local media assn fall conference report recap 2012

The Hottest Opportunities

for 2012

September, 2012

Atlanta, GA

Shannon Kinney

Founder, GM, Client Success Officer

shannon@dreamlocal.com

What’s hot?

• Social Content Strategies

• Digital Agency: is it for you?

• Selling Social Media

• SOLOMO programs

• Event Marketing

• Think like a startup – low to no cost toolsets

and more

Social Content Strategies

Strategy & ROI

• Building brand awareness and

engagement

• Brand extension

• Content sourcing and curation

• Increased reach

• Social amplification

Strategy & ROI

• Social influencers (recruit and leverage,

build relationships)

• Incremental revenue / audience growth

• Gathering user generated content (ugc)

• Increase digital footprint

• Closely monitor your analytics!!

Ethical considerations

• How do you identify yourself?

• Separate personal and professional

Twitter feeds?

• How do you verify?

• What language is acceptable (WTF)?

• What, if any, opinions are OK?

• Why a content plan is important

• What’s in a content plan?

• Your voice

• Important brand messages

• What will be posted where, when

• Standards for your content mix (marketing and

promotion, conversation, listening) – balance is

CRITICAL

• Promotions / strategies for fan base growth

Developing your content plan

Content Distribution• Develop a strategy per channel to maximize engagement.

Look closely at audience and optimum times/day for

posts

• Twitter

• Facebook

• Google+

• Blogs and RSS

• YouTube

• LinkedIn (Company Status Updates,Groups, discussions)

• Pinterest

• Posterous, Digg, Tumblr, Reddit, Delicious

Targeting

• By geography

• By topic or niche

• By columnist (if they

will engage with users)

• By category (advertising)

Challenges to overcome

• Need to master all channels and optimize your

content for them, invest the time

• Digital is different from traditional media

• Content is bite sized, photos and videos carry more

weight

• Social web requires monitoring

• Need to develop SOP to build into your workflow

• Develop strategy to work with and leverage citizen

journalists and UGC (blog hosting @ BDN)

• Requires good knowledge of SEO

Local Digital Ad Agency Model

The internet, and social media in

particular, have radically changed

the way people consume

information and the way

businesses promote themselves.

In this economy,

every business

is re-thinking all of their budgets,

and they will never return to the

way they once were.

The customer: Local businesses• Increasingly, cannot afford traditional

marketing, but don’t understand options

• View online marketing, and Facebook in

particular, as an affordable and important

option

• Are too busy to keep up with managing their

marketing and their businesses, seek assistance

• Are hungry for solutions

• Social media can bring significant results

“You have to sell what sells…

There is a huge sweet spot

between a full-blown (high end)

agency and the very small stuff.”

Keith Wilson

Publisher of the Times-News and

The Times Digital Group Team

Times-News Digital Group Breakdown

• Most profitable service:

video production

• Billings average: 1/3 of all

digital revenue for company

• Separate P&L but rolled into

company total

• Double digit growth each

year

• Average rate structure:

$100/hour

Why Agency?

• Serving local businesses is core to your mission

and role in your community

• Maintaining the relationship as the trusted

advisor and partner is critical to your long term

success

• Filling the advertiser need and guiding them

through the process will solidify your position

• Solution-based selling builds trust

• Can ultimately sell more print

Go BEYOND the ad budget,

tap into the marketing budget

The decision:

In-house

• Need dedicated resources with experience in

digital, video, mobile, and social media

• Tight operational efficiencies need to be

developed to protect margins

• Average investment of companies we surveyed

$200,000 many newspaper companies have

invested several times more than that

• Need to stay on top of rapidly-changing trends

• Ability to quickly and nimbly scale

Outsource option: Dream Local

Selling Social Media

Solution ComponentsCore Offering

• Online marketing strategy

development

• Social Media channel

enhancement and ongoing

management

• Reputation Management

and SEO

• Email marketing

• Blog posting management

• Video development &

editing

Optional

• Video optimization, distribution,

marketing

• Photography

• Mobile marketing solutions (sites,

promotions)

• PR

• SEO / SEM

• Agency level service (media

planning, etc)

• Event promotion (flyers, etc)

• Print ad design

• Web site & landing page

development

SOLOMO

“Our local retailers suddenly understand that the entire

retail experience is going digital.”

