I spent a good while on the phone with Mike Reilly, CEO of the recently sold Randall-Reilly. Easy for me to say “good” here as Reilly is one entertaining guy. Before I give you the story behind the story this Friday/Monday in the upcoming issue of min’s b2b, I thought it would be fun to share with you here some of Reilly’s wisdom/witticism’s. I’d also like to remind everyone that this is the guy who, in two years, helped Wachovia turn a rumored $75 million investment to a rumored $150-200 million return.

“We think Hanley-Wood is the cat’s meow.”

“When most people read putts, they read from the ball to the hole. I read from the hole to the ball, because that’s where I want to be–in the hole.”

“The pioneers get the arrows and the settlers get the land. We want to be settlers.”

“You never know who’s tallest until the tide goes out.”

A few notes: I’ve taken these little gems out of context. I’ll put them back in context in my longer article in min’s b2b.

We all know that page views and unique views are on their way out. Right? That might be the prevailing wisdom, but, on the ground, that’s what we’re all still using to measure the popularity of our sites. We’re also using those metrics to sell our sites to advertisers. Some of you might also use time spent on site, bounce rate, and other metrics. But nobody is really happy with them. Why?

You rely on Google analytics, third party vendors, or internal software to measure page views and unique views. But how much of that is spiders? How much of that is real? Why does Nielsen give different results from comScore? And how do you know that your time spent on site numbers aren’t inflated by someone leaving their Web browser open and walking away? Did they really watch the entire video? And what about tab surfing? In short, these metrics are not completely reliable–they remind me of measuring print magazine engagement and readership: How many people see each copy; did certain ads make an impression; etc, etc, etc. Basically, in an age of computers, calculations, and hard numbers, we’re still making estimations and guesses.

John Byrne, executive editor at BusinessWeek.com, has a solution for some of you. Using two indisputable metrics, Byrne is able to create what he calls the “reader engagement index”. It’s simple. Take the number of comments posted on your site by readers and divide that by the number of stories you’ve posted. You end up with the number of comments per story. In the case of BW.com, that number is 23 for the month of December. That means that on average, for every story, blog posting, podcast, and video, BW.com gets 23 of its readers/users to give feedback and insight. That seems good to me, but I don’t really know; I’m curious to see January’s REI for BW.com.

There’s lots more to say on this. I’ll save it for later postings here and for the upcoming issue of min’s b2b.

Also, you can read my original post on the story, with more details on marketing and words from Byrne at minonline.

I make a lot of typos.  And misspellings.  I’ve been known on occasion to miss a letter here or there in someone’s name–a very bad mistake, and one that always stings when you see it in print.  But, tell me this, how important is it?  Take yesterday’s post, where I put “you’re magazines” in for “your magazines,” now corrected.  In the previous post, “poweful” instead of “powerful.”  I could go on.

I think there are three kinds of magazines in this regard:

1. The Perfect: The New Yorker comes to mind.  There are few of these guys.  The NEVER make mistakes, and when they do, you hear about it (see the Wikipedia scandal).

2. Mostly Everyone Else: The group consists of mostly everyone else.  They make mistakes occasionally, but they are generally professional, and mistake-free.

3. The Skimpers: I can’t think of any because they don’t last long.  We all know why being vigilant about small errors is so important: if you slip into skimp-land, you may not make it out alive.

The truth is, humanity, especially consumers of specialized business information, will put up with the “mostly everyone else” category.  (And thank god for that.)  Why?  For one, as long as they get the information they need, the presence of tiny errors–to an extent–is tolerated.  But, it’s mostly because most people aren’t expert writers or designers.  They are so in awe of what we in the industry can do in print–writing, editing, thinking analytically and in an organized fashion–that they do not have a strong frame of reference from which to criticize.

HOWEVER, and here is my main point, this is not true in the face-to-face side of the industry.  At your events, everything must be perfect, and there is no middle ground: It’s either perfect, or it’s not.  Why is perfection so important here in comparison to print?  Don’t attendees mostly care about doing business, making conections, and gaining knowledge?

