Details for the upcoming SIPA congress, which will take place in London on Wednesday 8th July, were recently sent through to me.
SIPA is an abbreviation for the Specialised Information Publishers Association. It aims to serve publishers and providers of specialised information – such as online publications, newsletters and directory services.
This year’s congress is packed with material and with the backdrop of the current economic climate and changing reader habits this has to be an industry “must attend” event.
It took me a while to go through the programme – it’s jam packed – so I’ve pulled some highlights out below. The full line up and agenda can be seen here.
Before the congress, there are also two discussion forums on Tuesday 7th July run by:
Jeanne Hopkins, MECLABs and Louise White,Incisive Media; and
Victoria Mellor, Chief Melcrum Publishing and Paul Smith of Kable (part of Guardian Professional).
Congress highlights
- Who is the new online information buyer? (Andy McLaughlin, president of PaperClip Communications in the US)
- Using Twitter and LinkedIn as marketing tools (Ashley Friedlein, CEO and co-founder, Econsultancy)
- Lead generation – maximising name capture on websites and turning your prospects into buyers (Jeanne Hopkins, chief marketing officer, MECLABS)
- How MoneyWeek became the best-selling financial magazine in the UK (Angus Phillipson, managing director, WORKSsitebuilder and Toby Bray, managing Director, Fleet Street Publications and MoneyWeek)
Observations
With the shift to online perhaps there is the opportunity to run more dedicated online sessions, here, or at future events.
Online covers so many aspects; pay-per-click (PPC), cost per lead (CPL), search engine optimisation (SEO), mobile, mobile apps, ad networks, video, ecommerce, affiliates and even APIs.
These are the areas publishers need to be researching and looking at for the future. It’s a minefield but an Association can bring best practice and trusted suppliers to the table.
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June 11, 2009 at 9:17 am
Thanks for the plug.
We have regular events covering search, e-commerce, mobile & video. A lot of these topics will also be covered in roundtable sessions (which are one of the highlights of the SIPA programme).
Some of the other areas you mention – ad networks, affiliates and API’s might be interesting topics for the future.
Rory.
June 29, 2009 at 9:05 am
I am going to be progamming an online only conference for SIPA in November. In a new move for SIPA, the event will be a “nonference”
At the moment has quite a loose brief – making money online in specialist publishing – with the focus on marketers. In my opinion the current ripping up of free content models and paid advertising heralds the rise of the marketer. All the revenue streams that are going to be the publishing business models of the future are marketing driven – paid contact, workflow solutions, data, audience profiling, lead generation, events and I want to have an event to debate this and help people understand what skills they need, learn from people who are doing it brilliantly already – basically to help ease people through the growing pains for a new landscape for media. The media is not dying but it’s going to look so different in 3 years time, none of us will recognise it.
So the event is going to be a nonference… because the breakout round tables are always the most popular part of SIPA events I am going to make at least half the day roundtable style – interspersed with lots of Q&A and real-life case studies. I run an informal networking club for SIPA and present regularly at events and I am just as interested in things that went wrong as well as what worked. SIPA is all about sharing the truth so that we all become better marketers (and for me at least that involves getting a lot of stuff wrong.) The aim for me is to share and drive best practice and tell the truth about what works and what doesn’t. I love B2B media and think it plays a vital role in bringing companies to account so I am determined and exciting about who we flex, innovate and survive in an online world.
June 29, 2009 at 10:28 am
Thanks Louise – really helpful overview of your session. Keep me posted on how it goes!