As Education Week gears up for another Online Summit this afternoon—with more than 2000 registrants signed on—it is clear now that, knowingly or not, the publisher was amazingly prescient in starting these in 2018.

At De Correspondent, a Dutch, membership-based news site, journalists regularly turn to all 60,000 members to ask for potential sources, information and inspiration for new stories—a process that works so well that it expanded to the U.S. market as The Correspondent. At the MelEdits blog, Melanie Padgett Powers, a big contributor to our Association Media & Publishing division, writes that organizations should develop a similar system when it comes to generating content. “...put out a content creation call for sources in your regular e-newsletter,” she writes. “Plan ahead and regularly ask for contributions on specific topics... Continually monitor social media and your online communities to see what members are talking about—but also who is doing the talking.” The benefits of this process are multifold: Not only will you be able to see what your members are talking about—and therefore what kind of content is relevant—bu ...

"...what really makes an outlet stand out, especially now in 2020, is being able to establish all your writers as distinct voices—people that readers will want to come back to read whatever they write. That's kind of one of my big focuses and goals—to make sure that our writers become [that] voice, and folks will want to read their latest stuff."

This is a guest blog post from Edwin Bailey, director of strategy, at Publish Interactive.

One theme of last month's stimulating Business Information & Media Summit was the continued breaking down of silos at publisher and media companies—especially when it comes to the rise of product.

We were fortunate at a Tuesday networking dinner to be joined by Debbie Bates-Schrott, founder and CEO of—as of last Thursday—the newly named Beyond Definition (formerly Bates Creative). The process of choosing and implementing a new name took well over a year, she said. There were multiple reasons for it—emphasizing that they go "beyond" design is a primary one—but it was spurred by her taking on Mark DeVito as a partner.

Amanda McCarthy, director of marketing for Bates Creative—an agency in the Washington, D.C. area that is soon changing its name to Beyond Definition—wanted to get across the importance of personas so she gave us an example. She came up with the American Association of Carnivals, whose members would be amusement companies and providers, carnival staff, ride safety officials, food vendors and performers. The industry challenge is a decline in popularity. The organizational challenge is a decline in membership. The lesson came during a recent conference here called AM&P 360 and the session was titled They Get Me: How to Sharpen Your Publishing Strategy. Bates has a 5-step Persona Development Plan. Here is Bates' 5-step persona plan: 1. Define your purpose. This will help determine if you’re profiling current or prospective members. 2. Conduct audience research. 3. Extract themes from data. 4. Build out the persona profiles. 5. Put your perso ...

The Washington Post has started a new travel initiative called By the Way and it's getting a lot of buzz. Of course, none of us have the resources of the Amazon-owned Post, but there are some lessons to be learned on innovation and starting a new initiative from their story. The quotes are from an interview on Medium.com

"Who do you want to be listening?" asked Kate Super, founder and executive producer, Sidford House Media, during a session on Creating Successful Podcasts this morning at Association Media & Publishing's annual conference here in Washington, D.C. "That will tell you a lot about what your content should be."

Your audience is attending an event or busy in their workday. How do you connect with them? According to Jean Ellen Cowgill, global head of digital strategy and business development for Bloomberg Media and general manager of TicToc by Bloomberg, you give them “key frames” and “side frames” that humanize their news and play on their Fear of Missing Out.