In a rapidly changing content world, being able to launch new products, channels, or efforts quickly and effectively is key to success, but finding efficiencies early on within an implementation is what ultimately drives that content success.
By now we’ve all heard the philosophies of “Go fast and break things” and “Be agile.” The pace of evolution of publishing for digital magazines has offered a great example. The requirements for getting digital magazines out the door, in relation to print newsstand dates, across multiple devices, is bringing publishers to their knees.
A primary reason is that often this “agile” approach is taken as a permission slip to sweep aside best practice, smart process, effective collaboration, and lessons learned — not to mention a well-monitored bottom line. And because of this, many implementations are crumbling, and even failing. Continuing to treat digital magazines as an extension or by-product of the print product is the root of the failure path.
That said, I’ve often emphasized that publishers need to be willing to
take some risks and get out there with product and content in
order to learn what works and what doesn’t for their consumers,
but it also means learning what works for their organizations
as well. And if this part is missed, it has not been an
effective and valuable risk.
The agile approach to working quickly also needs to be about changing the way an organization aims to learn more rapidly, collaborate differently, and work more effectively. If there is going to be an inkling of true success with new content products created this way, results need to be monitored. Shaping efficiency needs to be a full-time, visible, and parallel effort to the core content creation tasks at hand. Organizational and process development are the key factors for success in this, or no matter how great the content is, it won’t generate the needed results.
True content product success is being able to hit the mark with
the least amount of effort and the best quality (translated: lowest
cost, highest return). Neither of those are possible without
efficient and constantly calibrated process.
Any good project manager will tell you that if you go into a project without defining your criteria for success and how you will measure that outcome, you have failed. Digital publishers are highly focused on the analytics of their content, to see how it performed best. Why is the same question not equally important for the process and methods by which the content gets created? The results or revenues are just as important as the costs, and the cost and sustainability side of digital magazines has been highly overlooked in the launch of this new product channel.
So when respected industry colleagues (stay tuned for my next blog!) are willing to state that digital magazines have failed, I’m stating that if they are failing, it’s because publishing organizations have dropped the ball on shaping resilient processes. Handing the keys to content creators who focus solely on the outward results without accountability for efficiency is the failure. I’ll argue (and continue to argue) that working smartly and staying highly tuned to the metrics of content production (internal and external) are the keys to making this work.
Posted by: Margot Knorr Mancini
