Category: old media

Breaking the media camel’s back

Will News Corporation’s split be the end of print media?

Speculation that News Corporation is going to split into two could be the straw that breaks the back of the media industry.

News gathering has always been subsided by other revenues, mainly advertising in newspapers and commercial broadcasting.

Since the rise of the internet, most of that advertising has followed the audience elsewhere and newspapers have only held on because some advertisers are slow to break the business habits of the last 150 years.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation took that subsidisation to another level, with profitable pay TV and movie divisions also subsidising the print operations that allowed Murdoch to reach his position of power.

Should News now split those profitable operations away from the declining print divisions, those in the news media are going to find themselves in an even bigger world of pain as their revenue declines become even more apparent.

We could be seeing the end game for print in News Corporation’s move. The challenge for all of us now is to figure out the journalism model that works in an era where information is a commodity and there’s no guarantees of easy advertising revenue.

Delivering products

Focusing on delivery misses why we we are in business.

Once upon a time the local plumber got to work by bicycle, then he got a jalopy and now he shows up in a van or a hotted up ute. The plumber and his customers don’t care about the way his services are delivered.

A hundred years ago the retail industry was dominated by corner stores that customers could walk to, they received their deliveries by horse drawn carts and made deliveries on bicycles.

Then along came the motor car, which changed shopping habits and delivery methods.

Fifty years later the corner stores were a dying breed as they were replaced by supermarkets which customers could drive to and they took their deliveries by truck.

Today the retail industry is changing again, as the Internet changes shopping habits and society in ways similar to the motor car.

A similar pattern of change happened in the media sector; the evening paper died as commuters switched to cars and reading the Tribune on the tram or train home became less relevant.

Morning papers survived as people took deliveries to read over breakfast before driving to work.

At the same time radio and television became the dominant way most people got their news.

Even more the retail, the web has dramatically changed news distribution methods.

As the effects of Fairfax’s restructure sinks in, there are a group of people who don’t seem to want to accept reality – newsagents.

Mark Fletcher’s initial post about Fairfax’s restructure on his Australian Newsagency Blog attracted some harsh comments;

“Whilst the print media is arguably in decline I consider this post to be scare mongering……Fairfax will be here in print for years to come and to say or suggest that some days of the week will be or may be cut is pure conjecture at this point.”

” I am in semirural metropolitan Sydney. We have just added another 100 customers to our delivery run. Majority dont like reading their news online – old habits die hard. I hope that Fairfax dont abandon them. They like getting their newspapers in print.”

“Hi i will not pay to read online why it is all free, but will buy paper”

Focusing on print condemns those newsagents to the fate of the corner shop.

What is missed in the discussions about the future of the media is that medium is not message – people want relevant content delivered in the most convenient way.

This is true in every business. What we do is not really related to how we deliver the product, if we’re tied to one way of getting our services to a customer then we’re in trouble.

Disrupting the markets

Mary Meeker’s All Things D tech industry presentation raises some fascinating points.

Generally it’s not a good idea to have nearly a hundred slides in a presentation, but Mary Meeker’s overviews of the tech industry are so rich in data it’s impossible not to spend a weekend looking over the entire sldieshow.

Last week Mary gave her presentation at the All Things Digital conference and as usual she identified a range of trends and issues in the technology industries.

Smartphone upsides

Still the early days of smartphone adoption, with 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide but only 954 million smartphones activated.

This adoption is driving mobile revenues with income growing at 153% per year. Although as she shows later, this is not necessarily good news for everybody.

Print media’s continued decline

A constant in Mary’s presentations over recent years the key slide in has been ad spend versus usage across various mediums.

In this year’s version we still print still vastly over represented with 25% of US advertising while TV remains static, although Henry Blodget at Business Insider thinks the tipping point might be arriving for broadcasters.

Online’s thin returns

One of the things that really jumps out is how thin onlie revenues really are. In annual terms services like Pandora and Zynga are making between 6 and 25 dollars per active user over a year.

These tiny revenues indicate the problem content creators have in making money on the web, after the gatekeepers like Pandora or Spotify have taken their cut, there isn’t much left to go around.

Facebook and Google are also encountering problems as users move to mobile where revenues are even smaller than those from desktop users. This is constraining both services’ earnings growth.

Disrupting markets and governments

Mary’s presentation goes on to look at the disruption web and mobile technologies are bringing to various markets – it’s a good overview of whats changing right now and the products driving the changes.

