With several newspapers closing their doors or changing the operations, there is always an opportunity to look back in hindsight for ways that the outcome might have changed had new thinking or new media been adopted. Marketing Charts' "Newspapers Not Harnessing Readers' Social Power" had some interesting insights that the Broadcast Industry needs to take note of........
"Findings from the research suggest that newspapers are not providing potentially influential ?brand stewards? with the necessary tools they need to fully realize their role as influencers. These shortcomings include the failure to optimize the search experiences at their website and the lack of integration between content and social media functionality."
"In the face of declining circulations, falling offline and online revenue, and competition from digital sources, newspapers have not taken adequate steps to integrate social media tools into their content management ?ecosystem,? the report said, adding that the most important task for newspapers now is to prioritize the integration of social media into a current or future content management system."
"Key survey findings:
- 49% of respondents use general search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) once a week or more to find content, but only 20% use search tools built into a newspaper or magazine site.
- Only 24% share good content ?finds? with friends or others via personal communications - such as e-mail and instant messaging (IM), and a much lower number (7%) say they usually or often share content via embedding into social network sites.
- Although many newspapers list their staffers who are on Twitter, few offer Twitter users the ability to tweet stories from their websites.
- When asked what they do when they find interesting content online, 52% of respondents say they usually read it immediately. Only 9% said they bookmark it to read later. "
So how does this translate to Broadcast?
If you have a website, you had better enable the search tools in your site to use general search engines. Make it easy for content to be enbedded in social networking sites. Make sure your staff has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Allow easy access to content now and the ability to share it. Learn the lesson from what print has or has not done and make your endeavors more user friendly and take the remaining audience away from print by outperforming them...
?In the wake of the economic challenges facing the US newspaper industry, publishers are losing focus on the crucial imperative of how to capitalize on those consumers who remain loyal, engaged online and print readers,? said Allen Weiner, research VP at Gartner. ?Brand-loyal news consumers need to be turned into brand stewards who can wield their influence to two parts of their social graph - those who know them personally, and those who regard the brand stewards as tastemakers with similar points of view.?