Who Owns a Column Name?

A recent dispute between the New York Times and the Huffington Post raised the intriguing issue of who owns the name of a blogger’s column—the blogger, or his or her original publisher?

Lisa Belkin edited the Times’s parenting blog, then titled “Motherlode.” She moved to Huffington Post, where the blog was rechristened “Parentlode.” That change wasn’t enough for the Times, which sued on trademark and unfair competition theories.

After a little huffing and puffing about editorial freedom and the lack of any credible consumer confusion, Arianna Huffington waved a white flag (stylish, we are sure) and announced a contest to rename the Belkin blog once more.

The underlying issue is an intriguing one. Absent an agreement, who owns the name of a column or blog? Under standard law, the issue becomes one of consumer understanding—whether consumers understand the name to identify the publisher or the writer. The Times contended that the column developed loyalty because of its association with the Times, and it took that Times aura with it when Ms. Belkin went to HuffPo. (And the Times saw little distinction between Motherlode and its near-synonym Parentlode.) Ms. Belkin claimed that her readers were too intelligent to be “thinking you are somehow reading the New York Times when you are here at the Huffington Post.”

HuffPo’s decision to change the name rather than fight tells you that Times had at least a prima facie case. In these days in which reporters, columnists and bloggers can easily move a few pixels away to a competitor, publishers would be well advised to protect their interests by contract. For any writer who you promote, who may attract a loyal following, consider non-compete agreements, and explicit written policies or contracts covering even such details as who owns the column name.

Posted by Mark Sableman
MSABLEMAN@thompsoncoburn.com

Media Companies, Facebook and Monetization

BPA Worldwide recently polled visitors to its website about the most effective social media channel to market a company's brand. Not surprisingly, Facebook garnered the most votes as the best tool for marketing companies’ products and services.

But while Facebook remains the popular choice for both commercial and private applications, at least one industry pundit suggests media owners aren’t using the channel to its fullest potential. According to Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University who recently addressed the MPA’s American Magazine Conference, “The reason you’re having trouble making money is because you’re not relevant - profits are an indicator of relevance. Not a brand in here is managing capital allocation correctly in relation to Facebook.”

To read the full story with the rest of Galloway’s comments, click here. The question now is whether media companies will respond to the challenge.

What do you think?

In the meantime, here is the full question posed by BPA and the ranking of survey results: What has been the most effective social media channel to market your company's brand?

1. Facebook (43.5% of respondents)
2. LinkedIn (21.7%)
3. Twitter (19.6%)
4. Other (8.7%)
5. YouTube (6.5%)

Mobile Web Population on the Rise

The U.S. mobile Web population will increase to 97.3 million mobile device users this year, up about 25% from last year, according to a new analysis by marketing consultancy eMarketer. This represents 40% of all mobile device users in the country.

“The rapidly expanding smartphone and mobile Internet user populations raise the stakes for marketers and make the mobile web more of an imperative than ever,” said Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst for mobile.

Estimates included people who access the Internet from a mobile browser or installed application at least once per month.

Posted by Brittany Agro
b.agro@abmmail.com

Get Social with ABM & the B-to-B Industry!

ABM is currently developing new tools for better communication, including a new-and-improved association database, already well underway, and a new website to be launched in the coming months.

We also invite you to engage with your association, fellow members and industry peers socially, by:

• Following ABM on Twitter for frequent announcements, news updates, live event discussion and more.
• Joining the ABM Group on LinkedIn to connect with peers, share challenges and ideas, and expand your business network.
• Liking ABM on Facebook to view important ABM announcements, event updates, photo galleries, videos and more.
• Visiting the ABM blog to hear from a variety of industry voices on today's hot topics.

We have just announced a strategic alliance with SISO and a brand-new Drill Down event series, while announcements on a new education program, industry research and business metrics are forthcoming. Social media will be a vital way in which we collect input from and disseminate information to our members. The more you participate, the more we can focus these evolving services on your needs.

Stay tuned!

SISO: Companies Explore Digital Attendee Development

Day No. 2 at SISO’s Executive Conference began with a full room of eager trade show folks ready to deep dive into digital attendee development. The speakers, who led the session “The New Rules of Engagement,” shared case studies that uncovered driving traffic at trade shows through websites and referrals to analyzing metrics.

Integrated Systems Events

Mike Blackman, managing director of Integrated Systems Events (ISE), emphasized how important (and effective) a website can be. Elements ISE incorporates on its website include banners, video and links to registration pages. “The ISE website is our most relevant electronic media,” said Blackman. “We are able to track everybody that comes to our website; we can see what they are doing.”

