ShipCrunch

Contribute to the ShipCrunch community?

If you've got original thoughts about shipping, this may be a place where you can share them.

By Ryan Skinner (email)

I'm going from a day-to-day shipping mindset to a day-to-day digital PR mindset. That means I'll be blogging less about shipping. That means an opportunity for you.

I'm convinced ShipCrunch can go from a one-man blogging affair to a community think/do-tank affair.

Hundreds of profoundly intelligent and knowledgeable people in and around shipping read this blog. Their contacts number in the thousands. That's you and your network. Here's my proposition:

Maybe you've thought about blogging, but the trouble of building and managing the platform discourages you. You doubt you'll be able to post often enough. You wonder how it might impact your day job.

I'm offering you this platform to share your ideas and opinions. I like to think that the readers of this blog are industry trend-setters, particularly in terms of technology and innovation.

This is a chance to throw your original thoughts and ideas* in front of a dynamic audience, and see what traction you get.

Taking part in the ShipCrunch community includes feedback on your article, from advice on your angle and approach, to simple copy-editing. And the final post will deep-link to your own profile or site - an excellent SEO booster!

So, how do you get started? Just send me an email expressing interest, and we can discuss. Or fire through a submission for the blog. I'll get back to you right away.

The only thing we can count on is change. And I think that this is a boon for ShipCrunch and the community of people around it. Welcome!

*When I say original thoughts, I mean original thoughts. Do not send through your press releases and expect them to be syndicated here. This is about sharing what you've got on your heart, not on your sales calendar. 

Lloyd's List vs. TradeWinds: Two visions of shipping news

What news do shipping professionals really want? What do they really need? Two answers?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

It's all about this: Be the go-to source of information for the kinds of decision-makers who lead the industry. Any one pitching a story at a Lloyd's List or TradeWinds editor (and I've done it not a few times) will often hear them say: "If it doesn't interest the big shipowner boss, it doesn't interest us."

The shape and speed of what interests big shipowners may be changing, however.

The mother company of Lloyd's List, a pretty large media company called Informa, recently announced its annual results. Note how two aspects of this report play together:

1) "They are still benefiting from cost control measures implemented across the business." - Basically, they've slashed expenses related to news production, among other things.

2) "Informa were concentrating on premium intelligence and increasingly looking at enterprise sales of subscription content." - They're betting on supplying data to businesses.

An induction: Informa cuts Lloyd's List's budget down to less than it needs to survive long-term as a newsroom. It lives off of past glory and decent distribution only long enough to build up its data and decision-support business - Lloyd's List Intelligence. This is where the future lies.

Yes, finally, a few words on piracy

What it takes to put an issue like piracy on the high seas,
higher on the public agenda

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Piracy's a subject I long ago decided not to touch with a barge-pole. Why? It doesn't need attention from the likes of me, and so many people know so much more than I. Let them fill the airwaves with ideas and opinions.

It's a tragedy that piracy has not gained more attention, though. An utterly solvable problem of heart-rending proportions taking place in full openness has generated less overall attention than, say, one memo from a Nokia CEO.

Don't blame the public. Until these pirates are stealing our women and raping our cattle, we're not going to give it two thoughts. It's not an issue that is touching people where they'll feel it.

The industry has seemingly crafted pretty strong economic arguments against piracy. I've heard cost of piracy figures ranging from $1 billion up to $12 billion (can you say piracy bubble?). I'm sure these facts and opinions get the creaking machinery of the bureaucracy moving, but there's no urgency.

I've seen little in the way of emotional appeals. The closest it came was during the Maersk Alabama incident, but that story turned into an action movie featuring a sniper.

Suspend your disbelief for a sec. I see Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes in the humble home of a Ukranian second mate, who describes the harrowing ordeal of an extended period of incarceration on his own ship at the hands of pirates. Stahl asks the mate's young daughter "how did you feel when your daddy was kidnapped?" The young girl cannot explain her fear, but we can see it better than any words can convey.