“The challenge for most retailers in using social media

is they are too busy managing their business”

“We know offering our customers a way to expose their

business quickly and efficiently positions us as a true

marketing partner.”

Tim Anderson

Vice President of Revenue Development,

Savannah Morning News

Breakdown of SOLOMO program

• Set packages available, priced in local market

• Intense sales training

• Seminar event – several per day for 2-3 days

(event planning support from corporate)

• Follow up – make it fast! (If you can’t close

there, get appointment within 5 business

days)

• Contracts fulfilled at corporate in most cases

Social package includes:• Setup on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, foursquare

• Social media dashboard – update multiple networks in one place

• Reputation monitoring and alerts

• Competitive monitoring and alerts

• Best practices guide and help line

• Management available as an option

• …and more!

Local package includes:• Google, Yahoo! and Bing map and place pages optimization

• Entry and hygiene of your business listing on 25+ online directories to maximize your local exposure

• Standardize and enhance your business listing across major search engines

• Premium placement on cjonline.com’s local directory

Mobile package includes:• Mobile micro-site for your business

• Unique promotional keyword text promotions

• Unlimited text messaging

• Mobile subscriber database and management

• Appointment reminders and scheduling for subscribers

• Best practices and help line

• And more!

Summary of findings

• The Chattanooga Times Free Press has earned more

than $2.5million in revenue over the past three years

with an innovative event strategy

• Wide variety of events, most popular targets are

women and seniors

• Entire newspaper team (across departments)

supports the event team’s efforts

• Strong team and planning are required

• Deepens relationships with advertisers / sponsors

Leveraging a Newspapers’ Strengths

• Recognizable and trusted brand

• Voice in the community

• Market penetration

• Diverse portfolios

• Creativity

• Workforce

• Relationships with businesses

• Community Parternships

Revenue Sources• Sponsorship sales

• Ticket sales

• Booth & ticket

sales

• VIP packages

• Premium seating

• Merchandise

Win-win • Help advertisers grow foot traffic

• Creative and innovative solutions for

advertisers and sponsors

• Deepen community engagement

• Grow customer base

• Strengthen under-performing audiences,

showcase high-performing audiences

• Terrific marketing opportunity for paper

What you need for success• Invest in your vision, create world-class event

• Intense planning and learning from the

experience

• Teamwork

• Strong partners (facility, meeting supply

company if needed)

• Solid marketing & promotion

• Effective sales effort

Think like a startup

“This isn’t about saving money, it’s

about accelerating innovation” Senior Digital

First Media executive

Nimble Companies

• The Bangor Daily News: the team replaced an aging

editorial front end system with low-cost solutions, re-

organized and retrained their teams to become a digital

first organization, and has the results to prove it

• McNaughton Newspapers: transformed four of their

operations with low cost tools and eliminated technical

limitations from being placed upon them by vendors in

the process

• Journal Register Company (JRC): Launched the Ben

Franklin Project to transform their newsrooms and

introduce culture change throughout the organization

Summary of findings

• All found large cost savings, yet all stress the value

comes in innovation

• All had a desire to be more in control and felt that

they couldn’t get that control with their current

vendors and software

• Efficiencies were gained at each profiled company

• Digital-first publishing is now in place at each

property

• New and exciting initiatives were developed as a

result of using free/no cost tools

McNaughton Newspapers

• Replaced newsroom and web site

infrastructure with low-cost web-based

solutions

• Cost savings were a requirement, but goal was

to gain more local control and options than

vendor solutions could provide

• Become digital native “leapfrogging” then

digital first newspaper model

• Went from Baseview to WordPress via open

source project EditFlow

Key takeaways• Innovation can happen with limited financial

investment – in fact, in these cases, forcing the

teams to work with less drove innovation – however,

focusing on expense control vs. opportunity misses

the mark

• To be successful in these endeavors, you must be

willing to re-think your entire process and

workflow, piece meal efforts will not generate large

results

• Companies both small and large can achieve

tremendous growth by adopting these innovative

strategies

Thank you!

Shannon KinneyClient Success Officer

Dream Local Digitalshannon@dreamlocal.com

@shannonkin

www.dreamlocal.com

Facebook.com/shannonkinney

207-354-7073