A workshop on how newsrooms can create community networks with local bloggers and other groups to boost their content offerings and audience. Delivered at APME's Newstrain March 23-24, 2012.
Lucknow 💋 High Class Call Girls Lucknow 10k @ I'm VIP Independent Escorts Gir...
Community Content for Newsrooms
1. Who’s afraid of
community content?
How Newsrooms Can Tap Into
The Best Of What’s Around
Mandy Jenkins, @mjenkins
Phoenix Newstrain, March 23-24, 2012
4. Community partners can :
• Provide high quality content in niche
or underserved areas of your coverage
• Bring in a new audience to your site
• Lend their brands to yours
6. The Cincinnati.Com Model
• Sought bloggers to supplement underserved
lifestyle content and popular sports content
• Recruited existing local bloggers with known
brands
• Converted offline brands into onsite bloggers
• Advertising on the blogs
• Bloggers were paid
7.
8. The TBD Model
• Recruited existing local and
hyperlocal blogs to supplement a
small staff output
• All topic areas considered, so long as
it was local
• Shared advertising with bloggers*
• Bloggers were unpaid
10. • Increased content in Lifestyle area
• Increased incoming traffic to
Cincinnati.com
• Added traffic from network affiliates
increased overall pageviews
• Built goodwill within the blogging
community
Cincinnati’s Success
11. • Increased local content
• Sent traffic to a new website
• Built awareness & trust for new brand
• Built goodwill within the blogging
community
TBD’s Success
12. • What audiences do I want to reach
that I’m not currently reaching?
• What kind of content do we need to
better attract and retain readers?
Evaluate your needs
14. • Document every local content source
you can find
• Name, link, social networks, content
type, etc.
• Helpful for source building, too
Step 1: Do a local blog audit
15. • The #1 space to find local blogs is the
blog rolls of other local blogs
• Follow the links down the rabbit hole
Start with those you know
19. • Community group, church and school
publications
• Neighborhood listservs and newsletters
• Competing publications
• Content outside your area
More than blogs
30. • Who owns copyright?
• Will content be featured in print?
Questions to Consider
31. • Who owns copyright?
• Will content be featured in print?
• Will bloggers be edited by staff?
Questions to Consider
32. • Who owns copyright?
• Will content be featured in print?
• Will bloggers be edited by staff?
• Required number or length of posts?
Questions to Consider
33. • Monthly or by post?
• Tied to pageviews?
• Access to traffic reports?
• Ad revenue share or no?
Paying Bloggers
For the sake of this class: Writing, photography, graphics, video created by people who are not on your staff. UGC is general interest user content.
What makes a community partnership more valuable than everyday UGC is that you are selecting and recruiting people who are already known in this space. They create good content - and they can bring their own audience to the site.
Existing news presence looking to expand and grow audience
Brand new local news presence looking to find an audience
Brand new local news presence looking to find an audience
Very close knit blogging community
Cincy wanted to reach womenTBD wanted to reach local readers for a new siteThink niche: lifestyle, non-dominant sports, hyperlocal/neighborhood coverage
We did this at both Cincinnati and TBD - collecting all of the blogs we could find in a spreadsheet with their social networks, contact info and a quick assessment of their viability as partners. It is time consuming, but this sort of list is useful for building your network and for future research and source-building.
Local bloggers tend to interlink and be connected with one another - this is an excellent starting point.
No local gardening blog, recruiting gardening center to write oneLocal cooking icon didn’t have an online presence, we made her one
Outside vendor also happened to be local
Blog roundups, with direct links out to the blog sources
At TBD, community engagement eds with focuses in certain subject areas reached out and maintained relationshipsAt Cincy, it was a mix, depending on the subject area.
Both sites kept copyright with blogger, could also publish blogs elsewhere, on other networks
Cincinnati worked that out on a post by post basis
Onsite blogs were given a once-over for content, not line edited
Cincinnati didn’t write it into agreement, but said it outright needed 3 substantive posts a week
Consult Cincy agreement and pay scale
Denote members of the network, usually link back to a main page, driving traffic back. Might also include Omniture tracking code and/or ad tags
Cincinnati sold ads on the blogs, usually as a vertical or group (food blogs, Reds blogs, living blogs, etc.)
Cooking with Caitlin and Cincy Chic….We Love DC…..LOL Expo