We are all publishers. Larry Dignan gets this, and explains in this wonderful Amazon Kindle Single how the publishing industry is adapting to the digital revolution. What’s cool is that even if you are a small business, this book can help you understand the SEO revolution, the review revolution, and how critical it is to think not just about content but about publicity. An excellent, fun read for just about anyone in small business (Internet) marketing!
By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor – JM Internet Group
Posted: February 29, 2012
Review of Larry Dignan, The Business of Media – A Survival Guide ©2012 (Five Stars / Recommended)
There are few books out there, as most of readers and critics know, to which I give five stars. The Business of Media – A Survival Guide, however, is one such book. What’s more – it’s deserving of five stars not just for its target audience (journalists, publishers, media types) but for small businesses as well. Why? Because Larry Dignan “gets it.” He gets one of the truisms of our time: everyone is a publisher. The New York Times is a publisher, Geico is a publisher, Gail Collins is a publisher, Seth Godin is a publisher, Sweet Teez with its amazing candies in Larchmont, NY, is a publisher, and you as a writer, poet, clown-for-hire, or whatever, you – too- are a publisher. What’s more you are a writer, an editor, and a producer. Dignan “gets it,” and he explains some of the pain (and opportunities) of today’s Internet and social media economy. The book is relevant not just to traditional publishers but to everyone who has a small business, works as a marketer, or seeks to cultivate publicity.
SEEING THE POSITIVE IN THE INTERNET PUBLISHING REVOLUTION
Second point, this book isn’t all negative. It’s not a rant or a rave, a Luddite rebellion against an unstoppable Internet future. Says Larry: it’s an “exciting or absolutely frightening time,” depending on where you sit in the media ecosystem (large publisher with fixed costs or small new Mommy blogger with a successful blog), and depending on whether you are the small business that “gets it” (the restaurant that understands how SEO, Google Places, and Yelp are critical or the restaurant that still shovels money at the Yellow Pages and wonders “what happened?”). It’s an incredibly positive time for you to take advertising into your own hands via SEO, Social Media, and AdWords!
CONTENT IS NOT KING; PUBLICITY IS KING
Third, Larry gets the fact that content is decidedly NOT king. SEO-structured content is King, content that Google notices is King, and even more “distribution” is King. Getting to the top of Google is the gateway to be dominant; so good (great) content is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Internet success. So action item: start publishing, start blogging, start releasing news and new content… but do it in an SEO-friendly,structured way, leverage Google for free advertising. Do you get it? Get SEO? Get Social Media? Once you do, this is a terribly wonderful time to be a publisher, small business…
DO YOU GET IT? YOU AS A SMALL BUSINESS, A SMALL PUBLISHER
This Kindle single is a think piece, one of the best examples I have found to date of an enjoyable, thought-provoking read. We are all publishers, and Dignan conveys how this revolution is rocking media, and journalism, and as I hope I have pointed out is and will continue to rock the world of small businesses. All small businesses are publishers now – just some “get it” and some “do not.” Which are you?
