Traditionally newspaper advertising was sold based on distribution. The more papers were sold, the more the publisher could charge… simples… then the world changed & digital joins the party!

The number of pages becomes the key measure… but what does that really mean? Many papers now simply say come and look at 20 pics, putting one on each “page” that then get streamed as one… not sure that’s cricket?

With folk viewing media on multiple platforms at once, surely engaging the readers for longer has to be the aim of newspapers in 2014?

Obviously the time spent being based on the level of relevant content there is to be digested… so a full time daily newspaper with 20+ journalists on the books is looking for readers to stick around for say 3 hours a day, while a weekly blog is looking for 20 minutes a week.

What are your thoughts?

You can tick multiple answers and even add your own… do take 1 minute to join in… thank you.

 
In my opinion, readers hanging around longer, strengthens relationships and as long as the news content remains uncompromised by commercial goals, readers will keep coming back.

Obviously interjecting with advertorials will be seen as fair play as they are obvious, readers aren’t thick, they know revenues need to be generated to keep the virtual printers running…

Talking advertorials, one great way to engage the readers is by including them in the articles. I used the maps4news.com as the foundations for this engagement piece, looking to connect with journalists and so took the O2 North West Media Awards nominees as my source of content…

In the process I established that 85% of journalists & media folk are on Twitter… nature of the job, looking for the latest news, it’s logical that they would engage there. It also makes sense that journalists get hit with loads of tweets about this, that or the other and are unlikely to respond immediately but they will take a look because they can’t help it… YOU just want to know what’s happening don’t ya!

The map was given an overlay which allows me to monitor engagement, click through on the map & link above and you will be able to engage with the map in real time, this blog is sitting on WordPress.com so it doesn’t allow interaction with “strange” code, fair enough. In the same way I want this blog up 24/7 without the worry, so posted the map on my other, independently hosted blog which hick-ups from time to time!

The O2 map has been viewed 381 times and 907 of the tags have been glided over with 20 being clicked on. Not only that…

Have a guess at the average time spent on the news page for this story?

I will share the answer next week…

 
Thank you.

Jon

Jonathan L Davey
ICE BREAKER
The Berkshire Blog
“Saying hello to strangers so you don’t have to!”
07717 820823