Second, it reveals some opportunities that could become part of your offerings, for example helping update their social media and websites. The graphic shows that most businesses feel positively about social media and generally OK with their existing websites. But their  frequency of updating ranges from pretty good, to poor.

Ask your advertisers if they need help with posting to their websites and/or Facebook. If there’s a decent response, consider making it part of your offerings. You probably can price this work reasonably yet profitably. Not only will this service create a tighter relationship with the customer, but it also  diversifies your revenue stream.

via: The Expanding Small Business Web [INFOGRAPHIC]

The first installment, “The path of disruption: Did Newspaper Next succeed in transforming newspapers?”  is a pretty good start.

Still, I have to poke at a couple of assumptions in the piece.

One assumption is that  innovative projects were derailed by a steady decline of newspapers’ revenue, especially the downturn of 2008. This is true on some level, but one big message in Clayton Christensen’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma” (on which N2 was based) is that internal disruptive innovation will always be derailed when the core business runs into trouble.

If Christensen were the snarky type, his response to Newspaper Next’s results might be “I told you so.”  Few, if any, newspapers created separate divisions, as recommended by Newspaper Next.  Because newspapers insisted on keeping their “innovators” within the core business, the innovations were predictably doomed. As Christensen found, it’s too easy to shut down a low-profit (or no-profit) initiative when times get tough, and it’s too hard politically to keep a skunkworks going when the core business is laying off employees.   The companies that beat the dilemma (like 3M, one of Christensen’s examples) are ones that insulate their innovative startups from the fortunes of the mature business.

Another assumption I question is that newspapers really wanted to innovate  in the ways Christensen recommended. Christensen describes two kinds of  technology: “disruptive technology” and “sustaining technology.”  For example, online distribution of newspaper content is a sustaining technology - it extends the usefulness and  value of a current product.   Craigslist is a disruptive technology – something that upends the current model, typically starting small and under the radar, and then catches on. Early in their development, disruptive innovations often are pooh-poohed by those in the core business as unprofitable, low quality, unworthy of attention.   That was   the newspaper industry’s early response to Craigslist.

So the article asks, ”Did Newspaper Next succeed in transforming newspapers?”  Sadly, the answer is No.

Unfortunately, the legacy of N2 is that Christensen was right, again.

Now the LA Times has done an A-B experiment, running the same story with two commenting approaches: Facebook Comments and the paper’s existing commenting system. Poynter examines the outcomes. 

I see two very important takeaways: First, Facebook isn’t just a powerful technology, it’s a powerful viral marketing system. LA Times has seen significant increases in engagement (measured in traffic) in the Facebook experiment. Second,  it reduces vitriol in comments not just because people’s names are attached, but because the comment shows up on your Facebook wall!  I believe the latter point is key. It’s one thing to make some idiotic comment on a site where a friend may or may not see it. It’s something else when that idiotic comment is broadcast to all 899 of your friends.

In the past couple of years as Facebook has become embedded in the culture, there’s an even bigger reason to use Facebook if you’re a publisher. Remember Willie Sutton’s response when asked why he robbed banks: “Because that’s where the money is.”  Why use Facebook? Because that’s where your audience is.

In both cases, the assumption is that local coverage requires an approach that carries tremendous overhead cost: a traditional newsroom approach to assigning, editing and delivering news.

But far under the radar of media watchers, there is a ton of local coverage being done piece by piece, primarily by  a solo journalist covering a town, city or neighborhood. While this piece-by-piece coverage may not look significant enough to the pundits, it’s real and it has impact. Unfortunately, that piece-by-piece nature also means it’s barely sustainable because each site’s traffic isn’t enough to support a professional sales effort.

I’ve been getting a close-up look at this world for the past few months, working with a group of independent news sites in Chicago to figure out a sustainable business (a project supported by the Chicago Community Trust).  These solo publishers are passionate about local news, and they wouldn’t need all that much revenue to keep going. They’re using free or cheap technology, lots of volunteers and their own energy to serve and grow local, loyal audiences.  In many cases, their revenue is zero or close to it. So when these publishers talk about revenue opportunities, it’s a “glass half full” discussion. Contrast that with a traditional media company (like the Guardian) where any new initiative has to hit high revenue benchmarks to even look interesting.

That doesn’t make the business challenge any less daunting for independent sites. Building a sustainable business around local news takes resources and revenue to support them,  which probably means some kind of group effort. But it doesn’t take the revenue that a traditional media business expects.

