06.07.19
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How BBC Good Food is using voice search analytics to develop its Amazon Alexa skill

Unboxing my Amazon Echo. An Amazon Echo and its accessories.
My new Amazon Echo unpacked, by Brewbooks, Wikimedia Commons

Today, the newsletter featured a story about how BBC Good Food, one of the several magazines published under the BBC brand, gathered voice data to develop its Amazon Alexa skill.

I think that Marcela Kunova on journalism.co.uk makes a good point in writing about the process: Smart speakers are still an evolving space and that user behaviour and the technology itself is still a moving target.

I’d go one step further. I think that voice interfaces are still in their infancy. I swear a lot at Alexa and Siri, and the voice eco-system is still in its infancy. At the public broadcasting group that I work at, we have already had issues with getting our work to audiences on smart speakers. Reaching audiences on Alexa is mediated through NPR, our national network, and TuneIn, one of the several audio discovery services. TuneIn’s process for managing our stream has been opaque and very informal for such a critical distribution service.

At the moment BBC Good Food is using what data it can get. The report mentioned that of the 90 m searches done through its website, “only a few hundred users who access the content through Alexa skill.”

But they are using some of the same statistics that they use for web search to guide the development of the Alexa skill: “volume of use, volume of completion, drop-off rate etc,” according to Hannah Williams, head of digital content at BBC Good Food.

Apart from how they analytics that they are using, the other thing I found interesting in their process is how they are trying to get information about anonymous users of their digital services by pushing users to other digital content through their skill.

Williams said that people looking to develop an Alexa skill shouldn’t focus on creating a perfect product because one doesn’t exist yet. She said its more important to invest in analytics to improve the product as user tastes and engagement with smart speakers change.

Most read this week

In the past week, here are the stories that subscribers to my newsletter have been reading the most:

Have a great weekend, and if you have a good media business story, especially from outside the US and Europe, please send it along to @kevglobal on Twitter.

06.06.19
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Podcasting: Lessons from an award-winning pod about pot

Cannabis Station, Denver, Colorado, a medical marijuana store. The sign says, "Fill Up on Diesel $30 ⅛'s."
Cannabis Station, Denver, Colorado, by Jeffrey Beall, from Flickr, Some Rights Reserved

Readers of the newsletter will know that podcast audiences and advertising are growing, well at least in the US, where podcasts can break up the long drives Americans take (and I say that as one). In today’s media business newsletter, the top story is a pithy Q&A about some lessons from a podcast on the pot industry in Massachusetts.

Pot content is not necessarily new, especially as more liberal marijuana laws have swept across the US. The Denver Post had a marijuana critic for a while and a vertical focused on the subject called The Cannabist. (Sadly, the critic and a video show were victims of the well-covered cuts at the newspapers. Indie newspaper Westword said that journalist Jake Browne was to be “replaced by bots.”)

The podcast, Mass Marijuana, “a show about the growing pains in the newly legal cannabis industry in the state of Massachusetts.” Mass is a clever pun both in terms of legal marijuana use coming to the masses and also Mass being an abbreviation and nickname for Massachusetts.

Unlike a lot of professionally produced podcasts that have grown out of public radio in the US, this one is produced by a local TV station in the Boston area. Lead producer Dalton Main said:

As cannabis became legal, we were covering stories constantly. My job was to take the interviews and stories created every day and weave them into a larger overarching narrative. I got to read between the lines and connect the dots of the daily news pieces. It was very fun.

Mass Marijuana: What Broadcasters Can Learn About Podcasting from An Award-Winning Show About Cannabis, by Seth Resler, Jacobs Media

The two lessons that stood out for me were, one obvious one, that they tapped into an identifiable, and I would argue a well-known niche. A niche focus is important, if not critical, in several digital media formats whether that is a podcast, newsletter or blog. Number two, they tapped into a wealth of coverage that they are were already doing. And three, they also mined their own archives.

Keep those suggestions coming to me on Twitter, @kevglobal. As the newsletter grows subscribers, sharing international media stories with me and others will make it even better.

