420 likes | 544 Views
The Power of Local Focus. August 2007 Martha L Stone. SFN Partners. SFN Partners. Local is profitable. Expanding a local/regional franchise. Newspapers are king of local content. Newspapers are king of local content. Where web visitors go for local content.
E N D
The Power of Local Focus August 2007 Martha L Stone
SFN Partners SFN Partners
The importance of local focus has not changed, but the definition of local has…
Network Content Neighbors Niche Power of Local Focus Case Studies Revenues
Network Content Neighbors Niche Power of Local Focus Case Studies Revenues
Niche sites attract niche advertisers
Network of school sites can attract big-name Advertisers Niche advertising fetches three times the yield for advertising
Network Networks can knit together local sites
NP sites still earning largest share of local online revneues
Locally produced television show with paid advertising segments featuring the advertiser’s product or service
Content Rob Curley from WashingtonPost.com says: • Own breaking local news. Email, Internet, mobile. Solicit reader eyewitness accounts, photos, videos. • Hyper-local content. Local kids’ sports stories to neighborhood politics is how newspapers will win. • Embrace databases. Calendars. Restaurants. Churches, Taxes. Home sales. Traffic tickets. Crime. Anything that can be searched like that should be on your site. • Multimedia. Using video, audio, Flash animations
Evergreen content. lasts forever on your site. the history of your city, all of the information you can gather about someone famous from your city, maybe an overview of your local sports team’s greatest season, etc. • Make sure your content can work on any device imaginable. Web. E-mail. RSS. iPods. Mobile phones. Other mobile devices. Sony PSPs. Right now, I really think newspapers should be focusing in on content for mobile phones. • Interactivity: Blogs, Reporter contacts, post comments on stories
Advantages of ciitzen journalism Relevant: content generated by other readers perceived as relevant to consumers’ lives Interactive: two-way dialogue with readers Genuine: content submitted by readers can be as valued as those produced by professional journalists Connected: bonds readers to their community Targeted: attracts an audience desired by advertisers Complementary: content created by users complements news reported by traditional journalists
LoudounExtra.com • 5 Washington Post reporters in Loudoun bureau asked to write 10 stories per day • Added 1.5 journalists for police blotter items • Full-time blogger for gossipy “Living LoCo”, most-read feature on home page • Databases with 100 schools, hundreds of churches, thousands of events, homes sold, building permits, updated regularly • Immediately profitable; ad inventory sold for first year • “Soft launched” one month ago; 100,000 PV/day • Haven’t launched citizen journalism component yet • Scraping YouTube, Facebook for Loudoun content
COMMUNITY NETWORK The Next Generation of Local News and Advertising
YourHub.com • 25 total journalists, hundreds of citizen journalists; 1.5 journalists per zone • Launched May 2005; profitable after six months • $7 million revenue for 2006; 40-50% new advertisers • WebAudit: Local advertising in suburban, non-daily newspaper has grown 49.7 percent since 2003 • 44 local websites and 15 zoned weekly editions distributed in daily papers for suburbs around Denver • About 20,000 registered users; 1,500 stories posted per week; 500,000 page views per month and growing • Citizen journalism blogs, photos, videos, event listings, free classifieds with names, faces and events in towns • Print edition reaches 400,000 households and 800,000 readers per week; 28 pages • Content posted with ”curse word” filter in real time
Thank You! August 2007 Martha L Stone mstone@wan.asso.fr