One way to really get a sense of what people in your niche are interested in is to create a newsletter for your readers. (Now, I’m not talking about an e-mail subscription to your blog or an RSS feed, although those are great ideas you should be doing, too.)

This is something more personal, where you dialog directly with your readers. My newsletter started sort of by accident. When I began covering parenting nearly two years ago, I started e-mailing parents I had interviewed for stories once a week to let them know when the story they were part of would be in the newspaper and on my blog. I visited local moms’ groups in my community to gather sources and story ideas, and I asked those women if they wanted to be on my e-mail list. I also asked my co-workers if they knew any parents who might be potential sources, and I invited those people to be on the list. I was thinking of it as a way to boost my then fledgling Family Life blog.

Eventually, this little list turned into a more formalized newsletter that goes out once a week to about 300 people, most in my community but some in other states and nations. I also post it on my MySpace blog. It turned out to be even more valuable than I imagined.

Benefits of an e-newsletter:

• Find story ideas: I would estimate that 90 percent of the stories I write for my newspaper come from my e-newsletter subscribers (I call it my parents’ network) or from other parents I’ve met in my travels. The best ideas come from the audience you’re writing for.
• Connect: As time went on, my newsletter subscribers became people I know. I’m not friends with them per se, but I’m interested in what they think, and they know that. They know if they come to me with a story idea, they won’t get shrugged off as happens well too often in a typical newsroom. I also ended up connecting with many of them through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or Cafe Mom. All this gives me more access to knowing what they are interested in reading about. Some of them even tell their friends about my network and my blog, which is fantastic.
• Test ideas: If I’m contemplating whether to do a story, especially one of those routine ones newspapers tend to feel obligated to do, I ask my subscribers first. Do you want a story for Halloween? If so, about what? I asked this one year, and their answer was: No. So I didn’t do one. Why given them a hackneyed piece or waste time trying to come up with something creative that still won’t resonate. I also posed this question for back to school. A readers suggested I just do a calendar  of what parents need to do at what point in the weeks leading up to the first day of school — when to get the kids’ physical, when to sign up your baby for kindergarten. It was a great idea that I didn’t think of, and I did the story, using the reader’s suggested headline: “Ready, Set, School.”
• Crowdsource: I often use my subscribers as a way of gathering content for a story. I wrote about having twins, I asked them: “Parents of twins, what’s your own tip for new parents of twins” and then I published their responses with their names. It made for a fun, easy-to-read, helpful story. Or I asked “How are you using the recession as a teachable moment,” and I interviewed the parents who responded and asked one of them to blog about the issue.
• Find sources: You know the type of story. You need a source who has a had a very specific experience, but that person can be hard to find. A newsletter makes it much easier. A few days after Christmas 2007, an editor mentioned to me that the Webkinz (a kids’ social-networking site where children play with virtual pets who have a real-life stuffed animal counterpart) was down all day on Christmas. The toy is insanely popular with the 6- to 12-year-old set, so we both knew this could be a great story.  I needed parents whose kids had gotten a Webkinz for Christmas and whose kids were frustrated that the Web site wouldn’t work. In the old days, I would of likely staked out a toy store, hoping to get lucky. Instead, I send my parents’ network an e-mail about 9 a.m. But 9:20, I had responses from about a half-dozen parents who were ticked off that the Webkinz site hadn’t worked and disappointed their kids. By 3 p.m. that afternoon, I had put together a front page story about it, quoting a bunch of the parents and featuring a picture of three of the distressed kids. 
• Promote my blog: I mention highlights from the past week on my blog, with links, on my newsletter. My thought is I’d love it if everyone read my blog daily, but I know they don’t. So this is a weekly reminder that sums up the past week.

How to get your newsletter started:

• Ask people: Every time you interview someone for a story say, “Hey, I put out a weekly e-newsletter, can I add you to the subscriber list so you’ll know the latest on (whatever your beat it.)” The worst they can say is no. Many will say yes. But be sure to ask people; don’t just start e-mailing them. That’s spamming and will backfire.
• Put it on your blog: Have a regular place on your blog where you invite readers to get your e-newsletter. Include an e-mail link right on the blog post, so they can easily sign up.
• Use a list serve: When I started, I didn’t do this. I just manually added people’s e-mail addresses, but the problem is some e-mail programs will flag you as spam if you are mailing to a large group. A list serve gets around that. It also frees you from having to handling subscriptions. People sign up through e-mail on their own. Here some tips on how to start your own list serve.
• Offer incentives: Sometimes a small incentive can encourage people to subscribe or keep them as subscribers. I offer my subscribers a weekly contest for a free children’s book (publishers mail hundreds of books to the paper, hoping we’ll promote them.) The contest is only open to subscribers. I also let my subscribers find out in advance what the weekly contest (also for children’s books) will be on my blog. If they enter and note that they are a subscriber, they get 10 extra entries, increasing their chances of winning.
• Offer an opt-out: Somewhere in your newsletter, you should offer a place where people can cancel easily. If you use a list serve, this will usually be an e-mail address. Include it every week. It’s sad when someone drops me, but I’d rather someone drop my newsletter if they don’t find it useful. Don’t obsess over it.
• Keep it short: I try to keep my newsletter to five items, each of which is a paragraph or less, and I use pictures. I write mine on my blogging program, and then preview it without publishing it, and copy the previewed view into my e-mail. I do this because then I can set up links and boldface in the blogging program, and they are retained in the e-mail. But some of my co-workers do their newsletters directly in their e-mail program.

