Building your championship caliber workplace team starts with spring training everyday

https://www.petevanbaalen.com/single-post/2018/11/29/Building-your-championship-caliber-workplace-team-starts-with-spring-training-everyday

The first snow has fallen, and I'm well on my way on a count-down to spring training and the return to baseball season. That's pretty typical for me, being a fan of baseball as well as a hater of cold Indiana winters.

It's especially true this winter, after watching my favorite team the Boston Red Sox win the World Series this past October. And if you're of like mind, you can check out the Spring Training Countdown site to see how soon before the sports reporters announce that pitchers and catchers have reported.

Spring training is where championship teams are developed. You have to have talent, for sure. But spring training is where the fundamentals are taught and emphasized, skills are honed and team chemistry is developed.

Being a manager is not all that glamorous at times. Or a lot of time, pending on your situation. But the best part for me is working with and developing people. I guess that is why I love spring training. Once the season has started, you'll rarely see a veteran being instructed on how to round the bases. But during the spring, they will spend an hour on it, perfecting on the exact approach you should have as you hit the bases.

Developing people in the workplace is my spring training, and I try to make it a part of my daily routine. From working with a brand new sales rep to working with a very experienced business office person who is learning new tasks, the opportunities for developing your team is the most reward part of being a manager.

Alex Cora, the manager for the Red Sox developed a high performing championship team. I'm just trying to win the month with a good performance, but lessons can learned from the rookie manager's approach.

"He just has a way of making you believe." That was a comment from Nathan Eovaldi, pitcher for the Red Sox. I cannot think of a better compliment that someone could  pass along to a manager. That was Eovaldi's comments in the hours after the Sox defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers for the championship.

In all the reading I did after the World Series ended, one article stood out to me. ESPN's Tim Keown's story focused on the culture of the winning team, and specifically Alex Cora. Cora made $800,000 to be the manager of that team which seems like a lot of money. But a team with a payroll of over $228,000,000 that is chump change. Yet, Cora built the team up and kept them up setting team records for wins in 2018. And I'm convinced it all comes back to culture.

Keown writes:  "This was the culture Cora set out to build when he became Boston's manager a year ago, which made the scene both humbling and a little sad. He wanted a team that felt like a family, one constructed out of tolerance and diversity and inclusion. Given the transitory nature of the game, he wanted to create an ecosystem capable of absorbing new members." 

Obviously the story is talking about how to build culture for a successful baseball team. But doesn't that sound pretty accurate for business, a sales team? Looking at building a multi-generational workforce, with Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials and more? Then I think the advice from the rookie manager is a good thing to consider.

That passage doesn't talk about accountability. It is a very touchy-feely commentary but that doesn't mean I am not for accountability too. Far from it. I think employees, the good ones anyway, expect to held accountable for their productivity and actions. When they achieve or exceed, or when they fall short and need guidance, if you've treated them with tolerance and respect then they will be more open to hearing the words being expressed. This is especially important when those words are disciplinary by nature.

Shifting demographics still bring optimism to traditional media

https://www.petevanbaalen.com/single-post/2018/11/23/Shifting-demographics-still-bring-optimism-to-traditional-media

A co-worker of mine asked me the other day if I'd heard about the tsunami that was about to hit. Normally our conversation is about popular music or sports, so his weather statement caught me a bit off guard.

Then he forwarded me a recent post from InsiderRadio.com that brought things into perspective. His reference was to the "Silver Tsunami" that is gripping the nation. The trend is that as the US is getting older, the once coveted 25-54 demographic is losing the Baby-Boom generation. As of January 2019, all Baby-Boomers have exited, moving on to the 55+ age range.

The article suggests that advertising agencies and marketers need to rethink who their target should be going forward. Instead of targeting the 25 - 54 age range as in the past, it is time to think older and follow the money. And as Baby-Boomers age, they are aging with all the money! OK, maybe not all of the money but enough that they can't be ignored.

Tom Peters was one of the first business gurus back around the start of the millennium to talk about the need to focus on where the money was regarding marketing dollars, and that you cannot ignore the aging Boomer population. That trend is only intensifying as Boomers get older. Baby Boomers control 50% of the wealth in this country today, and 28% of retail spending based on findings from Deloitte Insights.

The grip on the cash that Baby Boomers have is not something that they are planning to relinquish anytime soon. Their current net worth of 50% of the wealth only drops 5% over the next 12 years. This is good news potentially for traditional media  who continue to struggle in this ever-increasing digital age.

