Digital journ feb 25 class

Audience Engagement and Interactivity What do these terms mean to you?

Feb. 25, 2014

Remember back to Week One...

Emilio and Jonathan outlined a few ways their newsrooms

are addressing the topic.

Is the news story as we know iton the verge of extinction?

The Atomic Unit of News

• Live blog•Text and email alerts•Verified, real-time Twitter posts•Curation platforms, such as Storify• Live online chats

The Reporter as Maestroof the Conversation

Beat Ownership AND Thought Leadership

• Be a regular presence in the flow of information• Be a broadcaster and not just a reader• Be a curator, not just a marketer• Be an acquirer of sources, not just a follower

The changing design of newsrooms as new roles are

created

Technology in the form of new content management

systems are finally starting to catch up with the times.

Growing appreciationfor metrics

What do you think?

As journalists, should your individual traffic numbers matter?

How much do you want to know?

Stats

For writers: weekly and monthly summary stats and graphs about top

articles and outside referrers + insights

For editors: all of the above, plus weekly stats for individual writers

For general manager: all of the above, plus hyper-detailed stats and graphs

on outside referrers

• To communicate your site’s brand, need to find ways to engage them beyond that first click:

• Good headlines

• Compelling visuals

• Smart writing

• Navigation and trending bars

• Featured post box

On-site engagement

Understanding aggregators and SEO

• It is NOT a curator.

• The big ones are:

What is a news aggregator?

• Web Index• Googlebot crawls from site to site (WWW)• Googlebot creates a snapshot of the web (index)• Pagerank dictates page ranking• Blacklist model (every web page EXCEPT ____ )

• News Index• Same thing, but...• Crawl happens more frequently for news• Whitelist model (ONLY the following pages ____ )• More critical moving parts (headline, image, proper categorization,

authorship, etc.)

How aggregators work:

• Aggregators don’t show results based on their traffic/referrals alone. It wouldn’t make for a good user experience.• Quality of source• Freshness• Pagerank (citations)• Relevance• Authority of source within field

How aggregators work:

You want your site to prosper onor other major aggregators?

• Expertise• Know what you’re talking about.• You don’t have to start with a reputation, but run the site like

you’re in the process of earning it.

• Quality• Practice good, honest journalism.

• Variety within your scope• Don’t be a one-trick pony.

Algorithms

• They’re always changing and on an unpredictable basis.• You could try and follow/adjust with these changes, or your

could make sure your site’s fundamentals are always strong.

Five SEO Headline Tips

#1

Five SEO Headline Tips

• Stories need at least two kinds of headlines:•One for people• Display headline and accompanying blurb should

engage people.

• The other for machines• SEO headlines should appeal to Google crawlers.

#2

Five SEO Headline Tips

• A strong, newsy display headline is best in many cases, but not all.

• Some headlines work by enticing, by giving the story but not the whole story. • You can do this in a subtle way, without littering the page with lazy

question marks and without withholding such key information that readers are annoyed.

• Be careful not to over-promise or bait-and-switch. • This Washington Post headline from last year told readers enough

but not too much -- "Fact Checker: Why Obama owes Rutherford B. Hayes an apology."

• Remember, these are the headlines that are trying to convince a reader to click on to a new page.

#3

Five SEO Headline Tips

•Digital summaries should distill.• The goal is to deliver a tight and provocative takeaway.

Craft a complete sentence, with proper punctuation, not a secondary headline.

#4

Five SEO Headline Tips

• SEO headlines should highlight key terms.• Include actors, place names and other potential hot

topics that a reader might search; first names and other identifiers should be added when appropriate • (e.g. Miley Cyrus, Pope Francis)

#5

Five SEO Headline Tips

• An SEO headline should be clear, direct, complete and conform to a two-line limit; it should not be cute, oblique or a mere compendium of search terms.

•Here is an example of an effective SEO headline:• Snowden granted asylum in Russia, leaves Moscow airport

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