It’s not just markets that are being disrupted with Mary also looking the US’s budget position and entitlement culture. This in itself is a massive driver of change which will have a deep effect on our lives regardless of where we live.

Are we in a bubble?

Mary finishes up with a look at whether we’re in a tech bubble or not.

Her view is that we are and we aren’t – there are silly valuations of companies in the private market however the poor performance of tech stocks on the stock market indicate the public aren’t being fooled.

One telling statistic is the only 2% of companies have accounted for nearly all the wealth creation of the 1,720 US tech IPOs between 1980 and 2002. There’s little to indicate much has changed in the decade since.

The optimism in funding new businesses is based in the disruption they are bringing to markets and industries – you only need one eBay or Google in your portfolio and you’re a legend, if not filthy rich.

Both the economic and technological changes are disrupting our own businesses and this is why its worth reading and understanding Mary Meeker’s presentations if only to be prepared for the inevitable changes.

Product Review: Australian Financial Review iPad app

How does the AFR’s latest iPhone application stack up.

I really wanted the Australian Financial Review’s iPad application to be great as the country desperately needs good reporting on the platforms people are using. Unfortunately Fairfax’s misguided commercial judgement gets in the way of delivering a killer app.

Many publishers are putting faith in iPad applications, seeing them as an opportunity to catch a market that is fleeing paper publications for their online equivalents.

To meet this demand, the Australian Financial Review has released their iPad application with a free fourteen day trial and plans starting from $59 per month for the digital editions.

It’s telling the subscription plans favour those buying the paper editions as the feeling from using the iPad app is that Fairfax’s management would rather you bought the paper.

This continued focus on print shows in the news not being updated – a reader of the app in an airport lounge at 6am will find little different logging at lunchtime or in a cab on the way home in the evening.

Clinging to the old news timetable is admirable but it means the AFR isn’t taking advantage of its marketplace strengths or the talents of its staff.

One of the reasons the iPad has become so popular as a reading device is the rich, relevant content publishers can display, for instance The New York Times iPad app, their stories on the Syrian massacre in Al-Houla link directly to Youtube clips from local news sources.

So it is disappointing is that the AFR hasn’t harnessed the multimedia advantages of the iPad. For instance Canberra correspondent Laura Tingle’s political stories don’t even link to Laura’s video page on the service.

Similarly a story on BHP won’t have any links to the AFR’s profile of BHP, its stock price or financial results. These are features that could make the AFR’s a killer application for anyone wanting to understand the Australian business scene.

Compounding the issue is Fairfax’s unfortunate policy of reluctantly linking to outside sources – this short sighted view devalues all Fairfax’s online efforts as it detracts from the authority of their broadsheet and business publications. This again is true in the AFR iPad application.

Overall, the AFR’s iPad app is a missed opportunity which is a shame as the Australian business sector desperately needs good reporting delivered through the tools today’s executives and investors are using. Hopefully the next version will do better.

The Australian Financial Review online subscription was provided by Fairfax and the AFR. I have free subscriptions available for the best two comments on the blog this week so fire away with your views on this post or others.

Can Warren Buffett save local news?

Maybe an old billionaire could save the local newspaper industry

Warren Buffett’s purchase of local newspaper chain General Media Publications last week raised eyebrows and the question about the future of local newspapers.

Local news has bucked the trend of the big four gatekeepers taking over – most of us expected Google and Facebook with their local business listings, search and community functions to take over the market just as the web has stolen the income streams of the bigger metropolitan mastheads.

What’s more, us digerati believed social media services like Facebook and Twitter would give us most of the information about what is happening in our communities and make the role of the local newspaper redundant.

This hasn’t happened and there’s several reasons for this – a key one is current web services are great at connecting disparate communities but don’t do a good job of connecting local groups.

A bigger failure is both Google and Facebook blew the opportunity to dominate local news.

Basically, local news isn’t sexy, it’s much more of an ego stroke to be treated like a rock star at a conference or to negotiate a billion dollar purchase of a social media application.

Late nights reporting goings on at the local council or chamber of commerce isn’t sexy. So Facebook and Google’s executive focused on the shiny things.

That failure to execute by the big players has largely left the market to the incumbents and their income is largely untouched – Media General’s income is largely static, unlike the declines being seen by big city mastheads.

A similar phenomenon is at work in other markets, in Australia Fairfax’s regional newspaper division is far more profitable than any other sector while competitor APN makes a good return from their publishing activities in smaller communities.

Interestingly almost all of the local news incumbents are saddled with debts or poorly thought out ventures that absorb the profits coming in from their core operations.

Part of the profitability is because local newspapers are established brands. Locals know they will get news about their community that is immediately relevant to them.

For local businesses, they still have to advertise in the local press as that’s where their market is. Local customers might be reading about Federal politics, Kim Kardashian or Occupy Wall Street on the web, but they are still turning to the district news to find out what’s going on in their immediate community.

How this pans out for Warren Buffett is going to be interesting, Berkshire Hathaway tends to run a lean management philosophy in its businesses and this might be one of the saving attributes for their local media investments.

Stripping out the million dollar men who infest the top levels of the newspaper industry and investing in content – both online and in print – may well be the key to success of the local news industry.

Key to the local news success will be energising the advertising sales teams – there’s little point in skilling up journalists in new technologies or getting editors to “think digital” if the salespeople are stuck in the mentality of display print ads being the only thing that matters. This is the same challenge metro newspapers face.

Strong local media matters in both country and suburban communities. It’s essential to the spirit of the local town and a healthy local media is always a feature of a prosperous community.

One of the promises of the Internet is that local groups could seize back the news about their towns and suburbs, this doesn’t appear to be happening. Maybe it’s going to take Warren Buffett to fix it.

Grappling with the online news beast

Old media organisations are struggling with the web. Is the news industry dead or evolving?

The head of Google News, Richard Gingras, last week discussed how the news industry is evolving at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation.

Much of Richard’s discussion centred around disruption – the newspaper industry was disrupted in the 1950s by television and by the 1980s most print markets had seen several mastheads reduced to one or two.

The remaining outlets were able to book fat profits from their monopoly or duopoly position in display and classified advertising.

By 2000, the web had killed that business model and the newspaper industry was in a decline that continues today as aggregator sites like Huffington Post steal page views and Google News further changes the distribution model.

One of the problems for the news industry is how different the online mediums are from print, radio or television broadcast. The struggles of media startup The Global Mail is a good example of this.

In the middle of last year news started trickling out that one of the Australian Broadcasting Corporations’s top journalists, Monica Attard, had left the broadcaster to set up The Global Mail, an online news site funded by Wotif founder Graeme Wood.

The site launched on schedule in February 2012 and underwhelmed readers with pedestrian content and a confusing layout. By May, Monica Attard announced she was leaving the organisation she’d founded.

Tim Burrowes of the media site Mumbrella examined why the Global Mail is struggling, his Nine problems stopping The Global Mail from getting an audience details how the site doesn’t use online media effectively.

At heart is a fundamental mismatch between the methods of journalists raised in the “glory days” of print and broadcast journalism against those of the online world, not least the much harsher financial imperatives of those publishing on the web.

One key problem it the TL;DR factor – Too Long; Didn’t Read. Where online readers tend to leave stories after around four hundred words.

Richard Gringas is quoted as encountering this problem when he worked at online magazine, Salon.

At Salon, articles were paginated, but only 27% of readers made it to the end of the four-page articles. Compared to competitors, Richard was told, this was a good benchmark. But with fresh eyes, he was astounded that a product was being produced with the knowledge that the vast majority of the audience would not consume the entire piece. Richard loves the long form, but if the objective is to convey information, we need to think about the right form for the right medium at the right time.

So “long form” journalism has to be written the right way and it has to be backed up with good visual components and have “short form” versions suited to the more impatient readers who make up the bulk of the web audience.

The New York Times made a step in this direction with their iEconomy series on how the US middle classes have been displaced with manufacturing’s move to China.

An even better example of journalists using the web well is The Verge’s Scamworld where an online expose of Internet get rich quick schemes and the conmen behind them.

Scamworld shows us what skilled journalists can do online. The amazing thing is the site’s new steam is tiny compared to those of established outlets like the New York Times, Guardian, Fairfax or those of News Corporation.

This failure to execute by incumbent news organisations isn’t because they are lacking talent – every young, and not so young, journalist has been required to have multimedia skills and the ability to file stories in multiple formats for at least a decade.

Old Media’s problems lies in the mindsets of senior journalists, editors and their managements who are locked into a 1950s way of thinking where fat advertising revenues funded the adventures and expense accounts of roving reporters who tough as nails editors occasionally bullied into filing stories.