06.05.19
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Newsletters: How to launch a successful one

Man Reading Newspaper, by Mike Prince, from Flickr, Some Rights Reserved

This is going to a very meta post because I’m writing about a post from another newsletter about newsletters from the writer of another newsletter.

A couple of days ago, I spotted this very good newsletter from Poytner about journalism tools, and today, Ren LaForme offers up praise for a morning newsletter that he gets from Buffalo, New York, a place where he hasn’t lived more than a decade ago.

It’s both informative and interesting. It’s packed with voice — from individual reporters on the top stories and freelancer Brian Meyer on the roundups, with the occasional edition from Max Kalnitz (a fellow Spectrum student newspaper alumnus) — without losing its institutional authority

In praise of the morning newsletter, by Ren LaForme, Poynter

It’s a great summary of what makes a great newsletter, and being a newsletter about journalism tools, he also links off to a brilliant post by solo businessman Paul Jarvis about newsletters, which are critical to his business. Reading Paul’s post makes me wonder if newsletters are the new blogs – a personal publishing vehicle that helps a person build a professional profile.

Paul has a lot of pithy advice about newsletters, and it’s really useful. He lists three styles of newsletters that are successful, although I’ve seen others list more. For Paul, most successful newsletters are either long-form writing, the roundup (which is my newsletter) or news.

To be successful, he says that you first need to remember that you have to write, and I’ll say that I started doing my newsletter more intentionally to get me back in the habit of writing. I was offering up too many excuses and letting my perfectionism get the best of me. I felt like I needed something weighty to say to write, and slowly over time, the barrier to what was substantial enough to write became greater. Writing a quick summary of my newsletter, lowered that barrier, and it got me back in the habit of writing. The momentum now feels self-sustaining.

I also like this formulation that Paul has about the magic of newsletters:

Newsletters are interesting because they’re the only form of communication where 1:1 and 1:many exist in the same place.

My newsletter approach, by Paul Jarvis

As he says, writing a newsletter needs a cadence. I’m quite surprised that I have been doing this thing almost daily now since last autumn. I have had to flex how I do this as my work schedule changes, but I’ve been able to commit to it more as I got into it more and got more subscribers.

Paul has a great list for how to start your own newsletter. I’ll highlight just point number two:

Where do those people who should be on your newsletter currently spend their time? Who do they currently read? Who has these people as part of their audience already?

All in all, if newsletters are part of your work or are on your agenda, then you’ll want to bookmark Paul’s write-up of his approach.

Right, I better get back to prepping for my newsletter launch at work next week. Thanks for reading, and if you have a story that you think should be in my international media and journalism business letter, please drop me a link on Twitter, @kevglobal.

06.04.19
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Chartbeat’s 2019 lessons for publishers who want more subscribers

On target, by viZZZual.com, from Flickr, Some Rights Reserved

Occasionally there is an article that really stands out from all of the other media business intelligence, and today, the top story in my media newsletter today is one to bookmark. Nancy Lee, a senior product manager with Chartbeat, summarises 400 hours of research the analytics company did on subscriptions.

There is so much in this post and so many times that I was agreeing violently, but I’ll just highlight some of the points that really stood out for me.

  • Publishers’ infrastructure is still focused on advertising-led businesses and have not kept pace with the shift to reader revenue.
  • Email is still a neglected and overlooked channel for many publishers. “The energy behind email’s return is that it remains the most cost efficient way to test conversion and retention strategies. There’s little risk and plenty of reward for readers to opt-in to newsletters and other distribution lists.”
  • The point that really leapt out at me was how editorial thinking and content strategy are now being married to product thinking. And they touch on the cultural issues that can arise in that shift in thinking. That’s an entire article on its own.

This post is a great conversation starter, and it’s so economical in its communication. I will definitely be using it when we have some of these conversations in my shop.

As always, if you’re not a subscriber to the newsletter yet, click on over to my Nuzzel profile page. And if you have a story that you think should be on the site, let me know on Twitter, @kevglobal.