– Gina

Today’s the last installment in my series on how journalists can use social-networking sites. (If you haven’t been here for the whole series, be sure to read about how to use Facebook, MySpace and Linked In in previous posts.)

To me, niche social networks provide perhaps the greatest potential for journalists trying to engage their community. Why? Because they reach an already-targeted audience.

If you write about education, and you want to find people really interested in education, for example, a niche social network might help. You won’t reach as large or as broad and audience as Facebook, but a smaller audience that is super interested in your blog topics or stories is better in way than a larger audience that isn’t.

I rely on two main niche social networks for my beat, parenting. They are Cafe Mom and Twitter Moms. They help me connect with moms both in my geographic coverage area and throughout the world who may be interested in the parenting tidbits on my Family Life blog.

But niche social networks don’t just work for my beat. They can work for yours, too.

How do you find a niche network on your beat?

• Ning.com: Anybody can start their own social network for free on ning.com, and they do. First step, plug in a keyword of your beat (education, firefighters, environmentalists.) Then check out sites. You may need to try out a few. If one doesn’t yield results, try another one. You can even start your own site if that will serve your readers by helping them connect in one place. (If you’re considering setting up your own site, here are some ideas at Beat Blogging to help you decide whether that will work for you.)

• Do a Google search: It seems so obvious, but I found one mommy social-networking site while trying to help a reader find a support group for parents of children with autism. I Googled autism and support groups, and found a support group on this mommy social network. (I just Google firefighter social networks and came up with this  social network just for firefighters, EMTs and rescue workers, which could be helpful if you cover the police and crime beat.)

• Watch ads on Facebook and MySpace: I found out about Cafe Mom through an ad on MySpace, which I suspect showed up on my page because I have a lot of parenting/mommy type information on my page.

So why do you want to connect with people who aren’t in your geographic area?

• Reach more readers: Local newspapers, especially ones in smaller cities, used to be limited by their geography. The Web changes that. While I believe newspapers should play to their strengths and focus on their local community, that doesn’t mean you can’t gain readers all over the world. So many experiences are universal. So many issues we write about transcend geographic boundaries. A compelling murder trial can fascinate people across the globe from where it happened. Niche networks help you expand your community beyond geography to include all the folks really interested in your topic.
• Find out a buzz: If you cover education, and you find out on an education-related niche social network that a new way of teaching math is gaining popularity, you can bring that idea back to your community. Is it being used in your geographic area? Should it? Your educating yourself, so you can engage your reader better by finding out the answers to smart questions. You may even come upon some experts to use in stories.
• Connect with your readers: Once you join a site, let your readers know you’re there. Promote it on your blog or in the newspaper regularly. You’re expanding your community two ways: widening the circle to include people outside your geographic area and engaging those people who already read you. In time, your regular readers will join the site you’re on. You’ll have access to them in a while new way. You’ll be able to chat with them, find out what they think you should be writing about, even ask them to write for your blog or your newspaper. They’ll become your inner-circle of advisers.
• Find how your particular site works:  You need to play around once you join a site, and figure out how it will serve you and your readers. Each one may be different. Cafe Mom, for example, has a “hot list,” where people can list links they think will be popular. I use that on occasion to list a story from my newspaper’s Web site or a blog post of mine that I think will have wider interest. Other readers can “bump” my link, so it moves higher up on the list and likely reaches more readers. I don’t use this feature every day, but it’s a good way to reach the targeted group of moms on Cafe Mom, which has an estimated 6 million visitors monthly.  Twitter Moms offers a spot to  list all my blog contests and polls, potentially expanding their reach. I’m also on the “welcome wagon,” for that site, so I get a tweet each time new members join. That enables me to “welcome” them with a nice note on their page; hopefully, they’ll check out my page and my blog or friend me. Niche sites in your topic will have their own unique features. You just need to find them.

– Gina