The single content brand that I’ve had the longest relationship in my life is The New York Times.

Even though I grew up in New England, a highlight of the week was when my dad went and got the Sunday papers — the Boston Globe, the Providence Journal and The New York Times.

Five decades later, the New York Times is still a key element of my daily information routine.

I’m typing this post up in the small cottage my wife and I use for our Connecticut office. There’s snow everywhere, and I can see to the end of the driveway out my window. There’s a block of blue plastic propped up against the snow. It’s today’s copy of the Times.

Someone will probably bring it in later. But I’ve already had three interactions with my favorite newspaper.

The first was around 6am when I woke up and browsed the national and business stories on my iPhone. (I use the mobile browser version of the paper; their iPhone app is overly busy and slow.)

About an hour ago, I stopped for a cup of coffee and went to NYTimes.com to check out the sports and arts headlines. I read a couple of stories and then shifted over to my RSS reader (I’m a fan of the Firefox add-in Feedly.) I caught up on some of the economics writers that I like to follow.

The New York Times doesn’t have to worry about my loyalty to the brand. It stands out for its quality and its breadth.

But the New York Times does need to worry about its economics.

The change in how I access the Times is a good example of how its business model has shifted. Its audience is no longer a cohesive entity which it can leverage for commercial benefit. The audience has fragmented into distribution channels that don’t offer the same advertising payback.

As a consumer, I’m still paying a lot to get to the Times. I spend more than $1000 a year on my internet access and more than $1000 a year on my wireless access. I’m paying for the distribution pipe.

How does the NY Times turn its brand equity with me into money? The brand doesn’t have a consumer problem and it doesn’t have a content problem. The problem is in the relative economics of distribution and advertising in the new channels that I am reliant on.

There’s not a lot of advertising on the pages I’m encountering during my interactions with the Times. And the advertising that is there is nowhere near as lucrative as the advertising in the print version of the paper.

This is a shift from being a MEDIA brand to being a CONTENT brand.

When you’re a content brand, you need to be able to extract a significant amount of your profit from the value of your content. That payment will come either directly from the consumer or from the distribution pipe (think of Premium versus Basic cable channels.)

But in this ubiquitous information world with broad redistribution of content, the distribution pipes aren’t looking to pay to subsidize content creation.

And, if the New York Times wasn’t available on my iPhone or on the web, would I change carriers? Nope. I like the content and I’ve got a long-term relationship with the brand, but I don’t think that would be enough to change my communications and internet infrastructure.

This is a problem that challenges the economics of paying people to create quality content.

Interestingly, I think it’s where the content curation discussion becomes most relevant.

A brand like the New York Times, which has tremendous reach and authority, needs to find ways to expand and deepen its relationship with its consumer across the wireless and wired web. Curating content, building applications, creating micro-communities, turning its top journalists into entrepreneurial brands, picking and choosing where to invest money in highly differentiated and traditional reporting…this is the mix of content, focus and activity that can make the digital connections into increasingly profitable areas.

Here’s how the head of the NY Times is looking at it. The key business focus is finding ways to recover the content costs. I think there’s a bigger web to spin, which will help to support the cost of original content in a different way.

A happy life is filled with frequent and substantial conversations with others, according to a psychology study reported in Science Daily this morning.

Greater well-being was related to spending less time alone and more
time talking to others: The happiest participants spent 25% less time
alone and 70% more time talking than the unhappiest participants. In
addition to the difference in the amount of social interactions happy
and unhappy people had, there was also a difference in the types of
conversations they took part in: The happiest participants had twice as
many substantive conversations and one third as much small talk as the
unhappiest participants.

These findings suggest that the happy life is social and
conversationally deep rather than solitary and superficial. The
researchers surmise that — though the current findings cannot identify
the causal direction — deep conversations may have the potential to
make people happier. They note, “Just as self-disclosure can instill a
sense of intimacy in a relationship, deep conversations may instill a
sense of meaning in the interaction partners.”

