Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: new media

  • Dangerous Game

    Associated Press have warned they will start taking action against news aggregrators like Google. Rupert Murdoch made similar noises last week.

    As Fred Wilson has pointed out, the problem for AP and News is the web is now the newstand and taking publications off the shelves is not good business sense.

    We see that with the Australian Financial Review. Its position as an Australian journal of record has been diminished by Fairfax’s incompetent obsession with protecting content.

    As result, other channels such as The Australian, Business Spectator and blogs have stepped into the vaccuum and eroded the AFR’s online authority.

    Following the RIAA path and suing Google, the Huffington Post and any blog that dares link to their sites will backfire on the news industry just as it did on the record industry.

    In many ways newspapers are even more vulnerable as journalists employed by organisations like News and AP are quick to rip stories off from blogs, web forums or MySpace and Facebook pages with little regard for permission or attribution.

    I suspect it’s one legal quagmire Associated Press or Rupert Murdoch might rue becoming bogged down in at the very time their business models are challenged by both economic and technological change.

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  • Does your business need a blog?

    It’s fashionable to tell business owners they need to embrace every aspect of the web. But do you really need a blog in your small business?

    There’s no doubt a blog is worthwhile for many. It can give another perspective to the business and enhances their story. It can help smaller businesses cut through the noise to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

    A good example is Mark Fletcher’s Newsagency Blog which has publicised Mark’s software company and his associated newsagencies while establishing him as a leader in the industry.

    Not all businesses have Mark’s energy or some simply don’t have the time. For others, their markets don’t really care about blogs.

    Also a blog is not an end in itself. A newsagent with an interesting blog is still going to fail if they don’t  deliver service to their customers and the same applies for PR agencies, marketers and management consultants.

    If blog is going to distract you from your core business, then maybe it isn’t a good idea.

    Every business is unique and what works for one enterprise is not necessarily right for another. A blog is a business tool, just like every other aspect of the Internet, and you need to choose the right tools for your business.

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  • Should you drop the Yellow Pages?

    yellow-pagesToday’s Australian reports Sensis’ Yellow Pages revenue is up 5% and White Pages over 11%. That’s an interesting result as it bucks the evidence that online advertising is hurting them.

    At business events I’m finding many owners and managers are telling me they are dropping their Yellow Pages ads as they find they aren’t getting the returns they were hoping for and think online offers more return for their advertising dollar.

    There’s a lot of people who agree with that idea and even Sensis’ e-business report showed 89% of consumers are using the net to research purchases.

    So there is a pretty good argument for businesses to move their advertising online, but before doing so you need to look at what channels your market is using to find you.

    For some businesses the Yellow Pages is still an important channel. For instance, the local plumber cannot afford to be without a Yellow listing.

    But other businesses, say an online auction site, don’t need to worry about an expensive Yellow Pages display ad although a listing in the White Pages would probably help their credibility with some customers.

    In the end, it depends upon your business and the customers you want to reach. If your business is a service business that generates work from emergency calls, such as the plumber, dentist, vet or a computer technician, then you will need some presence. 

    Even if your business doesn’t cater to those markets, the online Sensis listings are still useful as this plugs your business into the directory enquiries, 1234 and web based services, although these may not be as useful as Google or Yahoo!.

    Marketing’s all about telling your story to the right people. While many of those people are now surfing the web, it may suit your business to still spend something for those people who insist on using the Yellow Pages.

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  • Social networking and old media

    I’m currently attending the Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration World Conference.

    There’s some interesting perspectives on where social networking is going and how people are going to make money from it.

    Personally, I think too many of the big players like Bebo and MySpace are too fixated on the old broadcast media model of top down content where they control everything.

    Particularly fascinating is how dismissive many of the attendees are of YouTube and Facebook. The funny thing is there were five people around me with laptops on and all of them visited their Facebook pages during the morning seminar.

    The icing on the cake was on the bus home. The girl in front of me had her MacBook open and she was editing her Facebook page.

    It seems to me the big established media companies are struggling with their investments in the social media space. 

    More on this later.

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