Baby Boomers have embraced digital, and I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't do digital campaigns for this segment. But I think Baby Boomers more so than the generations that have followed are holding on to traditional media. The best example is the newspaper audience.

Newspapers continue to struggle with maintaining circulation numbers. That issue is pretty universal. But the losses are a result of the industry's inability to attract the next generation of readers. This is a long term problem, no doubt. But in the here and now, I believe this is an opportunity.

Newspapers are strongest in the older demographics, especially Baby Boomers. What was once a vehicle to reach the masses is now becoming a vehicle to reach a specific target. And the good news is the target that newspapers reach happens to be the most lucrative segment in the marketplace, and it will be for another generation.

Market research budgets are a thing of the past for most media companies, but there is still at your ready resources that you can use to show newspaper readership. Which you should then match up those readership numbers with the wealth index for this country, and remind advertisers and agencies of the power of the Silver Tsunami.

In Indiana, data from the Hoosier State Press Association's 2017 Readership Study provides you with excellent data on the value of newspaper's older audience. The study, conducted by American Opinion Research found that 74% of adults in the Hoosier state over the age of 55 read a printed newspaper on a regular basis. That strong readership number coupled with a simple explanation about the Silver Tsunami is a powerful combination when talking with media buyers.

This reminds me of Ronald Reagan's debate with Walter Mondale during the 1984 presidential election. Reagan, at the time the oldest president in history emphatically told the audience, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." He turned a potential negative into a huge positive, catching the audience and his opponent off guard.

Newspapers have the same opportunity. The perceived negative of the aging audience, at least for now, is still a positive opportunity. Newspapers continue to serve the wealthiest and most influential group in this country better than any other media outlet around.

Media has an opportunity to tap into the desire for a sense of community

https://www.petevanbaalen.com/single-post/2018/11/04/Media-has-an-opportunity-to-tap-into-the-desire-for-a-sense-of-community

I was recently lucky enough to get to go on vacation, which included a stop in New York City. Seeing the hustle and bustle of the big city was great, and filled with many memories. Near the top of that list was a chance to see up close the Statue of Liberty.

It was inspiring to see it with my own eyes, and think about the immigrant paths of my family and that of my wife’s along with the hope this statue brought to them and so many other families over the years. But I also looked on with a sense of pride, as I had just recently learned about the important role newspapers played in building of the Statue of Liberty.

The statue itself is a gift from the French, but the pedestal on which she stands needed funding. In steps Joseph Pulitzer, who made it a crusade of sorts to get that money raised. In the pages of his newspaper the New York World, he raised over $100,000 which was more than enough to finish the job. How appropriate that the base of liberty was built by newspapers.

That ability to rally a community and help it to be a better version of itself is one of the many things I love about this industry. And despite the troubles in the industry, newspapers are still building better communities today.

I did not know Matt Tully. To my knowledge, I never had the pleasure of meeting him, yet I couldn’t help but shed a tear as I read about his recent passing. Tully was a columnist for the Indianapolis Star, and Tully helped build communities.

Matt Tully died of cancer in late October. The story of his passing reminded me of what is good in media, and I hope the industry is reminded of the opportunity we are given each day. No doubt as I read about Matt that he took those opportunities and did some great thing. My favorite story started back in 2009, when Tully decided to focus on inner-city schools and tell their stories. He took a typical story assignment, added his passion and ignited a community. The pinnacle was the Christmas concert put on by the choir which, thanks to Tully and the many readers of his column, was attended by over 2,000 people. Most of those people had no direct involvement with the school. They were there because of the call of Tully and the Indianapolis Star. People wanted to be a part of something special, and I believe many yearn for a sense of community. Media and newspapers specifically have a chance to be that conduit to make things like this happen in small towns and large cities.

Building community is not an easy endeavor. While a newspaper wants to build up a community, it also has to report on the bad things too. So finding that balance is never easy. But here, I believe, is every newspapers opportunity.

Nearly every newspaper does a progress edition. It gets called different things at different publications; progress edition, focus edition, community annual report. Instead of doing the same stale section that only looks at the heath care, business and industry, retail and education which rarely changes much from year to year. Look at those topics, or other topics if relevant in your market, and find ways to rally the community.

Rallying the community around a project or a specific need may not generate 2,000 people, but all you might need is the right people to step up. The cities and towns we serve need our help, and taking the annual progress edition and making it important again will have impact. Our advertisers, local business want this too and I believe that not only will rallying the community be good for the community, it will be good for business.

