November 28th, 2005, 1:49 pm

How to drive traffic to your newspaper-sponsored blogs and podcasts

Oh, what a tricky question … How to get users to visit newspaper.com “extras” … your chats, blogs, podcasts and online exclusives. My boss asked me the question, here is my (longwinded) answer.

Concepts

Leisuremedia projects

OK, it’s a hokey word — I’m open to a better one. But I think it captures the essence of most of the current newspaper.com new-new media projects. They certainly aren’t necessary to your day-to-day activities … no one turns to blogs to find out quickly what the score was last night … no one listens to a podcast to find out if traffic will be bad on the drive home. Newspaper.com’s leisuremedia offerings offer a deeper, richer understanding and experience of their subject matter … an experience by necessity usually enjoyed by our users during moments of downtime.

That’s important — if leisuremedia projects aren’t necessary, like flossing, they should be enjoyable, like ice cream. We’ll get back to that later.

Here’s another concept I think is paramount to this discussion …

On-demand content

Due to changes in, erm, every entertainment industry, our users expect a few things out of their leisuremedia:

Being able to get the latest content, instantly, if they so desire ( “I love the breaking news updates! I want them sent to my PDA!”)
Being able to save all content so they can return to it later (”This is cool. I’m going to bookmark it so I can read it when the boss is gone.”)
Being able to discover a new product and “binge” on it (”I just got sucked in … who knew an Ashlee Simpson hairstyle blog could be so entertaining!” )

This has a few important implications for the consumption of newspaper.com leisuremedia offerings:

Unlike articles, your users won’t necessarily be accessing your leisuremedia offerings within a few days of their publication. It’s likely that they’ll be consuming them off-cycle … will the content still be relevant?
Archiving and site navigation become incredibly important. Are your archives password-protected? Did the URL change? Has your site nav changed, making it harder to find your leisuremedia?

OK …. so now that we have those two concepts out of the way, let’s get into it.

Your audience

I think it’s important to realize that you’ve got two audiences for your leisuremedia projects. The majority of your visitors will be leisuremedia newbies … folks who have heard the words blog and podcast before, but really haven’t played around with them before.

And then you’ll have the leisuremedia pros … the bloggers, podcasters, webmasters.

Both groups are important and fluid … after all, your newbies can turn into pros, can’t they .. but they both need different approaches.

Leisuremedia newbies

Hey, we all had a first time, right? Make sure your leisuremedia is easy to use for your first-timers.

A few suggestions:

Include a link to a “What’s this?” page that explains the basics of blogs, podcasts & chats.
Explain the role of the newspaper in the media offering … “Our blogs are written by our staffers, edited by our Web Editor, and put online for your enjoyment.”
Include a FAQ that offers easy instructions on downloading podcasts and participating in chats. Number one myth to dispel … you don’t need an iPod to listen to podcasts.
All roads should lead back to Rome, right? Spell out for your users the different ways that they can continue to receive this content.
Be the guiding light. Offer your users a page that will allow them to find other blogs and podcast that might interest them … explaining Technorati, and podcast directories. Making your users more familiar with the mediums in general … allowing them to become mini-experts … emphasizes your credibility.

Leisuremedia pros

OK, you’ve got your legions of Comic Book Guy nerdicles who are gong to be extremely critical of your leisuremedia offerings. Make sure that what you are offering is up to their snuff. If they love you, they will be your marketers … lauding you on their blogs and sending the links out. If they think you suck, they will crush you.

Suggestions:

Don’t put out crappy content. See my post, “How to build a better blogger.”
Make sure your offerings play well with the biggies. How do your feeds look in Bloglines? How are your podcasts labeled in iTunes? Make sure everything is labeled clearly and works correctly.
Register, register, register: Treat all of your leisuremedia offerings as sub-sites; give them their own URL, and aggressively register that URL with search engines and directories.
Use Web 2.0: Use social tagging to your benefit by manually tagging all of your content (using del.ico.us or Furl) to ensure that it will pop up in web 2.0 searches.
Offer well-rounded content: Make sure all leisuremedia offerings are complemented by enough text, images and FAQ information that the sites can be considered destinations.
Utilize other networks to create other “serendiptious” ways for users to stumble across your content. Use Flickr as an image server (where all images are tagged thoroughly) to drive interested parties to your content. Use MySpace to collect and organize fans of your content.
Make sure your content plays well with our on-demand world. Have something that’s only relevant to locals, or will expire in a few days? Structure it so that it’s separate from your evergreen content.

Basics of generating traffic for leisuremedia offerings

Make sure your site works

You wouldn’t expect your guests to stay for dessert if you served them rancid meat as a main course, would you? Nor should you expect your users to invest their time in your leisuremedia offerings if the basics of your site aren’t working well.

Give it time

Leisuremedia is consumed at a different pace than article content. You need to give the content the time to find an audience. It will take a while for search engines to find your site; longer for it to pop up on the top pages of results. When it does so, your traffic will increase.

Believe in your content

It’s the idealism that drives online journalism: “Good content will be rewarded for being good. It will rise above the chaff and find an audience.”

Remember back in the day, when your newspaper was just starting? It sure didn’t have a print run equal to today’s … certainly didn’t have a revenue stream equal to today’s. Your leisuremedia offerings are babies … give them time to grow.

Cross-pollinate

How integrated is your site? Is it easy to travel from one part to another? Measure how many clicks it takes to get from one portion of the site to another, and factor that into your thinking. If it takes 10 clicks to get from your classifieds to your blogs, or 5 from your homepage to your podcasts, that might have something to do with the relative popularity of your leisuremedia offerings.

Use print to raise awareness … NOT drive traffic

I learned this lesson when Creative Loafing, Inc. ran a cover story on the trial of Edgar Ray Killen simultaneously in three markets. The cover of about 282,260 papers in three cities — that’s as much print exposure as our organization is capable of giving a story. The story was based on a series of John Sugg’s blog entries, and included a healthy teaser to the blog. There wasn’t the slightest increase in traffic — not the slightest bump, the entire week those papers were on the street. But the weekend before, when the Killen media frenzy was at its height, JohnSugg.com’s traffic increased by 17 percent.

Lesson learned: print coverage won’t drive traffic. I think the better approach is to use traditional resources to drive awareness of your leisuremedia offerings.

Guerilla marketing is just the right size

Because your leisuremedia offerings are in their infancy, you can use their small size as an asset. Small budget promotional tactics … like flyers in happening cafes, bars & clubs, stickers in high-traffic bathrooms, and posters can help to increase awareness of your content.

And those business relationships you have with your advertisers couldn’t hurt. How ’bout this for a quickie promo idea? Create a coupon/flyer … one side is a promo for your content, and the other is a coupon for $1 off a purchase with an advertiser. (Thanks to compatriot Aaron Karp for reminding me of this point.)