Compete has  released their search engine market share reports for the month of February and for the most part, there were no surprises – Goolge, Yahoo! and Microsoft took the number 1, 2 and 3 spots, with Microsoft making minor gains.  (It’s been the same story since the launch of Bing).  What I found  interesting, however, in Compete’s    search data was how much search query volume had decreased, across all of the search engines.

We suspect the rise of social networks and their ability to extend past the colloquial ’status updates’ and ‘friend requests’, has affected search query numbers.  What we mean by this is that more and more users are getting news, business information, details on events and sales from links sent to them by their ’social friends’.  From a recent Pew Internet study, we see that 75% of users who get news online, either get it from social networks or via emails sent to them from friends.  And it is no wonder that these friend shared links have had such an effect – as we’ve mentioned previously, friend shared links and information also act as a recommendation and for shoppers and service consumerists that means more than a random keyword search done on a search engine.

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Below is a chart showing marketers expected spend on social networks and you can see how this compares to what newspapers are telling us here.

We haven’t talked about newspaper online pay walls in quite some time, but with Murdoch’s properties getting so close to pay wall launch dates, we cannot avoid it.

The Fast Company posted excerpts of the British Times editor’s (James Harding), online question and answer period with the public and what I found most interesting, while reading the Q&A, was that when questioned about the pay wall initiative, Harding didn’t introduce compelling support for the move.  I got a sense that he himself wasn’t behind it 100%.  He didn’t say things like: “we asked our readers what they would be willing to pay” or “we surveyed our casual content consumers and asked what they would be willing to pay” and the most important, he didn’t talk about what it is around their content that makes them  unique and not a ‘me too’ news source.  The items Harding brought up to support their new initiative was that they will provide video, interactive graphics, personalized news feeds and a chance for people to engage directly with journalists.  None of that is  new and none of this would I agree to pay for.  My caution to publishers; the minute you decide you want to charge users to access your content online, you better ensure you have something that they cannot get elsewhere.  Don’t kid yourselves into thinking that your brand will be enough.  You need a clear value proposition that will compel users to spend the money you are asking.

At the end of the Fast Company article, they state that a user asked James Harding if  he would leave if the scheme did not take off. “Nope,” he replied. “Just hide under this desk.”

Below is an excerpt from one of our earlier blogs and the graphic is relevant to this discussion.   The API (American Press Institute) surveyed both publishers (called providers in the graphic below) and web users and asked if their newspaper started to charge for online content, would they be likely to return to reading the newspaper.  Publishers (providers)  felt that 75% of users would return to reading the printed newspaper,  which differs greatly from what the users say.

Just this past weekend, I spent some time with the NYPA (New York Press Association) group, speaking at their conference on business strategies for classifieds. The session covered all aspects of the business and didn’t just focus on what people usually think when you combine newspaper professionals and the word classifieds – 4pt. font, and abbreviation filled ads on newsprint. Nope – not my session. Instead I spoke about classifieds as a business, not just for today, but to ensure relevance in five years or even two years from now. I shared with the group what I thought was the ideal business model for classifieds, if one were thinking strategically. Nonetheless, and as expected, my vision for classifieds ensued some debate – some good debate mind you – amongst the conference attendees. What sparked the debate was when I said this:

“As newspaper publishers, we need to change the way we think about classifieds. If you do not see classifieds as the editorial in print and online – you better start. Gone are the days where you counted on classifieds to bring in 30% of the company revenues. As your extended editorial, you should use your classifieds to crowdsource, and then monetize the result of what that crowd is doing.”

In essence, I was telling a group of publishers to blow up the classified business model they’ve operated with for years (charging per agate line; charging for online classifieds on a generalist site; forcing classified advertisers to purchase print; moderating the content to death) and wholeheartedly adopt the freemium model, within their generalist classifieds verticals. The immediate objection to my proposed classified strategy from some of the audience members was “why would I want to give up that revenue”. To which I asked how this attendees classified revenues looked this year versus last year, and then the year before that. Once we chatted about the year over year numbers, it was clear that they were already loosing that revenue and what was worse; they were doing nothing different to try to offset the losses. I explained to the attendees that the goal in changing your business model is not to lose the base of clients you have now, but to encourage the ones who don’t do business with you, to do business with you. The idea is to grow market share and content share and the only way to do that is to change the way you do business to encourage a mass of new fans and brand ambassadors – in essence crowdsourcing. Keep in mind that a protectionist strategy (“why would I want to give up that revenue”) is no strategy at all, especially when you are already losing the battle.