Stahl interviews one of the warlord pirate leaders in Puntland, and a couple 16-year-old pirates who are about to board a mother ship. "Why do you do this?" Through the translator, we hear them say "It's a living."

Stahl talks to shipowners, negotiators on both sides, IMO leaders and Navy admirals. She paints the picture of an entirely avoidable state of affairs, beginning with a collapsed state harried by fish poachers and illegal dumping and ending with a menace to a salt-of-the-earth workforce.

Who's going to pitch this story to 60 Minutes? Take Producers David Gelber, Howard Rosenberg, Shachar Bar-On, or Associate Producer Sam Hornblower. All have friends of friends in shipping. Go ahead and look them up in LinkedIn. Maybe you know someone who knows them, or another producer.

It's all about the stories. Who knows a seafarer with a piracy story that hits heart-strings? Our piracy experts have countless colorful sources on both sides of the piracy equation. We know the navies, the IMO and the shipping industry will talk about it.

For a producer of gripping television documentaries, this story has a bow on it.

Here are some examples of other people trying to put some color to this story, if on a more modest scale than 60 Minutes:

Kirk Klocke's 3-part documentary on the shipping industry and piracy

A CBC documentary that has, unfortunately, been taken off the air

Sky's Ross Kemp in search of pirates

My cousin the pirate on Vimeo

Somaliland Piracy (but only if you understand Italian)

Are we in need of a serious digital fire sale?

Is the Internet, and the jolly nook of it inhabited by shipping, in serious need of an arsonist?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Go to LinkedIn and search for maritime groups, or shipping groups. Then click on something like the 50th page of search results. It's a sorry sight. Groups are started with love, or self-love, if you will. One member, maybe two. How are those discussions, you think?

The same thing can be encountered on twitter. Mark Warner of ShipServ (@mdwarner) has recently noted that Clarksons is on twitter. They're tweeting index moves to a hearty dozen people or so. I recently chatted with a marine media type who explained that the shipping titles simply don't know what else to do with twitter than churn out headlines.

And churning out headlines has become the new virtue. Shipping actually now has its own content farm, a la Demand Media (no, I won't link to them, damnit). I've had not a few sources point out that their articles are fallacy-ridden. How many other publishers can truly claim to be much better online - cranking out the texts, either in the hope or conviction that this will pay off.

It doesn't. For most of the smaller media entrepreneurs in shipping, it's a matter of leapfrogging from pivot to pivot (the term for failing your way into a new business model).

Go to the App Store, and you'll find a new app called "Shipping Professional". I've been told it's a premium app, where you get access to an RSS feed of headlines. Click on any of them and you hit a paywall. Nice. They're ready for a pivot methinks.

Not surprisingly, when your average shipping dude encounters all this, he rolls his eyes. "It's just what I told you. The Internet's full of trash. There's no value in it." (Ironically, most shipping dudes feel the same about print shipping magazines and newspapers, but that's another story for another day).

So, I ask: Are we drowning in digital chaff?

Jeff Jarvis is a role model for me - he's an astoundingly smart guy when it comes to media, and I read his blog buzzmachine.com like wine. He recently posted about one of the (few) interesting presentations at Davos by a guy who argues convincingly that, no, there is not too much content in the world. There's too little.

It's a tough concept to swallow after reading an error-riddled article about shipping emissions. But it's true.

New media has opened up the sluices of information, opinions and analysis. This blog, among many others, poured through. And each of those microgroups in LinkedIn. And the spammers, content farms and bot-feeds.

From this dreck, quality rises. That's what Google helped us figure out. Do you think, a decade ago, that there would be so much content on the Internet, and that it might be possible to navigate it somehow? You know, back when Yahoo! was indexing the web with people at the levers. Filtering and consumption improved. Radically.

The point is this: So many things can now start. Most of it will fail. Some of it will succeed. And the failures will learn, and come back a little wiser. That's the metaphorical pivot.

So, if you feel pissed or astonished at the pure volume and/or misery of content you find online, think this: Thank god. From this pile will come some great things, and I don't need to do anything more than ignore what I don't like.

