Anyone have any ideas for this newspaper publisher? He runs a state-wide newspaper for a religious denomination, and every two weeks they mail about 16,000 32-page newspapers out to subscribers. Paid advertising makes up about 10% to 15% of these pages. They have a modest e-zine as well, and they have all their news on their Web site, too. Every state has a similar church-denomination newspaper, and he has teamed up with the editors in two other states, with whom he shares news tips and stories. There is no central newspaper organization for the whole country, however. A typical story in his newspaper might be one that covers a controversial resignation or organizational dispute occurring in one of the state or national religious organizations, or maybe a report on missionary work, and so forth. But this newspaper editor's question to me was, what more should he be doing, given the dramatic new technologies available?
I told him that social media like Facebook and Twitter might be perfect vehicles for a church-based newspaper, because members of a church are natural connectors; most of them want to reach out to others, share stories, make suggestions, and do good things. So I suggested he arrange a one-hour tutorial for himself with someone familiar with these services, and that he should begin thinking about how to start conversations, generate feedback, and create more active communities of common interest among his readers, as opposed to simply putting out news.
But what else should he do? Anyone have any good ideas? Know any similar situations?
An interesting concept might be to learn more about the interests of his subscribers by sending a postcard inviting them to a pURL (personalised URL).
For doing this perhaps the subscriber might be enticed with a month of free service. The subscriber would be asked to fill out an online survey where they would be asked what kind of articles and advertisments would be relevent for them. This data would be captured for the production of a variable newspaper run and compared to a database of articles and advertisements at press time. Each subscribers newspaper could now be customised for them and would be more meaningful because it would more cater to their interests.
As noted above, participation and two way communication is critical to leveraging the Web for publishing. While NING is a great tool and resource, existing social spaces (Facebook, LinkedIn, Care2) may be better options which don't require subscribers/readers to create new accounts - only leverage existing ones. Also, developing mobile-friendly and smart phone applications for content delivery would be a good idea.
Regardless, the key to publishing sustainability is monetizing content. Networked, contextual and user-targeted advertising needs to replace traditional, broadcast/banner approaches for the online publishing component.
Publishers must adust traditional editorial thinking to allow for the juxtapositioning of contextually relevant advertising - we recently piloted a project with the New York Times online that positioned product ads next to a story in which that product was profiled and increased the click through rates by over 3,000 percent. Combining contextual positioning with regional targeting and even individual subscriber behavior linkages is very compelling to advertisers.
Here is some data on traditional publishers shifts to online:
http://www.jaybyrne.com/2009/04/02/the-death-of-print/
Getting involved in the SM scene is a great first step. My recommendations moving forward would be to rethink the "publishing" mindset.
From a community perspective - church/faith based participants as you've mentioned are naturally inclined to connect. If I were the publisher I'd look at being the central point of aggregation on all the conversations that matter to their subscribers. In other words - don't publish information - enable conversations.
Create a NING site, aggregate great content from other sources, act as a trusted advisor for other publishers who have the same issues. Become the network node for all information associated with the needs of the audience.
Ask the question: "what does my audience need?" instead of "what do I need."