Audience Development in the Digital Age

Audience Development @glecharles | #smbtv | #dbw
Audience Development
in the Digital Age
Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley #8
November 12, 2010
Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Director, Programming & Business Development
Digital Book World
digitalbookworld.com
@digibookworld

A cynic is not merely one
who reads bitter lessons
from the past, he is one
who is prematurely
disappointed in the
future.
–Sidney J. Harris

“Mommy, when I’m at a
bookstore, I feel like I’m
at a party with 25,000
presents.”
-Isaac Gonzalez, 9

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoomar/2159635379/

#cmonson

On ebooks: A Publisher's View of the Digital Transformation
Dominique Raccah, Publisher and CEO, Sourcebooks
http://bit.ly/9VvSZZ

“Without great audiences we cannot have great poets.”
Walt Whitman

The idea that someone could have the
opportunity to make a Nuyorican team and
choose another venue, let alone another
New York City venue, was shocking. But
for louderARTS and NYC-Urbana, the
choice was extremely validating.
It proved that the new series could have
the power to be something great.
WORDS IN YOUR FACE
A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City
Poetry Slam (Soft Skull, 2008)
Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

The social
infrastructure of
the community
is much more
important than
the technology
infrastructure.

Audience Development
 What is Audience Development?
 Why is it important?
 Where is our audience?
 Whose responsibility is it?
 How do we do it?
 When will it have an impact?

What is Audience
Development?
 Definition: To build and manage a customer base across a brand’s
media platforms—print, digital and live events.
 It involves the continual recruitment of new customers and consistent
engagement with existing customers through integrated marketing
campaigns that include direct mail, email, online messaging, face-to-
face interaction, and word of mouth.
 It includes all customer touch points—from editorial and circulation, to
ecommerce and competitions, to advertising and customer service—
via our own media platforms, and everywhere else our community
gathers.
 Community leads to commerce, not vice versa.

Why is it important?
Consumers are the most valuable piece of the entire media
ecosystem. Ironically, their interests are rarely brought up in
discussions about the future. But their influence will only grow
because technology is introducing more choice and voice.
“We need to stay grounded in high-level theories of what customers
want, how we can meet their needs profitably, and how we can
communicate to motivate them,” says David Meer, chief research
officer at WPP’s Enfactico.
“And we must do this in a world where consumers control the
conversation.”
The Endgame Of Media Buying And Selling
Max Kalehoff, AttentionMax

Where is our audience?
You Don't Build Communities, You Enable Them
from the enable-people;-don't-define-them dept
 What the rest of the internet has shown is that you build
community not by building a community, but by enabling a
group of people to do what they want. And that can include
commenting on the news, creating the news or sharing the
news among many other things.
 There isn't a magic bullet to create a community -- but
[publishers] should look to see what they can do to enable a
community to form and then get out of the way.
Mike Masnick
techdirt.com

Community?
“Because they are voluntary,
people do not remain in
communities that no longer
meet their emotional or
intellectual needs.”
--Henry Jenkins

Whose responsibility is it?
Marketing is everything a company does to
acquire customers and maintain a relationship
with them.
Investopedia.com

Whose responsibility is it?
YOURS. MINE. HIS. HERS. OURS.
 Community Leaders
 Editorial and Creative
 Sales
 Circulation
 eCommerce
 Events
 Competitions
 Customer service
 Online product managers
Audience
Development

How do we do it?
 Create valuable content
 Fish where the fish are
 Give others a voice
 Spotlight your contributors
 Join your community
Mack Collier
Five Ways To Increase Engagement
And Build Community

“Focus less on the products [we] have created in the past, and more on
the problems and challenges [our] audience is in need of immediate
solutions for.”
Dan Blank, Publishing, Innovation & the Web

When will it have an impact?
Today, Tomorrow and Yesterday.
 Existing customers
 Quantify
 Identify
 Value
 Prospective customers
 Quantify
 Identify
 Value
 Organizational Assessment
 Product and marketing analysis
 Technology resources
 Staff responsibilities

Implementation and Impact
First steps
 Quantify, identify & segment existing customer base
 Maximize ROI for circulation and ecommerce initiatives
 Increase relevant engagement with core audience
 Identify opportunities for new content, products and services
 Quantify, identify & segment external customer base
 Maximize ROI for SEO/SEM and social media strategies
 Deeper, relevant engagement with broader community
 Identify opportunities for new content, products and service
 Review, coordinate and optimize all marketing points of contact
 Establish a consistent, authentic voice for the brand
 Establish standards for customer acquisition, service and retention
initiatives
 Develop fully integrated, community marketing strategy

The initial wave of consumers
using social technologies in the
US has halted.
Companies will now need to
devise strategies to extend
social applications past the early
adopters.
Forrester: The Latest Global Social
Media Trends May Surprise You
http://bit.ly/bQ4Y67
Social Media Reality Check

“Be aware that not only do you need to be prepared to
communicate over these platforms, but you need to be
ready to deal with the responses you get.”
--Caroline McCarthy, CNET news
FOLIO: Social Media Will be ‘Part of Virtually Everything’
http://bit.ly/cyqWeK

Email is a more targeted form of sending
content; while content-sharers may shoot
off mass emails to large distribution lists,
most email shares are likely sent to a
person or small group selected based on
the specific content being shared.
Sharing via social networks like Facebook,
by contrast, typically involves feeding
items to an entire friends list.
eMarketer: Email Still Tops Facebook for
Keeping in Touch
http://bit.ly/dpRyrB

What's a link worth?
Twitter: $.43
LinkedIn: $.90
Email: $2.34
Facebook: $2.52
Study: Facebook Sharing
Trumps Twitter, LinkedIn, E-mail
http://bit.ly/dh7mjo

In the beginning…

“Some of these conversations ended in a sale, but don’t let that fool you. The sale was
merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.”
Markets Are Conversations, CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nic/230233024/

Community
Manager Driven
model
Customers
Products
Community
We act and behave in groups
online across social networks. You
must understand the community
dynamics that surround your
customers if you want to sell more
books and develop a B2C brand.
--Shiv Singh

How did we do it?
• Create valuable content
• Fish where the fish are
• Give others a voice
• Spotlight your contributors
• Join your community
Mack Collier
Five Ways To Increase Engagement
And Build Community

 Free – News, commentary, blogs, podcasts, webcasts,
social media; all open access and socialized for
comments and sharing.
 Registered – Enewsletters, forums, promotional
downloads, introductory webinars, research and white
papers, product demos and samples.
 IMPORTANT: User-Generated Content (blogs, images, links),
 Paid – Books, magazines, database access, VIP
programs, intensive webinars, competitions, events.
Content Strategy

Engagement Strategy
 Listening - using social media as “real time” research
and gaining insights from listening to customers.
 Talking - using conversations with customers to promote
products or services, authentically.
 Energizing - building brand stewardship; identifying
enthusiastic customers and using them to persuade
others.
 Supporting - making it possible for customers to help
each other.
 Embracing - turning customers into a resource for
innovation.
Via Forrester Research/Groundswell

Engagement Strategy

Listening…

Talking…

Energizing…

Supporting…

Embracing…

Community FTW!

Free Content
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January 24-26, 2011 | http://dbw2011.com
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Contact / Q&A
Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Director, Programming & Business Development
Digital Book World
digitalbookworld.com
@digibookworld
guy.gonzalez@fwmedia.com
loudpoet.com
@glecharles
glecharles@loudpoet.com

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