Can you pay your way out of ignorance?

A new guide to marine efficiency technologies is out. It's called "The Guide". Is it "The Answer"?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Most publishers give reviewers a free copy of the book. A few days ago a PR rep from Blue Communications sent me a press release (here it is: Download Fathom 'The Guide' Press Release Jan (1)) about a new book. Yes, a press release about a book. Presumably, I would have to buy it (at around $400), if I want to review it. It's OK. I don't.

But I'll help them spread the word about it. We know full well that shipping companies are writhing and contorting themselves to figure out how best to figure out the efficiency beast. A publisher called Fathom (get it?) has now created a guide to shipping efficiency technologies, snappily called The Guide. They give a review of 60+ technologies that improve efficiency, and add information about the companies that offer them.

Thus, my question: Can you pay your way out of ignorance? God, I hope so. Or I hope people can at least read their way out of ignorance. We've seen a passel of indices related to efficiency, we'll see more and more books like this, there are conferences and seminars and who knows what else. If you can't pay your way out of ignorance, these people's business models are in trouble.

Questions for The Guide: Does your reference book tell a shipping company about the thorny process of grafting a new efficiency technology on an existing structure? Does it describe how this efficiency technology will meet regulations that haven't even been written yet? What were the sources of your information about technologies - the suppliers themselves, Lloyd's Register, or impartial users?

What The Guide doesn't purport to offer (sadly) is a community around the content, to provide a mechanism for vetting and renewing the statements, and to build a path for future development of these technologies. Geomares Publishing at least tried to do as much with its book, The Electronic Chart. They seemed to fail, but at least they had their head on straight.

The Ultimate Shipping Social Media Primer in 12 easy pieces

 

12 zippy articles to give any shipping professional the ultimate social media head-start

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Over the past two years, I have done my best to cover everything that moves in terms of social media and the shipping industry. This has resulted in 12 posts that, together, form the ultimate shipping social media primer. So, without further ado, here goes:

Social Media Basics

• Top Social Media Entrepreneurs in Shipping: These eight guys are shipping's social media pioneers.
• Biggest enterprise social media brands in shipping: Eight companies that have been doing it right.
• The state of social media in shipping: Five steps to social media in shipping ninja-hood.

Social Media Best Practice

• All-a-twitter: A chat with Lloyd's List's Mark Warner: Not with LL anymore, but good stuff nonetheless.
• A chat with Brett Keil - shipping's LinkedIn superuser: The guy's started shipping's best discussion forum. Respect.
• Shipping blog outreach: It happens. Really. - One shipping guy knows the new PR. Here's what he thinks.
• First-mover opens up in-house expertise to social network: TMC Connect created an online forum. Would they open it?
• Twitter: Special marketing sauce at maritime brokerage: FIS shares their approach to winning with twitter.
• gCaptain and the power of community: a chat with John Konrad: Shipping's blogger godfather opens up....

Social Media Tools

• Shipping in social media: Your twitter starter kit: A touch outdated, but still pretty good. Also see Coracle Voice's Who's Who in shipping twitter
• Six ways to start LinkedIn shipping discussions that succeed: This can be done right, and it can be done wrong. Do it right.
• 5 steps to empower your marine sales force using social media: Some quick and easy tips to big-time success.
• Define your business world: Wikipedia & Shipping: Don't get left behind. Talk about your technology on Wikipedia. Your competitors are already doing it.

Want to know more? Contact me. I love to talk about the topic, and I'm easy to talk to (in other words, I won't beat you over the head with a sales pitch...right away).

Shipping marketer, who the hell are you talking to?

Probably 70% of marketing efforts in this industry are box-checking exercises. Who are you talking to?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A new pump/box/widget/port-service is going to be launched, so the marketing people put together direct mailings, a press release, maybe a press conference at a trade show, a product sheet, an advert for a few trade mags, a new product web-page, maybe an e-newsletter and (dare I say it?) a blog post.

