It is the best of times and the worst of times for some businesses. Many look at the world and see the opportunities of being data rich, customer centric, and nimble while others imagine they can bring their old school thinking to the new media, always-on connected customer. They sit cross-fingered hoping that putting lipstick on their pig will improve their results. Let’s explore two publishers making news recently and learn how one is failing while the other has become quite successful.

We will learn from this comparison no matter what type of business we are in.

I love to consume and share content on my iPad. Ask any of the nearly 20-plus million people who have one and I am pretty sure they’ll respond the same way. So you figure when a publishing powerhouse invests an initial $30 million dollars and another $500,000 an issue into an iPad-only publication, how could it go wrong? Well, not all the numbers for The Daily have been revealed (for that you would have to speak to Rupert Murdoch or his Daily staff), but based on recent data and calculations, the results are not very promising. It has been estimated that the app had been downloaded 500,000 times and that 75,000 people have become “regular users” of the app, at least during the extended free trial period. Nevertheless, the tweets per day from the app are on the decline.

If I had to explain to Mr. Murdoch and his team why their paid subscriber to application download conversion rate is so low, I would tell them that while their content is beautiful, the experience of consuming it was painful and slow. People want speed, freshness, and variety. It’s painful to watch all these little boxes on screen while my issue was being delivered and to watch my beard grow as thumbnails of pages loaded. Mr. Murdoch, your publication is obese and crippled.

What has been your experience with The Daily? How would you fix it at this point?

By now I am sure you have heard about the acquisition of The Huffington Post to AOL for $315 million and all the change that has followed that acquisition. The Huffington Post’s news, analysis, and lifestyle website was founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors and boasts an affluent, influential audience that is growing at a rate of 22 percent.

You may have heard how The Huffington Post uses  real-time testing to write better headlines. Or maybe you heard The Huffington Post’s CTO Paul Berry speak about its Google Analytics deployment and how it uses it:

When the HuffPost publishes a front-page Quick Read or other feature story, Berry and his team can use Analytics to quickly gauge traffic spikes and update the content in minutes to drive the publication’s editorial direction. The editorial calendar stored on Google Calendar is then updated accordingly, giving staff easy access to any changes even if they are on the road. “Overnight, we can shape our feature stories or Quick Read columns and share any changes with everyone on staff to create more targeted, relevant content and attract more viewers.” says Berry.

As important as these data-driven pieces are to the formula, it was only recently when I heard The Huffington Post’s CFO Eric Ashman deliver the Web Analytics Association Gala Awards dinner keynote that I realized how hard-core, data-centric, real-time-enabling, and customer-focused their business was as he spoke about the primary drivers of The Huffington Post business model.

He spoke about the critical importance of having the right reporting structure in place with web analytics data including real-time stats as they relate to the “product” and marketing stats as they impact sales and marketing flowing directly to the office of the CFO and the board of directors. My brother and I have been advocating that for a reporting system to be meaningful, every piece of data must flow into the financial statements since 2001. Eric, as I do, believes “traffic analytics are as core to strategic planning, decision making and building shareholder value as financial statements.”

Several other critical success factors he shared included:

• Getting the technology team support and the importance of being nimble.
• Getting real-time data in the hands of people who can react quickly.
• Starting simple and building from there.

Mr. Murdoch, I truly wish you could have been there to learn.

Do you agree that we can learn from these two very different publishers?

Create relevant and delightful experiences people want to share. Speed up your site, speed up your corporate metabolism, enable everyone to make decisions based on data, and execute rapidly; that is going to be a winning formula for the next several years. Will you be able to keep up?

Is your corporate metabolism a bit sluggish? Are you dragged down by the weight of meeting-itis? Do you need more energy and resources to respond to the ever-increasing demands of your customers?

Well I wish I could tell you about the next magical black box, with the persuasive infomercial that promises you miraculous gains without any of the hard work required. If you bought any of these gimmicks before and are tired of their sugar-coated promises and lackluster results, then maybe you are ready to get on the marketing optimization fitness plan.

