Introducing the TidBITS Content Network for Apple Consultants
Apple consultants are some of our favorite people because they share our desire to help everyday users solve problems and work more efficiently with their Macs and iOS devices. That’s one of the reasons we like diving into technical topics in TidBITS — we know that consultants will be able to translate our knowledge into real-world solutions for their clients.
We’ve now come up with a new service to help consultants, resellers, and other businesses who need to communicate with Apple users. As a bonus, it will also expand our capacity to teach normal home and office users how to make better use of their Macs, iPhones, and iPads. We call it the TidBITS Content Network, or TCN for short.
We designed TCN to provide content that Apple pros can use to stay in touch with their clients. Consulting — and business in general — is often as much about maintaining relationships as it is about providing a service. But in today’s hectic world, the best way to maintain contact is with practical, helpful information.
Each month, TCN provides professionally written, edited, and illustrated tips and articles that its members can use to update their blogs, create a vibrant social media presence, and power email newsletters that people will actually read. To be specific, TCN publishes four short tips and four 400- to 600-word articles each month, complete with featured image photos, carefully composed screenshots, and Facebook and Twitter teasers for each article. Everything we write for TCN is targeted to the everyday Apple user and focused on providing useful guidance.
The key to TCN is that it’s syndicated content, so everyone who subscribes to TCN gets the same tips and articles. That works because almost no consultants have overlapping audiences. If a TCN member sends an email newsletter with one of our articles to her clients in Boise, there’s little chance that people who work with another TCN-subscribing consultant in Tampa would ever see the same article. It’s like the Doonesbury comic strip — it’s the same in every newspaper, but few readers ever see it in multiple places.
Unlike Doonesbury, though, TCN members are welcome to modify the tips and articles however they wish to add a personal touch. Or, if they want, they can publish them unchanged as a guest post.
If you work in a field where you’d benefit from publishing Apple-specific tips and articles for your clients or customers, check out the TidBITS Content Network site, which has pricing details, sample content, frequently asked questions, and an introductory video. And if you’re more on the user end of things but know any Apple consultants, resellers, or techs who could use TCN content, I’d appreciate you passing on the news. After all, if your consultant subscribes to TCN and publishes our content, you’ll get to read it! Thanks!
Good luck with this new venture. I hope it doesn't detract any further from the attention you devote to TidBITS, which has seemed a bit lean in recent years as more of everyone's time has gone into your Take Control books. As a paid subscriber to TidBITS I hope it doesn't become any more vestigial than it already is.
Sorry if you've had that perception, but it just isn't borne out by reality, as you can see in this chart of TidBITS issue sizes over time. I can't see any way to call what we're publishing in TidBITS each week "vestigial."
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/574336/TidBITS-Sizes.png
Plus, apart from me, the people who work on Take Control are largely unrelated to TidBITS, so it's again not true that Take Control has taken significant time away from TidBITS for anyone but me.
Regardless, the fact is that we need to earn a living. As much as TidBITS memberships have enabled us to be able to afford to continue publishing TidBITS, with fewer than 15% of subscribers supporting us, revenues basically pay for Josh as managing editor, Agen's work on the TidBITS Watchlist, articles from external authors like Julio, and a small amount for my time.
If we had 85% of our current readership contributing, things might be different, but as it stands, Take Control Books and the TidBITS Content Network are what we live on.
Given that I spend the majority of my week finding, editing, and writing content for TidBITS, I disagree that it's vestigial. :-) However, we do stay highly focused on technology. Just about every other tech publication has a few "hobbies" — pop culture, coffee, design, politics, sports, or whatever — that fill in the gap when tech news is slow. We have a pretty good sense of what our readers want from TidBITS and we try to stay laser-focused on that. But we're always open to suggestions.