Remember, we’re in early times of local journalism’s reformation. There’s plenty of creative destruction in the works and still to come. A “hyperlocal”  movement is under way, and it’s happening regardless of whether traditional media companies manage to  make a business out of it.

Her main points are that successful startup journalism enterprises are happening, they’re experimenting with different economic models, and there are plenty of lessons being learned. You hear about a lot of the failures, but not much about the successes, which tend to be smaller, and local.

McLellan hits a theme doesn’t get nearly enough attention: startup journalists need to think like publishers, not as just journalists.

Ask Tom O’Malia, professor of clinical entrepreneurship at the USC Marshall School of Business, what he sees in journalists who arrive at Knight Digital Media Center’s News Entrepreneur Boot Camp to learn how to start a new site. O’Malia responds: “They have not yet recognized the difference between what they do, the product, and the value – the benefit – of what they do.”

The first, the product – what we have always called journalism – is what we have been spoiled into believing it is a public good so compelling that people are bound to open their wallets for it despite abundant evidence to the contrary. The latter – discovering and providing what customers value – is the challenging path to actually making money in news.

The thing is: making money in news isn’t a necessary evil. It’s an important measure of accountability. Is your news site (or newspaper, for that matter) relevant to the local community? Do local people use it? Do they count on it? If so, your  journalism can support itself  through advertising and other revenue streams. Selling advertising (or seminars, or t-shirts) is the clearest feedback loop you can have for a news site – unless and until you can really make a subscription model work. Even then, you’ll still need more revenue streams.

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: there’s more to a local community than traditional news. If a startup local online publisher wants to be successful, he/she needs  to understand what makes the community tick,  needs  to understand the role of commercial content (yup, advertising) in the community’s interactions and vibrancy, and then needs to figure out where a new site fits among those interactions.

The money quote: “I don’t use my blog anymore. All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

Not to wax nostalgic, but this took me back to the ’90s, when lots of us in media were trying to figure out “user generated content” (what a term!) – or more specifically, how to persuade those users into generating that content for us.  Seriously, we thought it would be a win-win, not media taking advantage of users.

Didn’t matter. Those users are a slippery bunch, and they wouldn’t play along.

The most interesting group was teenagers. They were the first ones to build their own websites to show off their art, or music, or their programming skills. They used flashy HTML tricks, like blinking text. So we tried making a contest for them to show off their websites. They weren’t interested. Then we discovered they weren’t even building websites anymore. They had blogs.

More recently working on ConcertRat.com, I went looking around the web for how young people are talking about music. I found lots and lots of dormant blogs, each with a link to the user’s Facebook page.

It makes sense for a whole lot of reasons: it’s easy, it’s interactive, it’s immediate, and like the guy said, “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”

Still, there’s a pattern here. You have to admit Facebook has a pretty solid hold on everyone’s attention these days, but still, what will be the next thing that kids move to, after Facebook?

We hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content. We take pride in Google search and strive to make each and every search perfect.

Makes sense to me. Google’s only asset is the quality of its search results. As long as Google delivers me search results that answer my questions, I’ll come back. Why would I bother trying some other search engine?

Google has always seemed to be working hard to anticipate what I’m looking for, versus what someone’s trying to shove in front of me.

For instance,  I just now Googled “restaurant” and yeah, OK, there’s restaurant.com, and the Wikipedia entry for “restaurant,” but most of the page displays restaurants around my current location. Google understands that when I search  ”restaurant,”  I’m probably not asking how to start a restaurant, or what a restaurant is, or who makes the best restaurant equipment.

Point being, Google’s priority is delivering results that the user values – that’s basically Google’s definition of “quality.”  If anything starts diluting that quality, according to Google, they’ll push back. And “webspam” is diluting the quality of search results. Cutts writes:

Just as a reminder, webspam is junk you see in search results when websites try to cheat their way into higher positions in search results…”

The obvious implication is that these content farms could have a brief lifespan. They exist only because of Google’s search algorithms, and Google can change those algorithms anytime.

The second implication is that Google is paying attention to tactics that drive results higher than their “natural” ranking.  That’s called “search engine optimization” – but  it’s a very broad topic.  At one extreme, it simply means avoiding things that  will keep your site  unnaturally low in Google rankings. Examples include not assigning unique URLs to every page, not using unique   titles for each page, not putting relevant terms in titles and headlines.

