New Study: Newspapers’ Progress Going Social

The Bivings Group just published their latest annual “Use of the Internet by America’s Largest Newspapers.”  The study shows newspapers have made significant progress from a year ago  to become more social, open its content by linking outside its own web universe, and allow more user-generated content.

Courtesy of Precious Roy via Flickr

The study is indicative of two trends that run parallel and in many ways, hold the key to large newspapers’ ability to make profits.  First, newspapers by now fully understand the environment in which they are publishing.  Blogs, online video, social networking sites and mobile will not be beaten and major newspapers cannot simply fend them off.  Information sources outside of newspapers will exist alongside them.  Newspapers get that.  They’re figuring out now how to best handle that relationship.  As the Bivings Group report shows, newspapers understand this reality and are embracing this new media environment.

Second, the Bivings’ study also demonstrates that while newspapers are becoming more social, and therefore more relevant in the social webosphere in which information is exchanged, they are still a long ways away from monetizing their content in a digital medium.  In other words, they’re improving their online audience aggregation, but cannot match the audience with advertisements in a profitable way that existed with paper editions.  That’s traditional media’s new media dilemma.

Just this week, I read that Digg founder Kevin Rose is also grappling with how to best monetize his highly trafficked site.  Inc magazine reports that Digg is in fact losing money.  For me, I see the financial challenges Digg is facing, without all the overhead that traditional media carries, and I believe it will take some massive traditional media reorganization to remain profitable.

My prediction is that the very biggest newspapers, like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal will be able to continue to focus on the journalism they are currently engaged in and get by.  But others, like the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and Washington Post will have to do a better job of becoming something unique and meaningful to its readers.

I think that’s a healthy process and is a natural outcome of technological and media advancements.  Years ago, getting national newspapers in my hometown, Chicago, was just more expensive and often came at the expense of missing some of the local news that I liked in my Chicago papers.  But now, I can easily access national newspapers like the Times, get the content I want, which makes my reliance on Chicago papers for information significantly less.  In other words, I’m not going to read Chicago papers for international or national political coverage when I can get better coverage and writing from other places.

In that environment Chicago papers have to provide something relevant to consumers.  I doubt a paper like the Tribune will have a readership as big as it once did.  That’s just the reality of the new media envrionment.  I think the Tribune should be building new expectations for this new media age.

Thank you to the Bivings Group for great research.

Social Media Will Be Very Important for Vacant Emmanuel Seat Hopefuls

Some prominent local and state Democrats are preparing to vie for newly appointed White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel’s open congressional seat.  In this coming special election, candidates will not have the time, nor the money to run a full-blown campaign with large media ad budgets.  In this atmosphere that will likely feature some recognizable names and good reputations, candidates will have to look to social media as a mode to connect with the district.

This special election promises to be different than other Illinois special elections.  Mainly, such as in the special election for Dennis Hastert’s open seat, the race was divided along party lines.  Here, the 5th district is so heavily democrat, that whomever emerges from their party, will surely win the election.  That being said, we’re looking at a crowded field of candidates cutting up the electorate along several lines.

Social media will be critical to serve the following purposes:

• Growing name awareness – most of the candidates are known quantities, but still have a ways to go before they reach Emmanuel’s level.
• Establishing their point of difference (branding) – people’s minds and traditional media usually define a candidate by a narrow set ideas of ideas or positions.  Social media can help the candidate define those positions and priorities, rather than anyone else, and have traditional media play the role of reinforcing those positions.
• Connecting with constituents, finding the evangelists - Chicagoland has a growing number of political insider blogs and interested citizen journalists that people look to for an “on the ground perspective.”  Candidates will be well served to cultivate relationships with those people.  Having key bloggers and opinion shapers in the district will be a big leg up in a tight race.
• Speaking directly with constituents – if the 2008 presidential election proved anything, voters want interaction with candidates.  I think in an election this size, the ability to scale interactions is totally within reach.
• Keeping things interesting – with all the 2008 election hoopla, we might be experiencing voter burnout.  Social media is a fantastic way to communicate and entertain.  Candidates who execute a good social media strategy will find voters will be spending more time finding out about their them.

This special election will be so interesting because it is a condensed race, filling a big-name elected’s seat and featuring candidates who are accomplished in their own right.  It’s an interesting environment for an election playing out in the 5th district.  I think whomever can think outside of the traditional boundaries of campaigns will be successful.

Facebook or LinkedIn for Public Affairs?