I’m not saying you’ll get 2,000 people at a Christmas concert; but I’m not saying you won’t. Pulitzer’s fundraising for the Statue of Liberty didn’t rely on the bigwigs with deep pockets. It was his average, every day reader that made the difference. In fact, over 125,000 people donated to the pedestal for Lady Liberty, meaning the average donation was only 80 cents.

The newspaper’s ability to tell a story and help change the world is evident every day in the pages published. Focusing on building community through the annual progress edition is an excellent place to build a community and ignite a readership base.

Can traditional media survive without social media?

https://www.petevanbaalen.com/single-post/2018/10/25/Can-traditional-media-survive-without-social-media

The headline, like it was designed to do, caught my attention. "Can your publication survive without Facebook?"

So this is what we've come down to, can a local newspaper, radio or TV station even survive without the audience generated by the social media giant? Maybe I'm in a fantasy world, but to me there is no doubt the answer is yes. Hell yes, maybe even.

The article chronicles a Danish publisher, TV Midtvest who went dark on Facebook for two weeks to see what the impact was to their website for their eight regional TV stations in Denmark. Their head of digital, Nadia Nikolajeva spoke about their experiment at the INMA Media Innovation Week in Amsterdam in late September.

They went cold turkey, no Facebook posts for 14 days, having only a post that invited people to go to their website instead. What happened is a little alarming. Site visitors dropped 27% during the two weeks, and that's a lot. But page views only dropped 10%. People still found their way to the website, without the prompting from Facebook.

Facebook for most websites provides a lot of "one and done" traffic, meaning they come for the story that showed up on their feed and never click on another story while visiting your site. Every page view is important, but to me this shows one of the problems with social media. Is social media traffic coming to your website really meaningful traffic? I haven't seen, but wonder if there is research that shows how often visitors to a website click on local banner ads compared with visitors who came to the site by other means? The bounce rate is so high for social media generated traffic, I would bet very few interact with anything else on the site, let alone banner advertising which pays the bills.

I look at results from my own site, and I believe you can survive without Facebook. Given all the recent news about the US Supreme Court Justice hearings in Washington, DC, one of our state's US Senator's announced he would not vote for confirmation. This story broke on a Friday midday, and we immediately put a story up online about this decision. We also posted about it on Facebook, and the reaction exploded.

The Facebook post about the story blew up. We had a lot of reactions, comments and shares of this story which produce a very high reach on the platform. This post was one of our better performing posts on the site in some time. Hundreds of comments on Facebook, yet barely a whisper in terms of traffic on my site. People react on Facebook, but they did not read the details on the story online. We did a great job of creating content and page views for Facebook, but what did we do for our own site? Very little, it turned out.

The same was true with a several Facebook Live projects we've tried. Our most successful Facebook Live broadcast was with a local singer that made it to the finals of NBC's The Voice. Our views on Facebook were very strong. Doing Facebook Live, you could make the case, helped make our brand stronger and more top of mind. But there was immediate impact on our revenue or bottom line. We were generating page views and revenue for Facebook.

Publishers  need to stay focused on driving traffic to their site. It is going to be difficult enough making enough money on digital based products with dwindling cpm charges, let alone if publishers end up generating traffic for social media instead of themselves. Using Facebook and other social media outlets as a source for traffic instead of being the source for them may end up one of the industry's biggest challenges in the near future.

My example of the story on the Supreme Court shows that the habits of readers has changed. The headline sufficed, and they did not bother to actually read the content. What started at USA Today by giving us snippets of content has been reduced to simple headlines as all consumers want. That is scary for the news business, and for the republic in which we live.

So the answer is to innovate; something most media outlets talk about more than doing. In the case of TV Midtvest, they did take action. As the article wrote, "TV Midtvest realised they can innovate and develop in-house tools that will allow journalists to communicate with their audience while retaining control over users data. They even took a step further and developed new services like a streaming app, that saw 20,000 downloads since its launch in spring."

Developing an app might not be within the grasp of all online publishers.  But there are things that can be done to help drive traffic. To me, one of the most obvious is to use Facebook to promote your brand, and ways for consumers to interact.

If you do not have a email database, then start one. Use Facebook to promote its existence and help convert those Facebook likes into deliverable email addressed. Then you can sell your email newsletters to advertisers, making money from the email. Those emails sent daily, weekly or whatever works best for your news cycle, will help drive traffic back to your website. And not to Facebook.

