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 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 data Tracking content Web analytics Search engine optimization Effective headline writing Distribution 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