President’s Letter

Digitally challenged? We help

by Warren S. Hersch, National President, ASBPE
Senior Editor, National Underwriter Life & Health

“May you live in interesting times” — the ancient Chinese proverb and curse — would have been an apt prophecy for my tenure as ASBPE’s national president, which began in the summer of 2007 and ends next month. The “curse” of this saying has been writ large by the crumbling world economy and the decline of the journalism industry. Closer to home, I’ve seen friends in the B2B press lose their jobs.

But there have been many positive aspects of “interesting times” as well, especially with all the changes taking place that will ultimately weigh in favor of B2B journalists.

As subject-matter experts who can communicate about complex topics, B2B journalists are likely to be increasingly valued as the news media continues to evolve.

For one thing, the B2B press is the one area of journalism that is producing content that an audience is willing to pay for — something most of our brethren in the newspaper and consumer press have yet to figure out.

I say “content” because, more than ever before, communicating with our audience requires more than“writing” articles.

A typical B2B journalist’s arsenal now includes webinars, videos, blogs, and various online social networking tools, such as LinkedIn and Twitter. B2B journalists who learn how to use these new technologies have more opportunities to expand existing audiences and engage with current ones in more ways than ever. (Members can see what BusinessWeek has done in our newsletternew).

Need for subject-matter experts will continue

The demand for B2B journalists will continue to grow because each one of these“social media” technologies requires someone with subject matter knowledge to craft the messages that are being sent to a sophisticated audience. The Web 2.0 initiatives that many B2B publications have begun to embrace would be dead on arrival without a subject matter expert crafting the messages.

Since the end of 2008, my job responsibilities as a senior editor for a newsletter about state taxation have expanded to include developing webinars and moderating my publication’s LinkedIn group page. Perhaps by the end of the year, I’ll be writing blog posts and sending out“tweets” to state tax experts on Twitter.
Taking on these new duties means I’m busier than ever before. Fortunately, I’m having more fun and benefiting my publication’s subscribers and bottom line in the process.

ASBPE as training center

How did I make the leap from communicating solely through the written word to producing webinars and moderating an online forum? The short answer is: ASBPE.

ASBPE has been my “lab” for experimenting with new forms of communication. It was through ASBPE that I learned how to produce a webinar, found out about Twitter, witnessed the benefits establishing group pages on LinkedIn and Facebook, and the advantages offered by a blog.

The good news is that you don’t have to be the president of ASBPE to do this stuff — we’re always looking for more members to get involved. Those who do will find that these are not only interesting times, but fun too.

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