‘You Can Plan for the Unplanned’; Processes and Audience Outreach Give Industry Dive a Content Blueprint to Follow

by COVID 19Media

 

Back in late October, we asked readers if they had finished their 2021 editorial calendar. While 67% responded, “Yes, though we have left some room for flexibility,” 33% checked, “No, things are just too fluid.”

“Having an editorial calendar is well and good until a pandemic hits,” said Robin Re in a webinar this week titled Why You Need to Operate Like a Newsroom in 2021. She is the VP of marketing for Industry Dive, a B2B publisher that in this time of shrinking editorial staffs in many places, has been consistently adding to its reporting staff. They now have more than 80 reporters working on 23 newsletters in 20 verticals.

While the webinar was geared to marketers—the idea being that the way the Industry Dive newsroom gets to know its audience is a worthy blueprint for marketing—it also gave us an inside look at a growing and successful publisher and the insights of its editor-in-chief, Davide Savenije. The five keys that Re and fellow presenter Lieu Pham, Industry Dive’s VP global head of strategy, offered came straight from Savenije as did a few mantras along the way.

When it comes to editorial calendars and other publishing issues that can be put in flux by outside conditions, Re emphasized the need for processes. “What’s your process for dealing with unexpected things in real time?” she asked. “What format can we use to get information out and then update? Pushes? Articles? Interviews? Podcasts? What are the next developments that can then spawn from this? People want to consume quick insight and analysis. By coming out quickly, we give ourselves time to develop the deep-dive story.”

Pham added that in today’s market, brands need a plan for all types of events, kind of a marketing version of a SWAT team. Know how production will be accelerated and where you can take shortcuts to get content out fast. Ensure everyone understands their roles. “You can plan for the unplanned,” she said.

“When we talk about having a newsroom mindset, it’s not just about serving our audience,” said Pham. “It’s about having a plan in place for keeping your audience in the know and helping them plan as much as possible for the future. In other words, it’s about being ready for anything. The world turns in ways that no one can predict. Know who you are, who you serve, and plan for everything: the known, anticipated and unknown.”

While Industry Dive has grown, Pham was quick to point out when asked that smaller editorial departments actually have distinct advantages. “You can be more nimble, act like a startup,” she said. “You can really experiment and refine your approach. Just set up really solid processes than can scale… You may not be able to compete on breaking news, but you can provide more thoughtful follow-up and analysis.”

Having processes in place and being ready to pivot are part of number 3 for Industry Dive: Stay Agile. Let’s go through the other four:

Know your audience.

“We have an entire team dedicated to audience,” Re said. “Who is our target reader? What’s keeping them up at night? [Questions like these] allow our reporters to jump on the headlines and events that our readers actually care about. The audience doesn’t stay static, and neither do our efforts to understand them.”

She said that midway through 2020, they surveyed their readers and found that a quarter believed that their job had significantly changed during the pandemic. “That meant our reporters needed to pivot to stories of transition, increased responsibility, workplace alternatives and continuity solutions,” Re said.

Pham recommended these activities for your publications department: Customer interviews – up to five customers per audience segment. Stakeholder interviews, especially those who are customer facing. Who at your association deals directly with your audience?) Social listening. Don’t go crazy with this, Pham advised. Focus on the key threads to help develop the story angle. Keyword research. “That’s critical to establish authority or own a key conversation.” Analytics. What topics are resonating? Alerts. Competitor mentions, industry trends.

This as an ongoing process, Pham said. “So stay attentive, monitor and listen to make sure you’re investing in the right topics.”

Choose your coverage, keeping your goals, brand promise and audience in mind.

“Focus on what will impact [your audience’s] lives today, tomorrow and 10 years from now,” Re said. ”A story should also correlate back to a trend that says something larger about the target reader’s profession. Our reporters take a backroads view of what will change in the next 10 years and then tell the day-to-day stories that help readers get there.”

