The Path More Travelled
Another week, and another opportunity to meet brilliant community builders from around the world. Last week I was fortunate enough to meet Mark Alker, Alex Zeevalkink, Clare Wain and Jackie Scully, on the panel organised by the #PPAFestival where we were talking about all things community.
The publishing world can often be perceived as keeping readers/ subscribers firmly at arms-length when it comes to actual involvement in their product. At least until very recently, it would have been pretty standard for an editorial team to have sole responsibility for setting the direction and tone, as well as the content. So I was struck when Mark shared how Singletrack World effectively upended this traditional model years before others in publishing even thought of questioning their ways of working.
It all started when Future Publishing closed down its Mountain Bike World title in 1998, and the journalists found themselves without a job or a platform. But they knew there was a passionate audience of cyclists out there and were determined to serve them. At the time, if magazines had websites at all, they were very much the poor relation to the “real” offerings. But needs must when the devil drives (or rides.) So, despite the internet being a primitive, sluggish, often still dial-up, beast back then, they decided to launch GoFar-mtb.com (with “GoFar” presumably being a broad acronym for “Get Off your Fat Ass and Ride”.) They quickly found that they were attracting a loyal and committed following of avid mountain bikers, and within a year tens of thousands were registering to read news, views and reviews.
Cut to a couple of years later and the team launched a crowd-funding campaign - before such a thing was a “thing”. No VCs or publishing houses were involved; this was driven by the community for the community, and basically they were asking their members to help fund the first few editions of a print magazine, Singletrack World, which was duly born in April 2001. As Chipps Chippendale, now editor for over 22 years, wrote in issue no 1:
“I should know better than to get together with a couple of friends to try and start a mountain bike magazine, published entirely with our own, limited funds - in a ‘flat’ cycling market. Only a fool or a dedicated fan of mountain biking would attempt such folly.”
The first daunting hurdle cleared, they were up and running, but soon calamity struck - the site was hacked and held to ransom. The team thought that was the end of the track, but it turns out mountain bikers don’t just ride bikes, some of them are also very knowledgeable and skilled IT professionals. So skilled and determined, in fact, that they rose up like a veritable army, driving off the raiders, so the site and the magazine could be reclaimed. No one asked them to help – they just did.
Ever since, the team have kept their loyal fans and readers close. In his first editorial in the print magazine, Mark wrote;
“You now have a unique opportunity to get involved in the upbringing of this new magazine. Virtual Godparents if you will. You hold the first of this new breed of magazine in your hands. Now come help us raise this baby in the ways of the mountain biker.”
The online forum was a key platform for connection and content. Again, when launching the print magazine, Mark wrote:
“We are not proud parents, so stop by the forum and leave a few tips and comments if you will.”
That attractively modest spirit remains and Mark and the team would be the first to admit that there’s room for improvement in the offering. It’s not built on the slickest of platforms, and nor does it offer the most intuitive flow - I’m sure a great UX designer would love to get their hands on it. But despite the lack of abundance of bells and whistles, it really does work and people are not only coming to the site - they are sticking around.
Why is that? Our take-aways are:
It’s a clear and focused offering. It isn’t trying to be something for everyone. Its members love to mountain bike. Period.
It’s authentic and real. This is not a tick-box exercise: you can tell they respect their members. They want to hear from them and they are listening.
The culture is really strong – it feels nice to be part of. It’s welcoming and friendly and there doesn’t seem to be much cliquey-ness in the forums. As a “newbie” to mountain biking, I didn’t feel overwhelmed or too much of an outsider.
Some results of building a community offering from the ground up:
650,000 (Unique Users/month)
130k registered members to the online community
Of print subscribers, 100% are part of the online community
Average length of membership to the community = 5 years
Annual churn rate <5%
In 2003, reader revenue accounted for just 10% of turnover (the rest was display ad revenue). It now accounts for 47% of turnover.
So for any magazine publishers out there, perhaps now is the time for you to consider a community-led strategy too? Find out more about our work supporting subscription businesses at www.customer-ization.com.
With special thanks to Mark Alker for his support with this post.