That model started to die in the 1980s and the Internet gave it the last rites.

Richard Gringas’ discussion at Harvard shows news and journalism isn’t dead, but it is evolving. Just like many other disrupted industries, the news media has to adapt to a changed world.

Irrelevance and the media

Real problems are ignored as the big boys play games

It’s a shame we weren’t around when dinosaurs became extinct. Then again, maybe we are.

News Limited business commentator Terry McCrann writes about the “Bleakest of views from the shopfronts” in his Sunday column describing the problems of retail.

All of the problems Terry cited are from big retailers – Woolworths, Dick Smith, Harvey Norman and JB HiFi. To make it clear he was talking about corporate issues there’s even a reference to General Motors.

Nowhere does Terry talk about smaller businesses or those challenging the big guys, folk like Ruslan Kogan or the Catch of the Day team. It’s all about the big end of town.

Terry’s article illustrates the problem of relying on incumbent mainstream media commentary; that it is Big Media talking about Big Business and Big Government.

“Small”, “ordinary” or “average” has no place in their conversation, if you can call the pronouncement of mainstream media commentators a conversation at all.

We can understand this – for a journalist, it’s good for the ego and career to look like a “heavy hitter” in big business. For the politician, small business and community groups can’t pay the speaking and consulting fees paid by corporations to supplement their meagre retirement benefits.

Increasingly what happens in the corporate board rooms or the once smoke filled rooms of political caucuses is out of touch with the real world.

This has become particularly acute since the responses to the 2008 crash proved to the management classes that their bonuses and perks will be protected by government bailouts regardless of how many billions of shareholder wealth they manage to destroy.

In the United States we see this in political controversies being focused on contraception – an issue settled forty years ago – while the country faces fundamental challenges to its economic base and the basic welfare of its citizens and industries.

While in Australia the media ‘insiders’ rabbit on about pointless internal party politics and soothing articles on how everything else is fine, we just need to be more optimistic. Yet the real questions about how we take advantage of the country’s greatest export boom, position the economy for the next 50 years and the nation’s dependence on the Chinese economy are being ignored.

Terry McCrann’s story is emblematic of just how out of touch Big Media, and their friends in Big Business and Big Government, are with the real world.

All we can do is let them get on with it and not take them too seriously.

Book review: The Information Diet

Clay A. Johnson describes how to manage information overload

We all know a diet of fast food can cause obesity, but can consuming junk information damage our mental fitness and critical faculties?

In The Information Diet, Clay A. Johnson builds the case for being more selective in what we read, watch and listen to. In it, Clay describes how we have reached the stage of intellectual obesity, what constitutes a poor diet and suggests strategies to improve the quality of the information we consume.

The Information Diet is based upon a simple premise, that just as balanced food diet is important for physical health so too is a diverse intake of news and information necessary for a healthy understanding of the world.

Clay A. Johnson came to this view after seeing a protestor holding up a placard reading “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Could an unbalanced information diet cause a kind of intellectual obesity that warps otherwise intelligent peoples’ perspectives?

The analogy is well explored by Clay as he looks at how we can go about creating a form of “infoveganism” that favours selecting information that comes as close from the source as possible

Just as fast food replaces fibre and nutrients with fat, sugars and salt to appeal to our tastes, media organisations process information to appeal to our own perceived biases and beliefs.

Clay doesn’t just accuse the right wing of politics in this – he is as scathing of those who consider the DailyKos, Huffington Post or Keith Olbermann as their primary sources as those who do likewise with Fox News or Bill O’Reilly.

The rise of opinion driven media – something that pre-dates the web – has been because the industrial production of processed information is quicker and more profitable that the higher cost, slower alternatives; which is the same reason for the rise of the fast food industry.

For society, this has meant our political discourse has become flabbier as voters base decisions and opinions upon information that has had the facts and reality processed out of it in an attempt to attract eyeballs and paying advertisers.

In many ways, Clay has identified the fundamental problem facing mass media today; as the advertising driven model requires viewers’ and readers’ attention, producers and editors are forced to become more sensationalist and selective. This in turn is damaging the credibility of these outlets.

Unspoken in Clay’s book is the challenge for traditional media –their processing of information has long since stopped adding value and now strips out the useful data, at best dumbing down the news into a “he said, she said” argument and at worse deliberately distorting events to attract an audience.

While traditional media is suffering from its own “filter failure”, the new media information empires of Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon are developing even stronger feedback loops as our own friends on social media filter the news rather than a newsroom editor or producer.