I'm not anti-Facebook or anti-social media. There's a decent chance you made it to this post from a social media post. But I'm using social media to promote my website, not as a substitute for my website. I think a lot of websites, particularly those from media outlets, have forgotten that point. We need to use Facebook to promote our site, but figure out ways to drive web traffic to our sites and not Facebook.

Newspaper advertising remains relevant but most adapt for advertiser's needs

https://www.petevanbaalen.com/single-post/2018/10/02/Newspaper-advertising-remains-relevant-but-most-adapt-for-advertisers-needs

Going to a really good conference for me is like getting an infusion of energy. Whenever I get a chance to attend a industry conference, my goal is to walk away from the meeting with at least one idea or kernel of knowledge that will pay for the time away from the office.

The annual conference for the Hoosier State Press Association provided me several good ideas and some great knowledge that will more than pay for the trip. Hopefully you were there and experienced the same results as me. For those that weren't able to make it, here are a couple of my take-aways that might help you too as you strive to end the year on a positive note.

Ryan Dohrn from Brainswell Media was one of the main speakers, working with advertising managers and sales reps. One of his quotes from the conference has been repeated numerous times by me since returning to the office. "If we sell traditional media in traditional ways, we will get traditional results." How you change things up depends on your market and your resources, but the reality is we have to change how we are doing business. Media outlets cannot do the same promotions this coming year that they were doing 5 years ago. Just as the businesses in small town - Main Street America have to change, media must also adapt and change.

Newspapers still remain a great option for creating brand awareness for advertisers. A business builder or frequency program where an advertiser runs a series of smaller ads on a consistent basis provides you with a much needed base of ads in the newspaper,  and provides your advertiser with better awareness with consumers in the marketplace. Advertisers can growth their brand and their business by associating with the local newspaper. Growing a business's reputation by affiliating with the trusted source for local information, which in many cases is one of the oldest  businesses in town, is very real and we as publishers often forget that value.

Building top of mind awareness through the newspaper is not new, but I believe it is something that many have lost track of as a valuable marketing asset to our customers. Consumers need to see a message 10 times before they act. Through newspaper frequency programs, the advertiser is building that awareness and developing an intent to buy from its customers. That awareness drives people to their store and to make purchases. It also helps with online search engines  like Google. When you are searching online, you are typically not searching generic phrases. Consumers are searching what is familiar with them, so a stronger brand equals a stronger presence online. Traditional media can help digital media's performance.

Newspaper advertising still performs. Hopefully that is a statement that you know and absolutely believe, and didn't need to go to a conference to have that reaffirmed. Sabline Carbaugh is the owner and COO for Golden Web Marketing, and her article titled "5 Reasons Print Advertising Works" offers some quick hit nuggets for your next sales meeting. My personal favorite is a Penn State University study that showed that readers retain newspaper advertising better than other marketing options. This is a point that gets illustrated every year for me, the Monday after the Super Bowl. Companies spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads. Yet hours afterwards, only one or two of those messages are remembered and associated with the brand they are promoting.

There is plenty of negative in the world. It is important that the newspaper industry continues to find and promote the good things that are still being said about it. For me, the words of Dohrn and those that came and shared their ideas at the annual HSPA conference provided me with fuel to attack fourth quarter.

A quick note of thanks to my friends in media

https://www.petevanbaalen.com/single-post/2018/09/21/A-quick-note-of-thanks-to-all-my-friends-in-media

September, 2018 -- I have been truly blessed. Luckily, I am smart enough to realize that, and that has been very evident to me in recent weeks. The older I get, the more I appreciate family. Having lost both my parents and my oldest brother, the family that remains remain very dear to me. Never would I have ever expected to get as much joy as a hug from my son at the end of a bad day at work.

While work remains work, I'm lucky enough to have fewer bad days than good. And that isn't easy when you work in media. This industry continues to lurk, jerk and contort in ways never before imagined as traditional media tries to adapt to the new digital world. 

Working in media, and newspapers most of my career is indeed a blessing. I have managed to feed, clothe and put a roof over my family's head for several decades. Because of that fortune, I always try to give back. I have made presentations for many organizations, I write a monthly column for a state press association and work when possible with students who are the next wave of media moguls through work with local universities.

So when I was presented with the Distinguished Service Award from the Hoosier State Press Association, I was beyond flattered; nearly speechless! It is the highest honor handed out by HSPA to an individual that has helped the association and the newspaper industry throughout the state of Indiana.

