In Praise of the Times Paywall...

So a heading i was not expecting to write but i saw an interesting tweet from a very clever media observer analyst who i used to work (Peter Kirwan)with Latest Nielsen stats of the decline in the Times readership since paywall went up. Now a few caveats before i give some praise - the stats are not very robust, essentially estimates in many cases, we have no idea how many free trials, promotional access etc are included in numbers and have no real comprehension of revenue therefore derived. And critically as a significant recruitment advertiser on times/sundaytimes online - we have seen response absolutely hammered and have therefore moved spend towards competitors. The recruitment part of this was not so much mismanaged as not even taken into consideration and NI probably are still not that bothered by this.

Anyway....this was supposed to be blog to praise, so here goes

1. I thought the figs would be much much worse. only 43% decline to front page views, total of 362,000 uniques per month. My gut  detailed analysis told me that nobody would register, let alone pay for content that was pretty much freely available elsewhere (BBC, Guardian, Telegraph).
2. If a decent proportion of this number were paying even £1 or £2 a week - it makes it revenue positive i would think compared to ad revenue - CPM rates are showing no sign of inflation at present and CTRs remain low.
3. I firmly believe that  users cannot expect this stuff for free in future - i love free content, and consume it and never pay for anything but the business model of providing a high quality product, investing heavily and giving it away free, relying on ad revenue does not have any commercial future. So lets applaud attempt at a different business model rather than slam it for impertinence.
4. Anecdotally - i now buy the print Times semi regularly (2-3 times a week) as i cannot access the content elsewhere. I am now an officially ex Guardian/Telegraph reader, as i can view their content via Ipad, laptop, desktop which is me pretty much covered.

So in summary - it will be fascinating to see more robust stats and to see what will happen and what competitors will also do but i can assure you that if they do make a success of it - everyone will be very quickly changing their tune and you will see paywalls flying up everywhere (should insert pun on wall building here but cant bring myself to crow bar it in!)

A Lesson in Parking Your Prejudices

I should be blogging about fish4 take over by Trinity but i can't think of anything much interesting to say. I truly hope that they manage to resurrect a painfully neglected brand but think that it will be a very tough job.

Instead - i wanted to highlight something else - as a SME business owner - i have come to accept almost as truth that the public sector is unmotivated, inefficient, lazy and much too big. I know that's not really the case but with the cuts coming - it has become almost a mantra that jobs, services, departments need to be closed for the greater good and it will be strong medicine but etc etc...
So private sector good - public sector bad - all day every day at moment.
And then you have personal experience which turns the abstract into the concrete.
My mother is quite old and not very well at all and she has been going from hospital to home and back again for last few years - my brother and I (Top Tip - if you want to be well looked after in your old age - have daughters not useless sons) reached a point when we had to make a decision about what to do on permanent basis yesterday.
The meet up was organised by Kelly Hierons who is an SDS for Essex CC(essentially looking after the social care element) and attended by Melissa who was looking after the health element of the equation for the Health Authority, the two of us, my mum and her best friend. All i can say is - Melissa and Kelly were brilliant - they were so focused on getting things right for my mother and were endlessly patient, caring, helpful and efficient. They were clearly hugely motivated by the desire to help people in very distressing circumstances in what must be a hugely difficult job. Needless to say - i felt i would have lasted about 2 days trying to do a job like that.

Anyway - the welfare state, NHS, Education system are such easy things to criticise them until you really need them when suddenly you become extremely grateful this apparatus exists - and i will try to remember that in the future when moaning about taxes, council tax etc.

And now for some good news - OME Sep 2010

Sep 2010 was OME's best ever month in terms of billings (we are up about 45% year on year so far in 2010) - not sure if this is of much interest or relevance to anyone else - but its my blog so if you cant be a bit full of yourself on your own blog then when can you?
Interestingly - though social media and PPC show greatest growth (mainly fee led) - our spend on jobboards is showing a large increase.
This is why we have to remember in this industry (digital recruitment) not to get too ahead of the curve - the value is in many cases - doing the established, trusted digital executions well - while low cost piloting the more cool interesting things. Take your clients with you - show them what digital can do for them - and don't burn a lot of their money on stuff where you will be learning as much as them.
I probably say that too many times and i am beginning to bore even myself.

