So Which Is It...Custom Publishing or Content Marketing?

The subject of this post is really a trick question...Simply because custom publishing and content marketing can be the same thing.

'Says Joe Pulizzi, founder of content marketing specialists Junta42: “We decided to go with ‘content marketing’ because brands didn’t get it—they automatically thought book publishing or print. The idea is that marketers need to be publishers today. When you talk to a brand, they get it right away.”'

The golden nugget in all things publishing has, is and always will be "King Content"...I've drilled this fact into many posts and other presentations. Success will be predicated on how we can mold, massage and present content...for whatever purpose.

FOLIO magazine presents these details by Matt Kinsman and Tony Silber:

The Content Marketing Revolution
How is content marketing a different business for publishers?

Each year the publishing world seems to become enamored with a new strategy that will redefine the industry. In 2011, that’s marketing services. Last month, Penton Media bought Washington, DC-based EyeTraffic Media, an online marketing firm, and in April is expected to announce a company-wide shift toward marketing services.

“If you look at Outsell, they say 60 percent of a marketer’s internal spend is going to their Web site and that it’s the biggest pain point,” says Penton senior vice president of marketing services Kim Paulsen. “We want to help companies do a much better job of utilizing their Web sites with great content and understanding social media. Companies all say they need a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, but they’re not sure what to do with it.”

Under the umbrella of marketing services comes “content marketing,” which really isn’t much different from custom publishing, it just sounds sexier (and more dotcom-friendly). “If you look at branded and custom content, it’s all the same,” says Joe Pulizzi, founder of content marketing specialists Junta42. “We decided to go with ‘content marketing’ because brands didn’t get it—they automatically thought book publishing or print. The idea is that marketers need to be publishers today. When you talk to a brand, they get it right away.”

Three big factors are driving the content marketing boom—brands’ focus on social media, search engine optimization and lead generation. “You need unique content for any of those three to work well,” says Pulizzi.

WATT Publishing is seeing dollars go to three particular areas online: ROI Integrated Marketing Programs (“After three long years of evangelizing measuring programs, we’re seeing traction,” says director of e-strategy and marketing Jeff Miller); virtual events; and custom programs/content creative that includes social networking and video. “We are providing a variety of new services including ‘ghost blogging’ and producing content intended to boost SEO,” says Miller.

A New Business Model

But while publishers may have offered successful custom publishing services in the past, content marketing as a business can be radically different from traditional publishing, from the client relationship to pricing and sales cycles.

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Mag Publishers Branching Out

In order to save money, and also seek new revenue in non-traditional functions, magazine publishers are taking on related tasks usually contracted out to vendors. Actually they are strengthening their own vertical (business model) in-house capability.

These tasks include such things as launching all kinds of media products, from Web sites to custom publishing, virtual events, databases, books, supplements and spinoffs...Afterall, if you're going to branch out you might as well stick to your core business and who knows what a publisher needs more than a publisher?

This magazine publishing branch-out (or in-house vertical strengthening, as I like to call it) kind of reminds me of what writers (novel writers as well as others) have had to do to break loose from traditional publishing "slush piles" and non-action by learning and taking on more of the tasks performed by publishing houses in the past...This all was made more possible and easier through the new digital technology. Let's all drink a scotch on the rocks to that!

Tony Silber and Matt Kinsman, reporting for FOLIO magazine, analyze it this way:

When Publishers Become Vendors

Dave Schankweiler, CEO and publisher of Journal Publications Inc., a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania regional publisher, remembers the day he became not just a publisher, but a vendor to publishers too.

Back in 2004, the company, which publishes the Central Penn Business Journal, Central Penn Parent, and NJ Biz, launched a new survey, called Best Companies in Pennsylvania. It used an outside survey firm to do the first report. The night the winners were presented was a huge success. "That night," Schankweiler remembers, "it was loud, and there was a countdown and a lot of excitement. And that's exactly when we decided to change the company, because we were coming down from the high of the event. We said, ‘Why don't we take this out into the market and do it as a service to other publishing companies?' "

Magazine publishers are by nature entrepreneurial types. They like to tinker with their businesses. They're incessantly launching all kinds of media products, from Web sites to custom publishing, events, databases, books, supplements, spinoffs. But there aren't a lot like Dave Schankweiler. Most media companies tend to stick to their knitting and limit their creative impulses to media products.

Some companies, though, are transforming themselves into a different kind of hybrid, media companies that have branched out into businesses traditionally occupied by publishing-industry vendors. Gulfstream Media, the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based regional publisher is one. Gulfstream is the parent company of Magazine Manager, a popular ad-sales management software. UBM's TechWeb is another. TechWeb created UBM Studios, which develops in-house virtual events for tech publisher UBM as well as for external clients.

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