So a new slew of cheap handsets with much better browsers will be hitting the stores as early as this summer.

Over on the blog for House of Local (a media consultancy I work with), I wrote about why this is such a big deal:

See: Qualcomm, Opera deal means cheap phones will be doing LOTS more web surfing

And for the Knight Digital Media Center, I explained why news organizations should care about this development, and start taking lean mobile more seriously in their mobile and business strategy:

See: Qualcomm, Opera deal could dramatically boost mobile web audience

The point is: Do you want to get most of the mobile audience now? Or neglect that audience so much that they decide you’re not worth their time?

This year is the big opportunity for building mobile audience. Smart publishers should try to not get their heads stuck up their apps.

If you’re a semi-retired professional who wants to build a consulting business, and you’re not an internet whiz, what kind of web site will really help clients find you? And how can you easily build and maintain a useful professional network?

My dad, Jack Gahran, is a semi-retired management consultant who knows many other semi-retired professionals. Today he asked me to look over the brand-new web site of a colleague of his, to offer some advice as to how it might be improved in ways that will build this person’s business.

The site is a pretty standard brochure site — a few static pages of basic information. It had a nice but simple design, and the content seemed to use keywords appropriately — both of which help search engines like Google index the site well. However, Google generally isn’t very interested in small brochure sites that are infrequently updated and don’t attract many inbound links.

I offered my dad’s colleague four basic tips for improving his site in ways that will make it much more visible in search engines, and thus more likely to attract inbound links from other sites (another thing Google rewards).

I get asked for this kind of advice a lot, so I figured I’d make a blog post out of it, so everyone can benefit.

Here’s what I told him…
1. Ask Google to start indexing your site

Eventually Google will find your site, index it, and start listing it in search results. But Google has a lot of sites to index, so it may take a long time for them to get around to indexing your site.

It helps to tell Google you’re there and ask them to list you, rather than passively waiting for Google to find you. Submit your site to Google.

You should also submit your site to Yahoo.

2. Add fresh content to your site often, the easy way: Blog

So far, your site appears to be mainly an online brochure. That’s someone useful for people who already know to look you up online, but it won’t attract much attention from search engines — and therefore won’t get much traffic from people who don’t already know who you are and where to find your site.

Search engines mainly care about timeliness and relevance. There is an easy way to make sure your site provides that: Add a blog to your site.

I noticed that right now, your site’s “news and events” section has no real content. I’d suggest turning that part of your site into a weblog (or “blog”) so you can easily add fresh items to the site on your own, without having to rely on a web designer to upload the content for you.

…You don’t have to call it a blog if you don’t like that term, you could just call it news and views, which would give you more flexibility in what sort of information you can post there.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: After discussing the following tip in the comments below, I decided that it’s better to integrate your existing brochure space into a blog, rather than vice versa. Read full instructions on how to get this done.

Talk to your web designer about integrating a blog into your site. You should set up the account with the blogging service in your own name, so you maintain control of it. But after you have the account it’s fine to get help with setup.

Once the blog is in place you can easily (right through your web browser) add fresh items to your site, and their titles and introductions will appear on that page, with the most recent item listed first.

You could write not just about news and events, but also share your insight or tips about things that might interest the people you want to reach — including answering common questions they have related to your areas of expertise. These can be really short pieces: just 1-3 paragraphs is enough. No need to write long articles.

The point is to post a new item at least a couple of times a month (of course, more often is always better, but you can start slow). Make sure the title and the first sentence of each post include words that you think people who need your services would search for.

If you add a tool like a blog that makes it easy for you to add fresh content to your site on your own whenever you want, over time you’ll grow the kind of site that Google likes, indexes often, and rewards with traffic.

Even better, when you regularly post fresh content to your site, that gives other people a good reason to link to your site. Inbound links are very important to Google. When people link to deeper content on your site (like specific blog posts, not just your home page), Google thinks your site is more useful and is more likely to position you better in search results.

