Specialist technology publisher Westwick-Farrow has announced a strategic partnership with US online publisher TechTarget to launch a series of new interactive portals targeted at the professional IT business to business (B2B) audience.
Claimed as a ground-breaking initiative, this is the first time an Australian B2B publisher has secured an international partnership to provide highly relevant, feature-rich, international content for a targeted local audience.
TechTarget Australia will launch in October this year, delivering an interactive platform with independent content, news, analysis, peer and community input as well as vendor provided content. TechTarget already hosts the web's largest directory of white papers, webcasts, collateral and research reports, drawing on the R&D resources of IT vendors, and unique content from their 130 technology journalists.
Westwick-Farrow has enlisted leading IT freelance journalist, Simon Sharwood to edit the new portals, which will contain the best of the US content plus locally written and sourced news and feature articles.
"This partnership demonstrates a world-wide shift in B2B publishing," said Geoff Hird, publisher of Westwick-Farrow's leading tech title, Voice&Data.
"At Voice&Data we are very close to our community of readers. While the magazine is still the core and backbone of the "brand' we know how important it is to continue to develop our on line offering."
"This partnership means that we can now offer an interactive, community orientated online platform that complements Voice&Data and makes it even more relevant to our readers, and to the greater ICT community in the region."
Hird believes that the traditional printed magazine is now just one element of an integrated reader-centric publishing operation.
"Readers want dialogue and interaction with trusted information providers. B2B publishers need to re-evaluate their operations and offer a variety of news and information sources if they want to survive and build a loyal reader community."
Each portal's specific category focus will offer IT vendors new, highly targeted opportunities to reach potential customers. As well as traditional advertising, ROI focused lead generation programs leveraging white paper downloads and user generated content will ensure vendors get real results from their campaigns.
In the US, TechTarget's clients include Microsoft, HP, IBM, Intel and Cisco.
The TechTarget model is a proven success internationally. Established in 1999 the TechTarget portals now boast over 300,000 qualified, registered site members worldwide. More than 30,000 of those are from Australia and New Zealand.
TechTarget Australia will kick off in October, initially launching portals for the booming security and storage sectors with a cross marketing program to the existing 35,000 www.voiceanddata.com visitors.
These portals will be followed by three more sites, dedicated to networking, enterprise voice and CIOs in early 2007.