06.03.19
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What a veteran journalist learned in launching and scaling a digital start-up

Business launch. An illustration of a man in business casual clothes holding a flag as he stands on a rocket. By Mohamed Hassan/pxhere.com
By Mohamed Hassan / pxhere.com

I often say that in the disrupted media businesses that journalists are all freelancers now, or to put it another, more positive way, we all have to be much more entrepreneurial than we have been in the past. That being said, making the move from being a jobbing journalist into an entrepreneur or business owner can be a major shift.

That is why the top story in my international media newsletter today is an interview with Jeff Kofman, the CEO of Trint. Jeff sums up his journey best:

As a reporter with 30 years in the field as a foreign correspondent, as a war correspondent, I just had no experience building a team, raising money, managing a company. It was an incredibly steep learning curve.

Jeff Kofman on how AI can empower newsrooms , from the Global Editors Network

The service uses AI to automate the laborious process of transcription while also adding searchability and discoverability. I like services like this because I often say that I would rather outsource tasks like this to robots rather than treat journalists like robots. It frees journalists up to add value.

The biggest challenge for media leaders is choosing where they think their journalists add value. This is important in creating a content strategy when we’re trying to determine how to make that value exchange clear so that audiences will become paying members or subscribers.

And in building his company, he has learned this important lesson: Even if you’re competing with much bigger competitors – in his world Google and Microsoft – that there is value in focusing on one task and doing that task incredibly well.

Today’s newsletter is truly international with stories from Europe, Asia and Africa. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please visit my Nuzzel profile page and click on the blue subscribe button. And if you spot a story that you think should be in the newsletter, let me know on Twitter, @kevglobal.

05.31.19
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How Schibsted’s ‘future lab’ is looking for new media business models

a starry night sky in the background with several silhouetted people looking through telescopes.
Amateur astronomers from across the country volunteer their expertise and offer free nightly astronomy programs and free telescope viewing. National Park Service/M.Quinn

TGIF! It’s Friday, and today’s top story in my international media newsletter is about Schibsted’s internal incubator, Schibsted Next Media.

John Einar Sandvand of Schibsted says the unit is the group’s “future lab”. He quotes one of the product managers of the group, Fanny Chays, who says, “Our ambition is to find the next generation of media companies for Schibsted.”

In addition to managing a couple of existing products, they also explore “so-called bets for potential future products”. They use a four-step process in identifying product bets:

  • Phase 1: Frame the challenge.
  • Phase 2: Problem solution fit. 
  • Phase 3: Product market fit. 
  • Phase 4: Scale!

Check at the full post at WAN-IFRA.

And here are the stories that you read the most in the past week:

  1. How Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter halved subscriber churn in 2 years, Digiday
  2. How Publishers Can Start Monetizing Smart Speakers, Pubishing Executive
  3. ‘Make something people need:’ How BBC Good Food is getting ahead in voice search | What’s New in Publishing | Digital Publishing News, What’s New in Publishing
  4. How BuzzFeed is making its video shows business sustainable, Digiday
  5. WIRED Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Thompson on lessons from a year behind a paywall, Media Voices Podcast

And that’s another week. Thanks so much for reading and also for subscribing to the newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed, go to my Nuzzel profile, and if you spot a media business story that you think should be included, shoot to me on Twitter, @kevglobal.

05.31.19
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How The (London) Times cut churn with its AI-powered newsletters

A cartoon drawing of a robot on a plaster wall.
Robo(t), by Daniel Lobo, from Flickr, Some Rights Reserved

At work, my hip-hop name is K-Fun, as in Kevin and conversion funnel. I’m semi-obsessed with how we can convert casual users into, in the case of the public media stations I work for, members.

So it should come as no surprise that the top story in today’s newsletter is about how The Times (of London is using AI and newsletters to reduce subscriber churn.

In my work, I’m focused on the top of the funnel – growing our audience – and the first stages of the conversion process. But for groups like The Times, which has been building its paid content strategy for years now, the focus is much farther down the funnel, on retention. Converting casual users to members or subscribers becomes a Sisyphean task if you have a high churn rate, a high rate at which you lose subscribers.

The Times is using AI to send personalised newsletters based on readers interests. Basically, they are using technology to send the right content at the right to time to subscribers on a level that would not be scalable if it relied simply on human editors. The halving of the churn rate was determined by comparing the churn of a group that received the newsletter generated by the AI and a control group.

