Right, I’ve been very busy with my new thing: I’m blogger in residence at the BBC. Honestly. It’s really cool. Follow my comings- and-goings at the special blog I’ve set up for the purpose at commonplatform.co.uk (the feed’s here). More about the whole thing here later…
In the meantime, I just want to share with you a small masterclass in how to run a web site and talk to your customers if you’re a magazine publisher. Mark Ellen and his team over at Word Magazine are in a tough market up against some pretty big-and-ugly competitors and their web site is full of lessons on how to make that work to your advantage.
Check out this brilliant forum thread about subscription prices, in which senior staff, including publisher David Hepworth, make funny and honest contributions that must have influenced the opinions of the complainers who started the thread and probably even sold a few subs. It’s the kind of thing that would almost certainly have been supressed or ignored by an EMAP or a NatMags but which the tiny, independent Word turns to its advantage. Perfect. 10 out of 10. Go to the top of the class.
I also really like the very simple video promo for the current issue that’s on the home page at the moment. One take, no edits, shot in the office, hosted on YouTube—brilliant. (declaration: I write the odd bit for Word, including this piece about memory and the Internet and an earlier one about Wikipedia and I’ve got a piece about why futurology’s rubbish in the current issue—so I’m probably a bit partial).