When sitting down with clients to evaluate which social network to get going on, people are starting to ask whether to go with Facebook or LinkedIn.  The very question represents a defining moment in social networking and marketing.  It signifies that the very social networks themselves are becoming differentiated enough to draw very distinctive utilities between each other.  These sort of differences might be the start of social networking fragmentation.  But, let’s leave that to a later post.

Instead, when looking at Facebook vs. LinkedIn, I find it helpful to ask the right questions and quickly size up the client’s intent when using social networks.

When working on a state political race, it become very clear to me that using LinkedIn was great at reaching out to specific audiences.  For example, older audiences or potential supporters we met at professional events, made a lot of sense to reach out to them using LinkedIn.  In fact, I always thought of LinkedIn as an entre to the candidate to develop deeper connections.

To me, LinkedIn is more like a static webpage.  That’s because the content is pretty static.  A person’s profile is basically their resume with a few other facts about a person.  CIO points this out in a recent article.  They explain people using LinkedIn can aggregate lots of loose connections with people, some they don’t even know, and still feel safe.   This is because LinkedIn doesn’t allow for people in a person’s network to find out a whole lot about them.

Facebook is much more interactive.  It shows peoples actions and is so transparent, one can learn a lot about people simply from observing them (of course privacy settings can alter this).  For events, sharing info and speaking directly with supporters, no doubt Facebook provides an advantage over LinkedIn.

At the end of the day, these different social networks are brands, like in any other category.  Think of LinkedIn as Polo (older, classic, experienced) and Facebook like Kenneth Cole (younger, hipper, stylish).  Inherently, these different brands attract users with different qualities or users of each site have adapted to the culture of these respective social networks.

It’s a good lesson when planning which networks to become active and how best to use them.

Social Media Campaign vs. Long-Term Commitment

I’ve written before that there is no such thing as a social campaign.  Campaigns suggest there is a beginning and an end to the social media effort.  But, organizations must realize that unlike most traditional advertising that is inherently a one-way communication experience, social media enables two or more way communications.  Therefore, to think of social media as a campaign, is counterproductive.  Organizations who involve themselves in social media must be in it for the long term because communication from target audiences is ongoing and social media represents an important space to build and evolve brands.  The beautiful and unique thing about social media is that this tool allows for more stakeholders to have a role in shaping the brand and therefore bringing more value of that brand to stakeholders’ lives.

Eric Lander of Search Engine Journal gets it right when he says organizations must be proactive rather than reactive when using social media.  It’s one thing to for an organization to say they want to fight attacks on them made on social networks.  But, the best way to do that is not through a campaign that may very well achieve desired results.  In the long run though, the attacks will come back.

Instead, organizations need proactive and sustained social media marketing.  Social media represents one of the best and dynamic places to build brands.  It’s one of the few places that actively involves stakeholders in the brand building experience.  Therefore, a long term commitment has to be made to social media marketing.

The best point Eric makes though is the role agencies play in advising clients on social media.  If an agency talks about running campaign, then they don’t get social media.  It’s up to us agency people to right the ship and direct organizations to align resources to make social media marketing part of an organization’s strategy.  Otherwise, it’s like using a band-aid in open heart surgery.  At some point you’ll need to make the investment and have the procedure.

Why Blog in Local Politics?

I was involved in a race for state representative here in suburban Chicago a while back where the campaign was not sold on the merits of starting a blog. If you read my blog, you know which side of the fence I stood on. The other side wasn’t against blogging because they thought blogging didn’t make sense or wasn’t worth it. Rather, those against blogging were more concerned the candidate would not have time to write posts to keep the blog fresh and updated.

For several reasons, I thought they were misguided. In a local race, often information about candidates is hard to come because big city media only pays attention to the largest races and/or national issues. Candidates or elected officials’ websites and their blogs, are the best sources of information in the absence of media coverage.

For a local or state race blogs offer the advantage of:

• sustaining conversation with constituents or voters where paid or earned media offers only one-way communications
• putting the candidate on record on important issues so community members fully know where the candidate stands
• blog posts are shareable, meaning if you are “word of mouth worthy,” your blog visitors are empowered to share what they believe is meaningful with others
• regular blog updates (which don’t have to be long-winded essays) are great tools to build community and sustain momentum in a long campaign

Looking back on my “to blog or not to blog” discussions with members of the this campaign for state office, the argument “not to blog” because the candidate would be too busy, actually presented a huge opportunity for others close to the campaign to fill in. What better way to outreach than to give supporters, volunteers or donors the opportunity to guest blog on a candidate or elected official’s website?