Yes, they are.  And, frankly, if you deliver good value to them, you can probably afford not to be perfect.  But they will remember your imperfection, and tiny errors could make them decline your invite to attend or sponsor next year.  Why?

For the rest of this post, click below.

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I spoke with Dan Lagani, president of the Fairchild Fashion Group, this week about checking your circ list for hidden nuggets and wrote it up in min’s b2b. I don’t want to give away the entire kit and kaboodle, but I will give out some practical advice based on our discussion and my conclusions.

Take a look at what markets you’re magazines are in. If you’re in one of the following B2B verticals, read on. If you’re in manufacturing, or shipping, or engineering, sorry, this isn’t for you…stop by and read my next blog post:

- Fashion

- Design

- Interior Design

- Architecture

- Building

- Kitchen & Bath

- Information Technology (includes security, developers, etc)

- Telecom

- Travel/lodging/hospitality

- Some food verticals (yes on retail, no on manufacturing)

- AV

- Advertising/marketing

If your book is in one of these verticals, take a closer look at your circulation list. Now, filter out all the subscribers you’d expect to be there: the industry CEOs, buyers, decision-makers, etc. Who do you have left? Well, of course, you’ll have some parts of your circ that is undesirable: people who have left the industry, people who aren’t in the industry, people who are too low-lever, and maybe some people who have died. But, if you’re lucky, and I know many of you will be, you’ll be left with two different kinds of people that you should treat as gold: journalists in the industry; and tastemakers.

For instance, I bet if you look at the circ for Nielsen’s Kitchen and Bath Business, you will find some interior design journalists. You will also perhaps find some tastemakers in the interior design industry who are influencers to consumers. Let’s say you have 50 journalists on your circ. How many people do these journalists reach on a weekly, or monthly basis? How many people do those influencers influence? Think about that, and make it part of your sales story. It’s not just 50,000 or 100,000 qualified subscribers, it’s also 50 or 100 journalists and tastemakers that touch 100 million worldwide consumers. If you can make that case compellingly to your clients, I’m sure they’ll reward you. Call your aud dev manager. Today.

Ps - I think this strategy should especially pay off for the IT books.

I was very happy to get the announcement today that Questex Media has acquired FierceMarkets. I remember meeting Jeff Giesea in late 2006. He had a very interesting and aggressive business model that made sense to me:

- Hire super smart, young editors who are willing to learn anything

- Sick them on a major industry that is hungry for information

- Build an e-newsletter around the editor’s ability to quickly aggregate and analyze information

- And–perhaps most importantly–do not be afraid to pull the plug if it doesn’t gain traction

Obviously, there’s more to it. But to bigger, traditional publishers, FierceMarkets represented (represents) one of the most dangerous types of adversaries in the digital jungle: fast, nimble, powerful, ruthless.

I’m happy about this transaction because I remember when people who were looking at the landscape and looking at FierceMarkets as a potential add-on to their businesses, and they knocked where FierceMarkets was in its development cycle. It wasn’t a big enough business yet. It wan’t far enough along in generating revenues. Forget that it’s growth curve is more of a straight line pointing directly at Alpha Centauri than a curve. Forget that its president is extremely dedicated. Forget that the company had proven the model already in various industries. And forget that what you were going to get was, A) a business that was already profitable, and, B) the know-how and drive to get these small e-newsletters off the ground and attacking entrenched traditional competitors.

So, now that Questex has seen the value, I’m curious to see what Kerry Gumas and Co. are going to do with it. More on that and how FierceMarkets is a good fit for Questex in the 1/28 issue of min’s b2b.

More Fierce:

Building The FierceMarkets Empire, One E-Letter At A Time (Premium)

Another Fierce Year: FierceMarkets Wants a Bite of Web

Here’s a story that’s been all over the national business news that has a very strong B2B angle: The hostile takeover attempt at CNET by Jana Partners and Sandell Asset Management, two massive hedge funds.

