kb seminars: building a web plan - unique aspects for radio station of network; 05/12

Asia Calling Network – Convergence Conference

“Building a Web Plan”

Presented 2 May 2012

Siem Reap, Cambodia

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Session 1: Developing a Strategic Plan

Session 2: Building AudiencePart 1: Audio Services

Part 2: Search Engines

Part 3: Social Media

Session 3: Revenue Opportunities

Session 4: Measurement

Appendix: Technical Details

Agenda: Day Two

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Strategy - Laying the Ground Work

The starting point for developing a Business Plan for your website is to address two key questions.

1. What are your goals for your website?

- To reach a new audience- To apply new reporting techniques- To generate new revenues- To reach new network affiliates- To reach new funders

There are many goals for building a web presence, the challenge is articulating the most important ones to your current operations.

2. What impact will the success of your new website have on your current operations?

- Creates the need for new content types

- Potentially shifts audience from one media to another

- Potentially shifts advertiser interest from one media to another

Your strategy will need to address these concerns and develop ways to measure and manage them.

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Strategy – Understanding the Market

Next begin with as much information about the online environment in your area?

1. Who is the audience?

- How big is the audience?- Who are they? Younger? More urban?

2. Is your audience outside your broadcast area?

- Are you targeting a “diaspora” audience?

- Where are they located?

- What language do they speak? What are they interested in?

3. Are there sources of commercial revenue to support your web operations?

- Is there an online advertising market? Are they interested in your audience?

- Is the information you provide uniquely valuable that people would pay?

+ Access to programming?+ Music?+ Other?

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Strategy – Developing the “Service”

Given your goals for the website and the environment, what kind of service do you plan to offer?

1. What will the content be?

- Audio only? A streaming only site?- Audio downloads with short descriptions?- Full text stories from the broadcast?- Full text stories plus online only content?

2. If you operate a news service or network of radio stations, how will you manage the content across this network?

- In your network is there one site that is most important? Why?

- Will you require any special involvement from network websites?+ Provide advertising space for the network?+ Provide local content to redistribute to stations in the network?+ Provide links back to the main network site?

3. Are there particular language or design elements you need?

- To achieve your coverage/audience goals

- To achieve your revenue goals

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Strategy - The Competition

After planning your service, look for other companies with the same goals, trying to solve the same problem.

1. What other companies are targeting your customer? What can you learn from them?- Are they successful? Growing?- Why are they successful? What do they do well?

- Where are they un-successful? Why?

- What can you learn from them? Pricing? Marketing?

Remember!

- Very rarely are there completely new problems to solve or products to solve them

- Most new products are really new solutions to old problems

So, you can always learn from others in the market!

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Strategy - OptionsThere are basically five “main” types of websites for radio stations and networks.

1.Basic Site – Provides simple introduction to the organization’s goals and actions.

2.Streaming Site – Provides an online facsimile of the radio station’s live broadcast programming.

3.Radio Station Site – Provides a full representation of the station’s programming and may include downloadable audio, streaming audio, text stories with photos and even video.

4.Radio Program Site – Provides a full representation of a particular radio program – like Asia Calling.

5.Radio Network or News Network Site – Provides access to all network programing and may provide other services (platform, advertising, marketing) to the affiliate radio stations.

Your strategy will define where you are today and how you will get where you are going.

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Strategy – Radio Station SitesRadio station sites have begun to follow a model – but not all radio website operators have broadcast stations.

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Strategy – Radio Program SitesRadio program sites are increasingly beginning to resemble magazine sites.

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Strategy – Network #1

Owned by its newspaper members

Limited re-publication by AP

Sales outside to Google/Yahoo, other online news sites has created conflict between AP and owners.

Wide redistribution with newspaper, radio and TV clients

Revenue:- News Service Fees- Advertising revenue

A few broad models for network or news service sites are available. AP.org – places most of the attention on the affiliate’s website.

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Publicly traded company

Full re-publication on Reuters.com and Reuters.TV (YouTube)

Wide distribution to clients and through website, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube

Revenue:- News Service Fees- Advertising

Reuters maintains all of the focus on Reuters and has built a large advertising business.

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Provides programming

Provides some stations with a digital platform – KQED.org

Takes locally developed programming from local affiliates.

Supports with training and revenue generation.

National Public Radio (NPR) provides both programming and services, but local affiliates can choose the relationship they want.

