How We Define Publisher Advocacy
The most common question I get (well, after “Have you ever heard the MC Hammer song? Really? You have?”) is “Isnt Lijit just a search tool?”
I always reply the same, “No, we are a publisher advocate.”
Which is always greeted with one of three responses: 1) a look of bewilderment; 2) a look of amusement; or 3) a look of agreement.
Perhaps the strangest response I get is: “Why?”
For Lijit, the answer is simple. Because our entire existence is predicated on publishers. Not our business model mind you (although thats part of it) but our core value.
Our belief about publisher widgets is that there are two types: Widgets that exist to make publishers better publishers and seek to develop a true partnership and widgets that provide some value extension to the publisher.
The first type are publisher advocates, they have to improve the entire experience, both for the publisher and the reader.
The second type either is successful only on a high traffic publisher, or only for one consistuency, the publisher or the reader.
Our guiding principle when we add features to Lijit is simple: “Are We Being Publisher Advocates?”
In other words, does this feature make a publisher a better publisher by providing better service or increased engagement to their readers?
This also limits our focus to three areas:
1. Content Discovery / Reader Engagement
By indexing all of a publisher’s social content and trusted sources, Lijit allows content that may have been buried in a general search engine search to bubble to the top. Why? Well, we only index the things that are important to you; general search engines index everything. So, our base value proposition is that a publisher’s readers should find everything that a publisher trusts and wishes to expose.
In addition, when a reader comes from a general search engine, our “Re-Search” box proves additional implicit white-labeled results that tend to have a relatively high click through rate, effectively keeping a reader on the publisher’s site versus clicking the back button to the search engine.
Our stats also provide a variety of information for a publisher including results that returned zero results, providing a clue as to what readers are looking for from the publisher, potentially helping to inspire future posts or articles.
2. Optimization of Monetization
Publisher monetization is a noisy, competitive field, and currently we are loathe to produce a sub-standard ad experience for publishers. We cannot just be Yet Another Google Adsense Clone. We have to be better.
Lijit has to create an experience where publishers are optimizing revenue from an under-monetized section of a publication, namely the search results.
Everyone knows that search can be monetized effectively, but we believe because the results driven through Lijit are more contextual and relevant, the resulting revenue should be higher for the publisher. So, we are spending a lot of time developing an effective user interface and experience. Its hard and takes a long time, and we are close.
Besides search results, there are two immediate things that occur when using Lijit search. Your current social content gets better promotion increasing your overall pageviews, driving additional revenue now.
3. Cross Promotional Traffic
This is really effective if a publisher has multiple blogs or a blog network. With Lijit a publisher can use a high volume publication to help drive traffic horizontally to lower traffic blogs through cross-promotion in the search results. On average, our blog networks find that almost 30% of the results clicked in a search result are to another network blog, rather than the originating publication.
Each of these three functions: Content Discovery/Reader Engagement, Optimization of Monetization and Cross Promotional Traffic are all examples of how we feel that we are being publisher advocates, helping publishers be better publishers and helping them serve their readers.
After all, at Lijit we know one thing to be an absolute truth:
If publishers didnt provide social content or trusted sources, our results pages would be empty.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Good post. We just heard the feedburner guys give a talk and they said it is really important to know the things you are and the things you aren’t. That way you can really drive the product to only work towards what you are. your post seems to reiterate that idea, while pointing out what the 3 primary focuses for Lijit are. I think we still need to really figure out and narrow our focus to something we can really be the best at.
For me the best part of Lijit is the cross promotional traffic. I want people to be able to see posts I have made on multiple blogs, flickr photos, youtube, etc but would never take the time to build a searchable index myself. That has always been the most interesting feature of Lijit to me, that it provides a one stop place to seek out anything I have really worked on.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Now see, after reading that, I get it a lot better.
What I don’t know that I understand is the phrase “publisher advocacy” - it seems so abstract.
When I read the 3 reasons, I think “aha!” but the phrase itself draws a big, blank picture.
I don’t know - maybe it’s the word advocate - I think of someone doing something on someone else’s behalf… rather than working in conjunction with them.
Still - Lijit rocks - and I can see where explaining it to this level converts a lot of folks. Because there’s nothing worse than driving traffic away from your own site because someone can’t instantly find what they know is there *somewhere*.
Great post.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:21 pm
It comes through. The simple fact that you put ME first comes through in everything. Which is why it’s not hard to use/talk about Lijit
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:39 am
Brilliant! I appreciate your transparency and truth that you display about Publishers and the advocacy thereof…
Jijit appears to be at the right place at the right time.
Matt
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:06 am
@geekmommy I am not sure if there is a better word. We are trying to work on behalf of the publisher to create a better search experience, provide value, etc.
Would love to hear your thoughts on a better word…
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Often the high-level discussion of content and publishing seems to drift away from the tone of what I do on a public level online. To have content you can monetize or optimize, there has to be some semblance of a focus, rather than just a body of work that “recommends” or “suggests” quality… which is my calling card, hopefully. I wonder how advocacy either way can improve the health of a site like mine.
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
[...] Baldwin, a Villij beta tester (and Biz Dev for Lijit), wrote a notable post yesterday on the Lijit blog. The point of it? That Lijit isn’t just a search tool; it’s [...]
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Good stuff, Micah. Nice to get a behind-the-scenes look at Lijit (and your purpose there). Inspired me to write a related post on the Villij blog: http://www.villij.com/ourblog/?p=38
June 18th, 2008 at 1:00 am
[...] publisher advocates, its important that we explain to publishers exactly what installing Lijit provides them in terms [...]