I won’t go into details, because I write a lengthy article about it in this week’s min’s b2b (I’ll link to the subscribe page here, because it’s just easier for me than retyping the 1,700 words in this blog), but, suffice it to say, I think that B2B media execs, especially those in the tech publishing space should be following closely. That means you, Bob Carrigan (IDG), Steve Weitzner (Ziff Davis Enterprise), David Levin (CMP), Jason Young (Ziff Davis), and Greg Strakosch (TechTarget). I would also advise that smaller operators, those of e-media startups and small content companies, watch this story closely–especially the company’s stock price, which can be found here.

(Hint: Right now, based on the company’s stock price, it would sell at about 23xEBITDA. Chew on that.)

I had lunch on Monday with the Steve Cohn (EIC of min), and the editor, publisher, and president of a very big, very well-known, and very old gentleman’s magazine at a restaurant in the McGraw-Hill building. Of course, we talked about their magazine, the Giants game, and consumer-side gossip. But one topic of conversation that kept on coming up was the state of trade publishing in 2008. We talked first about BusinessWeek and the plight of the weekly in general. Then we talked about M&A in the B2B space, and then, finally, the topic of whether trade advertising would be strong in 2008.

Alan Greenspan famously said while chairman of the Federal Reserve that he need only look at the price of scrap metal to determine where the economy was headed. The scrap metal business is a commodity based on several commodities: essentially, the profit that scrap outfits make is dependent on the price of various metals around the world as well as the price of oil, electricity, and various other commodities. Therefore, price of scrap can be a good indicator for the economy as a whole–scrap goes up, economy doing well, scrap goes down, who knows. (I got this from The New Yorker…see John Seabrook’s article “American Scrap” (abstract) in the 1/14 issue for more. You should also read Ken Auletta’s “The Search Party” (complete article) in the same issue–it’s about Google’s lobbying efforts in Washington.)

Like scrap, trade publishing can be a good indicator of how the economy as a whole is doing. When I look at our exclusive min’s b2b Boxscores and see that the building and construction category is down as a whole about 10%, well, that indicates something to me. Just for fun, I’ll give you a quick run down of how all of our categories are doing (change is in ad pages year-to-date through November 2007, Source: IMS/The Auditor, except Business/Horizontal, which is provided by min):

Advertising & Marketing: +1.66% (A strong year in advertising has bolstered some of the big books in this category)

Automotive: -2.32% (More on this category in this week’s min’s b2b)

Banking & Finance: -.60% (Something tells me that some books in this category will be hit hard in 2008)

For the roundup of the rest of our categories, click below….

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For everyone’s benefit, I’m taking a little break from blogging today, b2b-ers.  Enjoy these words of wisdom from Jim Casella.  You can also check out his blog here.

As we start the new year, the word that keeps coming up in politics and business is “momentum.” Hillary lost it in Iowa but regained it in New Hampshire. McCain lost it six months ago when his campaign started to run out of money before he had run any ads, but he regained it in New Hampshire and hopes to keep it in Michigan and South Carolina. Rudy believes he will gain it in Florida, but it could be too late in the game going into Super Tuesday, February 5th. Mitt claims he has won two silvers, but silvers do not give you momentum. Edwards clearly does not have it and pressure will mount on him to get out of the race after South Carolina and make it a two-person race for the Democratic nomination. Huckabee claims he had it for a moment in Iowa, but he lost it in New Hampshire. Obama clearly has it, but it slowed down a bit in New Hampshire. One of the candidates in each party will certainly grab the momentum ring on Super Tuesday and ride it to the White House in November.

