Creating an Innovative Community: A FOLIO Magazine Roundtable

Alex, KickApps’ CEO, was invited to participate in a breakfast roundtable by FOLIO Magazine about the ways that magazine publishers are using social media and online communities. The transcript of the roundtable was published as FOLIO’s September 2008 cover story. Joining Alex was Stephen Merrill, GM of BudgetTravel.com (a KickApps client and co-presenter of our webinar about creating a successful social media website), Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com, Ted Nadeau, GM of CondeNet, and several other leaders in publishing.

Hosted by Matt Kinsman, managing editor of FOLIO, the roundtable addressed a variety of issues, many of which you, as web publishers are likely facing today. Here are some choice excerpts:

Why social media?

Alex: …with social media, it becomes a two-way communication. You’ve invited your audience to participate in the creation of the experience, and that develops a much richer, stickier relationship between the publisher and the audience.

What type of content works?

Stephen M: I think the idea that there’s user generated content and then there’s editorial content is already antiquated. Maybe we ought to be thinking about how you co-mingle and not just run it on the bottom of the site. There’s probably a pretty interesting space where maybe an article is never finished. Maybe an article begins and you start to report on it and then people start to say, well, actually that’s incorrect. It’s a frightening time in that way. But not confronting it is probably a mistake.

Monetizing social media

Spanfeller: We’re having to educate people that not all user generated content or social media oriented sites are created equally. The ad world tends to put everything into one bucket. So social media inventory is equal to YouTube or equal to MySpace, where it’s 10 cent CPMs at best. If it’s part of a mega-generic, no-context sort of social network, somebody’s profile has no value.

When you’re done reading the article, come back here and let us know what you think of the issues that are discussed. We and the KickApps community would love to hear what you’re experiencing as a web publisher.