Now for many of the attendees at the conference session, the term crowdsourcing was new and I will explain it here to ensure we’re all on the same page, before I go into how this further applies to classifieds. To crowdsource means to amass a crowd, through an open call, and extend that crowd to do things that would benefit you in ways not unlike what you would ask an employee to do. For newspaper classifieds online, crowdsourcing would bring users (preferably engaged users), and traffic, allowing a publisher to monetize  page views (“the result of what that crowd is doing with you online”).

One thing newspapers fail to realize is that thanks to players like Craigslist, Kijiji, Oodle – Facebook Marketplace and some of the other pure-play trendy classified sites, classifieds has become the ‘new sexy’. The afore mentioned online players have proved that if the right classified marketplace exists for users, they will use it, and what’s more – tell others about it. With this being said, I strongly believe that on top of classifieds being the ‘new sexy’ and a business newspapers have been in forever, there are two vital things that newspapers have to their advantage, over the pure- play classified entities, yet none of them show that they realize this in their actions. These two competitive elements are brand trust and awareness, and an already employed sales force to action any monetization plan one could create around a freemiuim classifieds business. To further highlight what I am talking about, let me walk you through a newspaper classified business example.  — Imagine a newspaper brand that has been in a community or city for over 50 years, meaning that they’ve touched probably three generations in a family. They’ve covered more community events than you can imagine and have provided editorial content on a lot of the local going-on’s and some national. Given its tenured presence in the community, it is seen as a trusted house hold name and a well known brand. This newspaper then decides to move to free classifieds, with functional self service ad placement tools. They include the ability for classified advertisers to buy upsells for increased visibility and this includes the option of print. Given that the site belongs to a community recognized brand, driving traffic to the site will be easy and  encouraging users to place and browse ads on the site will be easy, provided it has all the functions and ease of navigation expected online today. If this newspaper also invests in SEO, specifically for their classified content and pages, incremental traffic from other users now comes into play. This newspaper then uses a team of sales representatives who understand how to sell traffic online, so that the increase traffic their classifieds have brought can now be monetized. In addition, this newspaper uses its inside sales BtoB (business to business) representatives to call businesses, who have placed free classifieds on their site, with a targeted, specific, timely and pointed offer, in addition to asking questions about how their current advertising on the site is going.

The example I gave above of ‘said’ newspaper is a common story for newspaper dailies and weeklies. Often times when I speak to members of a community, they express that there is a level of trust in the classified content found through a newspaper brand (print or online), more so than the online only players, but consumers feel they have no choice but to use the online only players, because they’ve crowdsourced, built traffic and content, and provided a no barrier to entry  (payment walls) model that allows users to easily engage with them.  And, if you don’t believe me on the sales force argument, just look at the relationships that Yahoo!, Monster, Google, and Microsoft have either made or have tried to make with newspapers, with hopes of having newspaper sales reps sell their products. Search engines and online only businesses recognize the strength in having feet on the street, especially if you want to ensure you have a good mix of content.

When we talk about crowdsourcing, by no means are we alluding to the fact that because your newspaper has existed for so long and has touched so many lives that this would be all you need to effectively amass a crowd, much less a crowd made up of product ambassadors. You’ll need to exercise other tricks of the trade to ensure you build a crowd of users who otherwise wouldn’t think of you on their own:

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): It is important to note that you cannot take the SEO principles applied to the rest of your site and use it for your classified sections, and just adding the word ‘classifieds’ to you tags isn’t enough either. You want to tag your classified site, sections and pages as though it were a standalone company. Think hard about the content on your site and the search terms you expect to relate to your property. Develop your classified site with valid XHTML and HTML in mind to ensure search engines pick up your content. Think hard about keywords and title elements and descriptions. There are tons of tools online that will help you to do that research. And lastly on the topic of SEO is the matter of links. Links are your friend. Ensure you have a plan to strategically use valuable internal and external links to give your classified Web site more credibility in the eyes of search engines.