Oh, and: If your web designers say they can’t easily add a blog to your site, they’re wrong. (CORRECTION: Actually, trying to add a blog to a static site is hard, which is why I now recommend moving your site into a blog.) You can create a blog using a free service like WordPress.com and integrate that into any site. Once it’s set up, then you just keep posting to it.

3. Offer an e-mail newsletter, the easy way

It’s always easier for you to go to people than to expect them to always come to you. For this reason, many people still prefer e-mail to the web as a way to maintain business relationships.

Dad mentioned that he suggested you offer an e-mail newsletter for your past clients and other key contacts, and I agree, that’s a great way to maintain those relationships. However, you can get even more mileage out of this effort by using a blog to create your e-mail newsletter for you automatically.

If you decide to add a blog to your site (as I suggested above), you can use some features of a free service from Google called Feedburner to turn the items you post to your blog into items in an e-mail newsletter which interested people can easily subscribe to. That way, they can see your latest items even if they don’t remember to visit your site.

Set up a free account on Feedburner, and follow their instructions to connect your site’s blog (they call it “burning your feed”) to feedburner. Then, under their “publicize” section, select “e-mail subscriptions” and follow their instructions. You might want to get your Web developer to help you with this process, but I strongly suggest setting up the Feedburner account yourself, in your own name, so you maintain control of it.

4. Link to your LinkedIn public profile

Dad already suggested that you get active with LinkedIn, a popular online service for professional networking, and I agree it’s very helpful — especially for independent professionals.

One useful option that LinkedIn offers is the ability to create a public version of your LinkedIn profile that anyone can view, whether they’re on LinkedIn or not. (Here’s mine)

I’d recommend completing your LinkedIn profile as fully as possible, and then posting a link to it from your site’s contact page. Then, make sure you keep your profile updated.

…Those are my basic tips, intended for someone with little to no experience with online media. I tried to strike a balance between empowering him to make truly effective improvements in his online outreach, while recognizing that he probably won’t want to spends a whole lot of time online, or know how to use social media.

So even though I could have suggested many social media options for this person beyond LinkedIn, I don’t think that would be a good fit for his current skill levels and interests. Later on he could grow into that. But right now, I think it’s more important for him to create a more effective home base on the web.

I didn’t link to his site because I wanted to give him a chance to work on it first.

What do you think of these suggestions? Are they appropriate for the situation I outlined? Any disagreements, corrections, or suggestions to add? Please comment below.

mine

Yeah, I wasn't the only person who found Time's "Mine" magazine disappointing.

I really don’t like golf — at all. So I was surprised when, this weekend, my first issue of Mine (Time Inc.’s slick glossy foray into custom magazine publishing) included selected articles from Golf magazine.

Nearly a month ago I signed up on the Mine site to receive five issues of this custom biweekly magazine. I opted to include articles from these titles: Time, InStyle, RealSimple, Food & Wine, and Money. My issue of Mine arrived with only three out of five right — instead of Money and Food & Wine, it included stories from Golf and Travel & Leisure.

I found this amusing, because I remember thinking when I filled out the subscription form for Mine how little information about my lifestyle, interests, or preferences Time was asking for. I wondered how any publisher could deliver anything approaching a custom magazine based on my address, picking five out of eight general-interest magazines, and my answers to these four questions that are nebulous bordering on ridiculous:

1. Which do you crave more: pizza or sushi?
2. Do you like to sing in the car?
3. Which would you like to learn: juggling or celebrity impersonation?
4. Who would you like to have dinner with most: Leonardo da Vinci or Socrates?

According to the Associated Press, my experience wasn’t unique…

“Many readers got versions that didn’t match their picks. Time Inc. Media Group President Wayne Powers apologized for the problem in an e-mail Wednesday to the group that may have been affected, blaming a ‘computer error’ and promising a sixth free issue, instead of the five originally planned.”

