A Q&A with Steve Ennen of American Business Media
August 7, 2007

Steve Ennen is Vice President of Digital Business Strategies for American Business Media. Steve’s primary role is to assess the digital landscape—including changes in user habits, new tools and media/information delivery systems—and educate member companies on how these issues affect their business structure and growth.

What are the key trends you see in how business professionals are consuming media?

There are two primary trends. One is the fact that they have the ability to speak back. With the adoption of blogs and the increased sophistication of social networks—what we call vertical digital communities—professionals have a greater ability to interact in multi-channel dialogues about key issues. At the same time, these conversations are becoming more niche, as very specialized people are finding each other and communicating to solve problems.

The second trend is the ubiquity of devices and services. Handhelds, laptops and wireless broadband Internet access have proliferated throughout the globe and really enable point number one more fully. Now, business professionals can search for answers online from anywhere at anytime.

The challenge to business information providers is to understand where people are going for information. Quite often, they go to search engines first. If business information providers don’t appear in the search results they stand the risk of being overshadowed by others who do.

How important is having a vertical search capability for a business publisher?

It’s absolutely vital. If business information providers want to be destinations for information seekers, they have to have a robust and efficient search system so people can access the information they need, when they need it.

What advantage would a publisher have over a mainstream search engine?

What I say about that is that as long as there has been business media, the stewards of that media have known their topics intimately. Editors are still the experts out there. The credibility that established media brands have is tremendous. Nobody is going to know the industries content as well as those people who live and breathe it. That’s why it is important to have that content accessed and apparent in a world with many search engines.

Do you think publishers need to wean professionals off of Google?

No, I don’t necessarily think so. I think the brands will offer such detailed information that they will separate themselves just by use. Google and Yahoo! and MSN and Ask are just tools. It may also be that at a point the business professional bookmarks the deep vertical site and circumvents the major search engines.

Google could break down their business across 160 business verticals if it so chose but it’s going to be hard for them to catch up on 150 years of editorial expertise. They will never have the reputation that these other brands have within their verticals. Some of these verticals are very complex, it would be difficult to come in as an outsider and really understand these verticals. 

Do business professionals search the same way as consumers?

I think multi-layer searching is evolving as information seekers become more sophisticated. They’re used to the idea that one piece of information might take them to another that is as valuable or more valuable. Whether we’re talking about broad search or vertical search, they both need to work in concert with each other.

What is it going to take to drive traffic to vertical search site?

This is an area of expertise that every brand is going to have to pick up to make itself heard in the digital din. The best way to do that is having an effective SEO/SEM strategy.

That being said, there are also other platforms available to business information providers, like events, print and handheld devices. We’re looking at four platforms that have the potential for driving traffic to the vertical search site.