Interesting article about how IBM completely transformed its business. They went from a hardware company to an IT services company. The author believes that newspapers are at that same crossroads but he doesn’t offer much insight into how newspapers are going to make this transition.

Fact is, we are already doing it.

Our digital agency, 1100 Broadway, opened for business a year ago and the lessons we have learned running a digital agency have taught us so much. The original idea was to provide digital and direct solutions for our customers. We have certainly done that. We have served 126 customers so far through 1100 Broadway and the list grows every week. 1100 Broadway revenue will be twice in the fourth quarter what it was in the first quarter. Most importantly, our customers are getting results. With a vastly expanded product line we quickly have realized that we have the ability to sell broad-based marketing solutions to customers. We have gone beyond our own products and services and we are now buying media for our clients, helping them with social networking and helping them track their results. Just this morning, we met with a client in an attempt to sell them our “agency of record” services for their ten-state operation. The customer was quite impressed with all of the services we can offer. We are finding ourselves having these types of discussions more and more with our clients. While we have a long way to go to diversify our company we are more confident than ever that we are on the right track.

Wouldn’t it shock some people if we were the next IBM?

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/dchase/200911/1794/

Throughout the month of September I reported that Sunday home delivery numbers in the 17 counties of middle Tennessee were exceeding last year. Last week, not only was home delivery up but so was single copy. In fact, total circulation in middle Tennessee was up 5,386 copies versus last year!

That’s right. GM’s market share is expected to grow three percentage points in October and when consumers were asked how they heard about GM’s 60-day money back program, 52% said the newspaper (combination of newspaper advertising and newspaper articles).

http://www.autoremarketing.com/ar/news/story.html?id=10257

Here’s a great article about providing excellent customer service. I think the most powerful sentence in the article is this one:

“Engage in something far more powerful than a vendor relationship by transitioning to a collaborator.”

World class customer service means providing our customers with excellent solutions that solve a problem – in our case – that means helping them sell products or services or getting their phone to ring or improving their brand or hiring employees, etc.

Let’s be honest, this has not been a hallmark of the newspaper industry. Yes, I think we do a good job building relationships with many of our customers. But those relationships must be focused more than ever on providing our customers with well thought out plans and ideas. We want them to like us, but more importantly, we want them to view us as a business partner that is looking out for their best interests.

Our focus on broad based marketing solutions means we are better poised than ever to provide the type of service described in the article. My responsibility is to make sure we do this effectively.

Read the article on providing excellent customer service now.

The stories have been reported for awhile now – Facebook is getting older. By now, most people have heard that the fastest growing group is women 55 and older. For many, this signals the beginning of Facebook’s downfall. When a middle age uncle is commenting on his teenage niece’s page, that’s sure to drive the kids away.

But I don’t see it that way.

What makes Facebook in particular, and social media in general, powerful is that you choose who is and isn’t in your network. The growth of older adults doesn’t need to have an effect on younger users because they don’t need to interact, if they don’t want to.

I know what you may be thinking – that’s not what’s happening. Almost everyone I know who uses Facebook has received friend requests from bosses, co-workers they never talk to, people they’ve met twice in their lives and so on. In short, people who are not their friends.

Like so many other things, it’s not the tool, it’s how you use it.

I think it’s likely people’s behavior on social networks will change. For many people, social media is like a new toy. You want to see what it can do. But in the future people will do what is useful to them. Reaching out to everyone you ever met may not serve a purpose. But being more engaged with the most important people in your life, or continuing to develop a relationship with an old friend you reconnected with, may be.

The same thing is true in using social tools for business. What is useful for your business? How does it enhance your ability to serve customers, find customers, increase customer satisfaction? The race for more fans, followers and friends will abate. While the focus on how it helps you create value will be critical. As it always is.

This article discusses the trend toward marketing automation. Many companies are able to use some very good self-service tools to help market their products. So, it will be more important than ever for marketing companies (like us) to sell their expertise, local knowledge, customer service, etc.

We believe that we need to offer BOTH good self-service tools along with customized programs developed by local experts. Agent 1100 is a good example of this and we will be launching more new tools in the coming months.

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/are-you-ready-for-the-trend-toward-marketing-automation-anita-campbell

An interesting and fair article about the newspaper business that explains pretty well where we stand right now.

http://www.urlzen.com/wyt

Sunday home delivery circulation is growing at the Tennessean.

Yep, that’s not a misprint, our Sunday home delivery circulation is growing in the 17 counties of our MSA. Allow me to provide some details.

Earlier this year, we made the decision at the Tennessean to pull back on home delivery in several outlying counties. It just didn’t make sense to continue to lose money on newspapers we delivered in those counties. However, we set up several agreements with wholesalers in those areas and we have been able to recover 68% of what we stopped delivering. And, due to how we arranged the wholesaler agreements, we did so profitably.

But our main focus is on 17 core counties in our MSA. These are the counties most important to our advertisers and, in July, we made the decision to invest a significant amount of money for sales and marketing efforts to grow circulation in these counties.

It’s working.

For the first week of October, Sunday home delivery circulation was up 129 copies versus last year. This last Sunday, we were up 1,649 copies.

And it’s not just the sales and marketing efforts that are making a difference. Good journalism, like the story Jaime Sarrio did on Sunday, October 4, about misuse of credit cards among Metro School officials is earning rave reviews from readers. The feedback from that story along with others tells us that people are hungry for good investigative journalism and will respond by buying the newspaper when they think we are doing a good job.

We will continue to update the circulation numbers in the weeks and months ahead.