Traditional media companies have yet to overcome their fears when it comes to ‘Social Computing’ phenomena such as blogging, citizen journalism and Google News.
That's what research firm Forrester discovered at the Online Publishers Association’s “Forum for the Future” held in the UK earlier this month.
According to Forrester, professional publishers should draw inspiration from leading media organisations — such as Reuters, the Guardian and OhmyNews—that have already begun to fully embrace what the researcher calls ‘Social Computing’, a term that describes the trend for individuals to increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies.
To thrive in an era of Social Computing, Forrester believes companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.
And media groups that want to survive will have to engage their users in the information delivery process and build up emotional links with their audience, for example, using blogs as community aggregation tools, Forrester says.
They will also need to open a dialogue with power players like Google News and Yahoo! News and leverage their own brand as a key differentiator.
Online Publishers Association “Forum for the Future”—key findings:
In early March, 260 members of the media industry gathered in London to attend the "Forum for the Future," organized by the OPA.
Leading media organisations such as Reuters, the Guardian and OhmyNews urged their counterparts to overcome past fears and take the risk of reinventing themselves in order to survive in a dramatically changing media landscape.
The key lessons for professional publishers were:
1. Don't ignore the power of user-generated content
Reuters CEO Tom Glocer cited the social networking site MySpace as an example: It grew from 40 million users in November 2005 to 56 million in February 2006—a 40% increase in just four months.
In comparison, the websites of the New York Times and CNN each attract about 22 million unique visitors worldwide—half as many as MySpace.
In South Korea, OhmyNews, the online citizen journalism service, achieved profitability in the 2003 with 40,000 citizen writers but “only” 50 staff reporters.
And according to its business model, 70% of OhmyNews' revenues are derived from advertising, just like any traditional publication.
In an era of Social Computing, where anybody can easily and publicly have their say, Forrester believes media players need to engage their users more deeply in their services and product delivery to create loyalty.
2. Integrate blogs as a community aggregator tool
For Emily Bell, Guardian Unlimited's (GU) editor-in-chief, blogging is a very serious matter. It not only redefines the frontiers of direct competition for GU's journalists, it will also soon become a major tool to increase reader retention around the Guardian brand.
The UK publication has been running journalist blogs for a while now to encourage user collaboration.
Each morning on their Newsblog website, Guardian Unlimited editors let their audiences know what the main stories they plan to cover that day are, involve their users in newsroom discussions, and eventually enable them to contribute comments and suggestions.
But why wasn't this enough? Because user comments drifted away from the original point, losing relevancy.
That's why GU has launched its "Comment is free" blog project: A place for "all the best minds to meet, dispute, clash, argue about the main issues of the day”.
More than 200 professional columnists across the UK have already been hired to fuel the blog.
According to Forrester, other media organisations should pay attention, as companies using blogging to present a human face will have an advantage.
The thought of having a public company blog instils fear in traditional command-and-control corporate cultures. But giving customers a view of the inner workings of a company has its tangible rewards, the research firm says.
3. Don't fear Google News
Media players may still feel that content aggregators like Google News and Yahoo! News are stealing part of their audience, building their traffic on the content traditional media companies have been producing at significant cost while not really giving back much of value.
However, managing director of the World Association of Newspapers, Ali Rahnema, reminded attendees of a simple fact: Google News and the like wouldn't exist without professionally-generated content being out there in the first place.
At a time when anybody can produce just about anything, those players bring a very valuable commodity—increased relevancy—to the market.
"There are only 160 hours in a week. People don't want to spend time searching 100 different sources to pull out what is interesting from what is not,” Reuters CEO Tom Glocer said.
“Too much choice often means no choice at all. People like fewer choices, not more.”
Says Yahoo! News general manager Neil Budde: “Our role is to ensure the best content is showcased. Our strategy has not changed. It is not our intent to have a lot of journalists... our main effort is more about aggregating.”
And according to Jeff Jarvis, founder of Buzzmachine.com and consultant for The New York Times Company at About.com, “if you're not found, your journalists’ work doesn't exist".
“The world is not dumb enough to get their information from Google News only. You have to figure out how to make them your friends."
4. Empower your brand as your key differentiator
Not only do users consume the content they want when, where, and how they want it; they also get it from a growing number of alternative sources, including their own peers.
In an increasingly fragmented market, what role should professional media play?
They need to use their brand credibility to act as a content facilitator, Forrester says.
Not every amateur source of information out there is accurate or worth reading.
Trust in traditional media sources like newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV is declining, but the reverse is true for the Internet.
Forrester’s research found that between October 2002 and June 2004, Internet content saw the biggest increase in consumer trust—from 15% in 2002 to 21% in 2004—while email and print media such as magazines and direct mail saw the greatest declines, with upward of 4% deterioration of consumer trust.
Fomenting trust online will be about opening content sources.
Consumers are moving toward consumer-created content online and relying less on print media and TV.
Many traditional publishers are sticking their head in the sand, expecting this to blow over.
However, smart publishers will add readership with new distribution channels such as RSS and consumer brand sites, and through enhancing trust by integrating consumer content.
