This week I attended American Business Media’s Spring Meeting 2007, which had a large focus on digital media (surprise, surprise). The first discussion of the event revolved around social networking and how publishers can launch and monetize social networking sites.
Much of the conversation revolved around vertical search. For those who are unfamiliar with what vertical search is, Wikipedia has a wonderful definition. The quick definition? – Take Google and focus it on a particular industry or topic. For example, Mashup Google with a 60+ year-old, and you get Cranky.com.
One of the panelists, Steve MacMinn, Chief Technology Officer for Globaspec, a leading vertical search portal in the engineering space, gave some interesting thoughts that I believe are relevant to marketers and publishers. Here are the highlights –
1. Content is King. You cannot just build a shell and expect anything. Without good content, don’t even try it.
2. Answer User’s Questions. If you create feedback mechanisms, be sure to create a process to respond.
3. Start with a few focused topics. You’d rather have a small area full of content than a big area with just a few threads.
4. Moderate the community. Spam and rants can take over if you are not careful.
5. Don’t squash what you don’t like. If someone starts to talk bad about you, take it as an opportunity to improve the product. Could be the best feedback you ever received. Treat it that way. Many companies try to delete these posts as fast as possible. That tactic usually cuts off dialogue quickly.
6. Keep distance from the business. Be careful using the information you receive. If you take their email and start selling them right away, what kind of message does that send to the community?
7. Invite people back. Create mechanisms, such as email updates and RSS feeds to bring people continually back to the Web site.
As a marketer, creating a vertical search community or forum can be a dicey activity at best. Do the research up front on what your customer behaviors are, and what types of behaviors you are looking to generate? As long as you are open and honest with your customer base, even a little experimentation is welcome.
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The E-consultancy/Convera “Vertical Search Survey 2008″ has just been released and reveals some very interesting information.
CPM will be fastest-growing revenue stream for publishers in 2008
Online revenue set to increase while print income flattens or decreases
Content owners must ensure visibility within fragmenting digital landscape by embracing RSS, widgets and toolbars.
Publishers see vertical search as opportunity to ‘reclaim the online community from Google’.
The fastest-growing revenue streams for publishers in 2008 will be internet display advertising and online sponsorship.
Some 72% of publishers are expecting an increase in income from CPM advertising next year and 67% are predicting a rise in digital sponsorship, while print revenues are more likely to flatten or decrease. Just under two thirds (64%) are expecting a rise in paid search (PPC) revenue.
The findings come from a survey which was circulated to members of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), American Business Media (ABM), Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB UK) and E-consultancy’s early-adopter community of internet marketers.
The research also highlights the need for specialist publishers to react quickly to major changes in the digital environment in order to maintain and increase their market share and visibility.
Publishers need to adapt to maximize their digital revenues at a time of shifting advertising budgets. Trends in digital marketing are leading towards a fragmentation of the online landscape and ‘atomization’ of content. Content owners have a great opportunity to increase visibility for their content through the effective use of vertical search, feeds, widgets and toolbars.
The level of uptake for feeds and customized homepages is very high among this early-adopter audience surveyed but this kind of online behavior will soon become more widespread among knowledge workers across a wider range of industries.”
Some 93% of more than 500 media and internet professionals said that they would be ‘very likely’ or ‘quite likely’ to use a search engine that focused on serving their specific business or work needs.
More than 70% of publishers perceived ‘reclaiming the online community from Google’ to be either a major benefit or a minor benefit from vertical search.
To download a free online copy of the full report, click here http://www.convera.com/survey/