Conventional Wisdom

Opportunities galore!!

The only problem with conferences that trigger great ideas is that I want to get back NOW and try them all!!
My choice of sessions today focused on the world of sales opportunities. I attended a talk by Peter Jackson (president of SalesSTAR corp.)  on How Newspapers Can Gain Their Competitive Edge and found his 12 steps to being more effective very relevant.
(While I won't be listing them here, Jackson will be e-mailing his presentation and I can gladly forward it to anyone who asks)
Once again on-line is front and centre and Jackson stressed that the days of "supporting the local paper are gone". Advertisers want innovation and results. They want internet, even if they don't know what that means exactly. In fact, many Mom and Pop shops don't even have a web site. Jackson stressed that we have to bring them the web solutions... pronto!
We also need to simplify the buying process for advertisers...how long will it take us to realize local businesses don't care what an agate is?! We need to see small advertisers and non-advertisers as huge potential and not rely on our top 25 advertisers to carry our business.
This small advertiser market was the topic of discussion for my next session too that addressed Effective Management of Small Accounts and featured: Denise Tucker, Barrie Examiner; John Hay, Links Information Management; and Katherine Wiggett, City Media. All reinforced the earlier themes of print and online solutions and looking for opportunities in non-advertisers.
"Try to fit them in the newspaper any way you can", advised Denise. I hear ya girlfriend! We need to take advantage of this revenue stream and get moving now!!
Kelly 
kmontague@thespec.com

Online sigh of relief

Rob Curley, vice-president of product development for the Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive was by far my favourite speaker so far. What innovation!
Curley spoke of the ever popular 'hyper-local' concept and gave some brilliant examples that were adopted by the Naples Daily News and Lawrence Journal-World in Kansas. Check out the video online program: On Being-brilliant!
Great advice about tapping into our intern resources and "every newspaper must have a supply of nerds". 
I must admit that while I was encouraged throughout the presentation that someone out there is doing this online stuff very well, my spidey sales senses were in high gear waiting for some indication of revenue success. Curley did not disappoint with a great finish alerting the audience that every city or newspaper has to have their own unique strategy and do what makes sense in their market.
While it appeared a ton of resources and revenue were being thrown at all of his wonderful projects, he also spoke of web revenue success!!!! Whew!
Kelly

Guess who else is coming to lunch?

Bruce Annan, managing director of Classified Intelligence LLC (and a presenter tomorrow, viz: Thee Personalization of Online Content and Advertising") wins the prize for the first (and we hope not the last) bit of user generated content:
"After his excellent presentation Wednesday morning ("How Brand Diversity & Consumer Insight Drive Growth"), NYT Regional Media VP James Gold was asked whether their regional papers are seeing the same erosion of classifieds as have metro dailies.
His answer: "not yet."
Meanwhile, do you suppose it was coincidental that when Kijiji.ca this week awarded $5,000 for charity to celebrate its "500,000th listing", it chose a Winnipeg woman?
Kijiji is the two-year-old, EBay-owned version of Craigslist, operating in 22 countries (but not the U.S.). It claims 3.2 million users in Canada.
You can read all about it on page B2 of today's Winnipeg Free Press. God bless newspapers that can be counted on to give glowing coverage to the competitors coming to eat their lunch.
Is Kijiji eating your lunch? Perhaps 'not yet'."
Thanks, Bruce. If anyone else is interested in offering thoughts, reports, gossip or news from the convention - this is a group blog and everyone's in the group. Email your post to me at - bdunphy@thespec.com , or, if you want to do more than a single post, let me know that, and I'll add you to our list so you can post directly via email.
Bill