How do we choose topics and what does the BarCode editorial calendar look like?
I am often asked this question and the answer is relatively simple. The editorial objective of the BarCode News is to provide interesting, informative and useful content on the topics that our readers want to hear about.
How do we know what barcode topics our readers are interested in? Every single day our readers vote on our content. How? An article may be read 500 times in the first day, or may be read 2,500 times in the first day. It may be re-tweeted ten times on Twitter, or one hundred fifty times or more. It may be shared on FaceBook or other social networks more or less than usual. We also look at the number of times an article is printed from our website. These statistics are specific, tangible and immediate. They provide a very accurate way measure of what is capturing the attention of our audience and, incidentally, is light years ahead of a printed magazine, which has no way of knowing what articles are read, or if they are shared at all. The publisher of a printed magazine doesn’t know if the recipient has had any time to look at that month’s publication. Personally I love printed magazines, in fact, I have a pile of them in my office, that sooner or later I will go through, (probably) before I discard them. Web-based content however is sought out by the reader. You, dear reader, are here now because of your own interest. And how many times you share or pass this article on, (please do!) will let us know whether we are doing our job well. It's like getting a mini-report card every day.
One request that comes in from Public Relations (PR) people on a regular basis is "can we get a copy of the barcode editorial calendar?” They want to be able to pitch the companies they represent to us in time for inclusion in those articles. We are not insensitive to their needs, and while we have certain editorial projects laid out far in advance, we don't feel a need to disclose them more than a few weeks ahead of time. The year-long editorial calendar may perhaps, be a holdover from the old days of printed magazines. In the old days (1980s and 1990s), copy was sent to the printer two months in advance, so it could be laid out, printed, trucked to the mail house, who could sort it and label it, and then truck it to the post office, who could then truck it to regional post offices, who could then truck it to a mailbox, where the recipient could maybe read it before disposing of it. (Yikes – how labor intensive, expensive and what a carbon footprint!) In large part, this is why printed trade publications continue to fall by the wayside. Over the last twenty five years at least four printed bar code trade publications came and went. And generally, they were excellent magazines. But nowhere near as cost effective as online content or advertising. Today someone clicks on an article because they actually want to read it. And if the article is about bar code labeling, then what better place for a bar code label vendor to have an advertisement?
(UPDATE Note - as of December 2012 - we have been so inundated with requests for an Editorial Calendar that we've decided to bow to industry pressure and publish one. The Bar Code News Editorial Calendar is here. )
Our independent writers get their assignments from the editor between one and four weeks in advance. Companies and PR firms also prepare fresh and original material for us – written within certain editorial guidelines, and we appreciate it. Some of our most popular articles have been written specifically for The Bar Code News™ by members of the trade, but focused on the viewpoint of the end-user.
What about press releases? Personally I dislike reading press releases. It doesn't mean marketing people shouldn’t send them in. They should, because it keeps us abreast of what the company is doing. But press releases make very boring reading. Example - “ XYZ company modified its version 4.3002b widget, etc”. Really? Great! But does anyone care except the companies that use it already and the competitors who probably already know? Not so much – because press releases are almost always about the vendor, and not about the customer. Rather, we would like to run a piece that talks about how users are benefitting from the new barcode product. The Bar Code News website is largely read by end users of the product, they want to learn how barcode technology can benefit them. “What's in it for my business”, and, "how can it improve our profit or efficiency"? That’s what they care about. And it's what we care about too.
At the same time, search engines like Google and Yahoo, and readers too, don't want to see the same barcode press release published in every newspaper or magazine. Once they’ve seen it, its not news. It's not fresh. We want our articles to be interesting and unique and we would like to be the first to publish that content. Do we succeed all the time? Nope. But we try very hard and we keep getting better. As we grow, we continue to add more staff and deliver increasingly higher quality content.
Part of the editorial mission of The Bar Code News is to grow the “barcode pie”. To help people find new ways to improve their business operations through the use of barcode technology. We want to accentuate the barcode positive. We don't want to waste an article, or a readers time, trashing a barcode product or a niche or a company. If we test a product, and it is not easy to load, not well documented, not user-friendly, we tend to discard it and not write about it. Instead we focus on the products that do what they say, that install easily, are intuitive and are the ones that add value. This does not mean we won't be critical of poor quality products or companies that do things that are, in our opinion, not so good for the end-user or the industry. We may take them to task. But finding fault and being critical is not our main purpose in life. We will, on occasion, have articles where we rank products for ease of use, quality of tech support, and so on.
Another component of our mission includes building the website to include a wealth of barcode resources. We intend to be “the go-to site for everything barcode™”. In that regard, we are constantly trying to increase our resource materials. And, we are proud to go to the best people in the industry for content.
The Bar Code News began in January 2010. The first day I think there were maybe ten or twenty articles. We now have over 500 hundred high quality articles on barcodes, QR Codes, RFID, mobile barcode apps and our depth keeps growing. By next year articles will number in the thousands. Our vision started with a ten year plan – we’re almost to the end of year two. So, we’re just getting going actually, and I’m pleased to say that operationally we have passed the break-even point and continue to grow.
So, what IS on the editorial calendar for this next year? Great articles and content that educates, informs, and helps our readers achieve greater profits and effectiveness with barcode technology.
