There is no print! There is
no radio, there is no tv: it is not about the web. There is content -
digitalized input and output.
Planning for an expansion into digital media
What do you have to say that
is unique and who do you wish to say it to.
Analyse the market: Who is
the competition? Here it is important to understand that the competition may
not be another news organisation. It is anyone who produces the kind of content
you wish to spread.
This could mean everything from government agencies to
Craig’s list to individual and community blogs.
What do you bring to the area that is not already
there?
Define your user
base
Here there are two categories:
Your target audiences and your actual audiences [see
“crunch the log files” below].
There will in all probability be a number of differing
audiences particularly within your target audiences.
Map their media
situation
In this case you are particularly interested in the
levels of access to technology.
Again there are two categories:
Their present level of access and their planned
levels.
“Media situation” should be a broad term encompassing not
only Internet access but also mp3 players, cell phone penetration etc.
Plan your operation
There will be two levels to this.
Internal - work flow issues, routines (how to spread
information internally, the relative weight of different media in the
publishing process, publishing policies), user-driven content, digital
collection of material, video/TV, sound/radio, databases, archiving etc.
Advertising issues need to be looked at – packages over all media types,
geographic targeting etc. Who are your strategic partners?
External – what the consumer sees and gets.
This is where you need to gear your site to the
technical levels of your audiences. A more (technically) sophisticated audience
will want some advanced applications (photo shows, illustrations, podcasts,
blogs etc); whereas a less (technically) sophisticated audience will possibly
find these extremely annoying.
Judging the correct levels is an ongoing task and as
levels of access and sophistication rise the site will have to be tweaked to
adapt.
A number of legal issues such as copyright, payment,
libel etc. need to be resolved during this process.
Design site
Style book.
Cutting edge technology tends to annoy most users except
early adopters (nerds). These can be a
very useful group in establishing the services in certain areas (cool factor)
but remember your core audience.
It may also be a good idea to stress that the pecking
order is journalism/story telling first, fancy technology last.
Test it!!!
Get some ordinary users in and see if they can
navigate it.
If something is absolutely clear to the designer
(“Only a moron could miss this”) but gives users a problem – ditch it! (and the
designers if they moan too much about it). Every new addition should be user
tested. The damage a non-functioning product can do is huge.
Crunch the log files
Every organisation with a web site has a huge database
of information on its users.
Where they come from and what search terms they used
if they found you in a search engine, what they look at, how long they spend on
each piece of information, what sort of bandwidth they have, what sort of computers they have, what web browsers they
use, and where they go when they leave you.
This information must be used to see if your target
audiences are actually the audiences you reach and to see if you are reaching
audiences you did not know about.
Change what does not
work!
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