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Agenda: Day Two

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Building Audience: Sources

Where does your online audience come from?

1. Direct: User knows your brand and its online address. User types address into the address bar or bookmarks the address. User Characteristics: Brand loyal, regular visitor, “older users”

1. Search: User is looking for a specific item of information on the web such as “Weather in Siem Reap?”User Characteristics: - New user, occasional users, lazy users (can’t remember web address)- Users more interested in the information than the source!

2. Referrals: User gets a recommendation from another user or website. Increasingly from social media like FaceBook & Twitter.User Characteristics: Referrer a “loyal follower” of your site.

3. Advertising: Users who follow an ad online to find your site. User Characteristics: User fits market’s target description.

Google Analytics will give you a summary of your traffic by source.

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Building Audience : The Mix

Simple

Real Time(test)

The Mix

The Mix

One of the more complex parts of building an online audience is the number of different ways a website must use to build an audience.

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Building Audience : Managing Sources

Online Audience

Today we are going to look at a couple of these tools.

Audience Source Marketing Technique- Direct On Air Mentions/Advertising Streaming Directories- Search Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Referrals Developing social media distribution - Advertising Developing ads to cross promote

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Agenda: Day Two

For radio networks and stations, online audio services provide two types of support.

1.Streaming: Provides a nearly real-time replica of the station’s live broadcast.

a. Usually used by individual stations to reach audiences outside of their broadcast area.

b. Simple to set-up, but often limited to the number of simultaneous listeners

c. Can be expensive to expand as audience grows.

2.Archived Files: Creates individual audio file for download or playa. Can be hosted internally b. Can be served through an external service

Podcasting – distributes archived audio files through RSS format to - Special (mobile) services, iTunes & Blackberry Podcast Directory- RSS Readers with multi-media built in, like Google Reader

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Building Audience: Audio Services

To promote your station’s stream, the most direct technique is to make sure that your station is listed in streaming directories.

1.There are multiple streaming directories:a. Choose either the largest streaming directories (which you can find

through a Google Search [Example: Chiang Mai Radio]b. Choose directories that are consistent with your target audience:

For instance, if you are targeting a overseas listener in Dubai, look for services that are strong in Dubai.

2.The largest independent streaming directories are:a. Tunein.com (US/UK)b. Streamfinder.com (US)c. vTuner.com (US)d. Streema.com (US)

3.The most frequently used directory is Apple’s iTunes Radio Directory

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To be included in the iTunes Radio Directory, follow these steps.

1.Determine what format, bitrate, location (web address) for the streama. iTunes only works with only a few standard formatsb. Bitrate and format can be provided IT Department

2.Set-up an iTunes Store account for the station, no charges apply.

3.Submit your radio station’s stream for consideration, by:a. Create an email, from a station email account to

[email protected]. Subject line = Station Submission <Station Official Name>

Email includes the following information:i. Station iTunes login email, Contact Name, Email, Phoneii. Station Name, City/Province, Language, Genre/Type (News)iii. Stream Type (MP3 or AAC)iv. Station website address and short descriptionv. Bitrate and Audio Stream address

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YouTube can also be used to distribute audio files/radio programs.

1. Save radio program as mp3 file.

2. Create “photo” slide show- Collect images in a file- Use a photo slide show editor iMovie (Mac), Photoshop

OR

- Use YouTube Partners OneTrueMedia or Stupeflix

3. Upload to Youtube channel

Examples: - Radio 105 Roma

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN3Fn8slge0

Using RSS of archived radio program mp3 files, your station can create podcast for use in an RSS Reader or on iTunes

1. Create multimedia RSS feed - Audio file, text description, …

2. Submit to podcast directories - iTunes - Blackberry

3. Desktop/laptop distribution - Example Google Reader

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Agenda: Day Two

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Building Audience: Search Engine Focus

There are five major search engines – Google, Baidu (China), Bing, and Yandex (Russia), Naver (Korea).

But for Asia Calling Network members, Google is the most important search engine.

Afghanistan Cambodia Indonesia Malaysia Nepal Pakistan Thailand#1 Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook Google.com Google.com.pk Google.co.th#2 Google.com Google.com Google.co.id Google.com.my Facebook Facebook Facebook#3 Yahoo.com Google.com.kh Google.com Google.com YouTube Google.com Google.com#4 YouTube YouTube Blogspot.com YouTube Google.com.np YouTube YouTube#5 Google.com.af Yahoo.com Yahoo.com Blogspot.com Yahoo.com Yahoo Live.com

Source: Alexa, 2012

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Building Audience: Search Engine Focus - Myanmar

Although there is no Google search engine for Myanmar, the company does provide for limited Myanmar search through its English site.

