James Fryer, deputy editor of online Gloucestershire arts and entertainments guide SoGlos.com, outlines his top five do’s and don’ts for success online.
DO # 1 – Be Great
- Set out to fulfil a niche and be the best at what you do. Soglos.com’s high-quality editorial content is Gloucestershire specific arts and entertainment-related, and exclusively written by experienced journalists.
DO #2 – Search engine optimise.
- Ninety per cent of SoGlos.com traffic comes through Google. Marry publishing and SEO through a bespoke CMS if you can afford it.
DO# 3 – Know your market and products.
- Be very specific about your target market of advertisers.
- Research what you competitors (both off and online) are offering.
- Create a clear suite of products.
- Clearly distinguish between editorial and advertising – know what can be bought and what can’t.
DO #4 – Establish a clear sales strategy
- A great website with an established audience may organically generate some advertising sales, but not enough.
- Divide your roles to encompass media sales, or commission sales professionals.
- Promote, but don’t get bogged down with web-specific advertising features.
DO #5 – Forge partnerships
- Carefully plan and forge print and radio partnerships, if applicable.
- Syndicate content in a controlled fashion, increasing audience and brand awareness. But, cash is almost always better than a contra-deal.
AND THE DON’TS
DON’T #1 – Compromise your model
- Develop and adapt, but don’t compromise what you set out to achieve and what you believe in. Don’t give in to pressure to diversify unnecessarily.
- Maintain your editorial integrity.
DON’T #2 – Be afraid to stand up for yourself.
- Stealing content online is as easy as copy and paste.
- SoGlos.com has experienced more than 200 individual infringements on their copyright from amateur blogs to the largest publishing groups in the UK.
- Make the choice, you lose time and money tackling it, but you may be able to seek retrospective license fees.
DON’T #3 – Spend all your time on Twitter.
- Is social media activity building you an audience which can be monetised, or directly making you money?
- SoGlos.com has had some success with Twitter etc., but real success came with
- YouTube. 3,500,000 video views. Excellent for link building and monetised through AdSense and licensing.
- Time on the telephone trumps time on Twitter.
DON’T #4 – Rely on UGC
- User generated content may be here to stay, but we agree with predictions that the new decade will see a resurgence of the importance of high quality journalism, written by journalists.
- Advertisers trust Soglos.com because it is written by professionals.
DON’T #5 – Stop moving forward.
- Respond and develop quicker than large publishing houses.
- Content is still king, but innovations including interactive map, bespoke CMS development and new embeddable widgets all keep Soglos.com at the top.
At SoGlos.com, 2010 will see:
- A redesign
- The launch of iphone apps
- 100,000 uniques per month.
- Unveiling of new franchise model, empowering independent publishers across the UK.