At the other extreme is what I consider aggressive SEO:  figuring out some secret sauce that gets your site into a high rank that makes no sense to the casual observer. Try this. Google “Maine real estate.” I offer this  example because I’m familiar with the architecture of the sites under the MaineToday brand (where I worked until 2008). You’ll see those sites in the first page of Google results (Numbers 3 and 4 – sweet!) . They have home listings from all over Maine, so logically, they should be ranked high on a search for “Maine real estate.” But check out the other sites on your first page of Google results. On this day, I’m seeing three sites that have only a few listings for a couple of  very   small  areas of Maine, and another that’s nothing but a set of links to other sites. So out of  10 search results on the first page, 40 percent are not very useful for someone generally looking to buy a home in Maine.

Under Google’s definition of “webspam,” and Google’s goal of “perfect” search results, that’s a 40 percent error rate.

So the second big implication of Google’s crackdown on “webspam” is this: Does aggressive SEO have a future?

I’ve been in touch with five local ad networks around the U.S., which have been extremely generous  in sharing their experiences. Each one has its own unique approach, which I find fascinating, since it means they’re each pioneering a model. They are:

• Sacramento Local Online Ad Network (SLOAN)
• Richmond Ad Network
• Seattle Indie Advertising Network
• TBD.com (blog network sales currently in hiatus)
• Boston Blog Network

One reason I’m posting that list is to find others, if there are any.  But check them out if you’re at all interested in independent news blogs. Each has some very interesting things going on.

And I’m really interested in talking with local news bloggers who are selling (or at least accepting) local advertising, and  how they’d want to work with a network of others in their area.

Shoot me an email at joe-at-joemichaud.com or post a comment here.

What’s incredible is that literally just two years ago, people in the industry were arguing whether it even made sense to put ads on Facebook. Now Facebook is by far the largest single deliverer of display ad impressions online.

I have to admit, speaking from my own experience, I considered Facebook ads a waste of money when mapping out the launch program for Concert Rat earlier this year. Who wants to see ads on Facebook?, I reasoned.

So the initial marketing plan involved Google text ads (search and content) and  some programs to get the Concert Rat brand into people’s hands – such as handing out flyers at concerts. But none of these paid efforts seemed to get results – i.e. people posting stuff on Concert Rat.com. On the other hand, our “free” marketing efforts on the Concert Rat fan page on Facebook seemed to be generating results.

So on June 24, mostly to support the fan-page activity, I finally created and started running Facebook ads. Guess what:  New postings started appearing on Concert Rat immediately. Literally — immediately.

And the pattern continues. Facebook is now Concert Rat’s No. 1 source of traffic. Before the ads, most traffic came from Google. And the traffic seems to convert to people posting stuff.

Why? My theory is twofold, and it wouldn’t work for everyone:

1. Concert Rat is about sharing stuff, and Facebook is about sharing stuff, so if you’re on Facebook, your mindset is about sharing. Thus the connection is more direct.

2. Facebook ads allow extremely fine targeting by interests. All those interests you put on your profile? Those become the targeting  filters for Concert Rat’s Facebook ad delivery. It’s a pretty amazing system. The Concert Rat ads target people who say they like: concerts, live music and “going to concerts.” Also we’ve selected  people 16 years of age and older, who live in the U.S.  If those criteria look like you, then there’s a good chance you’ll see the Concert Rat ads. If that’s not you, you won’t see the ad.

Put those two factors together – the transactional nature of both Concert Rat and Facebook, and the extreme targeting – and it starts explaining our results.

And it might explain the amazing market share of Facebook Ads today.

*Display ads include static and rich media ads; excludes video ads, house ads and
very small ads (< 2,500 pixels in dimension)

Here are a few  snips to give you a taste of the great lessons in this piece:

Mike Orren, Pegasusnews.com publisher, reminded that advertisers don’t care how big you are if they don’t know you. It takes a long time to build a brand in advertising community and it matters, because ad buying decisions are not made rationally.

Read J-Lab report New Voices: What Works and learn how much work it requires to keep the contributors active. Less than 1 in 10 of those you train will stick around to be regular contributors.

Founder Susan Mernit from Oakland Local said that they thought people would read normal feature-like news stories. It turned out that the really simple stories about a new coffee shop or the heavy, investigative pieces were the most read. So they stopped doing features.

Bottom line: Run it like a business from Day 1. If you’re running a hyperlocal site or just thinking about it, print out The top 10 key lessons for hyperlocal journalism startups from ONA10
and stick it on your refrigerator.