Think Like a Publisher

Publishing is no longer an industry or a job. As technology consultant Clay Shirky famously put it, publishing is a button. “It’s a button that says publish,” he said, “and when you press it, it’s done.”

The ease of publishing anything and everything on the Internet is radically transforming the worlds of journalism, traditional book publishing, and marketing. News blogging revolutionized the media business. Self-publishing books is no longer a loser’s game—it’s a multi-million dollar business. And marketers no longer need to rent all their media real estate.

The big six New York publishers once viewed books as produce like lettuce or bananas that spoil on the shelf after a short period. New releases would sell for a few weeks and months, but they had to be replenished constantly with more new releases because most bookstores didn’t have the space for anything else.

Some publishers still think this way to an extent, but with the rise of e-books, print-on-demand and online booksellers like Amazon where shelf space isn’t an issue, books don’t go out of print anymore. Every title is now an income-generating asset that can turn a profit indefinitely.

Think of your content marketing the same way. An ad in a newspaper is produce. It spoils even faster than bananas and lettuce. Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s bird cage liner or fish wrap.

Ads are fine. So are newspapers, bananas, and lettuce. Engaging content on your brand’s web site, however, can attract new readers—and hence new customers—for years as long as search engines can find it. Like e-books in a publisher’s backlist, your company’s high quality blog posts and articles are income-generating assets. And you should develop those assets by dedicating the same amount of resources you use to develop your other income-generating assets.

How? By thinking like a publisher. Your web site is not just a web site.  www.americanwidgets.com is just as much a publishing platform as www.wallstreetjournal.com.

You have the same capacity to publish massive amounts of quality material as any online newspaper or magazine. And you don’t need to pay for it with subscriptions or advertising revenue like they do.
But don’t just throw something together in five minutes and call it good because it’s optimized for search engines and mentions your company. Ask yourself seriously if anybody would actually want to read it. Is it good enough for Wired magazine? How about The New York Times? Is it at least good enough for a local newspaper or trade magazine? If not, your content will be ignored by readers accustomed to the higher-quality content they do find in the media business and on other company web sites.

The best way to produce content that’s good enough for online newspapers and magazines—in other words, content that’s good enough to engage, build and sustain an audience—is by hiring writers and editors with experience working for online newspapers and magazines.

Intel is doing it with its tech magazine, IQ by Intel. John Deere did it more than 100 years ago with its agriculture magazine, The Furrow, which is still delivered to more than 1.5 million subscribers. Saudi Aramco publishes Aramco World, a world class magazine about the people and cultures of the Middle East.

In his book, Epic Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi writes that his company, the Content Marketing Institute, taught a workshop for more than a dozen technology companies and found and that every single one of them “had an open position for an in-house journalist, managing editor, or content marketing director.” They didn’t reinvent the wheel. Most of them hired experienced media professionals with the proven ability to engage, build and sustain an audience.

And that’s what we’ve done here at reddbug.