The way people consume content and news has drastically changed over the past decade. Many more viewers are moving away from traditional channels such as television and radio and starting to check news and information on digital platforms. Most if not all of today’s biggest companies in the tri-media department have some form of a digital platform too.
What does this mean? It means that the evolution of content creation can no longer be ignored. We are now in the digital age of news delivery and consumption. And with that said, any company that looks to create a Newsroom site needs to start thinking about digital strategies.
When talking about marketing your website, search engine optimization should be top of mind. Anyone who’s been in the digital sphere knows that it’s important. But where we usually fall short isn’t in the strategizing, but when it comes to effectively implementing SEO strategies. Thankfully, there are now tons of tools that one can use to effectively run content development and publishing.
There are some tools that stand out as non-negotiables when considering newsroom SEO, content development, publishing, and marketing. Here are the top four tools that a newsroom website needs to be successful at delivering news efficiently and getting the word out.
A content management system, or CMS, provides news companies with a ready-built system for publishing content. Learning the content management software features and functionalities is foundational to streamlining a news delivery process. There are many content management systems available today to run blogs, websites, and media platforms. Search for the best solution for you. It’s often the case that a newsroom site will fit perfectly with a ready CMS.
A content management system is also important for SEO, as most if not all CMS tools have an in-built or integration-ready SEO optimization tool that helps analyze content for keyword optimization, readability, and other SEO considerations.
For a newsroom to be sustainable, it needs to be profitable. Content monetization can be tricky in the world of media as we want to deliver news at the lowest cost possible. But there are many ways that your company can monetize. You can either get advertisers to sponsor your website or provide an affordable subscription model. Some sites also do sponsored links and reviews for a fee.
The front-end user experience is another important piece of the puzzle that many sites must keep in mind. Design plays a pivotal role in getting traffic and keeping people engaged and informed on your website. Because there are so many templates already available online, newsroom websites rarely ever have to start from scratch when designing their websites. There are also front-end designer tools that minimize or even eliminate the need for any coding whatsoever.
News delivery is rarely ever a one-way street on digital media. People want to react and interact on websites. Things can get messy really fast so you’ll need an engagement tool to moderate comments, reactions, and interactions on a website. Find a solution that seamlessly integrates community and audience engagement tools with your content management system so that community managers can also manage your site’s engagement from the same platform.
Executing SEO strategies depend heavily on a newsroom team’s ability to optimize their workflow. Here are some tips that can help you when optimizing your newsroom operations.
When optimizing your newsroom site, it pays to be proactive when it comes to planning out your website content. Over 63.6 million live websites use a content management system for a reason— because it helps with the editorial workflow. Use a CMS to collaborate with writers and editors on keyword considerations, proofreading, and other processes that a piece of news needs to go through before release. With a content management system, teams can also schedule when a piece of content will go live to stay productive.
If you run a newsroom, the chances are high that you will be using multiple platforms. So finding and using multi-platform solutions on your content management system is also key when publishing content. These plugins and services can automatically publish out content as needed to multiple channels once a piece of content goes live.
Given that 30% of people in the United States check social media for news regularly, social media should be part of that multi-platform strategy. You can promote and release links to your content on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Some news sites also go on websites like Instagram and TikTok, but not as heavily as the first two.
It’s surprising to think that only 58% of companies understand the value of project management. Considering that over half of projects fail or never see the other end of the pipeline, more companies should use project management solutions, especially companies as fast-paced as news and media firms.
You can use an independent project management system to direct your content publishing workflow. But content management systems like Quintype’s Bold already have a project management system built into the backend that allows teams to move projects along the necessary phases.
We also integrate with other 3rd party project management apps to track the progress of the projects.
One other useful feature of content workflow software is a topic cloud, which is an organized database of news categories on your website. This service benefits both publishers and readers as its AI applications automate experiences on both ends. Readers can access content according to their categories and themes, just as one would check the sections of a newspaper. Through automated tagging features, publishers also save time and energy from having to manually sort news. Some services have the added feature of basing that auto-tagging on the keywords used in a news publication.
One of the fastest-growing digital publishing trends is monetization strategy. Digital platforms and the internet as a whole have democratized information, which is great for the readers’ side, but terribly complex for publishers. When deciding to monetize, streamline your processes by using an advertising provider like Google ads or other similar services so that you don’t have to spend time looking for advertising clients. You can just focus on building good content that generates traffic. You should also use readily available systems like Accesstype if you want to adopt a subscription-based model.
When your news team is always siphoned into the nitty-gritty of the day-to-day, the fast-paced culture can often take your eyes off the big-picture factors, such as the site’s user experience and look. To address that concern, website managers should do front-end design revamps in sprints to improve the design workflow. Using a ready-made design management tool like Ahead can also streamline the design process and keep web maintenance and design departments optimized and ready to go.
It’s hard to know for sure where news delivery and consumption will be in the future. Many media companies never thought that people would move away from newspapers until radios and televisions happened. And now television providers and networks are starting to realize that digital platforms will start taking out some of that chunk.
It’s unlikely that traditional channels will dissipate completely for the foreseeable future, but the pie will get sliced into smaller pieces as time goes by. And for any media company, getting a larger slice is always key to succeeding and staying relevant. How big is your pie slice today?