Wired.com’s Evan Hansen explains how publishers can find digital success
Kicking off the MagNet 2011 magazine industry conference in Toronto was a keynote speech from Wired.com editor-in-chief Evan Hansen. A graduate of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Hansen shared advice on how media outlets can best achieve their goal on digital platforms.
As reported on a liveblog covering the speech, Hansen wanted to remain optimistic despite the gloomy news for print publishers. “Brand advertising for Wired.com has grown faster than search,” he said. The website pulls in about 40 percent of Wired’s revenues, he noted. It now attract 13 million pageviews monthly.
He made sure to point out, “The principles of great magazines are not the same as the principles of great websites.” Only five percent of the mag’s content ended up on the website. Any frequent visitor to Wired.com could attest to the variety of content available, from its 13 blogs pumping out daily content to photo essays of NASA releases, for instance.
Near the end of his speech, Hansen highlighted “eight lessons of digital success.”
1. Don’t think platforms. Think brand. “Stop thinking print first; it’s just part of the brand,” he said.
2. Your core product is community, not content. Look at how Reddit brings in a billion pageviews a month on an eight-person staff. Also, Wired started a Ning.com site for the Haiti earthquake, and it now has 2,000 community members there, including 80 engineers talking about building earthquake-resistant buildings, Hansen added.
3. Let technology lead editorial strategy. He pointed out eight of top 10 media companies in the world are digital, such as Google and Apple
4. The web is not dead.
5. Pay attention to your advertisers. People will sell ads through network, and that’s a huge disadvantage. Brand-first custom campaigns are better, Hansen said.
6. Scale up.
7. Keep an eye on costs. And don’t forget about user-generated content, it should be part of the conversation, Hansen added.
8. The web is the web, so “don’t act like a magazine, act like a website.”
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