 |
|
|
Diamond Visions: Creating Content
Value from Existing Sources Gains Focus |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
4 April 2005 |
|
|
|
|
A
new research report from Shore Senior Analyst Patricia
Joseph focuses on creating new content value from sources
that were oftentimes right under a publisher's nose. With
search engines, text mining tools and other technologies
being rather unfussy about where they find content value to
exploit, traditional publishers and other companies in
search of healthier profits are learning to roll up their
sleeves and use creative thinking to provide value to both
existing clients and altogether new markets. Finding
diamonds in the rough is about a lot more than just
tweaking up existing sources with rich data. It's about
looking at content sourcing with wide-open eyes and looking
at the competitive landscape with a new sense of the
opportunities and the competitive forces at play. |
|
It's not
easy being a publisher these days, in case you hadn't noticed.
The technology to make basic, good online content is as common
as rain and there are more new sources of it than ever before.
Markets soften, margins wilt and there's oftentimes little time
or money available to invest in altogether new content product
lines. What's a profit-minded publisher to do? According to
Patricia Joseph's new research, "Diamonds in the Rough: Creating New Content Value
through New Uses", the answer is found
oftentimes not by looking in new places but by looking at
familiar places in new ways. The "diamonds" to which Patricia
refers are those gems of value that are oftentimes hiding in
plain sight in existing databases, documents and services that
are mostly in need of a good sifting and scrubbing to get the
shiny side of them in plain sight to willing buyers. Publishers
who have focused on "rich data" already know how to cull
through existing databases and create new indices and databases
for existing sources to dress them up for more effective use by
their clients. With most fixed costs for existing content
products on a plateau, there's little choice.
But as Patricia points out in her research, finding those
diamonds in the rough can go much further than simply tweaking
up content around existing products for existing markets.
Finding content value may mean looking at "functional" sources
of content such as subscriber data in a whole new way to
discover a new marketable body of content; it may mean looking
at a feature that you've deployed for your customers and
recognizing that it's actually marketable as a service for
other publishers in different markets; it may mean looking at
content inside or outside of your organization that people
haven't really thought of as being marketable at all; it may
mean using existing content products in new markets in which
their value takes on a whole new meaning; or it may mean taking
"best practices" internal capabilities and packaging them for
public consumption. Patricia gives key insights on all of these
options and more in her research, but the central point is
this: today's successful publishers are thinking a lot more
like prospectors looking for undiscovered treasures in trash
heaps than jewelers putting the polish on heirloom baubles.
Feel free to check out the
download page for this report to get some details as to the
"whats" and "hows" of creating new content value, but for now a
few quick thoughts as to the "therefores" of what major
publishers and institutions must be thinking about to succeed
in a landscape that favors folks going after new value in raw
resources:
- Fortune favors the unfussy. If you're sick of
hearing about the virtues of search engines in creating
content value, here's a suggestion: get used to it. It's not
a matter of recognizing the particular search virtues of a
Google, a Verity or text mining capabilities such as
ClearForest or Connotate to understand that the publishing
process that treats any content anywhere in any form as fair
game for creating content value is more likely to come up
with more unique content value. "Good content is where
you find it" is a key concept here at Shore; today's
successful publishers oftentimes are those that look for the
needs of markets with a broad mind and a wide net and who
don't stop at traditional publishing boundaries to fulfill
them. The clients usually don't care where the solutions came
from, as long as they deliver on their promise. Traditional
publishing and product management skills in publishing
companies must give way to far more agnostic approaches to
product development and product management to generate
premium margins in today's content markets.
- Hey, since when are they publishers? One of the
key take-aways from Patricia's report is to recognize the
full impact of organizations that learn how to package
content value effectively as spinoff efforts from operations
that have roots far away from traditional publishing markets.
It's not just publishers that are searching for more oomph on
the bottom line: manufacturers, technology companies and
service companies of many kinds are all looking towards their
publishing infrastructures and wondering how they can be
leveraged to increase top line profits and not just bottom
line production savings. With ubiquitous Web access and
highly streamlined publishing capabilities many organizations
never thought of before as publishers are transforming
infrastructure overhead into entirely new lines of business.
They may have a few things to learn about the traditional
publishing world, but as long as they're going for the cream
of the profits, most any profit-minded company or individual
could crop up on your competitive radar scope.
- Paper or plastic? Useful and attractive content
packaging is at the heart of the publishing value
proposition. Some business information providers involved in
workflow integration products take a sophisticated look at
content packaging for the most part. But even these leaders
tend to fall short of the mark when it comes to looking at
new content sources to feed into those technology frameworks
and new ways of spinning it out from those frameworks
profitably. Understanding workflow in detail is only the
beginning of identifying opportunities for packaging content.
Looking at every context for every use of content as a
marketing opportunity and thinking as cleverly as possible
about the packaging options that may enhance content appeal
in that context is a crucial aspect of the thinking process
when approaching new opportunities for creating content
value.
The great news in all of this is that the publishing
industry is shifting towards a new generation of product
leadership that is taking advantage of many "diamonds in the
rough" as the cornerstone of new value propositions. The extent
to which publishers and other companies must use creative
thinking to identify them may have been turned up a few
notches, but to those who are willing to roll up their sleeves
and to dig around in familiar terrain the payoff can be as
shiny as any gem of content.
-
John Blossom
To top of page
 |
