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FROM THE FRONTLINES :: STEVE SMITH
Q&A With RBI's Jeff DeBalko
 By Steve Smith, Digital Media Editor for min, min's b2b, and min's Digital Media ReportIt sounds as if Reed Business Information's chief internet officer has been knocking a few heads and tipping some old icons of business information. In the last year or so, the company assessed the best performing sites, turned those learnings into best practices, and started applying them to 23 re-launches of what Jeff DeBalko calls the "premium site" model. Sites like MULTICHANNELNEWS.COM and KidsTodayOnline now put greater emphasis on blogs and reader feedback. How do you get editors to learn new tricks like having readers talk back to any story? You mandate it. One of the chief tasks for DeBalko recently has been to get editors to "embrace how users are interacting with content today." That often means that readers are consulting multiple sources, grabbing news on the fly and moving on. The challenge is to bring as many resources in front of them in one place as you can so they "engage" rather than just move on. For instance, blogging is not column writing, he preaches. The best blogs, or at least the ones that get the best traction with users, are small short takes that get updated frequently. "It is a short hit, a point in time and really more of a reaction to what is going on in the marketplace to stir debate, with a lot of links to other information." We asked DeBalko to reflect on the evolution of the RBI sites and his approach to digital B2B. min's b2b: What are the biggest accomplishments in the past six months for RBI's digital strategy? DeBalko: Well, we had three major objectives going into the year. The first was to significantly upgrade our Web infrastructure, which we have done by implementing new inventory management, ad serving, and Web analytics technology. We are also beginning the rollout of our new CMS. The second was the standardization and optimization of our Web products across the portfolio. We have re-launched 23 sites under our optimized premium site model and will have the balance of our targeted sites done by the end of the year. We have a similar program in place for e-newsletters. Finally, we focused on driving new revenue opportunities by monetizing our products and audience in different ways. These would include network sales focused on our strong horizontal demographics, lead generation focused on our strong vertical demographics, inside sales focused on our "long tail" advertisers, and an aggressive effort to optimize our pricing. b2b: What has been the hardest lesson to learn about digital strategy and development in the current environment? DeBalko: On the content side, the most difficult lesson for our editors has been the change in what our brands stand for. More specifically, it is not enough to simply be great content creators, we need to be great content aggregators, content analyzers, and evangelists for user-generated content. On the business side, the hardest lesson has been understanding the difference between selling online advertising and creating great online products and businesses. We have a lot of great sales people who can move impressions but creating a great online business requires much more than that. b2b: How do you maintain efficiencies of scale and standardized practices in a multi-title business line that has to serve so many difference segments in discrete ways? DeBalko: Well, you start by mandating it. Our approach to the Web a year ago could best be described as "50 different sites with 50 different strategies." The fact is that 80% to 90% of what you need to do to run a successful B2B online media business doesn't change based on the vertical you are in. We began our standardization and optimization effort by doing two things. First, we identified what our most successful sites were doing from a content, product, and business perspective and we created a model for replicating that across the portfolio. Second, we embraced a content strategy that focused on user engagement with a heavy emphasis on blogs (both internal and external), user generated content, and content aggregation from multiple sources. Many of these concepts were let's say, controversial, but the results speak for themselves. The sites that have been migrated to our "premium site" model have traffic growth rates that are three times that of sites that have not yet moved. b2b: Describe your vision for how digital serves your major business brands over the next few years. DeBalko: I hope that over the next few years we move beyond the print v. online debate or the online migration discussion and get back to being focused on growing brands. This is and always has been an integrated media business--it is now just becoming one that is online-centric. I recently took responsibility for the Reed television group, which includes three great brands, Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News, and TWICE. I have taken great pleasure in reading print products on a weekly basis again. One of the great changes, though, is that in TWICE for example, we are including excerpts of blogs and "TalkBack" comments from our users in the print publication. There is great synergy between print, online, and events, and it is multi-directional. More Steve Smith
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