CEO and Lead Consultant
Top Audience Development Consultant
As a leading audience development consultant, Don works directly with publishing clients to increase website traffic, sales, and profits. In this capacity, he has worked with industry leaders including Consumer Reports and the Motley Fool, and the founders of special interest websites including HR Daily Advisor and Knitting Daily. Applying his unique combination of analytic, journalistic, and direct marketing expertise, Don guides his clients’ day-to-day audience development efforts. In addition to working with legacy publishers to improve the performance of their websites, he helps launch a handful of new websites and new businesses every year. Don currently serves on the boards of Aspire Media and SIPA. (Read more about our audience development consulting services.)
Innovative Website Architect
In 1997, Don and his team began analyzing, designing, and building open content websites using free content to drive audience development. Today, his Mequoda System Architecture is used by industry-leading websites around the world. His team maintains online publishing’s most comprehensive codebase of integrated best practices. Constantly evolving and based on A/B and multi-variant testing, Mequoda’s best practices are based on more than 60 open content benchmark websites. Pioneered by Don, the Mequoda 500 documents best practice usage at America's largest and most successful open content websites. Applying his depth of experience, Don helps clients understand, deploy, and optimize best practices for each unique website property. After conducting an initial Website Design Needs Analysis, Don and his team perform ongoing Website Performance Reviews using Mequoda’s Audience Development Analytics Suite of proprietary reports. (Read more about our website design, management and optimization services.)
Popular Teacher and Author
With more than 57,000 subscribers, fans, and followers, Don is one of the publishing industry's most popular audience development experts. His books and white papers have been downloaded more than 90,000 times. Each year, Don leads dozens of public and private training programs for Mequoda Group, FIPP, MPA, SIPA, and other leading organizations. His new Audience Development Summit and Audience Development Basics and Beyond Workshop will premiere in October 2012. Don blogs weekly about audience development, digital publishing, and organizational management for the Mequoda Daily, which is on track to generate more than 250,000 unique visitors this year.
Career and Personal Notes
Don got his start in journalism as a writer-producer for the Armed Forces Network while serving aboard the USS Enterprise as a nuclear engineer. From there, he went on to work for Sacramento Magazine and Houston Home & Garden. Over the course of twenty years, Don founded several firms: Lighthouse Software in 1983, MagazineWeek in 1988, Blue Dolphin Direct in 1993, and Mequoda Group in 2004. He holds a BA in Journalism from CSUS and an MS in Organizational Management from Capella University. Don and his wife, Gail, live in Massachusetts. They have three grown children, three grandchildren, and a two-year old Pug named Parker. Don is an avid sailor and reader who loves mysteries, thrillers, and historical novels.
To schedule a call with Don Nicholas, call Anne-Marie Sullivan at (508 435-1008) or drop her an email at Ann-Marie@Mequoda.com.
List of Professional Affiliations:
FIPP, IAI, MPA, SEMP, SPJ, and SIPA