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Building Audience : Searches Three Step Process

To understand Search Engine Optimization, it is best to understand how do Search Engines work?

Three Steps:

1.Crawl – Find the site

2.Index – Understand the site

3.Rank – Deliver the results

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Building Audience : Search Engine Basics – Three Steps

Step 1: Crawl

Each web page is made up of multiple files:- HTML, JPG, MP3, ....

When a page is ‘called’, the files automatically fill out a frame according to the ‘coded’ instructions.

Each set of files is (usually) held in a separate database:- Content Database- Media Database (photos, video)- Advertising Databases.

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Building Audience : Search Engine Basics – Three Steps

Step 1: Crawl

A “robot” moves across the webpages downloading these web files.

Often called a “spider”, because it moves on a “web”.

For a typical daily news site, the crawler may download 5 to 10 thousand pages a day.

The crawler may “visit” a daily news website multiple times during the day.

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Audience Development: Search Engine Basics – Three Steps

Step 2: Index

Search engines analyze each downloaded file for subject.

The search engine tries to answer the question:

“What is this file about?”

Search engines can only see TEXT:- Not photos- Not video- Not sound

Search Engines See This Page

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Step 3: Rank

Search engines then rank each file base on a formula – “the algorithm”.

Files with high ranks are at the top of a search return; low rankings at the bottom.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

High Rank

Low Rank

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Step 3: Rank

Many different things impact the amount of traffic that the search engine sends your site.

But for most search terms, the difference between the tops spot and the bottom spot (usually #10) is several 100 percent.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Source: Optify, 2011

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Building Audience : Search Engine Optimization

For each step there are things your site can do to build traffic.

These steps are called Search Engine Optimization – SEO.

SEO Elements

1. Crawl

1. Index:

1. Rank:

Step Do what?

• Be sure to register your site to help Google find you

• Focus on the site’s individual details to makesure that Google understands what they mean

• Make sure that your site is well-linked to other similar sites.

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Audience Development: Site Registration

To help the search engines find your site, set-up account with Google Webmaster services.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

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Audience Development: Page and File Elements

After telling the search engines who you are with webmaster tools, you have to make sure each page is well labeled.

The most important things to remember.

1.Text: Search engines “read” text, not photos, or videos.

Do: Use text to label photos and videos – title, caption, alt-tags.

Don’t: Assume that just because the story is about Putin, that the search engine will know that the photo is of Putin.

2.Files: More files on the page with supporting text labels, the more likely the search engines will know what the page is about. Do: Add photo, video and other related files.

Do: Label each file clearly, including file name, captions and in any “alt-tags” that are hidden in the page code.

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Audience Development: Search Engine Rank

Search engines rank your blog based on how engaged your blog is with other sites.

It’s all about links! The more links to your blog and from your blog to relevant information, the higher your blog’s importance will be.

Do: Develop as many relevant links to your blog as possibleA. Blogrolls: Create a list of blogs that you follow about your topics or location.B. Link Exchanges: Encourage “related bloggers or sites” to exchange links with you.

Do: Use links in a text post to your blog.A. Places or Organizations: Add a link to their websitesB. People: Add a link to their blog, resume page, or social media page (is they have one).

Do: Use social media to encourage reviews and ratings. All sharing is links.

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Building Audience: Search Engine Summary

Search engines play an important role in helping new and returning users find your site.

A couple of simple steps will begin the process of developing search engine traffic.

1.Register your site with Google Webmaster Tools

2.Manage your web site and web pages to clearly use text and “hidden text” markers to tell the search engines what each page is about.

3.Manage the links to and from your site to be the most relevant possible.

The more relevant links the higher your page/site will be ranked which will contribute to position in the Search Engine Return Page.

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Agenda: Day Two

This review will focus on establishing a foundation for future development, including:

Setting up accounts

Establishing “automated content feeds” to populate your FaceBook and Twitter accounts.

Building “friends”

Initial trusted interactions with your friends

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Building Audience: Social Media

Twitter’s very simple characteristics make it popular to use.

