An interesting case study published on NichedOut.com, posted by Prescott Shibles of Vital Business Media, deserves some note: A publisher of local print and online real estate magazine, Network Communications Inc (NCI) wanted to shake up its model and increase online reach in the hyper-competitive real estate niche. The company instituted a new policy for everyone in sales and editorial to share their interactions in the community via social media — that is blogs, Twitter and Facebook. The strategy paid off, driving a 30% increase in reach for the sites in the first two months. Read More »
Posted by Alisa Cromer |
10/16/09 | No Comments »
A pioneer in creating homemade social-networking, and in selling related software, The Bakersfield Californian is considering shutting down Bakotopia, its own community site. Why? Read More »
Posted by Alisa Cromer |
09/08/09 | No Comments »
”I want to renovate the newspaper industry,” say Gallinatti, COO of Konnects, a company that markets social media platform to newspaper websites. The platform is a hosted private label ”software as a service,” and let’s newspapers “go live” in about 30 days. Read More »
Posted by Alisa Cromer |
06/23/09 | 1 Comment »
The President and CEO of The Gazette in Eastern Iowa, Peters is one of the first to “clip” the newsroom from the newspaper (one person will still be responsible for the paper) and reorganize for digital communities that incorporate commenters from the community with a suite of high class tools to create new brands.
Writers who “own” a topic, Peters said, will be responsible to develop news, expand the package to include original sources such as reporters notes online and then curate a local wiki on the topic.
Currently, researching a topic by reading news stories “is like having all these information missiles whizzing past. You still don’t understand the thing.”
By using curated wiki’s for local issues, “you will not be stymied by having to read 15 stories to find out what’s going on,” Peters said.
Peters who has been one of the most outspoken publishers in the reinvention game, including spoke about his plans at MediaXChange produced by NAA earlier this year as well as blogging the strategies. He is reinventing his company on principles of “C 3″ Complete Community Connection”.
“We had 600 people doing the wrong things to the wrong end with the wrong attitude,” he said. “At first we were stunned and immobile. We worked very hard to get to the point to where we can stumble in the right direction”.
The Gazette Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, also includes and KCRG - TV9, an ABC affiliate, along with numerous niche print and online products.
“We came to the conclusion that we cannot do what we need to do without fundamentally altering the tasks in the first instance” in both editorial and advertising.
After addressing the 2008 NAA convention that newspapers needed to change — and getting very little reaction - Peters started to blog his ideas and has continued to blog changes as they worked their way through his organization.
With research showing that 10% of social network users create content, he points out that that means 8000 potential writers in a market of 800,000. Capturing that potential could transform the media and the community.
The technology to allow local bloggers to have an advanced “tool kit” to build a brand, audience, and content and communities is under development. Commecial ads will be matched relevant content throughout the networds. Peters said that Abe Abreu of E-Me helped develop the strategic vision and is currently developing the techology for the site.
“The Semantic web space has new Web.4 tools, not accessible to common content people,” Abreu said. “What if we could create an environment with these tools built in? You could build your own brand, content, blogs, feeds and communities to support the audience you are after. All this neat semantic technology will be already baked in, built on word press, with tools around it,” he said.
Some of the increased functionality includes relevant ads served, feeds from other sources and nifty social networking tools.
“If a reader is engaged in a story, they can go to their “social panel”, hit a button to go to Facebook and post with a link to the article,” Abreu said.
One fundamental organization change Peters has made on the road to the new platform launch has been to separate the newsroom from the print product, organizing it around topics owned by reporters. The paper will also use contract writers and user-generated content, identify by levels of trust. “You will know has you move through how trusted the source is,” he said.
The new mission is “ is to strengthen the community by providing an interactive platform that’s very engaging”
Abreu keeps a low profile, but follow him on twitter.
Posted by Alisa Cromer |
03/14/09 | No Comments »