Does this mean that a day on Twitter blocks happiness?

Traditionally, the most valued content was original.

This emphasis developed within a content model of constrained distribution and expensive production costs. When there are only a handful of distribution points for content — some magazines, books, a handful of TV station and radio stations — the way to build audience was to deliver original and exclusive content experiences.

The explosion of cable TV expanded a different kind of content model, the Commentary, where original voices offered their perspective on original content created elsewhere. Think of The Daily Show or the Mystery Theater 2000 on the SciFi station.

In today’s world, high quality production is within everyone’s reach and distribution is as easy as uploading a video on YouTube. This content that is being created isn’t bad, either. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of original voices where there were once just a handful.

Into this explosion of information comes the concept of Curation. Long-time tech journalist Paul Gillen weighed in on the value of taking a curatorial approach to content in a post about the Chile earthquake.

No longer is our problem lack of information; it’s that we’re drowning in information. That’s why curation is so important. Trusted curators who point us to the most valuable sources of information for our interests will become the new power brokers.

In a conversation today with two of our top editors, one shared how popular a weekly round-up of interesting blogs and bloggers in her market had become.   Doing the roundup had created an entirely new energy in her market, with new information sources appearing and more interest developing from her readers.

The blog round-up isn’t original, neither as an idea nor as content.   It is incredibly valuable for an enthusiast who wants to improve their web experience by finding good information about things that are interesting to them.

Gillen points out that the concept of curation shouldn’t be limited to media brands.

Marketers should take this trend into account. Creating new content is important, but an equally valuable service is curating content from other sources. This demands a whole different set of skills as well as a new delivery channel. It also means ditching the “not invented here” mindset that prevents content creators from acknowledging other sources.

Content curators have the task of creating trust and confidence in their social circle through the selection and sharing of quality pieces of content.  The curator needs to be able to grasp what is of interest to their social circle and to evaluate what pieces of content should be shared.

Media brands and marketers have social circles that are already primed to be exposed to high-quality content curation.  The members of these social circles have indicated preference and interest through their interaction with the brand.  Setting a goal of enriching the web experience of your social circle, and asking yourself the question, “Would my social circle find this interesting?,” when you encounter fresh content will help you build your authority and enhance your connectedness with your market.

Over the past five years, while people have debated the future of print media, retailers have developed an approach to direct marketing that balances multiple distribution channels, including web marketing, e-mail marketing and, of course, print media in the form of catalogs.

The decision-making is fact based: How much does it cost to acquire a customer through each channel and how much does that customer buy from me? The top-level conclusions are easy to see. Retailers still invest heavily in printed catalogs, along with creating e-commerce hubs on the web and using web marketing to drive traffic.

In an interview with eMarketer, Coy Clement of clementdirect, a direct marketing consulting firm, shares some of the insights he’s gleaned developing multi-channel strategies for retail clients.

Interestingly, behavior on the website is different on the part of people who used the catalog versus those who haven’t.

People who receive the catalog tend to use the Website differently from people who haven’t received a catalog. I’ve seen cases where people who’ve received the catalog buy the featured items. They know what they’re looking for, and they use the catalog as a guide to what the company is selling. People who show up through organic search or a corporate high-traffic site have much more difficulty navigating the Website because they really don’t know what the key items are.
points out that a multi-channel marketing strategy needs to be tailored to the behavior of the target consumers and adjusted for what you learn.

Interestingly, brand retention is higher on the part of people who have been exposed to the print catalog.

What is harder to measure, but still important, is the mindshare people have. This is particularly important for companies in fairly competitive fields. Let’s say you’re in a technology business and you look at people who don’t receive a catalog and people who do, and you do blind research, not telling them who the company is. You say, “Why don’t you tell me what you think of Dell or HP?” Researchers have found over the years that customers who receive catalogs tend to have a higher brand awareness and mindshare than people who don’t.

It’s as if the physical experience of the brand leaves an imprint.

