In her previous position as managing director and vice president, online, for Scientific American, Mina Lux led the iconic magazine’s digital initiative for the past seven years. She recently left the company to strike out to pursue a consulting career.
Prior to joining
Scientific American, Lux was senior vice president of online marketing at Working Woman Network — which has since become
WorkingMother.com — where she developed the site’s Web presence from the ground up, building traffic, membership and online sales. She also was vice president of the former DSI Interactive Marketing, at Doubleday Interactive. The division merged into a division called Doubleday Entertainment, which became part of Bookspan back in 1999. As of September 2007, after a bunch of mergers, the division is now part of Bertelsmann Direct North America.
While working as director of marketing for
USATODAY.com, she was credited with elevating the site from the No. 3-ranked general-interest news site to No. 1, overtaking
CNN.com and
MSNBC.com in less than four months.
eM+C asked Lux about about some of her past endeavors, as well as if she could share some insight about Internet marketing and publishing with our readers.
eM+C: I understand you were instrumental in launching a multimedia site called 60-Second Science when you were at Scientific American. Can you tell us about that?
Mina Lux: 60-Second Science began as a podcast and an extension to our successful 20-minute audio podcast product called Science Talk. The idea was to launch a quick daily science segment that would be informative yet entertaining, and targeted at people interested in science but who had little time. It was a success, and very quickly our podcast products combined were bringing us over 2.2 million monthly downloads.
The success of the audio product lead us to look into launching the Web site www.60SecondScience.com. The Web site was launched as an audio, video and blog site aiming at a younger demographic than the core brand — Scientific American — while staying true to the audio brand. We launched the site in less than eight weeks on a shoestring budget with full entrepreneurial energy and momentum. It was a lot of fun.
eM+C: Why did you decide to use Web 2.0 tools like podcasts, video and blogs for the site?
ML: We believed that in order for us to be effective, we must take advantage of the strength of the digital media. With video, we are able to present complex ideas in an entertaining manner. With audio, we are able to deliver portable science with the wide MP3 install base. With blogs, we are able to have a young, hip voice reporting on complex ideas on all aspects of science while still making it a quick, entertaining read.
eM+C: Do you find these tools help attract or retain customers? Do you have any general ROI numbers from them?
ML: The traffic numbers for 60-Second Science are very preliminary. As the site was only launched at the end of October, we look to have at least three months worth of preliminary data before we draw any conclusions.
eM+C: Do you offer these tools on SA’s main site?
ML: We do, in fact, offer all these tools and more at Sciam.com. We do syndicate all 60-Second Science video and audio products to www.Sciam.com. In addition to the site’s own blogs, we also syndicate some of the blogs as well.
