Follow the Audience

While you're done breathing a sigh of relief at the lower price of gas next time you fill up your car, take a glance above the pump–you might see a video screen running news, weather and advertising from your local NBC station.

Kelsey Group reports that it's part of a concerted effort by NBC to get its content out in front of as many audiences as possible, in as many ways as possible. That means putting content and advertising in such non-traditional media as online gaming, taxis, supermarkets and others. According to the same report from the Kelsey Group, cable giant Comcast is doing something similar by gobbling up niche sites and services like movie-ticket seller Fandango and networked personal organizer Plaxo. 

This is smart thinking, and something that all media companies should be emulating. It's just not enough to merely have a Web site. In fact, a Web site is not nearly enough, because it means you're essentially sitting around waiting for customers to come to you. Instead, news organizations should be working to push their content and advertising out through multiple channels and to get it in front of readers and viewers any way they can. 

It doesn't have to be something as non-traditional as gas pump video screens or the back of taxi seats. There are many other more standard–but underutilized–media that every news organization should be exploiting with smart, tailored products, such as:

• E-mail newsletters
• RSS feeds
• Facebook and social networks
• Widgets for blogs and social sites
• iPhone apps
• Mobile distribution
• Syndication to other sites (and its mirror image, aggregation of content from other sites–even competitors)
• Brand-extending partnerships with other sites, such as co-produced videos
• Niche products–not distribution per se, but sites and other products that target specific audience segments, both demographic and geographic

These all should be standard elements of a news organization's playbook for success. But way too often they're given lip service–if they're pursued at all. Major parts of your audience are gravitating to these venues to get their news and information (and to communicate with their friends), and you need to be there to reach them. It's essential to growing traffic, eyeballs and advertising opportunities. (Checked out the CPMs on e-mail newsletters lately? They're often lip-smackingly good.)

Back in the earliest days of planning The Washington Post's online strategy, 15-plus years ago, we talked a lot about our intentions to "be promiscuous"–placing as many bets as possible on as many different technologies and strategies as we could. 

That philosophy kind of went by the wayside over the years at The Post and other publishers as they put almost all of their chips on building up their Web sites. But as it turned out, the audience was promiscuous, adopting all sorts of online media and devices that publishers never fully appreciated. 

"Be promiscuous" is still a sound strategy, perhaps more so than ever. You've got to put your news, information and advertising in front of the audience wherever it decides to alight–even if that's in front of somebody who's pumping gas into their car. Otherwise, somebody else will.

Comments

[Mary Stokes]

As a trainee journalist, I am being drilled constantly on the importance of non-linear forms of journalism as a way to capture out target audience.
The technological advances have forced news corporations to adapt their newsbroadcasts to enable "consume" their news wherever and whenever they want to. RSS feeds, iPhone apps and the ability to interact with the news producers have all become part of the tools journalists use on a day to day basis.
With so many different news stations out there, we have to pro-actively seek out our audiences.