Beyond News: Driving Audience (& Revenue) With Different Local Content

By Deb Shaw, for the SNA Foundation

debshawsna@comcast.net

A specialty events & shopping website in the Chicago bedroom community of McHenry County, Illinois is about to celebrate its one year birthday, and the local newspaper folks there will be first in line to blow out the celebratory candle. That’s because Shaw Suburban Media is the company behind the successful PlanIt Northwest - a unique entertainment & shopping portal that is not part of their traditional news site. Instead, it’s all about the ‘go and do’ concept with a brand-specific strategy and an e-commerce component via a local partnership.

Let’s face it. News online drives audience (in McHenry County, the Northwest Herald website gets about 3 ½ times more readers online than in print) but most often advertising dollars have been slow to follow, with few publishers jumping for joy over the monetization of their news sites.

A recent SNA Foundation-sponsored webinar took a look at how two different local media companies are driving audience via events sites & calendars and, in the case of Shaw Suburban Media’s PlanIt Northwest, how the site can be designed to drive revenue too.

A Little Background
McHenry County, Illinois is a fairly affluent, bedroom community of Chicago that is representative of many suburban communities – lots of families, not a ton of nightlife especially as compared to the big city, and chock full of people who want nothing more than to stay local for their entertainment, dining and shopping needs.

Webinar presenter Scott Rosenburgh, VP of Digital Initiatives for SSM, gives credit to his publisher for being the first to sense the need in the marketplace for a unique site that would strictly focus on local things to ‘go and do.’  From the germ of this idea, Rosenburgh and company set about finding a way to merge the concept with a significant monetization aspect; in other words, to innovate in this new territory. “We wanted to take what we do so effectively with our newspaper, The Northwest Herald, and apply it to an entertainment and shopping site,” said Rosenburgh. He was referring to the cohesive power of hyper-local content and the attraction/confidence by local business to dedicate significant advertising investments to the medium.

Likening the entry into this online initiative to ‘throwing a stick in a tornado,’ Rosenburgh explained that the development team explored many scenarios but they were fully committed from the get-go. “We went into this project knowing that we were going to fail until we succeeded,” said Rosenburgh as he described PlanIt Northwest to the audience at last month’s SNA Foundation-sponsored webinar*. It’s this attitude that exemplifies the very nature of any innovative process, and the success of PlanIt underscores the wisdom of truly applying the mentality.

By the way, it’s noteworthy that PlanIt Northwest was named runner up in the Innovator of The Year category in SNA’s recent Best Community Website contest. The winner was Metroland Media’s Lois Tuffin for her work with another events oriented initiative, the Personal Online Planner, and you can read more about it by clicking here.  

What Is It
In a nutshell, PlanIt Northwest is a portal that delivers every ‘go and do’ style event in McHenry County, Illinois to the local market (essentially the same footprint as the well entrenched and respected newspaper leader in the market, The Northwest Herald, also published by Shaw Suburban Media).

Hyper-local in its focus, the ‘editor,’ aka Brand Manager Jessica Jacobsen, lives, breathes and eats PlanIt Northwest on a full time basis. She scours the community and confers with the newsroom to see to it that every single event in the county is listed on the site. Listings take many forms – on the calendar, in the various chapters (dining, entertainment, shopping, family fun, etc), in special revenue generating Showcases, in business listings, local links and special breakouts of current day events. Much more than just a list of things to do, the listings contain a ton of details that provide a rich and full experience for users.

It also utilizes a partnership with Local Thunder to produce special Showcases; that is, shopping portals for retail and dining with gift cards available for sale at deep discounts. Local businesses buy Showcases for about $300 per month, with half of that paid to PlanIt Northwest in cash and half in gift certificates which are then re-sold by PlanIt which keeps the resultant revenue.

Getting Off The Ground
Once they made the commitment to move forward with PlanIt Northwest, the company hosted many ‘all hands’ meetings to communicate the importance of what they were doing across the entire company.

They also committed to the hiring of Brand Manager Jacobsen and made the investment of a professionally produced promotional campaign. “We wanted something that was clearly different and wanted a creative effort that matched our end users - not our creators. If we wanted different, we needed different perspective,” said Rosenburgh in explaining their decision to engage an ad agency.

The launch campaign consisted of teaser ads that left the consumer wondering what was coming; the campaign then moved into a “what’s in it for me” stage with a series of print, online, cable & outdoor ads that touted the many benefits of this new local site. With a dedicated monthly budget, the promotional campaign is ongoing.

In addition to being the Brand Manager, Jessica Jacobsen is the ‘face’ of PlanIt Northwest. Video interviews and features are a consistent part of the home page experience, and front and center in them is Jacobsen. As familiarity with PlanIt grows, so too will the intentional ‘pseudo-celebrity’ of Jacobsen herself – an ingredient that helps personalize the hyper-local experience of the site itself and infuses increasing excitement as she becomes more well known around town.

The Numbers
All the typical metrics are tracked – unique visitors, page views, etc – but Rosenburgh points out that they track all the numbers they need to be successful, both in growing audience and revenue. For instance, he also keeps a close eye on things like most clicked links and gift certificates purchased so he can direct the sales division to pursue similar businesses to help turn the traffic into dollars. In addition to the Showcases, revenue generating aspects of PlanIt include live remotes, video tours, PlanIt Picks newsletters, programming and on-site features. “We’re not shy about asking for money,” reports Rosenburgh. Conversely, they watch what kind of information people are spending money on so they can beef up like content.

The site will turn one year old on October 1 and they’re already averaging between 25-27,000 unique visitors and over 75,000 page views per month. Average time spent per visitor on the site is a whopping 17 minutes – very high for a site of this nature and gratifying to Rosenburgh who interprets this above average investment of time as an endorsement of the whole experience.

How It Works
The software platform, with the exception of the Showcases produced by Local Thunder, was almost entirely produced internally. Its impressive depth and breadth inspired many in the webinar audience to ask Rosenburgh if his company was marketing the platform itself to other community newspaper publishers.

Although selling the platform is not an active element of the business strategy of PlanIt Northwest currently, Rosenburgh is open to having discussions with anyone who has an interest in learning more about what PlanIt Northwest is all about. He’s reached at (815) 526-4418 or srosenburgh@shawsuburban.com

Recognition
Many thanks to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for a grant which enables the SNA Foundation to make webinars such as Engage and Grow Online Audience with Innovative Tools for Local Happenings available at no cost to participants.

The Knight grant also covers all costs associated with the SNA Foundation-sponsored e-courses on Poynter Institute’s NewsU.org. They are offered at no charge and are self paced. Over 3,500 students, many from suburban and community newspapers, have already undergone these top-notch courses. Use them for personal as well as staff development.

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COMING SOON!
Producing & Managing User Generated Content
Due for release in October 2010, this new e-course will help local editors encourage community interaction and engagement, while improving the quality of citizen contributions. The e-course is designed in two tracks – one for editors to learn how better manage user submissions, and one for citizen contributors to learn how to submit better content to local media. Through tools and resources, both editors and contributors will learn how local newspapers can more effectively incorporate user-generated content into their digital offerings.