Newspaper Industry Says Websites Reach 36% Of Internet Users--Bu. 5 Ways Traditional Media is Going Social. Woody Lewis is a Social Media Strategist and Web Architect. He authors a blog at woodylewis.com about social media strategy for newspapers. Social media has infiltrated nearly every aspect of our public and private lives, from the White House providing access to its official photostream to a coffee shop that takes orders via Twitter. Businesses have been quick to respond, adopting new and sometimes radical processes while keeping an eye on earnings that reflect the poor economy.
As faltering brands look for new strategies, and the newspaper industry desperately searches for a way to keep a portion, if not all of its print business alive, traditional media companies are using social media to engage their audiences. 1. Widget TV Verizon will soon push a software update to its FiOS service that will allow customers to connect their set-top boxes to the Web. 2. 3. Over a year ago, the Dallas Morning News and the St. 4. Not to be outdone, book publishers have been posting trailers on YouTube. Seth's Blog: Time to start a newspaper.
What should not-so-busy real estate brokers do? Why not start a local newspaper? Here's how I would do it. Assume you've got six people in your office. Each person is responsible to do two things each day: Interview a local business, a local student or a local political activist. Twice a week, send out the 'newspaper' by email. It will cost you nothing. Own your Zip code.
HOW TO: Create Online Video That Works. David Rich is senior vice president, sales and marketing for TurnHere, a leading Internet video production and advertising company that provides broadcast-quality online video for both large consumer brands and small businesses. With the recent explosion and expansion of online video, the biggest question is how to best drive viewer action and monetize this new medium.
Online video has a lot of promise. It offers what was once limited to expensive TV advertising: reach and emotional engagement with potential customers. And, it’s relatively cheap and provides immediate, measurable feedback. Even with these strong benefits, most agree that the video opportunity has yet to be fully realized. Companies struggle to best make use of this new medium, and have found that porting television-style advertising to the Web is regularly rejected by the online audience. It’s important to recognize that the Internet and television deliver two completely different video experiences. 1) Make it Authentic.
US newspapers cautious as they expand online. A study by the Bivings Group on newspapers and the Internet in the US shows how cautiously legacy media are approaching the web. The study (PDF) quantified the online features of the top 100 newspapers in the USA in 2008. Some features, such as blogs and RSS feeds are commonplace. But there is less uptake of features such as social networking or user-generated content, or let alone reinventing themselves online. Only 10% of newspapers offered social networking tools, such as user profiles and the ability to friend others. Even though this is low, it is still an increase from 5% in 2007. Similarly more newspapers are experimenting with user-generated content but largely when it comes to photos. This is hardly surprising as mainstream media tend to use user content to complement their newsgathering, such as providing photos from the scene of breaking news.
The space for written content is provided through comments on stories. Bivings concluded: The New York Times Clutters Up Its Homepage With Links From Else. It used to be that when a newspaper put out an “Extra” edition, it was filled with stories written by its reporters who had toiled away the night to cover some breaking news or collection of stories. Today, the New York Times is redefining “Extra” as stories written by others. It is turning on a new feature on its homepage called Times Extra that will start adding links from elsewhere underneath the headlines of its own articles. The related links are from other news sites and blogs (even the Wall Street Journal), with the source highlighted in green to differentiate them from the New York Times’ own stories. As you can see from the screenshot above, this adds a lot of unnecessary clutter on the page. (Don’t worry, it’s optional. That’s why they call it a beta). The links come from Blogrunner, the buzz aggregator the New York Times bought in 2006 2005.
Since last year, Blogrunner headlines have appeared on the site’s technology section. 4 Ways To Produce a Web Story Better Than The NYT. In a lot of ways, the New York Times website sets the standard for online content. But even the Times could learn a thing or two about making a story more relevant to we b readers. The NYT published a story about 12-year-old basketball phenom Jaime Nared on nytimes.com to preview their Play Magazine product. Site producers promoted this story in prime real estate on the website’s home page, and rightfully so.
Nared’s story of being banned from playing with girls or boys her own age for being too good is an intriguing read. But the Times fell short from making the story an intriguing web read. Here’s how the NYT and YOU could improve the Jaime Nared story to make it more interesting to web readers: 1) Show More Photos: This may sound counterintuitive, but photos help move people through a story. 2) Provide Info Boxes: Just like in print, info boxes are some of the most read items within any written content. 4) Embed the Video! Pretty simple isn’t it?