a specific answer of course, but I think that an overall goal is to preserve the value of the publishers’ role— identifying and providing access to high quality information while filtering out inaccurate or poorly presented information—while at the same time creating a model that is not tied to selling fixed units of information.
This is suggestive of some changes the industry has been discussing and pursuing with varied enthusiasm, such as unbundling and micropayments, but it also suggests a social aspect that needs to be explored.

Increasingly, those who are seen as experts in their subject areas are not authors of “the definitive book on the subject”, they are the bloggers and twitterers who answer questions or share their insights on a daily or hourly basis, in short, who demonstrate their expertise in real time.

Daily immersion in the living intellectual life of their customers and peers on the part of a publisher’s authors and editors is going to be a necessary aspect of the move to a participation model. It doesn’t mean that all information has to be free; conversation needs to be free, hints and advice need to be free, but people will still pay for detailed, well-structured information from a source they trust (many bloggers are selling books). That trust, however, has to be built not on reputation but on demonstrating one’s knowledge. And the context those conversations provide is important; unbundling content and making it available online is essentially just a version of the web we have now.

So what are we talking about—does a publisher become a big, global, digital reference desk? Yes, I think, to some degree. But the librarians need to come out from behind their desks and ask questions as well as answer them, and the library needs to have unlimited interlibrary loans. Another key to our new “Wikinomic” world is openness and collaboration. If I am an expert in a particular field I probably know not only of some great content I have authored with my publisher, but also of information by my peers that is published elsewhere. We need a model that would allow and encourage an expert to point someone to both pieces of information and for the creator and publishers of this information to be compensated. Maybe we need an agreed-upon micropayment standard for the industry as well as something like a commission structure for the source of the referral – think affiliate networks.

The book, Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams provides many examples of struggling companies in moribund industries such as mining that reinvented themselves into profitable juggernauts by rethinking their businesses in the context of participation and collaboration.

And in that spirit, I’ll end my piece here. No closure. No conclusion. An open question for discussion and collaboration.

Tweet Globally. Reap Locally

Twitter can be a great tool for brick and mortar businesses looking to drive traffic into the store. Many small local businesses have been slow to embrace the online world, figuring it’s a waste of effort to reach millions of people who aren’t in their neighborhood. We’ll address the local/global issue in a minute.

But if you own a local hair salon, wine shop, pizza parlor, etc. and are interested in social media, Twitter might be your best first step. The short “microblog” messages are perfect for the type of announcements you might put on a poster in your window or on a sandwich board out on the sidewalk. “Thursday Special: Cavitt Pinot Grigio $5.99!” Twitter conversations move pretty quickly so they are well suited to getting immediate response to short-term “one-day” promotions. If you are a restaurant owner, for example, it’s ideal for your daily specials. If you don’t have specials everyday, but have an event planned for the weekend, you can promote it daily in advance, and post pictures afterword.

Now, what about the global aspect? Twitter is about more than just one-way status updates. It is also social. Conversations around your business and products, no matter where they come from geographically, make them more interesting and helps to gain and keep customers. For example, if you are a wine merchant advertising a new Malbec you have on sale, you may attract the attention of other wine merchants or wine fanciers online who don’t live in your area but would share tweets that reinforce your message with comments like “Wow, that’s a great price for a great wine” or links to a reviews around the Web.

I know many small businesses also struggle with finding the time to participate online, another reason Twitter’s short message format is an attractive option to start with. But there are also many tools to help streamline content management for social media, as well as companies (like mine) that can help set those tools up, or take managing all of the mechanics so you can focus on the message.
Please feel free to contact me via my website http://www.bmindweb.com with any questions.

A Big, Old, Wrinkly, and Real Thumbs Up for Customer Service

For many of us “thumbs up” has become just another icon on our Facebook profile.   That’s not the case for folks of a different generation, and the other day I got a very non-virtual thumbs up that was worth 100 “likes.”

These days I am on the front lines of customer service:  I’ve taken a seasonal job at LL Bean’s flagship store in Freeport, ME.  Yes, things are slow in the marketing and consulting world and I can use the income, but it also seemed that getting a look inside a company with a great brand and world-class customer service could be very educational.    So nearly every day I am at the cash register greeting customers, helping them find what they need, and checking them out as efficiently as possible.

One day an older gentleman came to the register with his middle-aged daughter.  They had a classic plaid shirt in one hand and a catalog in the other.   They were a bit frustrated. Clearly the guy had fairly simple tastes; just a few key items in his wardrobe, and he was used to simply walking into LL Bean every couple of years and stocking up. The plaid shirt was one but the other were some long-sleeved T-shirts with a breast pocket.  In another time these probably held a pack of Lucky Strikes, but these days the pocket was for his glasses and cell phone.

The rep in the Men’s department had told them that they weren’t in the store and they would have to order them online or by phone, and sent them over to me to check out.    I could tell that neither of them relished the idea of having to take the time to make another call when they got home or use the daughter’s computer to shop online.  They were here and they wanted to get it over with!  I seemed to remember something from my training about placing catalog orders in the store, so asking a more experienced rep next to me I found out where the nearest phone was and how to get connected.

I walked the gentleman and his daughter over to the phone and got on with the sales rep, giving them the item numbers from the catalog they were holding. Then turning the phone over to the customers for their shipping and billing info, I went back to my place at the register bank.

A few minutes later, I saw the gentleman and his daughter heading for the exit, he looked over at me and held up one gnarled paw with his thumb extended and smiled.    It only took me about 3 minutes of extra effort to interpret and meet this customer’s need, but it turned a frustrating experience into a positive one that they will remember. And so will I.

We keep talking about how the community aspect of social networking brings us back to the character of the mom and pop store and allows us to provide  personalized service to customers on a broad scale.  Well that’s what it looks like in the real world and I’m afraid the icons are still no match for a real “thumbs up;” age spots and all.