Many of the shortlisted businesses have already featured in InPubWeekly, but here are my top ten clever ideas from this year’s shortlist: worth noting and seeing how you can apply to your niche consumer or b2b publishing business…
1. Loop Digital’s audacious move of dropping print altogether to focus on iPad apps, and discovering a new international market plus video advertorial revenues from global companies. Their great strength was their video back catalogue.
2. Precious using paid live networking events and awards to build its online community, and taking web content to create books and a schools project.
3. Songlines, world music publisher, building up their Facebook page with a sampler edition and using it to encourage voting in the Songlines Music Awards, with a 250% increase in votes.
4. Boat International, who work hard at their relationships with superyacht owners to obtain exclusive content, support for their superyacht awards, and have developed a video production team to help owners promote yacht charters and sales.
5. Singletrack, who have invested in print production values to court subscribers, and given them a valuable package including digital access and retailer discounts. Plus they have enlisted specialist retailers to help them sell subs.
6. Windpower Intelligence, who organised their databases of windpower plans and installations to create a subscription service that generated over £100k revenue
7. David Hall Publications, who took all their mags onto iPad, discovered that their smallest mag sold best internationally, and have now launched a digital only mag, Total Angling.
8. Citywire, financial publisher, who employs an audience development team to meet readers worldwide and designs new types of events and conferences to meet their needs, plus provides advertisers with hot leads from relevant online stories.
9. Mollie Makes, who started by building an online community using social media and then launched their print magazine, using the content from the community for editorial.
10. Peach Business Tracker, who used their industry relationships to launch a research tracker that is now used by major brands to monitor and plan their business – and attracts sponsorship.
The final winners will be announced on 24 May, and awards will be presented by the 2012 sponsors, Audience Media. You can read all the shortlisted stories here.
There’s still time to register to attend the show and soak up a full day of practical workshops, expert 1-1 advice, live tech demos and Planetarium shows, plus the best networking in the specialist publishing world.