This has been a challenging time to be in a job. The industry doesn’t really matter, although the industries that I’m close to — housing, multi-family, media, marketing and publishing — have experienced challenges on an order of magnitude that none of us could ever imagine. But for everyone, the work of going to work, doing what you’re asked to do, managing people and dealing with customers is fraught with an undercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty.

This is at the core of the national mood. A quick look at Gallup’s Economic Averages shows that the suppressed mood of Americans is barely changed from a year ago, despite a perception that the outlook for the job market is somewhat better.

Our day-to-day work life lacks the public and external validation, such as raises, promotions and bonuses, that helped boost our sense of self and well-being. I was reminded of this over the past week as we went through budget reviews at my company, NCI. Our teams have been incredible over the past two years, making balanced decisions about people, products and resources even while the business conditions have deteriorated around them. We’ve preserved our company, have improved our operating abilities and have innovated in exciting and promising ways. As we went through the presentations, I was struck by just how much has been done to define exactly what the benefit of each of our different services is, and to clear away any statement, activity or process that is not critical to delivering that benefit.

I was also struck by how little external reward there is in the current business climate. I can only recognize people and thank them.

But does that recognition have the same value as the more tangible rewards that were readily available in the past?

Maybe it does, if I’m able to be honest and authentic, and if my engagement with others is genuine.

In a reflective blog post this week,  the writer Scott Berkun exemplifies the power of candor.

In a list of his greatest professional mistakes, Berkun shuns cataloging business failures to take stock of  how aspects of his nature have kept him from realizing opportunities for growth.

Not learning to draw. I’m a visual thinker, at least some of the time. When I work with people on anything, I work at whiteboards and on big sheets of paper. But I can’t actually draw with sufficient aesthetics to warrant posting them here, or including them in books. This is a liability. But it’s one I plan to correct this year, as one of my goals for 2010 is to learn to draw. I’m working from Drawing on the Right side of the brain, and it’s going well so far.

The kind of self-awareness and honesty that Berkun promotes in this post is of great value today. In order to achieve a sense of balance, calm and productivity, each one of us can benefit from acceptance of ourselves and our circumstances. In that acceptance we’ll find tremendous opportunity.

I’ve had this conversation with a number of my colleagues over the past couple of years. At the center of rapid change, it is easy to lose your bearings.

As a manager, keeping those bearings is important to helping the people around you. I was reminded of this as I read an article from The Gallup Organization that looked at how to bolster employee confidence during these lean times.

The secret is to take a genuine interest in their future, to help them learn new skills and gain new experiences.

“This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.” Employees’ optimism about their standard of living also rises steadily with their level of agreement that they have opportunities at work to learn and grow. In fact, employees who strongly agreed in early 2009 that they have such opportunities were significantly more likely to feel their standard of living was getting better (50%) than to feel it was getting worse (33%).

The feeling of making progress against the long-term goal of their professional life creates a sense of mastery and confidence that diminishes the short-term discouragements of an adverse business cycle, the Gallup researchers say.

Two important touch points for a challenging time: Accept who you are and take a genuine interest in the people around you. These are enduring truths that are too easy to lose sight of when times are tough. But, these truths are about accepting the human spirit, being humbled by our lives and shedding the illusion that we can control the fates.

What’s the most important and tangible goal for marketers using social media? To drive web traffic, according to an ongoing benchmarking study conducted by the consulting firm MarketingSherpa.

73% of the more than 2300 respondents to the MarketingSherpa survey says they target the goal of increasing web traffic, and measure results against that goal, when they deploy social media marketing programs.

The next three most mentioned goals are equally tangible: increasing sales revenue, improving search engine rankings and increasing lead generation.

Within the general discourse about social media, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the opportunity to open up organizations and create a new level of engagement with prospects and customers.

In our implementation of social media marketing programs, we’ve seen the potential of that activity.

Yet, the most tangible impact comes from the increase in visibility on search engines, and the direct conversion of consumers to website visitors, that accompanies the expansion of a company’s digital footprint.