1.Twitter is short – 140 letters OR spaces.- Designed for use on SMS- Can contain weblinks

2.Twitter is public. The default twitter message is public to all.- Requires a specific action to make a tweet private- DM (Direct Mail) an individual- Set your tweets to “private” in your profile. Only followers can read.

3.Twitter is mobile.- Originally developed as a group SMS project.- SMS in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan (https://support.twitter.com/articles/14226-how-to-find-your-twitter-short-long-code)

1.Twitter is open.- Many aspects of twitter are provided by outside companies. - Many aspects of twitter were created through group consensus.

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Building Audience: Social Media Twitter

https://support.twitter.com/articles/14226-how-to-find-your-twitter-short-long-code

Opening a twitter account is very simple.

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A few things to watch:1.Use a company email like [email protected] to establish account2.Chose a short username. Twitter posts are 140 letters or less!3.Don’t become hostage to a single person.

Writing a tweet has some basic rules.

1.Remember short – leave room for followers to re-share (re-tweet) and comment. Leave room for your Twitter name @XXX.

2.Do include links back to your site. - Use “link shortening” sites to shorten long url’s- Example bit.ly/Akkxpl points to

http://unn.com.np/index.php?pageName=news_details&catId=14&id=6121 (~65 letters)

- Examples of Link Shortening sites are: bit.ly, tinyurl.com,

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Twitter Name

Link shortening

Building followers in Twitter is simple, but requires regular posting and can take time.

1.Posting: - Post regularly, ideally a couple of times during the day.- Post during or just before peak tweeting times- Treat your followers like your “brand’s best friends”

Examples:- Offer polls- Create special offers, only to those following your Twitter stream- Post photos and solicit photos, even have photo contests

2.Follow Other Tweeters!- Target tweeters who are relevant to your content

– Politicians, other media, local citizens, sports teams

3.Join Directories like www.thaitwitter.com

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http://www.thaitwitter.com/

In summary, there are a few simple steps to get started on Twitter.

1.Create a Company account.- Make it short and memorable- Make sure it belongs to the Company

2.Create a regular posting schedule:- Choose a few stories from your website to re-post with a link OR- Use Twitfeed to set up an automatic re-posting of links to your website

3.Ask everyone in your Company who is currently using Twitter to follow your account!

4.Add your account to local directories

5.Find at least 100 twitter accounts that your company should find interesting and follow them.

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Now the hard part – FaceBook.

FaceBook is one of the fastest growing websites in history and currently has over 900 million users worldwide.

Excluding the US FaceBook’s top five countries are India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey. - In all of these markets mobile usage dominates.- Usage patterns in each country are unique.

Fastest growing major markets in the last three months- Brazil (+ 7.0 million)- Japan (+2.4 million) - South Korea (+1.9 million)- Sweden (+1.7million)- Russia (+1.1 million)

FaceBook has many features and opportunities to build audience and revenue. But the extra features make it more complex to use.

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Building Audience: Social Media Facebook

Building Audience: Social Media FacebookCreating a FaceBook page is more complicated.

When you have a personal profile, you can choose between three types of FaceBook “pages”:1.Profile: Specifically for people- No limit to “friends”- Cannot advertise their profile

2.Group: used for specific groups of people- Can be either public or private- Limited to 5,000 members- Cannot advertise to promote group membership

3.Page: Used for organizations- Can add specific “apps” to create customized functionality

+ RSS Graffiti, publishes directly to Page from a site’s RSS Feed.- No limit in the number of people who can “like’ the page- Can advertise the Page to promote and create audience- Can analyze with internal “Insights” analytics- Detailed guidelines in Appendix.

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Best Choice

Building Audience: Social Media FacebookOnce you have created a FaceBook Page for your website, there are several actions to grow your “fans”.

1.Create a regular posting schedule:- Determine key stories to post and times to post each day OR- Set-up automatic story posting using an RSS app like RSS Grafitti

2.Create regular interaction with FaceBook fans in addition to the FaceBook scheduled posts. - Add special FaceBook only audio or video- Create polls or other opportunities for “fans” to submit. “Send us your flood photos”

3.Advertise your Page on FaceBook- A good way to grow your first fans is to use FaceBook’s advertising tools to reach your target audience.

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Agenda: Day Two

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Revenue ToolsAs your audience builds, you can add revenue tools to your site.