She explained that choosing what not to cover can be just as crucial as selecting topics. Every story idea at Industry Dive must undergo a rigorous evaluation, focusing on the value it provides for the audience. She quoted Savenije, saying, “You can’t be an expert on everything, so be an expert on the most important things.”

This mindset aligns with approaches taken by independent SEO consultants, who prioritize high-impact areas rather than spreading resources too thin. Pham emphasized the importance of determining which topics establish expertise and authority, ensuring they align with your business’s core strengths. She added, “Check out the competition; assess what they’re excelling at or missing. Remember, you’re competing with all content providers, not just your traditional competitors.”

“Be really intentional,” Pham advised, whether that’s “meeting a gap in the market or simply creating high-quality journalistic content. In a world where content is highly commoditized, investing in quality could be all you need to take the lead.

Prioritize substance over clickbait.

“Readers trust us to take a deeper analysis beyond any other business publications,” Re said. “So we need to provide depth.” They discovered that 82% of their audience feel that quality of analysis is something they look for in a news source. So their headlines are active, informative, succinct and engaging, but don’t oversell. “Your teaser text should drive the headline,” she said. “Also try to be economical with words. And compel the reader to take action.” Create a curiosity gap that leaves the reader wondering.

Pham wants to see a diverse range of experts, inside and outside of your organization, leveraged, and for you not to make format assumptions. Narrow your coverage, she advised and double down on the why’s—thought leadership, big ideas—and hows—resources, templates, guidance and how-tos.

Listen. Measure. Learn.

“We want to build a relationship [with the audience] based on trust and credibility,” Re said. So page views are nice but they’re too soft a measurement tool. They prefer time spent on page, engagement rate and shares. “We use content that engages our target reader as fuel for our next story. Why waste time on a topic that the audience has shown little interest in in the past?

“We’ve built out dashboards that help show our newsroom the engagement behavior of our most valued targeted readers. Which stories are they reading? Which ones are they sharing? That tells where we go next?”

“It’s really good practice to adopt an evolutionary approach to content,” said Pham. “We constantly monitor performance and… the topics not working, and double down on the topics that are performing well. It’s a form of content Darwinism; it’s literally survival of the content fittest.”

The webinar can be watched in full here. There is also an accompanying free report titled 2020 Audience Insights for B2B Marketing in the Year of Disruption that you can read here.

‘Is It Evergreen?’ Our First ‘Industry Question of the Week’ Concerns Updating Popular Content for SEO

by Media

We are so fortunate to have among our membership and audience various experts on multiple subjects who are very willing to share their knowledge. So we will take advantage of this huge asset in a new feature called Industry Question of the Week. If you have a question that you would like me to offer to the experts, please email me at rlevine@siia.net.

Here’s our first question:

We are having a debate at our company about updating old online content for SEO and engagement purposes. We are being told by an SEO and engagement expert (whose background is in content marketing, not journalism) that we should go back to older articles that are still performing well in SEO, or that are relevant to a keyword we want to target as a subject for improving search results, and update them, including changing the date. If we did change the date, we would have to make sure the information in the article is up to date, which would mean trying to get in contact with old sources. At that point it would probably take less time to write a new article on the same topic.

And here are answers from three experts:

Kim Mateus – chief strategy officer, Mequoda

“In our view, there are two kinds of journalism online—one approach that keeps the original date forever in order to maintain that proper historical record, and another approach that is appropriate for evergreen content that we publish through our portals (aka the free sections of our site that we use for audience development). We believe both of these content types have a place in a publisher’s portal. For evergreen content, we believe the best service you can provide your readers is to keep the content updated, and simply keep a note on the bottom of the post stating the original post month and year, i.e ‘This post was originally published in January of 2008 and is updated regularly.’

“So for this particular example, they should determine if this content is evergreen and needs to be updated and maintained like you would a reference book, or if it is more like a newspaper article that you want to keep on record and maintain its chronology forever. In our view, the example could be considered an evergreen piece and could be updated with a new publish date, and reference that the quote was originally acquired in 2008, while also adding in that sentence at the bottom of the article that says, ‘This post was published in January of 2008 and is updated regularly.’ The fact that the company name has changed and that [a person quoted] is now deceased could be acknowledged in a slight rewrite of the post’s lede and anywhere else in the post where an updated reference is needed.