Blackman credits referrals from exhibitors and colleagues as the most effective attendance driver: “Our exhibitors are the most single successful attendee marketing channel … Providing them with the right tools and incentives will boost any attendance.”

To help drive show attendance and get support with attendee marketing, ISE gives exhibitors a 10% discount incentive for next year’s show. “You need to work with your exhibitors because they know the attendees better than you can,” noted Blackman.

JDEvents

Joelle Coretti, VP of marketing, JDEvents, went into great depth on how her company provides attendees and exhibitors with dashboards. She said the company developed an event planner so that its website could become a “store front” to ultimately drive people there. 

The dashboards created allow attendees to build their agenda and choose exhibitors that they want to see. Meanwhile, exhibitors can build a robust company profile and search for attendees in advance to set meetings. “We want an intuitive interface so there wouldn’t be a learning curve,” said Coretti.

The dashboard for JDEvents’ Healthcare Facilities Symposium and Expo is an elaborate and detailed dashboard for attendees and exhibitors. The company measured its success by its usage: averages 35% depending on the event (initial rollout was 18%; it nearly doubled the second time around, according to Coretti.)

Coretti added that the cost for the event planner, which covers four to five shows per year, was $40,000 plus nominal updates/enhancements.

Diversified Business Communications

Four years ago, Diversified Business Communications opted to outsource an internal marketing database. They tracked metrics, collected information related to geographic and demographic shifts and conducted a “State of the Business” on audience data in the first year.

“Our retention rates, loyalty assessments, overlap between our media and products were accurate,” said Vicki Hennin, VP strategic marketing and business intelligence of Diversified. “It just made us realize that some of the things we believed were true and others were not. We debunked some myths.”

The company learned that direct marketing is effective with their customers and very ineffective with prospects. As a result, marketing expenses decreased or shifted to new innovative programs and expenses were cut by almost 35%.

In the second year, they learned more and refined their model, developed touch strategies for specific audience groups and shifted marketing investments to ‘indirect’ marketing efforts.

Hennin told the audience that the key takeaway of her presentation is performing analytics: “You have to commit to doing this as an organization. Get everybody on board. It’s a marathon but pays off at the end,” she said.

Posted by Brittany Agro

b.agro@abmmail.com  

SISO Keynote Woos Trade Show Crowd

This morning, SISO kicked off its Executive Conference in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. The keynote speaker, Andrew Davis, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Tippingpoint Labs, put on a riveting presentation to a crowd of roughly 125 trade show professionals on building audience and driving revenue by thinking like a media company. Davis wooed the crowd with his knowledge of social media platforms and cool presentation tools like Prezi.

With an appetite to learn more about new digital opportunities - the theme of this year’s conference - attendees were highly engaged by Davis’ captivating presentation, according to the rapid number of tweets that rolled in. Traci Browne of the Trade Show Institute tweeted: "Keynote @TPLDrew has done an amazing job customizing his presentation to his audience ... clearly spent a very long time prepping."

Davis offered great insights into building content relationships, social media and fractal marketing or exploring smaller, more niche-focused online communities in order to empower digital influencers to drive revenue and reduce costs. Some takeaways included:

• Think like a content producer: Every trade show is an opportunity to find the content, to find new opportunities.
• Content is the currency of social media. You need to be thinking about how fast you can get your content into the market.
• Remember the key elements of content: high quality, frequent and relevant.
• Today you must build content-based relationships; that is what a lot of social media is focusing on.
• If you are starting a video program, don’t just tell people about it. Tell them how they can build a relationship with that content, and then live up to it.

Posted by Brittany Agro

b.agro@abmmail.com

Hats off to Hoard's Farm!

Last month, Hoard’s Dairyman Farm in Fort Atkinson, Wis., was honored with the American Guernsey Association's Commercial Herd Award. The award goes to the highest-producing herd with more than 100 cows recorded for milk, fat and protein.

Their 243 Guernseys averaged 20,119 pounds of milk, including 966 pounds of fat and 661 pounds of protein. That equals out to about 2,339 gallons of milk per cow. Using their milk, fat and protein, a cheese plant could make 229,357 pounds of Cheddar cheese.

Holy cow!

Posted by Brittany Agro
b.agro@abmmail.com

How Do You Measure Content Success?

The proliferation of social media has brought us new opportunities to measure how well a post, article, page or website is doing.

