Any news organization’s web site can get a story picked up by popular sites such as Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Digg, or even Fark, resulting in a bump in page views. But that’s a traffic anomaly. A key metric media companies want to grow is their local audience, because local traffic is where the money is.
“Local advertising pays the bills in most cases and local advertisers want to reach people who can actually come to their stores,” said Serra Media CEO Mark Briggs, author of “Journalism 2.0,” and the upcoming book “Journalism Next,” in an e-mail interview. “And, as national news has become a commodity, local news is the differentiating factor most local news operations are emphasizing these days. Or, at least they should be.”
Local media companies are working with social media tools and user-generated content contributors to expand their local reach.
“I sense an inevitability is setting in with media companies with regard to social media. Those that thought … it was a fad that would quickly fade away are beginning to resolve themselves to the cold reality that social media is here to stay and will have to play a role in news coverage and audience building for a long time to come,” Briggs said.
The “Unbrand” Approach
Attracting local audiences can be a matter of launching a new, separately branded site with a targeted topic or geographic reach.
That’s what the Chicago Tribune Media Group did in August, when it launched ChicagoNow, a local blog hub dubbed a “new web site created by Chicagoans for Chicagoans.”
Bill Adee, editor for digital media for the Chicago Tribune, told me the Tribune has a huge local audience but there are certain areas they don’t index well. With ChicagoNow, he said, they wanted to focus on blogs, topics and people that visitors don’t get from ChicagoTribune.com. The site has just over 120 local blogs so far and Adee said the Tribune uses its other brands to promote the new site and its bloggers.
For example, he pointed out that if the Tribune’s cable TV station needs an expert on the Chicago Transit authority, they have one. “That’s something we can offer that a lot of other properties can’t,” he said.
ChicagoNow bloggers are paid $5 per 1,000 local page views, according to Adee, who said they focus their bloggers on Facebook and Twitter and encourage them to comment on other ChicagoNow blogs. About every month or so the site hosts a party so everyone can meet the new bloggers. The site had 1 million unique visitors in September and 45% were local — double what they expected to have at this point in the site’s development and they’ve hit every page view goal so far, he said.
“I think it’s gone beyond my wildest dreams so far,” he said.
Neighborhood News Coverage
Early last year, journalists Cory Bergman and his wife, Kate, started a Seattle-area neighborhood network of news blogs called Next Door Media, which won the Online News Association’s first Community Collaboration award in 2009.
Cory Bergman said in an e-mail interview that about 80% of their stories come from their neighbors and what they post in the blogs’ forums, comments, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. Experienced journalists who live in the neighborhood cover stories they find via those methods, using traditional journalism skills to gather and confirm information. When the stories are posted to the blogs, a hat tip is given to the user who originated the idea.
“In essence, we’re providing a layer of journalism over an empowered community. It’s a neighborhood answer service, rooted in journalism,” he said. Bergman said when it comes to breaking news, because the writers live in the neighborhoods they cover, they often beat traditional local news media to the scene. When a house fire broke out recently, they received seven e-mails and two photos in 15 minutes, he said.
He also added that Facebook and Twitter have been instrumental in helping Next Door Media get the word out about their sites, especially as they expand to new neighborhoods. MyBallard.com gets 600,000 monthly page views and 50,000 unique users and 95% of the traffic is from Seattle, which is “significantly higher than an average local news site and the engagement numbers are off the charts,” he said.
The company’s success is two-fold, according to Bergman. Editors care about their communities and go the extra mile to provide local news coverage that traditional media companies are increasingly unable to cover, he said, and also the site is not afraid to trust its neighborhoods.
He pointed out that launching successful sites isn’t easy and recommends news organizations partner with promising neighborhood sites rather than competing with them.
“Hyperlocal is a lot of work. There’s no magic formula. We’ve invested a lot of time in covering stories, attending community meetings and introducing ourselves to just about everyone. It’s about people and relationships and trust, not just code. It takes patience, which is rare quality these days,” he said.
Going Viral Locally
Internet memes can spread fast using social media, and news topics are no exception. What started out as crowdsourcing for a news story morphed into a local meme in the Twin Cities when WCCO-TV reporter Jason DeRusha, asked his followers on Twitter how someone gets an official day designated for them. He tweeted: “It’s National Cheesecake Day. How do you get a ‘day’ anyway? Good Question at 10. (Anyone have power to declare DeRusha Day?).”
That’s when the meme began. DeRusha didn’t anticipate how quickly the “DeRusha Day” movement would snowball. A Twitter user started a #DeRushaDay hashtag, and then someone created a poster, another person launched a web site and someone else started online petition devoted to the cause, which were all tweeted about. The end result? Sept. 21 was officially proclaimed DeRusha Day by the mayor’s office and a party marked the event.
So the viral nature of social media inadvertently spread among Twin Citians an idea that was closely tied to WCCO’s brand. How can others duplicate this success? Certainly going where your readers/listeners and viewers are is a start. Then you must regularly engage with locals in that social media space in a two-way conversation, rather than simply push out content. In DeRusha’s case, he uses social media in the story gathering process, often talking about the stories he works on and getting feedback from fans and followers. On TV he invites viewers to go to his blog and then discusses news stories there with them.
“I’m really interested in closing the loop between online fans, who follow me in the process, and TV viewers,” he said. “How do I get those web people to tune into the TV at ten? I try to put those people on TV. That seems to help.”
John Daenzer, WCCO’s director of new media, said in an e-mail interview the station’s use of social media has absolutely helped grow its local online audience. “We wouldn’t be as aggressive as we are about engaging in all sorts of social media if we thought otherwise. And we work very hard to ensure that when we use social media we’re not just pumping out promotional garbage. We also want to participate in the conversation and give folks new ways to connect with each other,” he said.
Facebook referrals to WCCO.com surged 1,287% in August and 1,082% in September over the same period last year, according to Daenzer’s data. Twitter referrals for August were up 1,029% over August 2008.
Keeping a Local Focus
Austin-American Statesman social media editor Robert Quigley has been the voice behind @statesman on Twitter since 2008. He also tweets for @hookemfans, the Twitter account for the Statesman’s football fan site Hookem.com, which relies heavily on aggregation and social media.
“Growing local audience is our local bread and butter,” Quigley said in an e-mail interview. “Our marketing department, through ads you can find on YouTube and many other campaigns, has been highlighting the work we’ve been doing online and in print. We’re making sure we understand and are serving that community through Statesman.com and Austin360.com.”
He keeps a focus on quality local content. His consistent highlighting of Statesman’s content, engagement in dialogue with the audience and crowdsourcing is also paying off. Facebook and Twitter are both in the top 10 in referring traffic to the newspaper’s sites, according to Quigley, who tweets about every 45 minutes Monday through Friday, but tweets more often when news is happening. He also typically updates the Statesman’s Facebook Fan page a few times a day with stories, photo galleries or videos.
Quigley said newspapers and other corporate brands should use social media as a two-way communication tool. “I follow back most people who follow us, which I think shows a level of engagement (and allows me to receive news tips privately through direct messages),” he said.
Sharlyn Lauby is the president of 
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