Donations: Volunteer contributions from your most loyal audience

Advertising: Lots of options, most depend on traffic volume and focus

Ad Networks: Simple to install. Another third party company sells the ads and you display them on your blog.

Sponsorship: Similar to a Donation, but from a business instead of an individual. Often a message is displayed “Sponsored by___________”

Ads: Requires a regular sales force and technology to sell, collect and display the ads.

Commerce: Selling product for yourself or for other companies

Syndication: Selling new or past work to third party media companies.

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Revenue Tools: DonationsVoluntary donations can build a small revenue base from your most loyal audience.

Do: Choose the simplest method for your audience to contribute“Widgets” exist for your site, mostly using PayPal

Do: Suggest an amount for regular donations

Do: Ask for donations to fund a specificproject like a specific story.

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Revenue Tools: AdvertisingAd networks provide the simplest and the least “conflicted” type of advertising for CJ blogs.

Ad networks do the selling for you.

Protects your independence from large advertisers.- Ad networks do not tell advertisers where their advertisement appears.

Ad networks depend on click-through on particular ads to make money.- To make money focus your content and build a large audience

Visually, ad network ads come in a lot of different forms, so they are not too disruptive to your blog.

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Revenue Tools: AdvertisingIn Asia Google AdSense has the largest ad network, but it is not available in all languages.

Google Adsense: - Introduction Page- Can be added quickly with an addition of an embedded piece of code

Google AdSense is a language specific network. It is not available in every language:- Available in English, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, Chinese- Hindi, Nepali and Urdu implementations are in development.

You can follow the annoucements at http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=9727

- AdSense is not available in Khmer, Myanmar, Pasto or Dari

But other local ad networks of English language pages may help.

https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/?hl=en_US

http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=9727

http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=9727

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Revenue Tools: Commerce and SyndicationTwo other revenue options exist though they are still emerging in SE Asia.

Commerce: Product Sales- For example: music program downloads, special access, …- Often linked to a specific project - Limited revenue opportunity, require some special technology

Commerce: Subscriptions- Create special value or special access to your site

Syndication: Content Sales- Independent content sales mostly through blogs in English

+ Helium.com+ Blogburst.com

- Some photo and video citizen sales sites+ AFP’s Citizenside

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Session 4: Measurement – Presented as Live Demonstration


Agenda: Day Two

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Agenda: Day Two

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For both Yandex and Google, site registration will require you to “verify” your site with the search engine.

Verification requires you to prove the “control” of the site by adding a short code line to the header of the site. For example:

There are many ways to do this – adding a verification code is just the simplest.


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After you have created webmaster accounts and verified your sites, you can work directly with the search engines.

Most important functions to start are:Submit Site Map: Submitting a site map informs the search engines how content is organized and when there is new content on your site.

Identify Languages: Each search engine uses different indexes based on different languages.

If you create a section of your site in English, the engines will index the site in Russian, unless you tell them otherwise.


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Audience Development: Webmaster Tools

FaceBook Page: Manage Permissions

1. Important to Set the Landing Page Recommend Setting to the Wall

2. Can restrict what audience can post to the wall

The more people can post, the more they will bring their friends to your Page.

Recommend allowing all types of posts. Check all boxes.

Facebook Page: Basic Information – Part 1

3. Best to choose Companies & Organizations > Media/News/Publishing

4. Complete basic info

Helps audience find your page in FaceBook Search

Facebook Page: Basic Information – Part 2

5. More information.

Always best to complete,if you have the information.

FaceBook Page: Basic Information – Part 2

6. Upload a logo.

Best to choose a logo or image that is SQUARE

FaceBook Page: Managing Admins

7. Managing Admins:

Whoever creates the page is the first admin.

The first admin can invite additional admins to help post content and manage the audience on the page.

New Admins must have “liked” the page, first.

Use the email the new admin used to register with FaceBook to add them.

Facebook Page: Managing “Apps”

8. Adding “Apps” allows the admin to create special services on the page.

For example:

RSS Grafitti allows the admin to automatically post to the page using RSS feeds.

Groups allows the admin to create a discussion group on the page.

Questions allows the admin to create a poll.

The Admin must first add the app to their account, then they can add to the page.

kb seminars: building a web plan - unique aspects for radio station of network; 05/12

Technology

radio network

strategy network

network of radio stations

news network site

new network affiliates

network websites

new audience

main network site