#mms12: Apple Newsstand advice from Future Publishing and Dennis Publishing

Leave a reply

It is almost a year since the launch of Apple’s Newsstand. After success stories for Future Publishing, which reported 6 million downloads in the first six weeks, and talk of it “revolutionising” the publishing industry, the question Mike Goldsmith, editor-in-chief, digital editions at Future Publishing, now gets asked is “how do I get on the Apple carousel?”

After Future’s success in regularly being featured in the carousel, publishers are keen to find out from Goldsmith how they too get in the ‘featured app list. Goldsmith shared his advice with delegates of today’s Mobile Media Strategies conference.

Another conference case study came from The Week, Dennis Publishing’s title which launched in 1995 and had an average monthly circulation of more than 190,000 in the first six months of 2012, according to recent Audit Bureau of Circulation results.

The Week’s iPad app has also been positioned by Apple in the ‘featured’ slot, and Alex Watson, head of apps at Dennis Publishing, also talked through lessons from the title which he said is reporting that digital subscriptions are growing by 10 per cent per month.

Lessons from Future Publishing

Mike Goldsmith’s main piece of advice is to “publish a good product”.

“Make something amazing,” he said. “This is the factor that will get your magazine featured in Apple’s carousel”. He pointed out that the ‘featured apps’ slot is not the reserve of large brands and smaller publishers can take the slots.

He also advised publishers to “get your support sorted out before launch”, explaining that they could expect to receive thousands of emails from readers so to put systems in place to respond to the customers who will contact them.

He also urged publishers to “know your customers” and study the analytics. And “remember you are selling a product”, he said, and therefore work on the cover of your app.

Goldsmith also advocated “telling manufacturers about your app”. He advised building a relationship with Apple (and Amazon and Google).

Lesson from The Week

Building relationships is something Dennis Publishing did when designing and building The Week’s app, showing Apple the product and listening to feedback, Alex Watson explained.

Watson said that they decided not to opt for a PDF-type replica of the magazine.

The app is “native in terms of way the user gets it” from the App Store, Watson explained, and uses HTML5 technologies to help focus on the user experience.

The technology keeps the file size of the app down to just 15 to 20Mb, giving the user experience of a fast download speed.

The Week also built in another feature, as the publisher knew its readers would opt for iPad app bedtime reading, which was a “night-mode” option with the bright back lighting dulled.

For more from Watson listen to the following interview:

#mms12: Lessons for consumer publishers from Immediate Media

Leave a reply

At today’s Mobile Media Strategies conference, Rebekah Billingsley, mobile publisher, Immediate Media, explained how the publisher, which was formed in November 2011 after a merger of BBC Worldwide magazines, Origin Publishing and Magicalia, has become the “second largest publisher of digital magazines”, based on Immediate’s own tally, with more than 1.3 million downloads to date and 16 apps downloaded every second.

Immediate Media launched its first magazine app in 2010 when it released Focus, later following with Good Food, which is now the “highest rated magazine app in Newsstand”.

When Apple’s Newsstand launched in October 2011 “sales quadrupled overnight”, Billingsley said. The same month as Newsstand launched, Immediate Media launched its History Magazine to Kindle.

And the previous year it started releasing ‘bookazines’, single editions with a long shelf-life. Two years on and the publisher aims to launch three bookezines a month and “every month they are making more and more money”, Billingsley told delegates.

Today 48 per cent of Immediate’s revenue from Apple comes from outside the UK and monthly PDF revenues have grown 500 per cent since launch.

“Be prepared to be surprised,” Billingsley urged delegates.

She had thought consumers would only opt for “enhanced, fully interactive models”. But recent ABC figures show “four out of the top 10 sellers are PDF replicas”.

Billingsley was also surprised by the numbers reading magazines on their phones, with 10 per cent of magazines bought via Zinio read on phones.

“Launching our titles gave us access to data in lots of countries,” Billingsley said, explaining they are now planning the roadmap based on actual data.

Billingsley warned:

Don’t just assume on behalf of your consumers. It’s new to them as well.

One thing Immediate did in order to convince advertisers of the value of the new app products was to hire 20 iPads and send them to media planners and also equipped sales teams with the devices.