What makes the media business so amazing is the people that are dedicated to it. I still have friends from my radio days, and of course a ton of friends from my newspaper days. The common denominator of all of them is passion and creativity with a desire to serve the markets in which they are working. For me, I was fortunate enough to be with many of them at the HSPA awards presentation in Indianapolis earlier this month. I had a chance to thank them personally. For those that I didn't see, let this serve as a personal thank you for sharing your creativity, your passion and most of all, your friendship.

Time for newspapers to start thinking like Veeck, as in Bill Veeck and become marketing disruptors

http://www.petevanbaalen.com/single-post/2018/08/26/Time-for-newspapers-to-start-thinking-like-Veeck-as-in-Bill-Veeck-and-become-marketing-disruptors

Bill Veeck was a market disruptor. They didn’t actually call him that at the time. They called him crazy. Looking back now some 32 years after his death, you might hear him referred to as a genius.

Veeck as in wreck is how people described him, and it also happens to be the title for his autobiography. A baseball hall of fame inductee, Veeck owned three different baseball teams including the St. Louis Browns, Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox. Though he won a World Series in Cleveland, he was a small market, small budget owner before they were referred to as such. This forced Veeck to innovate just to survive.

What made Veeck a genius is he actually thought about the fan experience at the game. Every baseball game you attend that has a special promotion attached to it, from fireworks to bobble heads, exists because of him. Veeck had to create fans of his product just to survive, and that is the lesson we need to learn in the media industry.

Fans of the game of baseball in Chicago have options for their entertainment dollars, including other places to see major league baseball. In Veeck’s era, there were the Cubs on the north side playing at Wrigley Field, and the White Sox with a much smaller following in a dump of a ballpark in a suspect neighborhood on the south side. To gain attention from fans and sponsors, the White Sox had to think differently. Thus they came up with things like exploding scoreboards when a home run is hit, having a crazy radio announcer Harry Caray sing a song with the crowd during the seventh inning stretch and have promotions like “Disco Demolition Night.” Innovative at the time, two of those three examples are now mainstays at ball parks today. “Disco Demolition Night” actually caused the White Sox to have to forfeit a game.

Newspapers should think more like Bill Veeck, incorporating promotions with an underdog mentality to attract fans and revenue. I worked for a couple years for John Dille, who owned The Elkhart Truth. In addition to owning that newspaper, Dille owned several radio stations, and he challenged me regularly to think like a radio station and develop promotions. From special events to contest, the goal was to attract attention to the product and associate good feelings towards it all the while earning revenue.

As an industry, we need to challenge ourselves to make the move from disrupted to the disruptor. One way to do that is to think like a radio station like Dille challenged me. Or Bill Veeck.

In my career, I’ve dreamt up promotions where I hid $1,000 somewhere in the market and provided clues so readers would find it, had a half dozen people live in a travel trailer in the middle of a mall for a week in a Survivor style promotion, among other things. Those were relatively high budget promotions, though I will say neither cost very much compared to the publicity earned. I’ve done many low budget promotions too, which any market at any size can pull off. There is no magic formula. You just have to try!

John Senger, the ad director at Greenfield, Indiana’s newspaper did a scavenger hunt for their readers. Called the “Ultimate Scavenger Hunt” this promotion was a great example of audience engagement, innovative thinking and revenue generation. This was a daylong event promoting the newspaper, its sponsors and the community they serve while generating revenue too.  

Small group of participants in The Ultimate Scavenger Hunt, presented by The Daily Reporter in Greenfield, Indiana.

Innovation often comes from necessity. As the media world changes, we have to think differently to keep the audience’s attention, and to keep our sponsor’s money. Pushing the limits of thinking, and finding promotions and contests that will work in your market will help you do both. If Bill Veeck owned a newspaper today, I have no doubt they would be doing wacky promotions, engaging with their audience, making money and still providing quality content for its subscribers.

Bill Veeck’s son is carrying on the family tradition of amazing promotions and profitability, now for an independent minor league A few weeks ago, they decided to celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the movie Animal House with the world’s largest food fight. More than 8,000 people showed up for the game, and the video as of this writing has been viewed over 150,000 times.

OK, so maybe the world’s largest food fight isn’t your cup of tea. I get it. The point is, like Bill Veeck or the St. Paul Saints, to survive in the long term, newspapers are going to have to get creative and become a disruptor.