An elegant use of social media for publications
February 14th, 2007
Association magazine publishers and editors are interested in identifying smart strategies for integrating social media tools with the content found in their print books and existing online presences. So an elegant application of blogging technology to a traditional magazine department coming from, of all places, The Economist, should attract a great deal of attention from publication leaders in the association community.
The Economist has created “The inbox,” a letters to the editor blog that transforms what has typically been a one-way conversation into an opportunity for robust dialogue among the publication’s readers. Although this isn’t the sexiest use of social media around, it is one of the most intelligent I’ve seen recently for three reasons:
1. Blogs are simple tools for creating conversations and the letter to the editor is a familiar mechanism for readers to create content. Readers don’t actually have to know anything about blogs or blogging to, in effect, create a blog post and begin a discussion.
2. The inbox blog reflects a public commitment to openness and authenticity because it features only reader-created content that will include critical as well as positive feedback and comments. While the blog makes clear that the editors will do some light moderation and editing of letters, it appears that most submitted letters will be published.
3. Through this blog, The Economist has a new mechanism for harnessing the collective intelligence of its readers. What might have otherwise been static submissions are now open for dialogue, offering the magazine’s editors and writers the opportunity to gain even deeper insight into the evolving worldview of its diverse readership.
In addition, the simplicity of the approach employed by The Economist is the huge opportunity it creates to build toward greater distinctiveness, perhaps by expanding beyond text entries, to include audio or video “letters.” Through the integration of other social media, this new blog may evolve over time to become a content-rich companion to the magazine’s print version, one that is entirely created by its readers. That’s pretty powerful.
One question that is sure to be raised is whether the readers of association magazines will submit letters to the editor. It’s a fair point, but it seems to me that creating an open conversation around letters might actually be an incentive for at least some members to submit them, perhaps even members who would never have submitted a letter under the traditional rules. A letters to the editor blog may well open up this particular channel to a new set of voices that have not been heard from before.
So, if association publishers and editors are looking for an intriguing and useful experiment to test how social media can extend the reach and deepen the impact of their publications, this may well be it.
Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way
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3 Comments Add your own
1. John Cass | February 14th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Jeff, makes sense to me that giving people more opportunties to comment on magazine stories will encourage more people to comment. I think it is a great idea. Thanks also for the tip about the Economist blog, I read the magazine regularly so I will add that blog to my RSS feed.
2. Sue Pelletier | February 14th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
My only quibble is that readers have to e-mail their letters to the editors. Why not let them post directly, with an approval delay? Better yet, attach a comment feature to their articles online so people could post their messages right on the articles?
This approach doesn’t seem all that different from posting letters to the editor (almost all of which are received via e-mail these days, in my experience) to the magazine Web site, which many magazines already do. Maybe I need to poke around a bit more, but I’m not seeing this as anything terribly new.
3. Jeff De Cagna | February 14th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Sue, thanks for your e-mail. I’m okay with an e-mail submission process because it is familiar to (just about) everyone. It makes things easier, and lowers the barrier to participation. The Economist does not make all content available via its website, i.e., it has “premium content” for subscribers only, so I imagine that is at least part of the reason why they are doing it this way. I would agree that what you propose around posting letters directly to articles makes sense for the future.
I would challenge the assertion that what The Economist is doing isn’t different from other publications. After receiving your comment, I did a quick search of the websites of comparable publications in the U.S. Neither Time nor Newsweek permits direct commenting on the letters of other readers, and U.S. News & World Report doesn’t post letters at all. On the upside, Time does offer social bookmarking of letters on Digg and other news sites, something that The Economist should consider going forward.
From an association point of view, however, the key point is not that what The Economist is doing is “new” in absolute terms, but that it demonstrates an easy and straightforward way to apply social media to publications that has the potential to create considerable new value for readers.
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