Ryan's Writings…at Mason

Since journalism has taken a liking toward the Internet, as well as mobile platforms, you can bet that is where our audience is going to be.

People reading the morning paper with their coffee and a bagel are far and distant memories that will soon be long-lost; but that doesn’t mean what they are reading has to go in the newspaper industry’s time capsule.

People still want and need news; the platform has just changed, which means the business model for journalism needs to change.

According to Mark Briggs, in his eleventh chapter of “Journalism Next,”  journalists need to build their online audience.

And these are the fundamentals of building an online audience:

1. Learn how to track your content. Crunch the numbers and see how many breaking news updates were sent last week, how many people click on video stories, how much has the audience grown in the last few months (or years), etc.
2. Track your audience with web analytics.
3. Understand search engine optimization (SEO).
4. Learn how to write headlines using SEO to find keywords.
5. Use social media to distribute your content (check out Pinterest to upload and share content).