No silver bullet.
There. It’s out; it’s said.
Last week’s blog – an enticing title of Four Horsemen of the Media Apocalypse – dissected what drags us down in the push to build a digital model.
As a commenter pointed out correctly, the four “horsemen” and riders listed – Mr. Indecisiveness, Turf Fighter, Head In The Sand and Who’s Your Enemy? – hardly deserve to be called Four Horsemen of the Media Apocalypse. They are poor excuses. Call them Poneymen, he said, and he is right.
And that’s part of the dilemma.
As we as an industry struggle with the very large elephant in the room – changing media consumption that accompanies a digital world and how print products transition – sometimes we prepare to fight the old battles, deal with the old issues that are most familiar to us.
Waste of time.
As promised, today’s blog offers counterpoint, but don’t skip ahead and read to the bottom.
It’s not built around a silver bullet or a magic elixir. If there was one, I’d have sold it to some big company long ago.
And don’t you think if there was a single solution, it would have already been found, adopted, applied and off we go?
Instead its built around four simple principles, and they require hard work, not a magic solution or silver bullet.
Anyone who tells you they have the single answer is someone you should avoid.
Boring, but the answers come from these tenets:
1. Maintain print: a no-brainer. It is still the gigantic portion of most newspapers’ revenue. Don’t forget about it; in fact work very hard to grow it.
2. Think about the Second Screen: Everyone says mobile tablets and second screens are a key to a rebuild of the media’s digital fortunes. Do you have a plan, or do you just have a mobile site so you can say you are working on mobile?
3. Grow Digital: Another no-brainer but it deserves repeating. Everyone – well almost everyone – says they are focusing on digital, but ask the next question, what are you doing, and what’s special about it? Are you really focusing on digital? Ask yourself in a private moment.
4. Have a vision? Oh, I know that can sound to some too painful and too complicated and too-time-consuming. But, not so: just think further down the road than this month’s performance, and set some goals. It’ll make you feel better; take a moment to step outside the daily tussle of survival.
Sorry, no silver bullets.
And if the only thing you get from this is thinking where you’re doing, and how you get there, that’s enough.
Media Solutions Partners offers both strategy and hands-on guidance to help media companies and the media support industry transition to a creative and innovative digital future. Contact John Reetz at (404) 316-4759 or john.reetz@mediasolutionspartners.com