Tagging too far

Some very interesting comments from Newsquest's digital MD being reported by Press Gazette.

Roger Green was non too complimentary about local paper's attempts to engage with the community using online devices.

Speaking at AOP’s Micro-local Forum, he gave a candid assessment of how he believed online technologies were inefficiently used by local newspapers.
He mocked the unnecessary geo-tagging of stories where location did not play an important factor, suggesting it wasn’t necessary for stories about "the launch of a pet insurance policy" to be plotted in this manner. "I mean honestly, what’s the point of that?"

Tips for that exclusive online community

There is a great analysis of the FT's Long Room by Roland Legrand, over at Media Shift.

Entitled the Velvet Rope Approach to an Online Community,perhaps it makes sense to cut down on quantity, and create an exclusive members-only structure.

That is what the Long room has done and New York-based Alphaville editor Paul Murphy explains some of the thinking behind it:

It is "an exclusive comment and analysis arena, where finance professionals are invited to share their research and offer thoughts on the work of others." It is free to join, if you can get through the vetting process to be accepted.

"We are a blog and we acknowledge that people are promiscuous,So we tell them what to read elsewhere if they have half an hour of spare time, and we tell them what they should read in the FT. Being financial professionals, it's a navigational service. We allow them to sample."

and as to why it works?

"It's a very light structure, especially compared to a newspaper, which typically requires a massive industrial process,The Long Room also enables the Financial Times to gather important insight about its readers. This information helps the paper sell itself -

A complete community connection-maybe I have seen the future

I have been reading a fascinating piece (Ht Sarah Hartley) from Steve Buttry which he describes as a

vision for transformation of our media company and of media companies in general.

Strong words indeed and Steve wants his company to become the " Complete Community Connection."

How well it will

1. provide an interactive, well-organized, easily searched, ever-growing, always updated wealth of community news, information and opportunities on multiple platforms. We need to become the connection to everything people and businesses need to know and do to live and do business in Eastern Iowa.

2.For businesses, we will be their essential connection to customers, often making the sale and collecting the money.

The C3,as he dubs the project will retain news as being essential to mission and identity,but acknowledges that it

needs to be a portal through which you can easily reach any information or activities in the community. We need to provide a conveniently organized, easily searchable treasure chest of information that feeds multiple products that consumers reach in a variety of ways:

The important point is that the content will be driven by the marketplace and will reach some people who never read the paper

by doing important jobs such as connecting them with people of common interests or helping them find the products and services that help them live their lives.

I fully recommend a complete read of the article-it may well be the future

Some thoughts on the online community

A couple of posts on community took my eye.

This from jeremiah Owyang (ht-Dom Rodwell) who lists what he believes to be the 9 ways to kick start your community

1. Create compelling content on a recurring basis.
2. Reward users who fill out their profile.
3. Invite community influencers and advocates to the community first
4. Encourage interaction through conversations.
5. Reward top contributors:
6. Centralize your community around your real world events.
7. Use virtual events tp integrate community:
8. Integrate with your website –and other customer touchpoints.
9. Encourage employees to get active.

Stuart Glendinning Hall looks at the various tools that a community manager has to bring an online community together.

One thing that he does advocate is the 90/9/1 rule

every 90 readers the remaining ten per cent will contribute to a lesser or greater extent, of that the top 1 per cent the most active.

which despite having come in for

criticism recently, and been described as a myth rather than reality, but I believe it still has value for community managers, especially when used as a heuristic 'rule of thumb'.