What You Read Reveals Who You Are, or Does it?

Aren't we all business executives now?

According to a recent survey by Ipsos Media American  business executives -- CEOs and other C-suite officers from mid- to large-size companies, including many from the Fortune 500 –- seek quality business information from a variety of media sources, including magazines and journals, the internet, and digital and satellite television. From the release [emphasis mine]:

The survey also examines the typical business leader's way of life -- showing they travel frequently, spend more nights in hotels, and are heavy users of technology as part of their work life. They also enjoy the perks of their positions in their personal lives, valuing personal luxuries the latest technical gadgets, and a high quality of life with their family and friends. When compared to their European and Asian counterparts, American executives have a greater taste for personal material luxuries and claim a significantly higher net worth.

The concept has been around for a while. Patricia Pormelau founded CEO Express Company in 1998 and launched the first online portal, CEOExpress.com in 1999 to organize the best resources on the Web for busy executives. Current visits to the portal are 1.8M per month. The site’s ultimate goal is to be the best executive assistant imaginable, providing a tool that users would have created themselves if they had the time and knowledge of the Internet. They call it "mind ergonomics" for the busy executive -- 20% of the most useful and critical information delivered to your desktop. We'll come back to this concept in a moment.

If you take a look at the default home page of CEOExpress.com, you will see the execution of Ipsos Media findings. I've used this information over and again to research companies and track the news. I do wonder if there will be a list of prominent blogs anywhere on this page some time soon. The lines are getting more and more blurred. I used to subscribe to the print edition of many of the publications listed here. When they shifted online, I kept up only with the ones that gave me the whole experience -- design, page layout, and content.

If online means (almost) completely free everywhere these days, what does the model mean to print publications that are shifting their efforts there? How are they going about building customer authority online? See one example -- a question more than a statement -- in my weekly post at FC Expert blogs today. Which takes us to the definition of authority.

Last night I signed up on Twitter and was amazed to see many add me to their list of people they follow immediately. Granted, our conversation started via blogs. Twitter is a portal of a different kind, still one where we can glean news from the front lines -- what we're up to, the events we attend, our travel preferences, questions about issues, etc. Yes, it borders on the mundane, yet isn't that what entertainment publications chronicle?

How are online publications going to stay relevant and useful when we are each constructing our own information portals?

Ipsos Media writes about voracious American executives. Some of you read information in more than one language and for more than one market, courtesy of online distribution.

We "track" the people we follow and those who follow us (time permitting) through many tools -- blogs, social networks, etc. By and large we know who they are and what they're up to, which makes publishing with them a much richer experience. How does a publication track its online readers aside from polling them?

Comments

[Geoff Livingston]

If what you read is who you, then I'm out of business because I'm reading my last copy of Business 2.0. Booo!

[Valeria Maltoni]

Vintage, man. It's all in the positioning ;-)

[Carolyn Ann]

How does an online publication attract readers? The same way as always: by differentiating themselves, and by identifying their customers correctly.

The news industry is currently trying to figure out how to make money online; everything is tried from the NY Times admitting "oops, subscriptions don't really work" to the Wall St Journal charging for simply looking at the site. (At least it seems that way!)

The basic problem isn't that these venerable institutions can't figure out how to attract readers - it's that they haven't figured out how to attach advertising dollars to those eyeballs.

But for a new publication to gain ground they simply have to be better than the competition. (No competition? You're destined to fail because you don't know your audience.) That and the usual lots of work. Oh - and people see through gimmicks quicker than most falsetto publishers would like.

I wouldn't be surprised if no one could say how long people spend reading online articles; how long they're willing to look for them, and how long they'd like to keep them around. (I keep some print articles for years. At least I can count on the paper still be available...) Or, if those metrics are known - I can't imagine that they are truly understood.

From what I've seen, the online publication world is still suffering from the "oh wow we're new and don't know what to do" stage of development. It's why I spend way too much money and time on magazines; I'll even make the 20+ mile trip (each way) to the nearest Starbucks for their coffee and the fact that I can buy a New York Times. It's an event, reading the Times. Online, it's part of my morning and evening tour of favored online sites. (The Times happens to the site I read when I'm still bleary-eyed, not having had my first sip of go-go juice.)

So: make your site an event. Make it relevant. Make it pertinent. Make it better than the competition. Make me want to visit it. And figure out a way of getting advertising on the page that isn't going to interfere with my reading (the contemporary slang for that is probably "experience", as in "interfere with my user experience". Or some such nonsense.) But most of all: don't push gimmicks and think I'm as dim as you hope I am. (Did that come out right?!?)

Give me information I can use, basically. Whether it's in developing an understanding of what's going on in the world, or my industry.

Actually - one of my inevitable sidenotes - there was a magazine called "Wall St Technology". I don't know if it still exists, but when I worked in that field it was extremely useful. It told me what was going on in my field, who the players were and what sorts of decisions were being made. Not just on Wall St, but in the global financial sector - but Wall St was its focus. It was relevant. And it assumed that I didn't have much time, but needed a good amount of detail. That's what "every" manager wants!

Hmm. If I can be defined by what I read - oy! :-)

Carolyn Ann

PS If InStyle merged with CycleWorld and The Economist... I'd be happy. :-)

[Valeria Maltoni]

"So: make your site an event. Make it relevant. Make it pertinent. Make it better than the competition. Make me want to visit it." And make me feel welcome once I'm there, I would add, plus accept my feedback with full transparency.

Wouldn't it be great if we also wrote white papers and thought leadership pieces that way? I'm working on making inroads in that sense...

I'm taking note of your ideal mix, just in case all else fails and I decide to be in the publishing business professionally. Well, I kind of am as a communicator.

I thought it interesting to view how different publications promoted different things about the online offering, etc. Not quite sure yet.