And Billingsley’s advice for consumer publishers considering apps?

As long as you are using cost-effective technology and testing you can try new things.

She also encouraged the repackaging of existing content.

Her final words of advice were to “watch your competitors, better still take them to lunch”.

#mms12: Eight facts on mobile for publishers from Enders Analysis

Leave a reply
Image by liewcf on Flickr

Image by liewcf on Flickr. Creative commons licence. Some rights reserved

The Mobile Media Strategies conference is underway in London today where Benedict Evans from Enders Analysis delivered the keynote presentation. Here are eight facts from his talk.

1. Half of the UK population has a smartphone.

2. Android and iOS mobile device sales combined are on target to hit 1 billion by end of this year.

3. More than half of Facebook’s user base is using mobile.

4. iOS users by five apps per month, per device.

5. Fifteen per cent of UK adults say they have a tablet. It is not reducing PC sales but the home computer gets switched on less and less.

6. Between Apple and Amazon they have a product at “pretty much all price points”, meaning they can be bought in the supermarket “without the need for a family conversation” about whether to make the purchase.

7. Android has about one third of the global tablet market and 10 per cent of the UK tablet market. But that could change.

8. Twelve per cent of tablet magazine and newspaper readers in April didn’t read print version previously, 20 per cent now read magazines and newspapers less.

In summary, Evans said:

If you are going to invest in developing for three mobile platforms – make them iOS, Android and Facebook.

SoundCloud adds trim and edit features to its apps

2 Replies

SoundCloud has updated its iPhone, iPad and Android apps adding some really useful features for journalists.

Users can now trim and edit a recording, deleting any mistakes before uploading the audio. The app also now allows pause and resume during recording and has a fade in and fade out option.

 

Third-party recording apps are also available that work with SoundCloud.

In a release, the audio recording and sharing platform said it now has 20 million registered users.

Released reading:

Release: Guardian promotes Tanya Cordrey to ‘new executive role of chief digital officer’

Leave a reply

Michael Bruntonspall on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Guardian News and Media today announced the promotion of Tanya Cordrey, current director of digital development, to the role of chief digital officer with immediate effect.

According to a release:

Tanya joined GNM in 2008 initially building the digital portfolio of environment products and most recently overseeing the product development team. In her new role Tanya will continue to have product oversight as well as supporting the strategic development of the organisation. She joined GNM from the start-up company Zopa.com and was previously on the UK executive team at eBay for five years.

Her new role encompasses her position as director of digital development, but she will now report to chief executive of Guardian Media Group Andrew Miller.

In the release Miller said Cordrey – along with David Pemsel, who was today named as chief commercial officer – “worked tirelessly and with great creativity to make our digital-first strategy a reality, attract unprecedented numbers of global readers and create new revenue streams”.

These changes are part of our strategy to bring both GNM and GMG closer together as we build a stronger, more digitally-focused organisation.

See the press release here.

Study: Fewer UK journalists feel social media improves productivity in 2012 than in 2011

Leave a reply

Image by Adikos on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

An annual study into how UK journalists feel social media impacts on their work was announced this week by Canterbury Christ Church University and public relations and media services outlet Cision.

The report’s findings are based on 769 responses from UK journalists. According to a release from the university the study found an “increasing number of concerns about productivity, privacy and the future of journalism”.

For example, the number of journalists who said they felt social media improved their productivity fell from 49 per cent in 2011 to 39 per cent in 2012.

At the same time, the percentage of those who disagreed that social media improved productivity increased from 20 per cent to 34 per cent. Journalists were also less positive this year about the impact of social media on their relationships with their audience.

In general, they think that social media allows greater engagement with their audience, but the number who strongly agreed with that sentiment dropped from 43 per cent to 27 per cent.

The study can be downloaded from Cision. For more on the findings see this report by the Drum.

Release: Guardian adds Observer to relaunched 7-day iPad edition

Leave a reply

The Guardian announced today that it is re-launching its iPad edition to include the Observer, with the first iPad issue of the Sunday newspaper to be released on Sunday 16 September.