Fine, fine… Only I don’t even want to read this first issue. It’s very pretty, but not worth my time or attention. Mine offers far less real customization than most news sites, mobile applications, and widgets. If custom content is what I want, I’ll continue to turn to my laptop or iPhone. Or perhaps I’ll try my hand as a custom print publisher in the public beta of Printcasting.

Apparently, Time could have been more careful with its editorial selection and preparation for Mine. AP reported that: “Several of the stories picked by editors from each title [for the first issue] were up to two years old, and some could be found on the Internet. One Sports Illustrated story about soccer fans, for instance, refers to a World Cup qualifier match ‘two weeks from now.’ That game wrapped up last June.”

From a business perspective, the biggest missed opportunity of Mine was its lazy approach to print advertising. My issue includes four full-page ads for a new Lexus model. The extent of the ad customization involved inserting my name, my city (Boulder, CO), mentioning a couple of nearby places (like Vail), and incorrectly assuming for some reason that I’m into trendy handbags and shoes. There are no other ads in the issue — nothing matched to any of the articles, or to my interests.

Worse, these ads tell me nothing about Lexus offerings near me. Where are my local dealers? What advantages might a Lexus offer in the driving conditions of Colorado? Are any special local deals coming up I should be aware of?

Which goes to show that for custom publishing — in print or online — both the advertisers and the publishers should be able to customize their offerings in relevant ways. It wasn’t just Time that wasted a lot of money on this issue of Mine. Lexus did, too.

(NOTE: I originally published this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

Newspaper publishers and advertising managers routinely toss around print and online readership numbers — but sometimes in ways that don’t make sense, and that might even miss opportunities to build revenue, business, and community.

Yesterday Dan Thornton, community marketing manager at Bauer Media, explained why it’s dangerous to compare print figures to Web site statistics.

It all boils down to this…

Thornton points out that in the UK, sales figures for print copies of the Guardian and Observer newspapers typically are multiplied by three to take into account shared readership, based on circulation research. However, online readership statistics generally fail to account for online reading that happens beyond the news organization’s Web site…

“It’s easy to overestimate the online figures in comparison to print products,” he writes. But, “I have to say that I think comparing print and online readerships directly …is equivalent to comparing the number of people who drive cars with the number of people with vowels in their name.”

Thornton suggests that if your newspaper factors shared readership into your print circulation, then to be fair you should also try to estimate how many people encounter your online news without ever logging into your site as a visitor. This includes people who:

• Block cookies
• Use a feed reader or personal home page (like MyYahoo)
• Get news or headlines via social media or news aggregators
• Access mobile or cached versions of your news (which often aren’t estimated adequately)
• Read reposts of news stories elsewhere online

According to Thornton, “There’s a big elephant in the news room. Whoever said that print newspaper readers were guaranteed to only be getting their online news from newspapers?”

Therefore: If you think your online readership (as estimated by direct Web site traffic) only represents only a small percentage of your estimated print circulation — think again. When considering the future of your business, how many people visit your site ultimately may be less relevant than how many people connect with your news content and brand via any online or mobile channel.

I think Thornton has a good point. The catch is recognizing the opportunities inherent in this broader view, and (in the short term) communicating that value effectively to advertisers and other potential partners.

…As a side note, to illustrate how diverse online distribution of your content can build your brand and attract readers, I first heard about Thornton and his post via this OJaggregator tweet, a headline service from fellow Tidbits contributor Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog, which republished Thornton’s article. A link from that repost led me to Thornton’s blog, The Way of the Web. I liked what I saw there so much that I’ve subscribed to that blog’s RSS feed and am now following Thornton on Twitter. So he’s now part of my regular fodder for Tidbits, my own blog Contentious, and to pass along to my nearly 3,300 Twitter followers.

Which goes to show how potential ripple effects from distributed online or mobile encounters with your content (even just your headlines) can yield surprising benefits to your brand. Thus, trying to be too controlling about where and how your content appears online can work against you in the big picture.