As our primary sources of information have become more filtered and processed, societal and political structures have themselves become flabby and obese. Clay describes how the skills required to be elected in such a system almost certainly exclude those best suited to lead a diverse democracy and economy.

Clay’s strategies for improving the quality of the information we consume are basic, obvious and clever. The book is a valuable look at how we can equip ourselves to deal with the flood of data we call have to deal with every day.

Probably the most important message from The Information Diet is that we need to identify our biases, challenge our beliefs and look outside the boxes we’ve chosen for ourselves. Doing that will help us deal with the opportunities of the 21st Century.

Clay A. Johnson’s The Information Diet is published by O’Reilly. A complimentary copy was provided as part of the publisher’s blogger review program.

Successful Sources Will Not Be Paid

The free myth is biting us in many ways

The whole world wants a freebie, and many of us are giving our ideas, intellectual capital and service away to online magazines in the hope of getting a link or a little bit of publicity.

Bringing the idea undone is the unfortunate reality that web is awash with free pointless material that adds little value. Your contribution, however valuable, gets lost in the static of PR driven articles and SEO optimised fluff.

This is why Google are trying to tie social recommendations into their search results, although it’s hard to see how your cousin’s LOLCat posts are going to add any more value than the generic garbage served from services like eHow.

Yet every day there’s more callouts for  free content – desperate journalists and publishers beg for our ideas or labor in return for some ‘exposure’.

And that ‘exposure’ floats away into the ocean of noise and irrelevance filled with the rest of the ‘free’ content.

Giving stuff away for free isn’t working well anymore and for those of us who are trying to build a business around that model, we’re struggling to get found or heard in the morass.

Along with the wasted time, the danger is we start giving away our best, most valuable work in order to get attention and then we have nothing left to sell.

Consumers are waking up to this and beginning to focus about what they read online. We should too.

the new gatekeepers

Are four powerful online empires developing?

As the net matures, are we seeing a new phalanx of gatekeepers gathering to complement the old ones?

Four companies striving to control great parts of the Internet economy; Google in the search market, Facebook for social media, Amazon in e-commerce and Apple in mobility.

Of the four, Apple seems to be the furthest along this path as the iTunes store coupled with the market take up of iPad, iPhone and iPod combination are beginning to dominate the mobile device segment of the Internet.

This is illustrated by two stories in recent days; the first is News Corporation’s deal to develop a dedicated iPad “newspaper” and the other Robert Scoble’s description of how Application developers are increasingly focused on the Apple platform.

The telling part of Scoble’s story is where he speculates how the tech media could be being rendered irrelevant by Apple’s control of the iTunes store, he goes on to say;

“Do app developers need the press anymore?

They tell me yes, but not for the reason you might think.

What’s the reason? Well, they suspect that Apple’s team is watching the press for which apps get discussed and hyped up.”

Scoble’s article is interesting in how Apple’s dominance of the distribution chain allows them to bypass other media channels; why go to Facebook or Google, let alone your local newpaper to find out what the hottest new apps are?

Even more fascinating is how Apple’s control of its distribution channels ties in with its dominant hardware platform, this is the online equivalent to one company owning the paper mill, the presses, the trucks and the news stands then forcing every magazine and newspaper publisher to work them.

It’s instructive that despite the real risk that Apple could end dictating all terms to those who rely on iTunes as their publishing platform, newspaper publishers are locking themselves onto this world. This is despite the publishers spending the last two decades shoring up profitability by reducing margins to their news sellers and delivery agents.

Despite these risks, News Corporation isn’t holding back after Rupert Murdoch described the iPad as “a fantastic invention”, across the empire various outlets are promoting their iPad applications, including the New York Post, London Sun and the Sydney Daily Telegraph.

It will be very interesting to see how this alliance between an old and a new media empire will turn out.

Meanwhile the new empires are jostling each other where they meet, Google’s latest spat with Facebook over data is just one of many skirmishes and we can expect to see many more as the big four explore the boundaries of their businesses.

The real question for us is how do we see ourselves working with these empires. Will we reject them, or will we accept that doing business with Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon is the easiest way of getting on with our online lives?

If it’s the latter then we’ll have seen the old gatekeepers of the media, retail and communications simply replaced by new, bigger toll collectors.

the price on our heads

Are we selling our privacy too cheaply?

