This isn’t really a revelation. Employers don’t buy their employees time, they buy the results that come from it. Consumers don’t buy features, they buy benefits. Advertisers, like the rest of us, want results. So, that begs the question, what is a publisher to do? It’s a painful question because it’s much easier to sell an ad than it is to be creative. But it’s also an opportunity. When you can provide the vehicle for advertisers to connect with the people they’re trying to reach, and conversely for a consumer to find the right product or service, you’ve just done something special.

We’re working with publishers in our network to find creative solutions to these challenges and ensure all of our members are equipped to take advantage of their unique opportunities, and of course make those opportunities available to larger advertisers as well as local ones. Whether it’s providing adveritsers with a ‘seat at the table’ at local events or creating content tie-ins that improve the experience for your readers the opportunities are out there. If social media is showing us anything it’s that advertising is become a conversation, albeit not always a real-time one, and publishers should seek ways to involve consumers in that conversation with contest, surveys, recommendations, feedback, etc.

Our tag line is “Building Community Through Conversation” and it provides a guiding light when we’re trying to decide which path is best. I encourage you to create something similiar for your business and you’ll find yourself thinking not about selling ads but finding ways to sell engagement.

This was originally posted on the Community Magazine Network blog at www.magazineconnect.com/blog.

As a small startup with limited resources and outsized ambitions we have to constantly juggle our technical, and business, roadmap to take advantage of new opportunities and information. We’ve adopted the use of Agile development practices, or at least a variation of it. The purest SCRUM Master would talk about backlogs, sprints, and iteration – basically that means planning and prioritizing, short bursts of activity, then improvement once you see what you have to work with. Why do community magazine publishers care about this? Because this process is useful for business too.

It’s too easy to get consumed with the work at hand and work head-down without coming up for air. Some people call this working in the business rather than working on the business. Don’t get me wrong, this is a useful skill to possess but if you get off track (or in our business the track itself moves) then when you do come up to surveil your surroundings you’ll find you’re lost. More than that, an Agile approach teaches that some planning is good but too much is a waste of time – I may be paraphrasing.

Knowing when to keep moving full speed ahead as opposed to when to surface is a tricky thing and definitely something we haven’t mastered but I have two suggestions both of which are probably pretty obvious. 1. Go see customers, as I tweeted about my visit with folks who publish 425 & South Sound Magazines, getting that infusion of fresh perspective and energy is a great reality check against what you’re currently consumed with. 2. Schedule times to step back and adhere to it. If you don’t make time you’ll find yourself working on those things that are merely urgent and not necessarily important.

It wouldn’t be a corporate blog post if I didn’t gratuitously plug one of our services. Giving publishers and their teams the ability to step back, even if only for a short time, to share and learn from each other is the reason we created the members-only professional networking environment on MagazineConnect.com. There are a lot of publishers and each are dipping their toes into new things, we bring them together to share and learn actionable insights for their business while still leaving them time to run your business. End of sales pitch.

I’ll close with a football analogy now that we’re heading into the Fall – great offenses need to be able to pass the ball and run the ball. Sure, one sided offenses can be effective for a while or against a given opponent but champions can do both. They’re balanced, able to adapt, agile. Make sure your business is balanced.

Given our progress and some of the new things we’re working on I’m hopeful about our odds of advancing. That said, things have been very busy for us and it’s likely we won’t get to put quite as much time into the deck to give it all of the trimmings we’d like but hopefully traction speaks louder than PPT.

All that being said, I was flipping through Inc Magazine (turning pages not swiping on a digital device) and what did I see? A print ad from… GOOGLE! Google is the company that prints money from it’s online ad network (oh, they do let you buy ads in other mediums too but that’s beside the point for now). There ad has a call to action that requires readers to go online, you can see you get a $75 trial so it’s a compelling offer for new customers.

