Embrace platforms: Assessing the gaps in your newsroom
Take this quiz for a quick read on where your efforts stand vis a vis this Table Stake.
The target audience has gone elsewhere and other platforms increasingly control distribution, which means it’s now the responsibility of the newsroom to drive discoverability, reach and engagement.
Take this quiz for a quick read on where your efforts stand vis a vis this Table Stake.
In order to overcome them, first understand the barriers to success at publishing on the platforms used by your target audiences.
Publishing on the platforms that your target audiences use requires your newsroom to know how best to use each platform and how to manage your portfolio of platforms. The net effect is a publishing platform plan, action and performance that are strategically crafted, effectively managed, resilient to external changes and robust in growing your share of audience.
There’s a wide variety of data to monitor platform performance. Avoid unnecessary complexity and also choose and monitor indicators that are not addressable by data – such as user experience, revenue and costs.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: If you want to maximize your digital subscription growth, you must have a focused plan on not only how to grow your subscriber base, but also how to retain and improve the engagement and loyalty of your current subscribers.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Newsday is driving digital subscriptions and engagement with targeted newsletters.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the KPCC-LAist newsroom has invited questions from its audience. Nearly 4,000 people have written in. More than half of them have opted into newsletters, and nearly all have received a personal answer.
Here’s an idea to steal and adapt: As a statewide public media TV network, University of North Carolina TV, or UNC-TV, is building a new and larger audience by producing digital content while staying committed to its traditional broadcast audience.
New platforms emerge regularly, different audiences gravitate to them, anxiety about “being on” them ensue, and then this cycle repeats until the next platform emerges. Avoid this by taking a strategic view of developing and effectively managing the portfolio of platforms used by your audiences.
Consider different purposes for platforms, use criteria tailored to those purposes, and use a management process for selecting platforms.
Publishing plans for each platform begin with the audience in mind, not the platform.
You need to name specific platform “owners” — who operates as a GM or publisher — taking responsibility for all aspects of platform performance, including strategy, operations, customers, costs and revenues.
Experimentation is essential because existing digital platforms evolve; new ones emerge; and, how to use digital platforms to publish content and build loyal audiences demands continuous improvement and innovation.