Insight October 8, 2010, 2:18PM EST

Five Steps for Publishers to Survive

The transitions to digital media and a changing audience are gathering speed. Here are five tips for thriving in a world of Google and Twitter

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If you own your own business, write a blog, work in the publishing field, or have simply read the news for the past year (and haven't been hiding under a rock), you may have noticed the key shifts occurring in the global publishing industry. Some are obvious, but many of the underlying trends are more subtle and relate to the changing usage patterns of the next generation of customers, what one could dub "Audience 2.0," for lack of a better name.

The combination of factors is complex, and all of them need to be closely considered by publishers as they look for ways to react to the current changes in the media industry and position themselves as long-term survivors and leaders.

Publishers are faced with content-generation challenges while they look to compete with sites such as Twitter and mass social networks such as Facebook for audiences sourcing either breaking consumer or, increasingly, business news. The thirst for fast "good enough" content is fueled by these new media channels; the elapsed time from when your news is gathered and when it gets into a reader's hands has dropped from 36 hours to 15 minutes or less.

Meanwhile, news consumption in total continues to grow. In fact, Americans spend about 23 percent more time consuming news every day than they did a decade ago, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. A different study from consultancy McKinsey shows that in just the past three years, the average time Americans spend consuming news has grown from 60 minutes per day to 72.

How Can You Compete?

This shift in behavior also signals a change in how Audience 2.0—whether consumer or business-oriented—consumes news. They are moving from paper to online and from editorial brands to aggregators and referrals. Publishers must move quickly to stay ahead of competitors and deliver solutions that cater to the next generation of audiences.

There is no silver bullet that can stop the shift of advertising and dilution of subscription revenue as readers move online—nor the challenge to traditional editorial formats from emerging channels such as Twitter. But the five points below outline strategic steps publishes can take to manage the transition:

1. Integrate content from other sources: Your own content alone is simply not enough these days. Publishers should lead with their own proprietary articles but also offer aggregated global intelligence (news, blogs, tweets) in real time to reposition their brands as search engines for content from reputable sources. If you can't beat Twitter or Google (GOOG), join them as a "trusted referrer" and leverage the current brand strength you maintain.

2. Enable intelligent, semantic search: Publishers need to apply intelligent, structured indexing that fully "reads" and understands the context and entities involved in any article. Then they must make it as easy as possible for users to link quickly between relevant content from both internal and third-party sources. The accuracy and usability of this machine-based content knowledge will become increasingly important as audiences demand more granular content relevance.

3. Personalize your feeds and go mobile: Personalized e-mail or app-push alerts about your own and third-party content is a powerful tool to maintain daily contact for your brand with audiences. (This is especially true during the current media shakeout, with its troublesome potential for brand dilution.) Alerts also give you more insight into user interests than simple subscription paywall registration.