It is clear that winning or coming close against great odds can establish momentum. The Giants lost to the Patriots in late December, but by playing his first team and coming close, Tom Coughlin gave the Giants the momentum they needed to beat the Bucs on the road in the wild card NFC playoff game and beat the Cowboys this past Sunday to get into the NFC Championship game. The Packers seemed to lose it towards the end of the season, but they regained it in the snow at Lambeau Field against the Seahawks. It brought back memories of Lombardi’s Packers, with Hornung, Taylor and Bart Starr in their glory years. Brett Favre keeps getting better with age! The Patriots continue to have it as they move closer to running the table. Can they be denied before Super Sunday, February 3rd? Not if momentum has anything to do with it.

min’s b2b keeps us informed every week on which publications and categories are hot and have momentum and which continue to be under pressure. Up until this past year, Hanley-Wood clearly had momentum, particularly with its residential titles. Its focused approach was a winning hand, just as enterprise computing was from ‘92-’01 when CMP, IDG and Ziff Davis rode the momentum wave. Google has it while Yahoo! has clearly lost it. Will Google be able to maintain it during this cooling-down period if it cannot introduce an innovative new product to complement search?

The media business is very similar to politics and sports. When you are winning and on top, it feels like it will last forever. But as Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, and others have stated, “only the paranoid survive.” Those of us who grew up on the advertising side of the business know how quickly fortunes can change and how difficult it can be to represent a property that is not #1 or #2 in its category.

As managers, we need to make certain that our businesses are constantly innovating to insure that we are not in the position of losing momentum for our core brands. Media brands with significant good will and brand equity will allow for tarnished brands to be rebuilt, but it is very challenging. Does anyone recall brands like Atari and Sega, which were once the leading video game platforms and seemed invincible? Keep checking those scorecards and doing research to insure that your leading properties will deliver strong results in ‘08 and beyond.

I came across an interesting piece of legislation this week (thanks, Anthony) that basically mandates the US Congress to pass legislation that offers tax subsidies to companies that build and invest renewable energy sources and to companies that conserve resources. It is imperative that we use our industry lobbying dollars (these go largely through American Business Media) to urge the government to offer broad and significant tax breaks to companies that use post-consumer recycled paper, sustainable paper, soy-based ink, and delivery and distribution methods that do not involve petroleum-based transportation.

I know that we’ve spent a lot of time and money on the postal rate case. And, though, as an industry, we basically lost to the bigger companies, it was a fight we had to fight. Now that that fight is basically over, we should insist that our lobbying dollars be spent on this new fight. This could be both an opportunity for our industry to really move the needle on an important issue while cutting costs.

Now, I don’t know how things work in Washington. Maybe what I’m proposing doesn’t make any sense. I’ll ask David Straus, ABM’s man in DC, and get back you.

I’m sorry. When Steve Weitzner was ousted at CMP and given what I’ll call a “soft landing” as the head of international biz dev, I asked David Levin, CEO of UBM (parent to CMP), point blank if Weitzner was being kicked upstairs or actually promoted. Levin told me that he was being promoted and that the proof would be whether in two months he was doing his job or not. Well, here’s the proof. So, first, apologies for dropping the ball on that. The summer before last I was unafraid to call a spade a spade when Bob Krakoff ousted Mike Marchesano over at what was then VNU Business Media (now Nielsen Business Media). That story was juicy and hard to resist: Krakoff had had his eye on that job from the minute he left Advanstar two years earlier. And Marchesano, no slouch, would have known that. I’ll try to be more on point from now on.

How Could They Let Him Go?

I read an article on Foliomag.com about this. I don’t know much about the contract that Weitzner was under, or what the actual status of his departure was. (I imagine that as time puts distance between the world and this event, I will find out one way or another.) I agree with the article, though. It’s ludicrous for CMP to allow Weitzner to go to a direct rival so soon after completing his tenure as CEO. I talk more about it in this week’s issue of min’s b2b. I also discuss the real significance of the Weitzner move going forward. There are two main points. Don’t be a square: Be a subscriber and read it! (Especially you i-bankers.) For those of you that aren’t subscribers, email me, and we’ll see what we can do: jgreenfield@accessintel.com. And click here to read the Folio article mentioned above.