Social Networks and Social Media: By no means does this mean posting to Twitter all of your content, but it does mean posting interesting content. It also means creating Facebook pages and coming up with engaging offerings for your fans or offers periodically posted that encourage others to become fans. As we talk about social media, if you provide classified user accounts (and you should – accounts to allow posters to easily edit,renew, and delete ads and accounts for buyers to easily bookmark, compare, create alerts, save for later) look at using things such as Facebook connect or even their Twitter user profiles to easily enable your users to create accounts on your classified sites. If you do this, you will have immediately married your users social media account with your property, making it easy for your users to syndicate your content to their online ‘social friend space’. Social media ambassadors in a crowd are definitely your friends. And our last point on social media, when posting content to social media sites think organically, but also think about the user of your property. What other content types within your company would apply or peak your users interest? Blend that type of content with the interesting organic content found on your classified site  because you’ll need a blend of both to ensure your influence level is high. Let’s face it, unless you are Craigslist, you can only find so much interesting classified listings on your site.

In closing, I caution that in addition to understanding the model above, newspaper professionals also need to be prepared for shifts in their business model that the above changes will breed. Now, more than ever, you need to employ sales professionals who understand how to sell Web traffic and you need to hire leaders who can find opportunity out of the content you will amass. Because no longer is the revenue in your classified listings – instead, use your classifieds to crowdsource, and then monetize the result of what that crowd is doing on your classified Web site.

It’s an online  content and traffic game now.  Do you have what it takes?

Mashable writer Stan Schroeder posted a piece on the Palm Pre and how a ‘Pre’ ad,  created by fan, was far better than what the company had paid to have professionally produced, via their agency.  Schroeder points out that the ad visuals created by the lay user, better portrayed the key benefits of the phone and as a result, was the better selling piece over the companies own rendition of ads.

This is not the first case of this kind that we’ve heard about.  The whole thing makes you wonder about your ad agency spend.  Depending on your product or service, it seems as though you are better served finding a social champion to help you create campaigns that encourage the public to, in turn, help you best determine what would better sell your products.  After all, getting a user created campaign is not just a campaign – it’s a peer to peer recommendation; and given the 80/20 purchase influencer rule, this is no small matter.

I haven’t yet had a chance to weigh in on the Patch.org initiative backed by AOL, but I will tonight, inspired by a glowing post by Fast Company.  Although my prose will not be as long as usual, it will be clear and concise.  This Patch.org thing… umm… not so much.  We are all about making news easier to access and read, with increased relevance, but I don’t see this AOL backed site doing it.  And yes folks, I know Jeff Jarvis is on the editorial board, and yes it’s true I am one of his biggest fans, but  I still don’t think that AOL is the brand to make it happen.

Already online today, there are a ton of news aggregators and organic sites that seem to serve the public well; The Huffington Post,  Digg, The Examiner, Topix,  Fwix, and let’s not forget Google News, coupled with the fact that I could continue listing sites that have garnered lasting mind and market share.  Moreover, these sites, despite their tenured success, are continuing to evolve/reinvent themselves for the betterment of the user and for further longevity.  Patch.org, on the other hand, has chosen to attract media attention with only five of the 50 states covered, with no international news.  A case of the premature clout quest I would say.

In order for Patch.org to make a lasting ripple on the market, they need an element that doesn’t make them a ‘me too’ product.

I am sorry AOL and Patch Media, but I just don’t see this as a viable competitor to the other online news tools Web users already have at their disposal.

There has been a lot of talk on what the ideal news Web site should look like. Is it the New York Times? Is it a personalized site that allows users to select their news categories of interest? Even after all of the debate, the exact recipe for success in online aggregated news usership has yet to be morph itself. But regardless of what that winning recipe may be, a group called Fwix has what we feel is the best display yet.

Fwix is an online news aggregated site that allows users to find news related to a specific city. As with any geo related site, their treatment of smaller cities is not yet present, but my Fwix experience, being from Toronto, was far better than on any other site that claims they have local news information, pertinent to me. The algorithm used by Fwix is proprietary and therefore not clearly described on the Web, but from what I can tell, it looks like they are scouring the net and specific sources, to find recent and geographically relevant news information that applies to the user’s city search.