What’s the lesson here? Digital is powerful but can’t do everything. The very first marketing class I took at APU talked about the importance of Integrated Marketing Communications and I buy into it. The premise is simple and extends the Reach x Frequency concept to say, you want action get your message in front of your target audience as much as possible and in as many (relevant) ways as possible. That means that brands need a diversified approach that includes a variety of mediums and messages.

Wouldn’t you know it but empirical research has shown that magazines drive web traffic and search more than other mediums. The key in all mediums is contextually presenting your message to the right group of people knowing that if done right the cumulative effect will have a whole that is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Dialing for dollars is always an interesting endeavor and you never know what you’re going to get but it’s pretty funny to see the range of responses to our value proposition… the sharing of best practices with other publishers amidst the changing media landscape, an audit that is not quite as robust as the big-boys but still extremely valuable (and cheap), and participation in an ad network that will attract large regional and national advertisers to these mags for the first time because we’re bringing them a bulk-buy based on their demographic and geographic objectives yada yada. The most common quip we get is related to attracting large advertisers. Yes, it is challenging and will take some time. No, we have not placed any ads yet (our network is just gaining steam). Yes, we have a plan to attract and service advertisers in a way that is novel and value adding.

On the other end of the spectrum, most publishers identify with the premise that the media landscape is quickly evolving and it’s impossible to stay on top of the latest trends and opportunities AND run your business in the process. But every now and then I talk with a publisher that ‘doesn’t need any help’. What’s most interesting is that it’s not the people who’ve been in the business for decades who are saying this while the newbies want to learn in fact we’ve found some of the most enthusiastic collaborators are those that started their magazine in the late ’70s or early ’80s.

Some of the response is probably due to sheer skepticism about anyone calling out of the blue with an offer but I suspect the other drivers of this behavior are self-doubt and/or fear. Self doubt in the sense that if they realize there’s one thing they don’t know then what else are they doing wrong and they don’t want to deal with that type of uncertainty. The fear is related to fear they’ll get found out. Most community magazine publishers are amazing people who treat their magazine as a mission and not just a source of income in the sense that they give a lot more to their community than they take but, unfortunately, this is not true of them all. For those, I believe, they’d rather stay solitary than come clean (perhaps even to themselves).

With the couple dozen calls I’ve made since our launch (most resulting in voicemails) and couple hundred I made to recruit the prelaunch members you see on the For Publishers page I’ve had the full spectrum of conversations. Fortunately, the majority are with people who I’d enjoy speaking with just to hear their stories.

Am I completely off-base? Why do you think people respond the way they do?

With the rise of regional, then national, and, ultimately, global telecommunications the potential size of a community grew. Nevertheless, prior to the rise of the consumer internet ‘community’ was still primarily defined by geography.

With the web, and now with social networks, the way we define community either publicly or within our own minds has shifted. Now we define the community we’re a part of conditionally: I’m part of the startup community, the MBA community, the Christian community, etc. Yet, amidst our expanded ability to participate in a variety of communities it seems that to a great extent we’ve lost our connection to ‘community’ in its purest sense – a community of neighbors. How often have you walked through your neighborhood and passed someone on the sidewalk without either of you saying a simple, “hello.”

Rather than being freed from physical definitions of community we’ve fled from them. But this epidemic isn’t ubiquitous rather it’s strongly correlated to technology adoption – or, more accurately, reliance. In my post about unplugging I was inspired and refreshed by a trip to my hometown. When visiting small towns like Placerville you come to realize that there is still a glimmer of community out there. But we may be approaching an dangerous inflection point.

For years leading tech companies have tried to do local online but have failed because, I feel, they tried to address the problem with technology. Local is to the web like quantum mechanics is to physics. Cause and effect aren’t always predictably connected and understanding one doesn’t mean you can even conceive of the other. Now we’re seeing a good deal of startup activity around ‘hyper local’ with some attempts still being technical in nature and others taking the new tact of working with people in their local communities. Our startup, aptly named Hyper Local Media, is part of the latter movement.