Over 500 million people have signed up on Facebook, trading their privacy for the ability to connect with friends and online communities. In turn, Facebook has built that massive group of people into an asset worth an estimated $41 billion dollars. But does it rely on us selling our privacy too cheaply?

A common factor in many of our communication channels in the last fifty years has been how we, as a group, have been prepared to trade something personal in return for a cheap service.

Broadcast media’s model offers us free or – in the case of newspapers, magazines and Pay TV – subsidised news, sport and entertainment in return for shrill or intrusive commercials that usually wastes our time.

Similarly with social media tools, in return for a free and easy way to find friends and relatives, we trade our privacy for targeted online advertising which can be so precise a commercial can be designed just for one individual.

The social media advertising model is on many levels a great idea, it cuts out irrelevant messages to the consumer and for the advertiser it’s more effective than the “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” methods of the broadcast advertising world.

A weakness in social media advertising in that it relies on users being prepared to trade away their privacy. Until now, all of us have been fairly relaxed about this despite the evidence mounting that giving away all our privacy and access to our networks often has costs to our reputations and friendships.

That cost can be great,  with the worst case seeing people lose jobs, friendships or even their liberty for something that they, or one of their friends, thought was quite innocent.

Under the old trade off, we could turn off the TV or not buy a magazine if we found the advertising too distracting or offensive. With new media we can’t recover our privacy once it’s been given away.

As we begin to understand the nature of our connected society and the values of our online reputations, we’ll expect a better price for our privacy. The challenge for platforms like Facebook and other social media tools over the next few years will be to convince us that these trade offs and potential risks are worthwhile for the benefits they offer.

Eight online tips for franchising

Is your franchise network part of the online economy, or becoming a relic of the past?

The world wide reach of the web has always been a problem for territory based franchises. As a consequence, many franchise networks have a token web presence which they use mainly as a recruitment tool for new franchisees.

An aversion to the web presents a difficulty for these franchisees as most customers are now online. By not actively using the net, those locally based franchise chains are finding themselves at a disadvantage to their non-franchised competitors.

The franchising industry’s problem was illustrated last week by Ben who called into to my ABC radio spot last week on Internet business trends to ask about how a territory based lawn mowing franchisee can use the web.

Ben’s question raised some important points that franchise holders — and anyone considering entering a franchise — should check to make sure that business is competing in today’s marketplace.

Does the franchise have an individual page for each territory?

Each franchise area should it’s own page within the chain’s site. While the contact details can redirect back to the central phone or form, the territory page should include some local testimonials and few other localised features.

Is the home page regularly updated?

A static index page that rarely changes isn’t attractive to search engines or customers. A vibrant business should be updating their page regularly. This is particularly true if there is a substantial network of franchisees.

How does the site rank?

When searching for the product or service the franchise sells, how high does the franchise’s page come up. If it doesn’t appear in the first page, then the franchise isn’t working.

Does local search work?

Type in a search for the franchise’s product and an established territory such as “lawn mowing Footscray”. If the Footscray franchise doesn’t appear in the local listings then the franchisor hasn’t listed their sites in the local search listings.

What does the site sell?

In researching this article, I found the biggest franchised lawn mowing chain appears in paid ads for “buy a lawn mowing franchise” but not for a actual lawn mowing. A site or digital strategy designed to sell franchises is good for the franchisor but doesn’t do much for the franchisee looking for customers.

Is the franchise engaging with social media?

Whether you trust social media or not, the market is talking about you on forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other channels. A great example of this was Oporto last weekend. A franchise needs to be engaging with customers, critics and fans.

Where are the franchisees?

Are the franchisees listing themselves? This is always a worrying sign that a franchise isn’t controlling its marketing properly. On the other hand, if their personal profiles aren’t appearing on sites like LinkedIn, it can indicate too tight a control on franchises.

What is their media strategy?

The whole point of buying a franchise is to have a ready made brand and marketing strategy. If a franchise is locked into a print mindset with only at best a token online presence then they aren’t going where the customers are. Have a look at the online versus print effort before signing up.

Many franchisors are playing by 1990s rules. Which was great for the last twenty years, but the old models are evolved as customers and potential franchisees have changed the way they shop and do business.

The web and social media are more than just a passing fad or a blunt advertising and marketing tool. They are a key part of your business identity and are being used by suppliers, recruiters, job seekers and commercial partners to figure out whether you are worth doing business with.

A franchise that doesn’t use today’s media tools is stuck in yesterday’s market.