Journalism Next:Chapter 11: Building a Digital Audience for News

Cindy Royal, Ph.D

Assistant Professor

Texas State University

School of Journalism and Mass Communication

croyal@txstate.edu

www.cindyroyal.com

www.onthatnote.com

tech.cindyroyal.net

twitter.com/cindyroyal

facebook.com/cindyroyal

Building a Digital Audience

• If journalists write great stories, but no one reads them, how will journalism survive?

• Good writing is still the foundation. But it's not enough.• Make smart business decisions based on dataTracking contentWeb analyticsSearch engine optimizationEffective headline writingDistribution through social media

Measuring Journalism• What gets measured gets managed• Essential to competing in data-driven world• Track. Measure. Adapt.• Decide what to track (stories, blog posts, slide

shows, videos, podcasts, news updates, Twitter, Facebook, retweets, replies, user-generated content)

• Set benchmarks• OKR – Objectives and Key Results• Make judgments based on historical data/future

goals• Track your audience – use analytics

Identify Key Data Points

• Pageviews• Visits and unique visitors• Engagement and referrers

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• How search engines work• Spiders/robots• Indexing• Queries• Google juice – Google gives more

importance to a website that links to it• Keywords• Search-engine friendly

headlines/content

Grow Audience with SEO

• Content is king• Linking is queen• Make sure links make sense• Use title tags• HTML Meta tags

Use Social Media as Distribution Channel

• Blogs• Flickr, YouTube• Twitter, Facebook• Digg, reddit, Fark, Stumbleupon• Increase social capital – becoming the

trusted center for a community• 2-way conversation• Puts human face on journalism• Track, measure, distribute, adapt