“Google is clearly giving publishers an incentive to keep evergreen content updated by sending publishers traffic to these evergreen posts, and this is a strategy we’ve seen enormous success with across our entire client base for many years.”

 

Matt Bailey – author, digital marketing expert and founder of SiteLogic and the Endless Coffee Cup podcast

“Yes, I’ve heard this one before. It’s made the rounds a few times, and it is just as useless as other ‘SEO tricks.’ Update a few words here or there for SEO (page title, headline), but don’t lie to your readers or to Google. Changing the date is cheating, IMO.

“It’s a terrible theory that made its way into mainstream SEO articles. I’ve seen some people remove all dates from their websites, but it doesn’t change anything. Plus, it makes readers upset when they can’t trace a date to the information! When Google spiders a page, it downloads the meta data (date pub, language), the content of the page, URL, etc. Any changes are matched against the original to update Google’s index. Changing the date doesn’t change the history

 

David Longobardi, chief content officer, CyberRisk Alliance

“I agree it’s wrong to simply change dates on old content. But you are on the right track about updating certain assets. The concept is known as managing ‘living URLs,’ and it can be a great SEO support. The idea is to review all of your high-ranking content and identify all of your ‘annuals’ and ‘evergreens.’ Annuals include stuff like rankings, and listings, year-end outlook features and so on. Evergreens (in this context) would be other content you might justifiably elevate to annual or quarterly status. Be generous in what you choose to bring under these umbrellas; think of it as part of your content strategy rather than SEO system-gaming.

“In looking at annuals, I’ve found that one year’s iteration of, say, a Top 40 Under 40 feature, always seems to outperform others in SEO and often it’s one of the older, outdated iterations!. Going forward, rather than spread that content across multiple URLs, there’s a way to structure it all under one, so that the full authority remains concentrated and searchers have the optimal experience. Meanwhile, in thinking about evergreens, you may find service features that have real shelf life and might legitimately be updated on some regular cadence. For example, if you hit an SEO home run with an explainer or how-to piece in 2018, decide whether it would add audience value to update it annually.”

We thank our three experts. Again, if you have a question, please send to rlevine@siia.net.

The Neal Awards Provide a Most Prestigious New Home for SIPA Members

by Media

The work that I’ve seen win SIPAwards the last few years could win awards in any journalism competition. So I strongly encourage you to enter the Neal Awards. Most of the categories that you’ve become familiar with—Best Blog/Commentary, Best Profile, Best Podcast, Best Series, Best Use of Video, Best Instructional Content—are there in the Neals.

Neal Award winners provide their audience with value. “Basically, I’m using data to help tell a good story—whatever it may be…,” Todd Dills, a senior editor at Randall-Reilly and a multiple Neal Award winner once told me. “I started looking around at the different sources of data that concerns issues readers have. It’s the readers who drive this. And I’ve always been interested in numbers.”

He spoke about the difference data was making in their journalism—and equally important in their readership (truckers). “We started doing a series of state law enforcement profiles; at the end of the day information like this gives the readers a better sense, a better reality,” Dills said.

The key, he added, is serving readers. “The big takeaway is that there’s data gathered on everything our readers do,” noting that the way you use it shows your “valuable priorities as a journalist. I have been able to essentially prove our readers right on some things and wrong on others.”

That is just one example of the importance and relevance of the awards we give out. Not only do they recognize people like Todd doing great work in our industry, but they amplify the trends—sometimes even before they become trends! Of course, data journalism is now one of the biggest difference makers in the content world of B2B publishing and media companies.

Over the last few years, I have had the privilege of working on both the SIPAwards and the Neal Awards. Both have been essential in honoring and promoting the amazing work done by B2B (and some B2C) publishers. This year—in order to devote the amount of resources that the entries and awards deserve—the SIPAwards have been integrated into the Neal Awards.