Lessons of Digital Recruitment History

Nice simple blog post - it does not need much space but has benefit of being 100% true.
It is this - every single objection i hear about social recruiting/social media recruiting
- not proven
- overhyped
- does not work
- only works for tech/geeks/young people
- no case studies
- USA different to Europe
- dont trust the metrics
- can't make any money from it (this is a supplier issue)

Are exactly word for word the objections - people made about job boards and PPC by print publishers or conservative clients.

and we all know how that one turned out.

OME's Social Media Recruitment Advice in as few words as possible

OK - going to try and summarise as concisely as possible - our current advice to recruiters (Sep 2010) on this topic. Please be aware that this by definition is huge oversimplification and generalisation but i wanted to see if i could do it.

1. Answer question - why are you doing it?
2. Do it - engage - don't come up with reason to delay - do something now
3. Its more about time than money
4. Don't outsource too much to people like us - much needs to come from within
5. But let an expert guide you, kick you off, assist where there are gaps
6. Appoint internal social media champion/s and give them external/internal support
7. Measure but accept measurement tools are not perfect
8. Don't try and do everything. Possible priority list may be LinkedIn, Twitter and micro/niche blogs, specialist forums etc.
9. Launch, engage, measure, enhance, review.....

Final Notes

• we have stopped including Facebook ads in this area, targeted cheap effective advertising fits in snugly next to all other forms of SEM and depending on your recruiting needs - if you are not taking advantage of this source - you are missing out.
• there is the massive issue of content strategy which i have studiously ignored above - it is very bespoke to each organisation - and requires more space than this list can provide
• please place any fat proposal asking for £50-70K for social media strategy roll out in the bin - you will be very disappointed

Sales Presentations - my recent bad experiences

Have received a few of these recently which it is fair to say - did not go well. I will try and group the major failings to avoid highlighting any individuals but i am always amazed that these errors still occur in 2010.
1. Sales person talking too much. Admittedly i have a short attention span but this is sooooo dull. It is not about showing off how much you know and sticking crowbarred benefits on everything. Its 2 way dialogue, exchanging info etc.
2. No real objective to meeting. equally dull as it just meanders along to no point. Is objective to close deal, get brief, update on new product. One meeting just petered out where we had all just drifted off and were all probably thinking out what we would be having for dinner.
3. Disagreeing with everything the client said. This was a one off and went spectacularly badly. The sales person just disagreed with everything client and consequently i said. Now putting aside the rights and wrongs of points made. When we have been told you are wrong for about the 4th time - your back gets up and you stop listening.
4. Going on too long. I think you should try and get 3 to 4 points across tops and ensure they are understood and then don't overstay your welcome. I think the impact gets lost otherwise.

I need to say at this point that clearly all the meetings i do are snappy, relevant and beautifully delivered......

How to Price OME's Social Media Work?

Recruitment and social media - a thorny subject - occupying a lot of OME time (not all of the team but growing for all of us). Not the place for a debate about whole topic here - let's make following assumptions for this piece

1. social media is very important now - even more so in future

2. most content should come from within an organisation - not be sourced from external supplier

3. it is NOT a short term response fix - its a long/medium term engagemenmt strategy (some exceptions to this rule)



So the OME approach can be roughly described as (not necessarily in right order)

* Agree Objective

* setting programmes up

* beginning to engage

* decide on policy for Big 3 Social Media (FB LI and Twitter)

* identify niche sites/forums/blogs

* agree ownership internally

* agree what is outsourced

* set up measurement metrics/objectives

* execute policy

* Monitor review and enhance



But we struggle to structure our rates for this correctly i think - the amount of work we do does not in any way correlate with fees. So what do we do?

1. Charge a very big day rate or proj mgmt fees? - make hay while the demand is huge

2. Treat as loss leader? Do such a brill job that we will be engaged for ever more

3. Hide fees in inflated media or content costs? Not the OME way but stuff i see in proposals

4. Bespoke every proposal - based on indvidual client profile - size of opportunity etc. Again not really us - as it means you are sizing up client on what they can afford - not what they need although quite a typical market approach i am sure.



I think our approach has drifted towards Option 2 and it makes sense as it does mirror how we have grown our business - show what we can do - then people are happy to pay higher rates due to value received. But it also means we are underselling ourselves and potentially giving away the quality work for not a lot.



So in summary - probably stay largely in Option 2 - but the rates are going up!