The Changing Face of Distribution

As the publishing industry continues to evolve and become predominantly one that is electronic media oriented, so will distribution. The move towards changing the way in which publishing companies look and measure their distribution is being driven by the consumer. As more consumers switch to predominantly online sources for the news and information, publishers will have to follow. Newspapers are no exception to this change, especially given the collapse of the paid subscriber. The questions are: Are they willing to change and can their culture allow for this change quickly enough as to not lose the franchise?

Our organization, The Employment Guide, is a publisher. We publish 80 free weekly employment publications across the United States. Just like all other publishers, we are not exempt from the changing media landscape. Our website EmploymentGuide.com is one of the top ten job boards in the United States (according to the comScore Media Metrix for Career Resources & Development sites, September 2007). We are making a concerted effort and significant investments in leading our organization successfully into the future. One component of our future will include an electronic distribution network that is being constructed to support our print titles in how we are meeting the needs of our customers. We are in the process of constructing this network which will allow for our client's message to be delivered through an electronic means to job seekers in a way that will specifically match the job seekers needs. In addition to distribution directly to job seekers, we are continually building additional distribution channels for our customers' job postings. We currently distribute our content to a multitude of websites, as well as powering a job board for a variety of websites across the internet landscape.

Of note is the recent trend towards publishers communicating their total distribution to include their online distribution. It is about time! Most of these publishers, including us, have made significant investments into developing this side of their business. All of this hard work, investments and the results of the effort should be allowed to be an extension of their distribution. In fact, if you were to take the more than two million copies of our print publication that we are distributing across the country on a weekly basis and add the readership (averaging 2.5 readers per free publication picked up) of the job seekers picking up our titles to our comScore, we would rank as the number four job resource in the Untied States, only outpaced by the three largest general job boards/resources. As far as niche resources for the hourly non-exempt job seeker, we would rank number one.

That is exciting as we strive to deliver quality results for our customers. We will continue to work on the development of an online distribution channel that will be hourly, non-exempt job seeker centric. The results of this initiative will manifest in the upward trend in our traffic over the course of the effort. We love to compete. We are excited about the future. No doubt we are a publisher that is evolving, but we are on the right track to continue our progression as a dominant player online. The Employment Guide is an exciting place to be right now. We are having a lot of fun while working on our own professional development as we continue on our journey of organizational evolution.

How is your organization evolving?

Built with Passion

If you asked me to rank the things that I love about what I get to do for a living, working on and providing resources for professional and leadership development to those within our organization would be at the top of my list. Building our organization from within is our goal. Effective developmental programs and succession planning will afford us the opportunity to make this a reality, while constructing a solid organizational foundation of leadership.

Building an organization that has strong leadership requires daily involvement through active mentoring and coaching as well as structured developmental programs. The leadership within your organization has to be devoted to the practice for it to become ingrained within the organization's culture. Those of us in a leadership role know that it can be a battle to find the time to make this commitment. My opinion is that leadership's involvement in the developmental process is so critical that organizations can only become successful at the practice when their leader's routinely demonstrate their passion for the process. I know I have written the following statement in previous blog entries, but people truly do "emulate their leaders." A leader's actions, or lack thereof, will create cultural drivers that will lead to a business having strong leadership and good succession planning or not.

From my perspective, it is of great joy to reflect on the times I have had the opportunity to be directly involved in an individual's professional development process. It should be a great source of pride when those that you work with on development embrace the principals that they are taught and utilize those skills to achieve higher levels of success and responsibility. I am exceptionally proud when these folks are recognized and rewarded for their contributions. One of the best feelings in the world is to watch individuals with whom you share your own personal thoughts and lessons, which you have learned from experience and mentors, achieve his or her professional goals. That is how you build and leave your professional legacy. Pretty cool stuff!

What has been your most rewarding experience when serving in a mentoring role?