Here are four exercises that should help you on your way. Don’t worry if you don’t execute perfectly on the first try; the key to this plan is to continuously improve day after day.

Exercise 1: Tweet VP

In 140 characters or less, tell me the value of doing business with you. What makes you different than your competitor? This is like writing your unique value proposition or unique campaign proposition, but you are limited to the number of characters, as if you were going to post it on Twitter. If you do a good job of this, you could lower your bounce rates by putting this on every landing page.

You should revisit this regularly and try to improve the power behind each word.

Exercise 2: Reflexive Response Time

Choose one of the following:

A.) If you are an e-commerce retailer, take 10 mystery shoppers and time how long it takes from customer order to fulfillment. Then have each of them contact customer service via e-mail, phone, and Twitter/FaceBook and time how long it takes for them to get a resolution. How did you perform? Were there any breakdowns in operations? Did each channel respond equally? How can you improve? How did you compare to your competitors?

B.) If you are a lead generation business, take 10 mystery shoppers and have them complete your lead generation forms. How long until they got their first real response – not an automated one from an e-mail auto-responder? Keep in mind that a lead loses its effectiveness by six times in the first hour. Now have these “leads” well-prepared to respond to a sales person’s questions. How long does it take for them to get a real price for your product or service? Then have these leads break into groups and ask tough questions by phone, e-mail, and Twitter or Facebook. How did you perform? Were there any breakdowns in operations? Did each channel respond equally? How can you improve? How did you compare to your competitors?

C.) If you are a publisher – pick a unique story line. How long does it take for your article to be researched and published? How long does it take until they get promoted and socialized on each of the social sites that you participate on? Have some pretty specific new information or corrected information to the article ready and ask your team to revise their article. How long does it take for it to be revised? Have “subscribers” ask a question each by phone, e-mail, and Twitter/Facebook. How long did it take to respond? How did you perform? Were there any breakdowns in operations? Did each channel respond equally? How can you improve? How did you compare to your competitors?

Exercise 3: 25 Interesting Things About You/Your Customers

You may have seen this pass-along on Facebook a while back as people started to list 25 interesting things about themselves. Do the same thing for your business and have several people involved in your business do the same. Then find the most interesting ones and use them on your about us page. This will enhance your credibility by adding transparency into your company.

Exercise 4: Metrics Madness

Have each of your team leads in a meeting room with you as you open up your marketing dashboard with your KPIs (key performance indicators). Go through each one and ask them what the team’s plan and role is as each one of those metrics changes by 20 percent up and by 20 percent down. Do they have clear action items? How long would it take for them to respond? Do you have too many KPIs or are your KPIs not clear enough? Can they prioritize these changes effectively?

There are plenty of other exercises you could perform on your way to becoming a marketing optimization fitness fan. Living the lifestyle that performs under pressure, responds to changes rapidly, and serves your customers and business in real-time fashion is just one way to improve your corporate metabolism fitness levels.

What else are you doing to stay fit?

No one knows exactly when the first advertisement was published on a printing press. We do know: In 1609, a British newspaper published an ad for migration opportunities to America. For hundreds of years, ads and print went hand and hand. Then came the Internet. AT&T was the first to pay HotWired to display the first ever online ad; a 468 x 60 banner that came to life on October 25, 1994.

Do you remember the days of explosive CPMs? Many people long for those times – before rates for traditional banner ad plummeted just as the market crashed from 2000 through 2002. These banner ads couldn’t support those rates because low click-through rates (CTR) and conversions didn’t justify the spend. To find ways to make online ads justify premium prices, publishers have had to experiment with all kinds of formats, including all intrusive full-page overlays to the content the reader is after. This still wasn’t the answer any one was hoping for.

There have even been attempts at changing the nature of print ads. Everything from CBS embedding a video screen into an “Entertainment Weekly” magazine to creating ads that you place your iPhone over to make the rest of the ad “come to life” like this example from AXA.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then along came Steve Jobs (I wish him a quick return to health), and the introduction of the iPad.Nearly 15 million iPads sold this past year. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) seemed to be a lot about iPad accessories or iPad “killers” and the nature of consuming content is changing dramatically. And as part of that change, it seems that advertisements have changed as well.

