Why newspapers should consider local social media sites
Newspapers and media companies looking to build traffic should strongly consider creating niche social network sites.
An EMarketer report this morning cites Children with Diabetes, a Johnson & Johnson-owned ad-supported social network for families who have children with diabetes. Nearly one-half of the site’s traffic comes from search, according to Joseph Natale, vice president at Children with Diabetes.
Children with Diabetes has some 32,000 pages of content optimized with words like “children,” “diabetes” and “juvenile diabetes.”
A newspaper could create a similar site but focused on the publication’s local community.
Newspapers should note that social media sites are not as strong on increasing brand building and reach as other areas of marketing and sales. A survey of executives by the Marketing Executives Networking Group found that 85.4 percent cited customer engagement as the main benefit of social media marketing, followed by direct customer communications (65 percent), speedy feedback/results (59.9 percent) and learning customer preferences (59.1 percent).
Brand building came in at 48.2 percent and reach was lower at 37.2 percent.
Full story with charts here.