For SIPA members, it adds an even more prestigious layer. Now in its 67th year, the Neal Awards have a celebrated history and are known as the most respected awards in the world of specialized journalism. Named after Jesse H. Neal, the first managing director of American Business Media, the Neal Awards were established in 1955 to recognize and reward editorial excellence in business media.

You will be up against the best of the B2B world, but in categories separated by company size. I can say firsthand that the work I’ve seen win SIPAwards the last few years could win awards in any journalism competition. So I strongly encourage you to enter. Most of the categories that you’ve become familiar with in the SIPAwards—Best Blog/Commentary, Best Profile, Best Podcast, Best Series, Best Use of Video, Best Instructional Content, and Best Editorial Use of Data, to name just a few—are there in the Neal Awards. Check out all of the 2021 Neal Awards categories.

And as an homage to the SIPAwards, there is a new Neals category: Best New Product, recognizing innovation in new product development, including events and pivots to virtual events. In addition, there are two more new categories that I know SIPA members have the work to nominate for: Best COVID-19 Coverage and Best COVID-19 Package.

Early nominations—which represent the most cost-effective way to enter the Neals—will be accepted through Jan. 31. Regular nominations then go from Feb. 1-21. And the extended nomination period is Feb. 22 – March 7.

We Also Need Judges

Award entries will then be assessed by your peers in three rounds of judging. This is also where we can use your help. Judging will be all virtual, of course, and will not require a huge time commitment. As in the past, it is a great way to see the best work of your industry, learn new ideas and observe how others are approaching work and revenue strategies during the pandemic. All the details about judging—including a detailed FAQ—can be read here.

Be assured that your voice is still clearly heard and will resonate loudly throughout the industry with your entries in the Neal Awards. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me. We are excited to expand these awards and reward and amplify even more great work by people in this industry.

More information: https://www.sportstalkphilly.com/non-gamstop-casinos-uk

Vote on Questions, Reimagine Swag and Get Out a Bit to Reenergize Your Events

by COVID 19Media

How I would’ve loved to vote on which questions get asked at the many panels and interviews I attended in-person pre-pandemic. Now we can. What else can we do to liven up our virtual events in 2021? Swag, speaker walks, a new networking game. One thing is for sure–it’s worth the risk to be a little creative.

In a park in Palatine, Ill., in March last year—with birds really chirping—a bundled-up Wylecia Wiggs Harris, CEO of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), addressed members on Facebook Watch before taking a much-needed walk. She wanted to assure everyone that she and her colleagues were okay, and, of course, make sure that members were doing okay as well.

It was a very effective use of video and the elements. I thought of this again when reading a 2021 recommendation that we encourage our speakers to take us somewhere new this year—literally.

“In-person keynotes and education sessions are compelling partly because dynamic speakers walk around the stage or even draw a picture or do something else creative while presenting,” Samantha Whitehorne wrote in Associations Now. “Find a way to get your virtual presenters to do the same. During his prerecorded keynote for the Turnaround Management Association’s IMPACT 2020 virtual meeting, Duncan Wardle, former head of innovation at Disney, walked around, used different camera angles, and had large paper slides hanging behind him that he illustrated himself.”

While most agree that virtual events will take a supporting role—in the name of hybrid—once in-person events return, that does not mean that they can’t improve this year. Here are a few more ideas that I’ve seen that can improve the virtual event experience.

Network like the old days. Fast Company calls Gather “half video game, half video call.” “Spend time with your friends, coworkers, and communities like you would in real life,” their site says. Everyone at a gathering is “represented as little controllable avatars that can stroll around and talk to each other. When your avatar approaches another one, the real-life video from your respective webcams will pop up on-screen so you can converse face-to-face. Walk away, and the video disappears. Small talk has never felt so fun!” It’s free for up to 25 users, with paid plans starting at $7 per user, per month, for additional features.

