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The traditional business model for journalism is in disarray.
That’s for damn sure true, with everyone having the ability to write what they want on the Internet thanks to technology.
To increase an online audience, a journalist needs to:
- Analyze what is published
- Determine what readers like and don’t like
- Do more of what readers like
Here are the fundamentals of building an online audience:
- Tracking your content
- Web analytics
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Effective headline writing for the Web
- Distribution through social media
Track what you publish, such as blog posts, video stories per week, podcasts, Twitter and other social network posts and total stories per day.
Set benchmarks. Determine what you want to accomplish so you have something to measure against.
Track your audience. Use tools like Omniture and Google Analytics to measure who is viewing your stuff.
Determine what is going to be your key data. Typically it is going to be pageviews, visits vs. unique visitors, and engagement and referrers.
Understand SEO and use it to your benefit. Many news sites receive as much as one-third of their traffic from search engines, so it’s very important to get yourself near or in the first 10 of results shown.
The best way to take advantage of SEO? Make sure your content is top-notch and link as much as possible as long as it’s relevant. Make good headlines better.
And above all else, use social media to push your stuff. Provide links of yourself on Twitter and Facebook. Contribute to blogs that deal with the same content as you. Put your name out there as much as possible.