In a release the publisher said the Observer iPad issue will feature “the main news section of The Observer, the New Review, the sport section and the Observer Magazine”. Editor of the Observer John Mulholland was quoted as saying:

As the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, we’re thrilled to be able to bring our journalism, ideas and debate to a new digital platform in a fresh way, enabling our unique content to be made available to both loyal readers and new audiences around the world. The look and feel of The Observer in the app is very much in line with that of the newspaper and we look forward to hearing our readers’ feedback.

The first two issues of the Observer iPad edition will be free, but subscriptions will then apply of £11.99 a month for the Guardian and Observer edition. Alternatively users can select just the Guardian edition for the current price of £9.99 a month or £6.99 a month for The Observer only.

Student summer blog: How students can get involved on citizen journalism platforms

Leave a reply

Images by lirneasia on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Danny Roberts is a sports journalism student at Leeds Trinity University College and tweets from @DannyRoberts74.

We live in a very fast paced, evolving world. Technology becomes more advanced by the second and is ours to use to our advantage, especially as journalists. Gone are the days were you must spend years working to get a break that would see your work published. In today’s world you can have your story seen by thousands of people in just a few minutes.

Citizen journalism has fast become a huge player in the media world. As a student journalist, you should have a Twitter account, a Facebook account and a blog already, and if you are looking for somewhere to publish your work even further, there are many sites that carry citizen journalism reporting as well as applications that allow you to share pictures and stream video live.

One of the most famous events which demonstrated the importance of citizen journalism was the plane crash in the Hudson River in 2009. Only four minutes after this happened, a picture and the tweet “I just watched a plane crash into the hudson riv [sic] in manhattan” were published online. It would take news crews a lot longer to get to the scene, set-up and report on.

Entrepreneur, Adam Baker, came up with the idea for citizen journalism website Blottr.com, after seeing the 9/11 attacks unfold on TV. He believes that people should have a place to publish their work and show it off to thousands of people.

Ravin Sampat, editor of Blottr.com, said citizen journalists fall into many categories.

There are those that are at the scene (not journalists) of an event who can be labelled citizen reporters because they captured a photo or video, and can help journalists collaborate on a story. Then there are those individuals who like being part of the newsgathering process, i.e. amateur reporters, who play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing, and collaborating on news. They play a vital role in the ongoing drama that is a breaking news situation.

Ravin then added that which he feels it is not fair to look for something specific in a citizen journalist, there are three important factors:

1. Facts and sticking to what you observe

2. Never altering multimedia content like photos and video to depict a different version of events

3. Avoiding hearsay

Blottr still likes to see traditional writing skills being put to use in its pieces but knows that not everybody on the site enjoys writing:

Quality of writing is very important especially if you want people to read your work. This rule applies to those working in the mainstream media as well and is no different for citizen journalists. Some citizen journalists don’t like writing but have a lot to contribute to a story using things like video and pictures captured.

Being part of a citizen journalism site gives students a platform to show off their talents to potential employers as well as gaining news writing experience. With sites like Blottr.com you can also collaborate with others to make the perfect, verified, story. It also allows people to share news without having to write and describe the scene and what happened:

Being a citizen journalism news site, you can understand we get different types of content on a daily basis, from protests in Chicago, to the growing conflict in Syria, to something as simple as people snapping photos of Olympic moments. Over the last year we’ve found that the content that picks up the most traction is the content that’s new, fresh, and photo and video heavy. When there is a breaking news story that we have first, we get lots of traction, and as the story develops, and the mainstream media outlets start getting more information, we get even more traction for having broken that story first.

The most views are usually on pictures and videos, however that doesn’t mean that writing or opinion is rejected as they all have their place. Sampat said that “amateur footage is unique in that it’s raw, unedited”, and in some cases can be more powerful on its own than as part of a news package. But he added that “depending on the topic, each type of content is unique it its own way”.

One platform that allows citizens to stream video live from a webcam or smartphone is Bambuser. This would allow student journalists to have another outlet for their work if they wanted to go into broadcast media in the future and are looking for experience. Then there is Flickr, that allows the sharing of photos, along with other platforms such as Instagram. They are examples of other useful outlets for students that want to get their multimedia work out there, and is ideal for people that want to primarily work as a photographer or broadcaster.

