Welcome to the Digital Edge Blog!
The Digital Edge Blog focuses on developments, trends, best practices and more in newspaper digital media. The blog launched in 2006 (archives before August 2008 are here).
We look forward to reading your comments and contributions to the Digital Edge Blog. Questions? E-mail Beth Lawton at beth.lawton@naa.org.
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Digital Edge News Update: Facebook Attracting Small Businesses; OCRegister.com's Relaunch with Customization
Facebook Starts to Attract Small
Businesses
 Facebook is
becoming an attractive, free marketing outlet for small businesses, The Los
Angeles Times reported. Facebook has 1.4 million business pages with an average
of 100 fans per page.
"Companies
don't have a lot of resources to create their own website," said Jeremiah
Owyang, a social media analyst at Altimeter Group. "Using these sites
where the customers already are in their communities makes a lot of
sense."
Businesses
are also connecting through Twitter, Yelp and other communities and social
services.
Source: The
Los Angeles
Times
Reporters: Be Careful when Contacting
Someone's Facebook ‘Friends'
Reporters
may want to be careful when they contact sources through Facebook, Poynter
reported.
"It's just
as easy to lie on Facebook as anywhere else. Why would one platform be inherently
more trustworthy than another? Even 'friends' can be the most casual of
acquaintances, with little personal knowledge of the individual," wrote
Poynter's Regina McCombs.
However,
there are ways reporters can use Facebook to more fully report a story. Read
more here.
NAA Report: Connecting with Readers
on Facebook
Newspapers
are following their audience onto the increasingly popular Facebook social
network with the goal of extending the newspaper's brand reach and driving
traffic back to the newspaper's Web site. Find out how the Charlotte Observer,
the Knoxville News-Sentinel and The New York Times are using the social network
to connect with readers and advertisers in this new Digital Edge article.
Source: NAA
OCRegister.com Relaunches with
Customization
 The Orange
County Register is relaunching its Web site and will allow readers to customize
their experience there.
"You may
increase or decrease the number of headlines, remove sub-topics within the
boxes, or minimize or eliminate the content box altogether. You may also add in
new content sections (up to 20) - whether it's content from ocregister.com or
outside Web sites - through RSS feeds," according to the Inside OCR blog.
The site
also has new community pages, and the newspaper is working with local bloggers.
More
information about the relaunch is available at www.ocregister.com/insideocr.
NOLA.com's Traffic Still Up
Significantly
 Traffic to
NOLA.com, the site affiliated with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, is still
much higher than it was before Hurricane Katrina hit. Poynter reported the site
gets between 1.1 million and 1.2 million page views per day - about 60 percent
more than before the hurricane hit.
Source: Poynter
Quote of the Day: Content, Community
the ‘New Critical Factors' for Revenue
"Content and
community are the new critical factors for site monetization. Why? Quality
content is more likely to create engagement, which leads to community activity
on the site, which leads to even more engagement. Engagement leads to
more time on site, and the likelihood of more interest in the ads targeted to
the site, which leads to ROI for advertisers. ROI for advertisers leads
to site monetization, profit and the ability to further invest in quality."
-- Judy Sims in a blog entry
comparing AOL's strategy with that of newspapers.
‘Amafessionals': Amateurs Emerge as
a Powerful Force Outside of Blogging
For years,
growing ranks of amateur bloggers have posted entries just for the fun (or the
challenge) of it. But amateurs in other areas are also using the Web for their
hobbies, giving rise to a new class of "amafessionals" (amateur-professionals),
according to a Wall Street Journal microtrends column.
Source: The
Wall Street Journal
Forrester: Print Media Slow to Move
Online
Only 12
percent of executives surveyed by Forrester say their companies are "very
aggressive" when it comes to investing in new media. Reasons included budget
constraints and a low rate of end-user adoption, Editor & Publisher
reported.
Forrester
surveyed more than 150 executives from several industries that heavily use
print, including publishing and retail companies.
Source:
Editor & Publisher
Google Launches Social Search
Google has
launched "social search" in beta, allowing Google account holders to search Web
content from within their own social circle. Google's Social Search will search
the Web looking for content from a person's connections that are included in
their Google public profile, including the people they are following on
Twitter.
Source: The
Official Google Blog
Registration
is Now Open for NAA's mediaXchange 2010
 As newspapers
refocus their business models toward multiple platforms, the Newspaper
Association of America will host mediaXchange 2010, a conference for industry
professionals to share audience and revenue development strategies that have
generated growth in print and online. Registration is open now at
mediaxchange.naa.org!
Also, NAA
is still accepting proposals for presentations for this even.! Click here
to make a proposal by Nov. 2.
Upcoming
NAA Webinars: Free Classifieds, Local Digital Revenue Strategies, More
 Nov.
18: Some newspaper
executives believe that offering free classifieds - at least in some categories
- can increase print circulation, online traffic, classifieds revenue or some
combination of those positive results.
Learn about the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution's program, how it has grown the newspaper's classifieds
audience and how free classifieds might help your newspaper in this free
webinar from NAA. Registration will open soon for this webinar!
Dec. 2: Innovation and opportunity in the
local market often benefits from the expertise and experience of partners who
have developed tools, technology and business models across many markets.
Here is a no-cost, time friendly opportunity to hear specific, quick-to-market
opportunities to drive digital revenues in your market.
Each of four sponsoring companies will present an overview of their offering,
describe the business opportunity from a newspaper digital media perspective
and invite followup/questions on and offline.
Confirmed presenters: Paper G and Second Street Media.
If you are an industry supplier interested in participating, please contact
Kevin McCourt at Kevin.McCourt@naa.org or 571-366-1055.
Registration for attendees will open next month.
To register for the free
NAA webinars listed below, go to www.naa.org/events.aspx:
- Oct. 27: Monetizing Digital Content Vendor
Presentation: Microsoft
- Nov. 4: Retail Newspaper Partnerships: Perspectives
from Retailers, Agencies and Newspapers
- Nov. 10: Monetizing Digital Content Vendor
Presentation: Yahoo!
- Nov. 18: Free Online Classified Programs (registration
will open soon)
- Dec. 2: Local Digital Revenue Strategies (registration
will open soon)
Published
Oct 28 2009, 08:53 AM
by
Beth Lawton
About Beth Lawton
Beth Lawton is manager, digital media communications in the Business Development division of the Newspaper Association of America. She writes and edits many of NAA’s Digital Edge reports and the Online Publishing Update.
Prior to joining NAA two years ago, she worked as a Web producer and editor in newsrooms in the Midwest and the Caribbean.
Beth is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism (MSJ New Media 2003).
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