(NOTE: I originally published this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)

News is never just about what’s happening today — it’s also about context, including what led up to this moment. That’s why lately I’ve been intrigued by the Google News archive search. This feature, introduced September 2008, its worth a look — and maybe worth including in order to make more money off your historical archives, or to augment current coverage.

The Official Google Blog explains in Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time that this service presents archived news articles online — either as they were printed, preserving original format/context (including, in some cases, surrounding stories); or with a link to a news org’s paid archives. It also presents a timeline, showing how popular a search term was in news from past years or decades.

For instance, a Google News archive search for “space shuttle” yields a timeline with significant spikes in 1981 (for the first shuttle mission), 1986 (when the Challenger exploded after launch), and 2003 (when the Columbia broke up on re-entry).

An example of the early shuttle coverage I found here includes this March 24, 1982 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story: NASA sees little problem with lost space shuttle tiles. That’s actually a jump from a page 1 story. Other stories also appearing on the page include: “Begin to stay on after Knesset vote,” “Will match missiles with subs, Soviets say,” and “Military coup ousts Guatemalan government” — an intriguing glimpse into the tenor of that time.

That archived story was available for free — but my search also pointed to several articles for sale from newspaper archives. For instance, the Christian Science Monitor is selling its July 21, 1975 story Space shuttle to involve Europe, too for $3.95.

Not every news org’s historical archives are available in the Google News archive. Apparently Google strikes partnerships with news orgs to scan and serve their archives, or to link to existing online archives.

Participating in this service could be a way to turn your history into traffic. The Official Google Blog noted: “Over time, as we scan more articles and our index grows, we’ll also start blending these archives into our main search results so that when you search Google.com, you’ll be searching the full text of these newspapers as well.” This means that participating news orgs could find their historic wealth increasingly findable, and thus potentially more compelling and/or lucrative.

(NOTE: I originally published this article on Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits. Thanks to Tech.Blorge for the tip.)

Here’s his line of reasoning. I think he makes a very going point….

First, Zuckerman quoted this comment left by Joshua Jeffryes on a 2007 Publishing 2.0 post. Jeffryes wrote:

“When I worked in advertising the ineffectiveness of advertising was hardly a secret. But customers couldn’t measure the effectiveness of ads. So they paid and continue to pay ridiculous prices for them. Online ads, on the other hand, are measurable. They work just as well, if not better, than print, television, etc., the difference is that for the first time ad customers know exactly how ineffective they are.”

From that, Zuckerman observed: “Basically, there are two ways to explain the disparity in online and offline ad cost. One is to argue that paper ads are, for some combination of reasons, ten to a hundred times more effective than online ads. The other is to argue that advertisers are better at pricing online ads than offline ads.”

Zuckerman continued: “Let’s posit for a moment that the price of newspaper ads may have more to do with how much money a newspaper needs to earn to keep the presses running, rather than how effective they are at producing new business for advertisers. …Why are advertisers willing to pay these prices without strong evidence that they give an effective yield? They may not have much choice — other options in a community where many customers are offline are also pay per impression and may be similarly expensive. …Without good methods to track the effectiveness of the print ads, [a paper's] ability to sell ads may have more to do with comparable ad rates in other local newspapers or radio stations.

“So what happens if the market rationalizes, if pay per performance advertising becomes a viable way to reach the majority of consumers who consume a particular publication? …If print advertising costs are fundamentally irrational, then it’s possible that the way we’ve built media in the U.S. can’t survive a transition to a more rational market.”

What do you think of Zuckerman’s line of reasoning? If he’s right, what — if anything — can ad-supported news organizations do to update their strategy and work with advertisers on a more rational basis? And if it’s too late for most legacy news organizations to make this shift, could their prospective successors find a more rational, fair way to make money from ads? Please comment below.

(Note: I originally posted this article in Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits.)