While many magazine publishers are still struggling at grabbing subscription revenue from their iPad digital magazines, a recently completed study by Alex Wang, Ph.D., on behalf of Adobe is showing the effectiveness of ads placed in these digital magazines. Participants in the study who saw the interactive ads had stronger engagement, message involvement, and attitude than participants who viewed the same static ad in a print magazine. Participants who engaged with the interactive ads also perceived stronger interactivity than the participants who saw the static ad. It is easy to speculate that higher ad interactivity could generate higher brand awareness.

All this interactivity combines the best elements of consuming printed content with the Web’s full interactivity. Best of all, the tracking of metrics is built right in. Now publishers and advertisers can find out how people really are engaging with their ads and content. This is why a software company like Adobe acquired Web analytics company Omniture; it saw where publishing was headed and how all this fit into Adobe’s Publishing Suite. Next step, Adobe just acquired audience optimization firm DemDex.

Matt Langie, an Adobe senior director, told PaidContent: “Audience optimization, which we define as putting all of the data that a publisher collects and matching it to an advertiser looking to reach a specific segment of those users, is the key driver of online advertising’s growth.”

It won’t be long until advertisements in digital magazines will be personalized based on a reader’s past participation with content and ads, location, time of day, etc. Might this also be where book publishing’s future is headed? Perhaps there will soon be interactive books that are free but supported through targeted advertisements or additional embedded content? The future is always interesting.

In the space of a few weeks I’ve had my material “ripped off” twice. One instance was OK by me, but one instance was not. The differences open up important questions at the forefront of the new rules involving content, sharing, social media, and copyrights.

Today, ideas spread quickly. Volumes of great information are shared through Webinars, e-books, and social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and SlideShare. Tracing an idea, insight, or fact back to its original source can be challenging. This is an even bigger issue when these exchanges are occurring among marketing professionals, especially because creating and sharing content has become practically the go-to strategy for driving business and lead generations for many companies. Take creative professionals who make their living from their ideas and content, give them an incentive to share that content openly, and you have a near perfect environment for undue influence and sticky copyright issues.

Like me, I’m sure you have your sphere of influencers. I’ve been fortunate to surround myself with people much smarter than me to nourish my brain. Being influenced by others is a good thing and it’s the reason my peers and I have been sharing our thoughts through (in my case) 300+ columns like these, presentations, and countless conversations. So far, the benefits have far outweighed any dangers or concerns. But as I mentioned, recent events have got me pondering the best ways to manage my future content sharing strategies.

The first instance happened when a student of mine asked me what I thought of their brainstorming session for banner ad ideas. When I saw the list, I asked my student if they were aware of where these ideas came from – or what influenced their ideas. As soon as I asked, they were embarrassed because it was a collection of disjointed ideas grabbed from past and future presentations and concepts I had written about in past columns and had shared with them in conversations we’d had together.

My students felt as though they’d ripped me off and I assured them that they hadn’t. What they had done is something our brains do naturally as we take in, process, and assimilate ideas. I shared with them this fabulous video of Derren Brown and his use of “Subliminal Advertising” to influence the kind of logo and branding advertising execs would come up with for a business he was starting. By manipulating barely conscious cues he provided ad execs, he predicted precisely the kind of logo they came up with. As soon as my students watched the video, they understood how their assembly of my ideas was unconsciously done and felt better about the situation. In turn, I explained how flattered I was, as my goal for the last decade has been to inspire others by sharing my ideas.

Influence Gone Bad

The next instance was not as comfortable for either me or a friend who I “influenced.” Here’s what occurred: This friend shared a presentation on March 1 titled, “15 Secrets of High Converting Websites.” (Follow along and you’ll see why the presentation has since been removed.)

