Headlines and Headcount
The SF Chronicle — a newspaper that has long been rumored to be suffering from the myriad challenges facing the newspaper industry — weighs in with a close look at blogger economics. Business reporter Sam Zuckerman zooms in most closely on TechCrunch, the Silicon Valley-based tech blog that most industry watchers regard as the bellwether for commercial blogs.
TechCrunch illustrates the new blogging math. It sells sponsorships that allow advertisers to display on the home page at $10,000 per month. It also uses Federated Media to sell display ads, keeping 60 percent of the revenue. And it charges $200 to list in its Cool Jobs section, getting about five or six want ads per day. Parties and conferences add another income source. Last month, TechCrunch organized a two-day event at the Palace Hotel that gave 40 startups a platform to tout their wares.
And, as far as spending goes, “our costs are only headcount,” Arrington said.
Let’s assume that newspapers need to study blogger economics in order to get ahead, or even keep up (btw, that’s a big assumption, because despite the success of TechCrunch, GigaOm, and other popular commercial blogs, the top line is not there for many others). One lesson for newspapers has got to be depressing: the overhead of running a commercial publishing enterprise has plummeted to a level where almost anyone can jump in. But note that Michael Arrington and others are spending on “headcount.” By that, of course, he means writers, and that’s not-so-bad news for journalists. The new publishing world continues to drive the demand for good content. Only question is, who’s hiring?
Social Media Spending Goes Up – Why Wait for ROI?
This is interesting, and it’s a nice follow-up to the recent NYTimes article I posted about last week. Prospero, a social-media vendor, has posted a study which shows that social-media spending is on the rise. Quoting MarketingVox, here are the key takeaways from the study:
Prospero’s 2007 Social Media Survey found 30 percent of online marketers who use social media plan to spend significantly more on social-media applications in 2008, while an additional 58 percent also plan to increase spending, though not “significantly.”
Some 59 percent of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives.
Survey participants were from leading brand organizations from a variety of industries, including Media, Education, Financial Services, Health, and Sports and Gaming.
Asked about social media return on investment (ROI), 35 percent reported positive ROI and 41 percent said that ROI was “unknown.”
What’s most interesting, to me, is that the report claims that marketing pros are not so interested in “ROI.” Why this matters: marketing folks of course care whether social media is effective. They wouldn’t approve bigger budgets if they thought otherwise. But I would bet that many marketing pros recognize that an investment in social media is a “must have” — regardless of the proven models for measurement because the entire business world is moving in that direction, and they cannot afford to be left behind.
Technorati Tags: Social Media Spending, ROI
What should a big-company "PR" guy blog about
I’ve asked myself that question for a long time now. There are many things I’ve been wanting to write about. But when you get down to it, I wanted to blog about what I wasn’t already reading — not it the blogosphere, not anywhere: the who, what, when, where and why of social media from a corporate communications perspective.
So much gets written and discussed about why you should care about social media, the number of large and small companies not employing social media, and what social media may or may not mean to the future of how we engage with one another in our personal and business lives. While I will leave the personal aspect alone, I will try to address the business side, at least from the corporate communications perspective.
Few conversations address how to overcome the inertia of change-management inside an organization to allow the concepts and tools of social media to flourish.
So, what needs to happen to get more companies – big and small – engaged? Does PR have a role in the social/new media world? I think so! It may not look like traditional PR but its role is as important. Is the topic bigger than just PR? It sure is: Blogger Relations anyone? Should social media concepts and tools be present across your entire communications strategy? It should if you want to succeed. Which is more important: internal or external communications? Well, that depends on how you want to get started, but both are equally important!
From what I observe (and there are exceptions) the communications profession (including PR) today is basically doing the same old things in the same old ways. The current “new” thinking is largely about doing old things in new ways (that’s the inertia that has to be overcome). Where we’re headed needs entirely new communications business models.
Have any thoughts? Have any questions? Interested? Let me know what you’re thinking. I’m making this my mission.