The brand marketers surveyed by MarketingSherpa recognize the central role their corporate web site plays in their business strategies, and are assessing the impact of social media in terms of how well it helps to improve those strategies.

For those of us providing social media marketing programs, being able to articulate the benefit of a service against these objectives, as well as providing measurable results, will be at the crux of long-term success.

A timely update of internet statistics, with commentary from Jeremiah Owyang at his blog, here.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

The video was designed by the agency Jess3. Their blog is a fun place to spend some time — they do a lot of cool graphics and data visualization work.

Owyang’s commentary is interesting. His conclusion:

While the numbers help us track adoption now, the future of all these numbers is moot. In the long run, social networks as destinations will fade into the background (like air) and we’ll just be able to access or be guided by our friends wherever we are in life at any given time we want.

That’s another stab at describing the post-digital world we’re entering.

eMarketer shared an interesting piece of research from the University of Maryland’s business school this week.

The survey looked at the use of social media tactics by small business.

The key takeaway: Small businesses are rapidly adopting social media. 75% have created a company presence on sites like Facebook and 69% say that they actively post status updates and articles of interest on those sites.

Twitter was used by about one quarter of the respondents, while almost 40% say that they blog.

This is an explosion of activity from the SMB sector. It makes sense: social media tools are easy to use and internet users are spending more time on social media sites than any other venue. The SMB social media adopters are just following their customers.

The January home sales report from NAR felt to some people like a letdown — the annual rate of home sales dipped from 5.4 million in December to 5.04 million in January. Some pundits, citing the wildly wrong consensus projections from economists, characterized the results as a bad turn for the housing market.

Step back and you’ll see some encouraging signs of a normalization of the existing home market.

The chart below shows the percentage change in January home sales versus prior year for the last 10 years. (This figures are not seasonally adjusted, reflecting the actual number of transactions in each period.) Since 2006, January sales had been down from the year before. January 2008 was the deep point of the housing slump, with the market coming to a screeching halt that winter. Last January improved somewhat, but still declined from a much lower base. This January, home sales were up 7% over last year. That is forward momentum.

2009 was a year of two halfs: Home sales were down versus the prior year each of the first five months, and then posted increases in each of the following seven months.

The huge year-over-year increases of October and November were anomalies, driven by buyers hurrying to take advantage of a tax-credit that they believed was expiring.

The composition of the housing market was highly unnatural in 2009. First-time home buyers made up close to 40% of the market; distressed sales made up close to 30% of the market. The jumbo mortgage market was essentially closed down for the year, putting intense pressure on the high-end.

And, many of the macro dynamics that contributed to the unnatural composition of the market continue to weight it down today. The job market is fragile and a high number of bank-controlled properties comprises a shadow inventory that puts pressure on home prices.

Despite those conditions, the market appears to be in the midst of a recovery.

The recovery is choppy, but it is being driven by a reasonable impetus. People are looking to buy homes, and sellers are reading the market more rationally, pricing homes in order to transact. The sheer human momentum of housing — families forming, expanding, contracting, moving — is creating the underlying energy for home sales. This activity is what has always been the foundation of a rational housing market.

This recovery in the home market isn’t going to lead the economy out of its slump, as in other recessions. To generate strong economic activity, we need an upswing in home building. For the foreseeable future, there is a surplus of existing housing stock — including bank-controlled properties that are held off market — and new construction isn’t needed to satisfy excess demand.

But a recovery in the existing home market is critical to helping to bolster the feeling of security, opportunity and flexibility among the American consumer. And that recovery is clearly underway.

Look at this!  I’m more of a Millennial than a Millenial, according to Pew Research.

I think that the big driver of my score was the absence of TV watching and my propensity to use social media and mobile communications devices.

I wish the score meant that you would have to pay more attention to what I think.  But, I know that it doesn’t (even though I’m a Baby Boomer, and probably think that everyone listens to everything I say.)

This is a neat little quiz:  you can take it here.

(Hat tip to Mark Perry of Carpe Diem for pointing to the quiz.)