Now we can measure beyond page views, impressions, click-throughs, open rates and comments.

You can choose from “likes” (Facebook) as well as “tweets” or “retweets” and “shares” (LinkedIn) and so on.

What’s my favorite? It’s what I’ll call “all of the above but at different times.”

OK, that’s a mouthful. But here’s what I mean.

It’s unrealistic to think that every article will be inundated with comments and tweets and “likes” and so on. (Unless you’re the Tiger Mother.)

Nor, for me, is there one metric that I necessarily want to achieve with everything on ERE.net.

But if we can spike up one metric one hour and another metric another hour – that’s good.

Here’s why.

I find that our highly-tweeted and re-tweeted posts tend to be about certain subjects that apply to the masses, which have broad appeal – but may not be the most valuable and detailed. These highly tweeted posts are great, but relying on them exclusively is dangerous as a long-term strategy. (Think of those magazine articles about “5 Superfoods” and “3 Ways to Become a Millionaire”; they grab you but over time there are only so many ways to be told to eat your blueberries and your almonds, and you lose interest in the publication.)

The articles that are most researched, and are in most depth, are often most valuable to a smaller number of people. They draw fewer tweets and likes. They’re necessary for a strong site, but relying on them alone is dangerous, as they draw less traffic. The metrics for them are tough to pin down – and are often in the form of verbal or written feedback as to how the article helped someone.

Controversies draw more comments, a great metric – but to make that the sole metric can create an atmosphere where you’re trying to create controversy, which usually is transparent in its lameness.
That’s how I see it for our site. Each article has a different purpose and a different metric should be used to judge its success. I like to see a high tweet count on one piece, a high number of comments on another and a “thank-you” note on a third.

I’d love to hear how you measure content success.

Posted by Todd Raphael
Editor-in-Chief
ERE Media

Studies Influence Web-Tracking Debate

Academic studies of web tracking technologies are significantly influencing the ongoing public debate about Internet tracking and privacy. For ABM members and others who use tracking technologies, these studies signal the importance of fully understanding and disclosing your web-tracking practices.

Most recently, within days after a University of California Berkeley study highlighted practices of the KISSmetrics tracking firm, that firm drastically changed its practices. According to the study, KISSmetrics, which provides analytical information regarding web traffic, provided code that allowed website operators to track users regardless of which browser they used or whether they deleted their cookies. Wired magazine reported the study's finding on July 29, and by August 2 it followed up with the story that KISSmetrics had "quietly overhauled its web tracking methods over the weekend, and is now permitting users to block its surveillance."

Reseachers at Berkeley and at Carnegie Mellon University have, over the last few years, issued a series of reports on web tracking and privacy practices that have attracted attention in Congress, the regulatory agencies and consumer protection lobbies. One of the Berkeley researchers, Ashkan Soltani, advised the Wall Street Journal on its influential "What They Know" series last year. Several of the Journal reports were, in essence, popularized rehashes of academic studies by Soltani and others. And those Journal stories in turn led to a spate of class action lawsuits alleging inadequate disclosures of data-collection practices.

The lesson for ABM members? Keep on top of the technologies being used on your websites – not only the programs you use directly, but also those that your contractors (like ad networks and analytics vendors) use. Tell your techs to act like computer science Ph.D. candidates at top universities are looking over their shoulders – because, they are in fact doing so, virtually. And keep an eye as well on your privacy disclosures so that they fairly disclose the technologies you use.

Posted by Mark Sableman msableman@thompsoncoburn.com

Cloud-based Services Survey Results

BPA Worldwide recently surveyed visitors to its website about what they thought was the biggest drawback to using cloud-based services. The results will interest you with “security” garnering the most votes, but perhaps the most revealing fact was that nearly one-quarter of respondents weren’t even sure what cloud-based services are.

Turns out the US government recognizes the value of cloud computing, and, in sizeable cost-cutting measure, is moving some of its massive data management operations to more efficient—and cheaper—online applications. The move to cloud-based services will lead to the closure of up to 800 data centers in the next four years with an estimated savings of up to $3 billion per year. That’s some savings! You can read more about it here.

Here’s the full question posed by BPA and the ranking of survey results:

What is your biggest concern about using cloud-based services?

1. I have security concerns (29.6% of respondents)
2. Content resides outside my control (25.9%)
3. What are cloud-based services? (22.2%)
4. I have to be online to access my content (22.2%)
5. I have already invested in supporting infrastructure (0.0%)

Posted by Glenn Schutz and Peter Black
BPA Worldwide