To conclude, citizen journalism is fast becoming an integral part of the media and reporting world. People use social networks every day without possibly realising that what they are posting can be seen and interpreted by millions of people. So if you have the news and just need a platform to share it there are clearly many ways to do so in today’s world.

Useful sites and apps for citizen journalists:

The Economist in figures: Social media, newsletter and circulation stats

Leave a reply

The Economist has released a set of audited statistics that show combined print and digital circulations, social media followers and newsletter subscribers.

The stats show:

  • Average print and paid digital editions circulation from January to June 2012 = more than 1.5 million
  • Average weekly unique devices accessing The Economist apps = more than 600,000
  • Total monthly unique browsers to The Economist website = nearly 7 million
  • More than 2 million unique newsletter opens, with a unique open rate of 13.9 per cent
  • A total of 5.6 million social media followers, including: 2.8 million Twitter followers, 1.1 million Facebook likes, 1.6 million followers on Google+ and 55,000 Tumblr followers.

In addition to worldwide data, each regional edition is featured in a separate section in the report.

UK stats show:

  • Print circulation = more than 210,000 (worldwide = 840,000)
  • Average weekly unique devices accessing The Economist apps = nearly 80,000 (worldwide = 600,000)
  • Total monthly unique browsers to The Economist website = 650,000 (worldwide 7 million)

According to a release, this is the first ‘consolidated media report’ for the title, which has been released by Audit Bureau of Circulations North America, with support from ABC UK.

The full stats, which are worth a look, are at this link.

Editor backpedals on ‘only good cyclist is a dead one’ comment

Leave a reply

Image by Arenamontanous on Flickr. Creative commons licence. Some rights reserved

The editor of glossy listings title The Richmond Magazine has done a partial backpedal today after invoking the wrath of cyclists.

The Bike Biz yesterday highlighted comments made by Richard Nye in an editorial column in the September issue of the magazine in which he said “the only good cyclist is a dead one”.

Nye wrote how the Olympics had temporarily altered his view of cyclists:

After years of sullen rage against the cycling fraternity – as a daily driver on busy roads, I tend towards the temperate view that the only good cyclist is a dead one – I suddenly found myself experiencing strange feelings of attachment towards the pedal stars of Team GB.

He later described a drive home from a long day at work:

“Bastardo!” I yelled at the windscreen. “Cycling swinehunt! Two-wheeled son of Beelzebub!” A huge wave of relief surged through me. At last I was back to normal.

Bike Biz reported that a bike shop had withdrawn advertising from the glossy listings mag and pointed out that only yesterday Your Local Guardian reported the death of an elderly cyclist killed in Walton, a few miles from Richmond.

Nye tweeted via the @TheRichmondMag account to say:

I am astonished at the reaction to my blog, which had nothing to do with cyclists being killed. I would never joke about such a thing. People have misunderstood my use of phrase.

The @TheRichmondMag then tweeted to say that Nye was on holiday, promising the post an update today.

The Times (paywall), which runs a safe cycling campaign, has got hold of Nye. He reportedly told the news outlet:

With regard to my remark about the only good cyclist being a dead one, it is just a phrase, like people who said during the Cold War that ‘the only good Russian is a dead one’. It’s a standard English phrase. It doesn’t actually mean you want to see that person dead. I absolutely don’t wish cyclists any ill.

I was suggesting that I used to be really angry at cyclists, then we all had this cycling love-in at the Olympics, and then to my relief I went back to being this angry person again. That’s not actually something to be relieved about. It had irony written all over it. I don’t shout such things at cyclists.

If I were writing the piece again, I perhaps wouldn’t choose to use that phrase and if there are individuals out there who have suffered a painful loss as a result of a cycle accident, then to those individuals I am very sorry and it certainly wasn’t anywhere in my thoughts at all to think about cycling fatalities when I wrote that line.

This wasn’t a deadly serious piece. It was a slightly ironic piece aimed as much at my own eccentricity as anything else.

Commenting on the interview to The Times, Bike Biz adds:

However, digging a hole for himself, he added “a lot of cyclists behave in ways that don’t help anyone, least of all themselves”.