Explore new ways to pick questions for Q&A. (From The Economist) At one conference, questions were displayed in a queue. Attendees could donate “points” to other people’s questions based on their interests—like a Reddit upvote. The moderator then asked the highest-ranked questions first. This ensured that the questions asked were those that mattered most to attendees.

Provide transcripts. (Also from The Economist) “Pre-recording sessions means event organizers can arrange for text chats, closed-captioning, even ASL interpretation. Even if you do the presentations live, providing transcripts later is enthusiastically welcomed. And there is now a wide range of AI tools that can provide accurate transcripts.”

Consider mingle-with-speaker sessions after panels. We did this for our BIMS 2020 conference—letting attendees chat with one another and the speakers on Zoom directly after a session. I was the lookout/moderator for a few of these. We did not have huge crowds join us in the Zoom rooms—maybe 4-6 people—but the people who were in there said they got great value by being able to ask questions in this more intimate space. So it felt worth it.

Reach out to presenters—look for enthusiasm. Asked what makes a virtual event great, 49% of respondents in a recent survey said when “presenters are enthusiastic and engaging.” Three in four respondents (74%) said passion and good online delivery were essential qualities in a great presenter—well ahead of being knowledgeable about the content (22%). To improve events, 51% said “being able to access the presenter after the event in an online forum” (see previous bullet) and almost a third said smoother technology.

Re-imagine swag. This idea—sending items to participants ahead of time—really picked up steam as the year went along and will probably get even more popular in early 2021. In late June, the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science and the Association of Genetic Technologists sent swag boxes to attendees—JAM Packs—that included a kazoo. Guess what the concerts were called? The Daily Kazoom. BIO Digital (Biotechnology Innovation Organization) took place in June with more than 7,000 participants from 64 countries. To foster community, they changed the meeting’s tagline from “Beyond” to “Nothing Stops Innovation.” Then, in advance of the conference, BIO mailed all speakers a custom mug with the new tagline.

‘They Mean More Than a Date on the Calendar’; Federal Bar Association Uses Anniversary to Celebrate and Grow

by COVID 19MediaUncategorized

 

In discussing why the Federal Bar Association decided to put together a most impressive, coffee-table book to be the centerpiece of their centennial anniversary last year, executive director Stacy King flashed a 2021, better-days-are-ahead smile.

“Attorneys love books. They really do. Since we’ve been doing all these Zoom calls, I never realized how many of my leadership has just books on books behind them. Everyone has that prestigious bookcase with all of their books.

“The other [reason] was that when the party was over”—the FBA put on a big virtual 100-year celebration in September to replace the canceled March festivities that would have included welcoming remarks by Chief Justice John Roberts—“we really wanted to make sure we had something to celebrate, something about the bar for years to come. We also wanted it as a marketing tool to raise our profile. So we are actually in the process right now where we’re sending the book to all three branches of government, all the chief federal judges, so that every federal courthouse has a copy.”

This informative and entertaining AM&P 2020 session—we even saw a photo of Eleanor Roosevelt speaking at a war-time FBA luncheon with their first female president!—was titled 100 Years of Content: Anniversary, Event, and Experience. Chris Durso, associate vice president of content, MCI USA, joined King for the session. He collaborated with her and FBA on the project, actually becoming, in her words, the “FBA historian.”

“Every association has anniversaries, and they mean more than a date on the calendar,” King said. “Use them to boost membership and raise a little money.”

Here are more key takeaways from this session:

Start early. Things take time. And stay in charge. I just heard that a new Denzel Washington movie coming out was written in 1993. King said that they started talking internally about the centennial eight years ago. After a few years of not much getting done, she learned that doing it by committee wasn’t going to work here. “We started from the get-go about the book with feedback [from the committee],” she said. “We took that and decided to do certain things. We kept officers apprised and made volunteers feel heard, but then we went and did the right things for the organization.”

Celebrate your history. “Every association has anniversaries, 25th, 50th, some are up to 100,” King said, “so the idea is to really honor where you came from and celebrate. Honor past members. For us, so many are still engaged. We get a lot of turnover—chapter leaders change every year. We wanted to inspire current leaders and show how prestigious an organization they’re a part of. We also got the engagement of the federal community and brought them together.”