Through doing a city news search, a user is served with uber recent news stories, stories that are categorized by what are the most popular categories searched on news sites, photos and a mini-directory. It really is a decently complete view of what newsworthy activity is happening in your city. When a user clicks on a headline of interest, they are taken to an iFrame that keeps the Fwix header, but shows the source site, still allowing advertisers of that source site to get the presence they require.

For publishers who see Fwix as another competitor that they have to compete with online, they are right. Fwix, themselves, have spoken to their mission to transform the way news is delivered on the Web:

Our goal is much more far-reaching than simply to “aggregate news”.  We have serendipitously stumbled upon an opportunity to bring independent journalists real readers. People constantly ask me “well, what’s so great about news” or “why did you select to do Fwix over idea x or y” and I always reply with “well, news is the only way we can make informed decisions about what to do next”.  If one entity or a set of powerful entities controls the distribution of news, we will only be more susceptible to making uninformed decisions.  (Taken from the Fwix blog)

Fwix has recently scored a relationship with the New York Times. The details of the partnership are not completely clear, but the synergies are blatantly obvious.

Last week I was alerted that there was a death in our family. It was a relative who lived in New York and they were extremely close to my mother, so I felt it pertinent to try to be there, and so starts my travel adventures and customer service mishaps.

Now to be clear, this post isn’t just to cover my going-on’s and travels, but I am using my experience to discuss the importance of customer service, as I strongly believe that with the day-to-day happenings, we often forget the importance of consumer relations.

When you talk to any executive, at any organization, regardless of vertical, they will tell you that they understand the importance of serving their customers, but way too often, the treatment of consumers differs from what you would expect from a ‘customer first’ organization. As we’ve stated on our blog in the past, our tightened economy and what some call a recession, has forced a new way of thinking from consumers. Their tolerance is lower and no longer will they be subject to substandard performance by a service they use, because the amount of choice in the market means they don’t have to.

Now before we continue on with this post and to ensure we are all on the same page, I think it important to breakdown what customer service is.  There are some basic customer service principles that if you, as an organization, get these  three principles right, you’ll be on the right track:

1. Listen
2. Exercise empathy
3. The customer must come first

I guarantee you that any other item you’ve been taught around customer service falls into the list of three above.

Let’s continue on with my story…

Knowing that I needed a flight to New York, I decided to start my search with my airline of choice, Porter Airlines. Unfortunately, given the short notice in booking, the rates were at least three and a half times more than what they normally would be, but because they are my airline of choice, I thought I would look to see if they had bereavement fares that would provide some relief on the price. At this point, I had come to terms with the fact that I may have to pay more. I called the Porter Air customer service line and explained my situation. Unfortunately, they were unable to help me, as they had no bereavement fares to offer, but what was worse was that the empathy was missing. The negative information about the flight would have been easier to take if the service rep showed some empathy. In the end I found a flight, using another airline and at a fraction of the price that Porter was offering me. I did share my feedback, in what I thought was a polite email to the Porter Air executives and the response wasn’t nearly pointed enough. They spoke about other things that they offered and none of which applied to my original query. So here, Porter Air appeared to not be listening.

Now my traveling woes don’t end with my flight booking, but they extend to my hotel stay at the W on Lexington in Manhattan. Now again, the W on Lexington is one of my favourite hotels, and I will try to stay there any time that I can, while in New York. I do this primarily because I like the décor and for the most part the service. Their “whatever whenever” mantra usually makes the customer feel that they are in charge. When I arrived at the W, around 7:00 pm, my room wasn’t ready (check in was at 3:00 pm) and they were fearing an overbooking situation. The check in attendant was good however, and assured me of a room in the next hour and in the meantime she offered to ‘comp’ a few meals and such. Although my room wasn’t going to be ready for at least an hour, I was ok with the level of empathy the attendant showed, with all that she had done. My issue with the W didn’t occur until the night before checkout when the manager of the hotel called me with a concerning comment, which led me to believe that they may have to charge my card for our room – - again. I went down to the lobby to chat with the manager, and had to wait for her to come out to the front. In the meantime, I talked to the representative at the counter and her response to me was “the manager is new. Don’t worry. There is nothing wrong. She is just new”. Before I could address the “she’s new” comment, the manager had arrived. As the manager and I chatted, her tone left a bit to be desired. All the while, I was thinking her newness is apparent not only in her actual tenure, but also in her approach. She had no understanding and didn’t take the time to check my file to see that I am a repeat customer and a good one at that. To make things worse, when I tried to confirm my bill upon check out, and of course asked to speak the same manager, she left me waiting at the counter and never appeared. So to the W I say, your leadership never listened, nor did they show empathy and most of all; no one thought of me, the customer. The manager’s newness should not cause a consumer to be displaced. With a customer first approach, I would expect the manager to perform the necessary research before making assumptions. What’s worse for the W is that I have a business trip in New York, scheduled for the very near future, and my stay at the W is pending, based on the expected reply I get from their leadership. (I will post the reply on my tumblr page).