Nicely for The Times, a £1m grant from Google’s News Initiative helped pay for the trial, which is a good reason for news organisations in North America to apply for the new challenge that Google is running there. I mentioned the challenge in yesterday’s newsletter.

Thanks for reading, and if you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do so easily on my Nuzzel profile page, and please, if you spot an international media business story I should include, flag it up to me on Twitter, @kevglobal.

05.29.19
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How ESPN is getting smarter with its Snapchat strategy

A hand holds a cube with the Snapchat logo
Snapchat User, by Blogtrepreneur, from Flickr, Some Rights Reserved

Hello dear readers, in today’s international media newsletter, the story that stood out for me was one looking at the success that ESPN is having with Snapchat. Snapchat, you remember that app, right? The one that Instagram has copy-pasted feature after feature?

As I often say in social media training sessions, Snapchat is mostly pointless for media folks – especially local media folks or media operations outside of the US and UK. The caveat to that is apart from a handful of verticals like fashion, or I guess sports.

As this Digiday+ ($$$) article points out, ESPN is running against the trend. The New York Times has ‘paused’ their channel, but ESPN is finding that their Snap efforts are helping drive viewers and revenue.

In addition to that, a few other headlines in today’s newsletter:

If you haven’t subscribed you, you can do so on my Nuzzel profile page, and if you spot something, let me know on Twitter. I hope to get comments working again on the ‘ole blog here, but that is a work in progress.

05.29.19
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Can free iPads help an Arkansas newspaper wean readers off of print?

Apple iPad, by John Karakatsanis, from Flickr, Some Rights Reserved

Hello new subscribers and long-time readers! I’m back after my long bank holiday weekend.

Lots of interesting news over the long weekend, but a story out of the US state of Arkansas caught my eye for my media newsletter today. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which goes out to the entire state, is promising readers that their subscription price will stay the same, $36, but it won’t be coming to them daily in print. The paper will still be printed and delivered on Sunday, but other days, they will have to read it digitally. And to sweeten the offer, the newspaper is offering a free iPad to read the ‘paper’ digitally.

As Rick Edmonds at the Poynter Institute pointed out in the AP story, this has been tried before. It hasn’t been a roaring success.

I think that this might be worth watching because the publisher is going out to civic clubs to make the pitch in person, and the newspaper isn’t just offering a free iPad but also training on how to use the digital edition. Will the personal touch be enough to win over subscribers and return the paper to profit by 2020? It’s one to watch.

If you’d like this story and others daily, you can subscribe to my international media newsletter on my Nuzzel profile page. And please, send along media business stories to me on Twitter, @kevglobal.

05.24.19
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How the Seattle Times earned $400,000 from its morning newsletter

H&R Block, from Giphy

Talking about newsletters in my newsletter today. How meta.

But seriously, newsletters are one of the hot topics in media right now because we have so much data on how they are the first step to converting a user to a subscriber. Or, put another way, newsletters are the “zero subscription” as a Google product manager said at the Google News Initiative Summit that I attended in March.

Poytner has a great interview with Kris Higginson, the editor and lead writer for the Seattle Times’ Morning Brief newsletter. Higginson will be leading a seminar on 25 May about developing a successful newsletter at Poynter.

One thing to note: They use Salesforce Marketing Cloud to produce their newsletter. They had been using Mailchimp, which is what a lot of companies, including mine use. Despite the issues always involved in transitioning to a new platform, Salesforce is important to their strategy because:

Marketing Cloud is part of a bigger suite of programs. It lets the business side have more insight into audience behavior. We can see what content drives conversion. We can offer related content based on individual user habits. These abilities underscore our goal of increasing digital subscriptions.

Behind the success of The Seattle Times’ Morning Brief newsletter, by Mel Grau, Poynter

Hello to even more new subscribers. Wahay! And being new here, if you are new here, I want to extend an invitation to pass along interesting reads to me on Twitter, @kevglobal And if you aren’t a subscriber yet, get the full round of interesting in your inbox every weekday by signing up at my Nuzzel profile.