When I saw this presentation, I immediately asked my Twitter and Facebook friends: “What would you do if someone you thought was a friend ripped off one of your presentations without asking or attribution? http://ow.ly/1cOgi”

Here’s the backstory: In just two weeks, I’ll be presenting my “21 Secrets to Top Converting Websites” at SES New York. It’s a presentation that took me the better part of a decade to put together. The presentation had received rave reviews as a keynote speech at SES London, including this tweet from @Liz_Gray: “#seskey Unbelievable keynote this morning from @thegrok! Action-oriented, clear and concise. Everyone with a website – test something today.”

I first delivered this presentation in December 2009 at SES Chicago and then recorded it in January as a Webinar for my conversion optimization students. This is where my friend was “influenced” by my presentation. No other copies of these slides were shared anywhere.

I have shared presentations in the past, but since I am now focused on being a professional marketing speaker, these slides are a good part of my livelihood, and my paying clients don’t want them shared all over the Internet. So when I reviewed this person’s newest Webinar presentation, it was a shock to find that “his” slide titles and content, including many of the images, were essentially the same as mine. That’s when I tweeted the question.

The tweet led to quite a firestorm on Twitter and Facebook as people responded. My friend RSS Ray, a.k.a., Brian Offenberger, who had committed this act, was inundated with e-mails and comments on Facebook. You can read some of the discussions on Facebook here. Two of my MarketMotive students who really studied my presentation shared these comments on Twitter:

Gene Gerwin wrote: “Judging from the slides, it’s such a direct lift that I wonder if mere attribution would have been sufficient…”

And Noran El-Shinnawy wrote: “Hey, @rssray here’s my comment on your blog since you won’t approve it (@TheGrok ) http://tweetphoto.com/12949589.” In a follow up tweet, Noran added: “INCREDIBLY UNPROFESSIONAL: @rssray rips off @TheGrok ‘s 21 Secrets presentation and passes it off as his own http://ow.ly/1cOgi.”

The next morning, Brian pulled the slides he shared from his Web site, posted an apology on his blog, and explained how items from my presentation unintentionally ended up in his. We subsequently spoke on the phone.

I asked him to share with me a list of what he learned from the experience. “I had the importance of checking and re-checking work re-taught to me in the most painful of ways,” Brian wrote.

The Future of Sharing

Some people suggested I sue for damages. I’m not an attorney, but from past legal advice I know that you cannot collect damages for material that is yours unless you have filed for the copyright with the Library of Congress. You can have them remove the duplication just by placing the copyright notice on your material and you can prove it was yours first.

These two situations have left me with more questions than answers:

• Do I feel comfortable sharing my slides any more? I have shared many presentations in the past. Do you?
• How do we prevent ourselves from being overly influenced by others?
• Let’s say someone shares a presentation online through sites like SlideShare and copies a slide or two from others. During the presentation, the speaker gives verbal attribution to the original source of information, but written attribution is not placed on the slide. Is that ok?
• What would you do if you were accused of “copying” someone’s slides? I think Brian handled it as well as anyone.
• How will copyright laws evolve with the times?
• How would you have handled this situation?

This week marks the 15th anniversary of my good friend Dr. Ralph Wilson’s newsletter, Web Marketing Today. Dr. Wilson’s newsletter was among the first newsletters I subscribed to in the mid nineties that got me started on my path to understanding what was happening on the internet. To this day I still open and read almost every newsletter I get from WilsonWeb.com.

Dr. Wilson’s first business venture back in 1995 was designing and building websites for small and medium businesses, but he soon found that these entrepreneurs needed help to market their businesses online. At that time web marketing was unknown territory.

Web Marketing Today features practical, how-to articles written by subject experts with hands-on experience. The site contains more than 100 video interviews with expert speakers at major Internet marketing conferences. The content of the site focuses on what people are actually adopting online and how a small business can implement and profit from these ideas and tools. The goal is to give readers practical, how-to advice they can put into use immediately.

If you are not subscribed to it, I highly suggest you should. See what Ralph’s been doing for the past 15 years to accumulate more than 101,000 subscribers and such a loyal readership.