As you can tell from my comments above, if you treat me well, I will be a return customer, even if that means I have to pay a bit more to do business with you. I am the kind of customer you want — Loyal. I can only assume that there are many more like me who are loyal, but still vocal when they feel that their service expectations have not been met by a long shot.  So to the W and to Porter Air, I repeat the three basic principles to customer service:

Listen – this ensures you delight the customer by providing a pointed solution

Apply Empathy – this ensures you still have a happy customer at the end of the call/interaction, even if your response is “no”

The Customer Must Come First – when you are about to do anything where a customer is concerned, think about how what you are about to do will affect them. If the roles were reversed, how would you react? Is your action only going to apply a short-term gain at the expense of a long-term loss?

A recent document (PDF)posted by Brandkeys, speaks to the Top Brand and Marketing Trends for 2010 and eight of the ten items listed all surround effective customer service. It’s an interesting read for all those in charge of consumer relations and and brand integrity.

Everyone… please give a round of applause to CEO John Paton, of the Journal Register Co. for his move to add social media and online innovators Jeff Jarvis, Jay Rosen and Betsy Morgan to the publishing group’s board.

For years, the newspaper industry has talked about getting digital and for the most part, they’ve been making valiant efforts at digitizing offline products. However, as we’ve said in the past, digitizing products is only half the battle, the rest comes in how you syndicate, drive traffic to and appropriately monetize these products, along with intuitive user interface and functionality that breed social ambassadors. This list sounds daunting, I know, but they represent the necessities for staying alive in this digital age. Moreover, attempting to do the items we’ve listed as the ‘necessities’, requires that a publishing organization recognize that their business models will have to change, and that reality is not an easy one at the start.

Paton’s move to include Web visionary thinkers to his newspapers board means that they will have a collective of board members continuously challenging them to do more and experiment with new models. All in all, we chalk this up as a brilliant move by John Paton!

New additions to the Journal Register Co board are:

Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? (HarperCollins 2009), blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com. He is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program and the new business models for news project at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen is a press critic, a writer, and a professor of journalism at New York University. He is a strong supporter of citizen journalism, encouraging the press to take a more active interest in citizenship, improving public debate, and enhancing life. Rosen’s blog is entitled PressThink, and it focuses on journalism in the age of the Web.

Betsy Morgan

Betsy Morgan is the former CEO of Huffington Post, an aggregated news and blog site that started with its content being  provided by the users – true citizen journalism.

Peter Conte from Borrell spoke to the SNA/SNPA Strategic Revenue Summit attendees about couponing and using it as a non-traditional revenue source for publishers.

Conte provided several statistics to support his claim.  He used a recent study from Scarborough Research that stated that over 75% of people have used coupons over the past six months. Further to this, Conte sited that coupon usage was up 36% in 2009, when compared to 2008 and that coupon usage by consumers has expanded past the grocery store couponing to clothing, electronics and such.  What was intensely awakening for traditional media attendees at the conference was Peter’s comment about online couponing redemption ratios; only 4.6% of the coupons marketed were marketed online, but online coupon redemption represented 20% of the total couponing redemption value.  Meaning that publishers should start to share more of their advertiser coupons online – consumers are clearly using them!

Below is a list of where consumer’s are getting their coupons in order of share, according to Conte:

1. Sunday flyers
2. In store
3. Print directories
4. Packaging
5. Snail mail
6. Online (now 31% share of coupon sourcing by consumers, up from 7% three years ago)

As we’ve always said on our ad-ition blog , if publishers get directory done right and align it with a powerful local search tool, couponing online or even offline will benefit their bottom lines greatly.