The Indiepub Blog

Business Tips for Web Journalists

May 23, 2007 9:49 AM Posted by mac

As Benkoil notes, it's imperative that Web journalists have a cursory understanding of the business, marketing and publicity worlds. Unlike push-technology content, which is a "print it and forget it" model, Web content relies upon a business-marketing-journalism ecosystem to succeed. If any aspect of this system fails, Web content is quickly swamped by a torrent of competing stories, videos and other digital distractions.

Benkoil offers a number of business tips from WSJ.com managing editor Bill Grueskin. I found the following to be noteworthy:

Understand paid vs. free models -- WSJ.com gets away with a subscription model because its content is mission critical in financial circles (i.e. it helps make money, so folks are willing to spend money to get it). However, most broad-based Web operations should think long and hard before instituting subscriptions. Decision makers need to ask hard questions: Which model holds more promise? Are we better off generating traffic and selling ads against page views, or, is our content interesting enough to justify exclusivity via subscriptions?

Understand the role of search engines in driving traffic and revenue -- This is the big one. If Web journalists focus on only one business aspect, it needs to be search engine optimization (SEO). This isn't even a business issue, it's a Web issue. If you work with search engines, people find your stuff. If you work against search engines, people go elsewhere. Whether your intention is to make money off content or just get people to read your content, SEO is vital.

SEO is a complicated process if you address its many aspects, but from a content perspective it can be quite simple. Whenever I instruct students or colleagues on SEO, I ignore all the technical elements and strip things down to two key actions:

1. Write headlines that work outside of context -- The context of a Web page -- all the pictures, navigation and accompanying text -- is removed in a search engine result. As such, a Web journalist needs to craft informative and interesting headlines that stand on their own. Headline writers should ask themselves: "If I saw this headline, would I want to read the story?" If the answer is no, rewrite ... then rewrite again.
2. Always write decks/excerpts -- Journalists hate writing decks, and with good reason. Distilling a 1,000-word story into 25 words of pithy text is a tedious process. But decks (or excerpts, or descriptions, or whatever you want to call them) are often used by search engines to describe a search result. A well-written, hooky deck offers another rare opportunity to inspire audience click-throughs. When writing a deck, Web journalists should ask: "If I had 10 seconds to explain this story, what would I say?" That one-sentence answer is the deck. Write it and use it.

Benkoil touches on other key Web business/content topics. I highly suggest reading his piece.

Comments: