Save the Media

One of the points I mentioned in my tips for fostering an online-first newsroom is that journalists need to connect with readers by creating communities. I think it’s a point that requires more elaboration.

What does it mean to create a community of readers?

You build out in your geographic area. This means that you create your coverage to connect with the people interested in your topic in your immediate area — your town, your city, your county, your state. I think of it as a spiral of ever-widening circles. At the core is you. You widen your circle by listening to your readers’ ideas as they contact through e-mail, the phone, in person and in blog comments.  You include them in the conversation on your blog by replying to their comments. You connect with them through social-networking tools, such as Twitter and Facebook. Then you widen that circle by encouraging your readers to become deputy journalists for you, finding sources among their friends, and, in so doing, connecting their friends with you. You follow up by listening to your readers’ friends’ ideas, including them in the conversation and connecting with them through social networks. Eventually, your readers will start promoting your blog or your stories by tweeting them or posting them as links on their Facebook page. You may gain readers outside your geographic area who are interested in your topic; embrace that. We’re in a global world.

• An example: I cover parenting, and I interviewed a mom for a story about home births about a year ago. That lead me to her husband, whom I connected with on Twitter. We chatted over the past few months on Twitter, and then he suggested a story about infant male circumcision. I put the idea out to my 300 e-newsletter subscribers, and about 10 people wanted to be interviewed for my story. One more person e-mailed me and wanted to be interviewed. She wasn’t a subscriber. She was someone a subscriber had contacted, suggesting she contact me. The original dad also suggested a mom for the story who isn’t on my subscriber list. The circle widens because you’ve found people who have strong interest in the topic, and they are taking it upon themselves to tell their friends.

You build up in your niche through the blogosphere. This is the part that many journalists forget about because it’s not part of creating a readership in print. But it’s vital. You need to connect with other bloggers in your niche area. You need to read what they are writing about to get ideas and to stay current. You need to comment on their blogs to join the conversation and possibly attract some of their readers to you. You need to link, link, link to other blogs. Linking draws you into the online conversation and takes advantage of the Web’s ability to provide richness — layers of information — in a blog post. Plus, it will help you get inbound links (when other blogs link to your blog), which will help you show up higher in a Google search.

• An example: This blog is my best example. I have more inbound links on this Save the Media blog, which I started just more than two months ago, than I have on my Family Life blog, which I started nearly two years ago. Why? When I started my Family Life blog I knew little about the value of linking out, so I didn’t do it. I mainly linked to news sites, which is good. But since then I have learned the value of linking to other blogs in my niche, parenting. I used all this knowledge to help me when I started Save the Media, so I started linking out from day one. It paid off.

Think of your readers as customers: Blogger Chris Brogan explains this well in his new e-newsletter, which I subscribe to: Set about changing your model from “talk about my stuff” to “find out what my readers customers need and talk about that and my stuff.”  I substituted the word “readers” for his customers, but the idea is the same.  All this community building will only work if it serves customers/readers and provides them with what catches their attention. That’s really the heart  of the idea: It’s connecting, not broadcasting to readers. Here are Brogan’s tips for finding out what readers customers want to talk about. (My additions are in italics.)

• Subscribe to the blogs your readers customers might read.
• Point out stories from those blogs that you think readers customers might like.
• Write original content that relates to your readers’ customers’ needs.
• Learn from customer service what readers customers are asking about.
• Deliver stories about complementary brands you don’t own.  (For journalist bloggers, I think this means linking to news stories from other publications if they have a great piece or additional details in their story. Your goal is to provide your readers with the best sources of information at your site, not to pretend other valuable sources don’t exist.)
• Answer all and any reader customer concerns that are generic or might apply to more people in a blog or e-mail newsletter, instead of just 1:1. (This is a good idea that I haven’t really done yet, but I plan to. If one reader questions a headline, explain to everyone why it was used or maybe that it shouldn’t have been. If one reader calls with additional information on a story, check it out and report it to everyone in a blog post or update. Don’t just think: Well, the story is done; too late.)

Coming soon: Creating an e-newsletter to connect with readers.

– Gina

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