Lots of marketing boxes are checked. We're good. Then someone asks the marketers: "So, who did we reach? Who read your stuff? Who liked it? Who came back for more information?" Then the marketers say, "hey, that's sales job!"

No.

I take it for granted that at least 70% of marketers and marketing efforts in shipping (and probably more) work just like this.

Shipping PR & Marketing all mixed up

If your products are so special, why do you describe them just like everyone else?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

It's a fact: Most companies in the shipping/marine sector don't have the kind of wherewithal to hire separate managers for PR things and for marketing things. Generally, the marketing person is going to get the PR responsibilities.

The results aren't pretty. An editor of a major maritime publication wrote me recently:

from my experience, a lot of the PR people that I deal with are still sending me things layered with 'leading' this and 'innovative' that, which leaves me spending an unnecessary amount of time getting the useful information out. It's not everyone, but some seem to think it's part of their job to get as many superlatives into the press as they can.

Hands up, the marketer/PR managers who he's nailed. (Don't lie now - admit to that "100th mother-of-god awesome marine pump sold to extremely delighted customer" press release last month).

The problem is this: The marketer/PR guy's marketing language bleeds into his PR work. Sure, when you're flirting with the big customer, you're telling her you're the biggest and the best. That's just marketing. Imagine that the press is her father-in-law. He's not interested in why you think you're great. He wants to know what you stand for, what you're really all about.

Here's a fact: Most suppliers/products aren't a whole lot different from one another. They can't be, as you spend much of the time copying the best aspects of your competitors. The difference between success and failure in too many instances boils down to the success of a sales guy. So stop trying to convince the journalist you're "the leading" or "the most innovative."

What you can achieve with PR are these incredible things called authority, credibility and tangibility. Most people will say "PR?!" and roll their eyes. PR's about telling your story in terms that make sense economically, socially and environmentally. You tell a journalist what it means that you do things the way you do them. The more authentic you speak, the more successful your endeavor.

This whole dialogue with the editor resonated from an intention to republish this blog in his magazine, and from an article I recently shared on twitter. Basically, it's saying that the lines between PR and journalism are blurring. Read it. It's worth it. It's the same thing I talked about half-a-year ago with my post about every company a publisher.

ShipServ's new web advertising network

 There's a new game in town for shipping's advertisers. It's ShipServ's shipping-focused ad network.

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Ad networks are common to many industries, but the shipping industry has yet to see much use of them. Basically, these facilitate the advertising transaction between web publishers (who own sites) and advertisers. Usually the advertiser describes what it's after and the ad network tries to facilitate that need, by buying space and automating the advertising process, then returning statistics on performance.

Mark Warner, who led up digital efforts at Lloyd's List for many years, has now launched a unique start-up under ShipServ's management to create an ad network for shipping sites and shipping advertisers. I asked Mark for an interview, and here's most of that chat. (It lasts about 7 minutes).

ShipServ

Who's got the most visited web-site in shipping? Answers!

Maritimerankings.com has all the answers. Oddly, one web-site appears near the top in every search.

By Ryan Skinner (email)

To marketers desperate to get the most bang out of their online advertising buck, a simple ranking of the most visited web-sites in the shipping industry would be golden. Well, not surprisingly in the age of Internet entrepreneurship, someone's thought the same thing, and made a site to answer that need.

It's maritimerankings.com, and it proposes to be the compete.com of shipping sites. That is, you can pump in any 5 url's (that is, web addresses) of shipping sites, and it will run an objective algorithm to give you a ranking, both relative to the other four and over an absolute list.

Cool, huh?! According to maritimerankings.com, this blog is the 244th most authoritative web-site in all of shipping. Hot damn! Time to retire!

Strangely, no matter which five sites you enter, you will automatically be given the results of a sixth site: www.marinelink.com. This sixth entry is a US-based shipping news site, owned and run by New Wave Media. Now that alarm bells are ringing in your head, you do a WHOIS search to see who is behind this maritimerankings.com site. Surprise, the owner is hidden behind a proxy site.