We’ve created the Community Magazine Network to work with the 1200 or so community magazines in the US in an effort to rebuild community throughout the US, you can read the detailed story on the About Us page of MagazineConnect.com. There are a slew of potential local collaborations but local magazines are unique in that they are small and scrappy as opposed to corporate, their publications feature incredible images that are relevant to readers, and, most importantly, they highlight people in the community that as a reader you know or at least know-of.

There are a lot of startups trying a lot of different things. My hope is that ‘local community’ will be elevated as a result of our collective efforts. After all, I think our national identity and disposition may depend on it.

How would things be different if you made the same contribution to your local community as you do with the others you consider yourself a part of?

We haven’t formally launched but the Community Magazine Network’s website is now live. If anyone is wants to take a look and give me some feedback I’d love to hear it before we start actively promoting it in the coming week or so.

Where are the medical breakthroughs, the truly revolutionary transportation inventions be they car or plane, even household tech doesn’t feel all that different other than flatter TVs. Clearly people haven’t been standing still but I don’t feel there have been many innovations or inventions that have impacted us in a how-did-we-survive-without-that kind of way.

As a consummate optimist I’m convinced that the next decade will see some pretty interesting breakthroughs that leave my son’s high school years looking very different from mine – and not just because he’s texting or listening to MP3s. My gut tells me that some of the biggest innovation will be around business models and service – the offline varieties (although I’m sure they’ll leverage the web).

What industries do you think are ripe for a leap forward?

P.S. I hate that people use innovation to describe any progress. Innovation is incremental, often a re-purposing of existing tech for new uses – often affecting the fat part of the bell curve. Invention is new in a that’s-never-been-done sort of way. Help me fight the good fight by replacing innovation with invention when appropriate.

This 80/20 rule is particularly interesting when dealing with a group of Type-A’s because for some Type-A is synonymous with being a perfectionist, getting perfect grades and being at the top of the class. And, for some, Type-A manifests itself by getting involved in as many activities as possible. In some cases it means both but our generation seems to have a better drive for work/life balance.

The point of all this is that by working with 100 very smart people I’ve started be able to spot the difference between those that are pursuing excellence and those that are simply perfectionists. Let me be clear, you can pursue excellence and be a perfectionist but I don’t believe they go together often. The reason? Being a perfectionist is about proving yourself to others, proving your ability, perhaps even something done out of fear in attempt to avoid looking foolish. What does it take? Work ethic and a willingness to put in time, time to keep polishing until it can’t shine any brighter – pushing through despite diminishing returns. A noble effort indeed but not all that value adding… take math, you can run numbers by hand and go over your work until it’s ‘perfect’ or you could just let Excel do it for you.

Pursuing excellence on the otherhand is about doing something special, something different, something of unique value. In reality, excellence is rarely perfect but generally not something just anyone can do with enough time or effort – unless of course your special brand of excellence is being able to think on your feet and produce quality (not necessarily perfect) work quickly. Excellence is about not being perfect. It’s about choosing something you’re willing to let suffer so that something else can be special… it’s also about knowing when the returns of simply doing more work aren’t worth the effort.

There’s a place for perfection but true perfection is rarely what’s called for. The next time you’re pulling a late night or beating yourself up over something stop and ask yourself, “Am I pursuing excellence or am I merely being a perfectionist?”

No, this wasn’t the TechStars acceptance e-mail (although I’m hopeful I’ll get one of those next week) this was an e-mail from John Cook of TechFlash fame inviting me to join the TechFlash foursome for the WTIA’s Annual Golf Scramble on July 26th. John wrote a blog post asking for submissions by people who were interested in filling out the foursome and I replied with 100-words that I’m sure could only be described as brilliant… I also gratuitously leveraged my cute toddler, I suspect the pic to the right is the real reason I was chosen.

Playing 18 with John Cook at a tech-related golf tournament is going to be a great way to spend a Monday in July (although, I hope the round is the sub-6-hour variety).