Think about outsourcing. The FBA has a “tiny staff” so King knew they had to outsource the work. “Look to have a good partner; it’s important to have someone you feel comfortable with [because you’re] trusting a vendor with your organization’s history. And you’re going to spend a lot of time together.”

Use it to build community—and membership. “We wanted to bring everyone back together,” King said. “Treat it like a reunion. Community is super important to us. We also used it to drive membership.” They started a campaign to drive past 20,000 members. “As an association anticipating change, we also started to talk about the future. In 2019 we adopted a strategic plan. What better way to get people excited about change than to celebrate where we came from. It was a way to set up changes and toast our 100th anniversary.”

Decide on a centerpiece. The first thing he discussed with King was, “How do we tell this story?” Durso said. “These are attorneys and judges who work for the federal government. We were really telling the story of the American century. So we took a mosaic approach. It’s a very handsome hardcover book.” There are listings of every national FBA president and where they worked, showing the prestige of the organization and giving a sense of impact.

Highlight your diversity. Prominently displayed in the book is the FBA’s first African American president, J. Clay Smith Jr., in 1980. There’s also that Eleanor Roosevelt photo and one of Elena Kagan at an FBA meeting. Durso and King did not speak about how to deal with a history that does not include any diversity. In that case, it would make sense to highlight the diversity that you have hopefully transitioned to now and your commitment in the future.

Think about your website. The FBA was in the midst of an overall website redo, and we all know how that can go. So King made the decision to launch a standalone site: www.fedbar100.org. “It became the hub for the centennial,” she said, “and gave us breathing room for the new [overall] site, which we actually launched on the exact 100-year anniversary date.” The fedbar100 site includes material from the book formatted as interactive timeline, profiles of FBA legends, and memories from past and current leaders. “They love to reminisce about the past,” she said.

Don’t be bashful. FBA used the new website for sponsorship and giving, approaching it in two ways. They set up a centennial fund within the foundation and then for the party focused on sponsorship. They asked for $100 donations for the 100th anniversary, and the past president issued a challenge for $1,000 donations. “We were able to raise the funds to cover the book,” King said. “And we used sponsorship outreach to cover the events we planned. I’m so glad we did the website as a standalone. Now it’s really a legacy site [and] another way to try to reach your members where they are. Some like the book, some like the website. We tried to capture all the voices and share with as many people as possible.” Added Durso: “The book was our stone tablet; the website gave us breathing room. We put voices there that we couldn’t put in the book.”

Be ready to pivot. This was everyone’s mantra for 2020, but it’s probably a good lesson for any time. “We had a whole weekend planned in March including a gala Saturday evening,” King said. They had not booked a Saturday night speaker deciding to “focus on the bar and who we are. Let the bar be the keynote.” That allowed them to come up with a plan b that actually transitioned well to the virtual world: a centennial video. “What better way to take the book and make it come to life than a video,” King said. “So that’s how the book became a movie, and the focus was on the association itself and not the speaker at the party.” Durso said that, for him, it felt like they “were producing a trailer for the book.” It allowed them “to take advantage of all the information and photos we found.” The video lasts about 17 minutes. “It’s kind of in the Ken Burns PBS model,” he said, with slow pans over documents and photos. “Every association has a story that can be told in more than one way,” King said.

Consider sending swag. I have read numerous success stories about sending swag in lieu of in-person event swag since the pandemic. The FBA adds another one to that. They mailed attendees to their September event swag bags that included the book, of course, plus centennial pins, chocolate, and movie popcorn with a sticker on it that told them when the movie premiere would be. Part of that Friday night virtual celebration also included a Q&A between King and Durso. “Did you know that the first FBA president was born before the Civil War?” Durso asked, flashing his new historian credentials. “And the first African American member, Louis Mehlinger in 1944-45, was the son of a freed slave from Mississippi.”

Ronn Levine is the editorial director of SIIA and can be reached at rlevine@siia.net