I’ve seen it too many times; a newspaper focuses solely on producing a newspaper but neglects the website by ignoring the strengths of a digital medium. Often times what the newspaper ends up with is a website that basically mimics the content that runs in print or in their e-Edition. To the subscriber it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense why you’d pay for content when you access free.
First let’s walk through a few things that make the web special and worth making a distinction to help understand why anyone would even want to read news online over a newspaper;
Real Time
The web is in real time. Now I’m sure you’ve seen how news can flow live through sites like Twitter or even Facebook. You’ve probably seen a news website update their site as news is happening using blogs, text messages, email etc. The web makes it possible to share news in real time.
Instant Feedback & Engagement
One of the simplest and most powerful tools for a site can be simple commenting. This allows your user to give immediate feedback on your content as well as share it out to the social globe if you’re using tools like Facebook’s Social Plug-ins , TweetMeme, or other content syndication services.
Accessibility
If you’ve got a connection to the internet then you can access news.
Community & Engagement
The web is a community and one of the best things about is that everyone has a voice. Most newspaper websites these days are integrating user blogs, photos, tips, reviews, comments, video and all kinds of other great content that just enhances the overall brand. These tools also provide a great way for your staff engage your audience to build trust and bring your user into the news gathering process.
Here are 9 things you can start doing right away;
1.) Identify your contributors –Who are your local bloggers, tweeters, active facebook groups, site commenter’s or forum communities? You need to make peace with these folks. They are your friend. Begin to identify key voices in your community and give them a place to promote that voice on your site.
2.) Stop the shoveling – Are you just processing content from your newspaper to the web? Stop it! Take some time to comb through your analytics to see what’s working online and what’s not. If certain type of content doesn’t get any traffic then why put it up? For example, is anyone reading those long features that you put all your money into? If not then why put it up. You’d be better off putting out a small promo to the feature for a day or so ahead of time on your site that say’s “hey, if ya want to read this amazing feature come check it out in the newspaper on Sunday”. Some newspapers will hold certain types of content back for a time which is ok, but you’ll just have to be smart about what your holding back to make sure it’s not content that goes against why users came to your site in the first place.
3.) Real Time – Remember the web is real time. Insert yourself into this environment and focus on getting content up first and faster than anyone else. You can use sites like Twitter or common blogging platforms to help with this if you can’t do it from your web content management system. Start building your content first on the web and push it out quickly then write a longer version for your print reader’s right after that. Update the article on the web throughout the day so your site doesn’t look stale.
4.) Aggregate & Curate – Your not the only news source on the block most likely so don’t look at other news sources as competitors. You need to be the source of the news by aggregating all the local news in one spot and curate what’s best for your audience. This way your doing your web audience a service and you become the hub for all local news rather than just one of the steps in the process.
5.) Niche – What’s unique about your area? What can you go in depth on that can make your brand stand out? Is it crime; is it your local school board, city council or town drunk etc? Whatever it is you need to identify it and go in depth on the topic. It can be controversial even it’s ok, but it needs to be something that acts as a topical guide for your community and something they can interact with.
6.) Interact – Interact with your readers wherever the conversation is taking place. If your content or brand is being discussed on Facebook, Twitter, etc then you need to go there and participate wherever your audience is.
7.) Push – Begin to push content to other places like mobile, Facebook, Twitter, email etc. Making your content more accessible can only grow your audience.
8.) Socialize your content – Make use of tools like some of Facebook’s social plug-ins, TweetMeme, to make it easier for users to syndicate your content and create discussions for you on larger sites.
9.) Focus – You’ll have to put some focus on digital if you want any of this to work.
Of course these aren’t the only things you can do, but these should be a few things that you can begin to do right away that will make a difference and have a low impact on your staff.
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