In my “How to leverage Facebook” post I mentioned how to create a Facebook page for your newspaper. I also complained that the lack of RSS support was a problem.
SimplyRSS has solved that problem by adding page functionality, and I am currently using SimplyRSS for The Temple News. I suggest adding your paper’s blog and site feeds to get some more pageviews as well as spreading awareness of your content.
Thanks to Scott Stewart of the Gateway for giving me the heads up.
In today’s issue of the Temple News (our first Global Edition) I had my first adventure with Google Maps. The map features push pins all over the globe detailing where Temple has a presence and where we could we put articles from the current and past issues.
Overall I liked the way it turned out, I just wish I had more pictures. Also I have realized that organizing the information from every section was nearly as important as the execution.
Side note: College Publisher sites have been up and down for the past two days. Try refreshing if something doesn’t load.Â
In launching broadandcecil.com I mulled over many forms of advertising. And then I slapped my self in the forehead and remembered we are at a college where students live on Facebook.
So we only let the outside world know about the blog by displaying it on the front page of the paper and by running Facebook flyers. I also encouraged staffers to put the links in their profiles as well as integrate their WordPress author RSS feeds to automatically add to their Facebook “Posted Items”. So where did the first two days of traffic come from?
<– See for yourself. Although it doesn’t look like much, the 1′s go on for another page. And as an added little bonus I can see what staff members have the most trafficked Facebook profiles (always worth the bragging rights).
I’ll have to do the exact math later when our ad runs off of Facebook, but I’d say so far so good.
At Temple-News.com we have come a long way from our humble beginnings, and this semester we finally addressed a long overdue aspect of the site: a blog.
Running on WordPress and the fabulous PressRow, Broad and Cecil is our catch-all our blog where the staff can post on anything Temple (or Philly) related. The reason the topic is so broad is to test the waters. While the whole staff has theories on what would make a good blog, we really won’t know until we check out the traffic and the comments. Most likely at the onset of next semester we will split into a few blogs. Blog content also gives us something to post on the front page of Temple-News.com everyday.
We also need to get a workflow established as well as work out some technical kinks. So we have established a one week dry run where we try to get at least 2-3 posts a day. However not many people will know the blog exists until Tuesday when we feature the blog in our print edition as well as run a heavy Facebook advertising campaign.
The goal is to add a Temple News property that is in the list of a student’s daily visited Web sites. Here at Temple University, we have one of the largest computer labs on the planet and when I stroll through and see what students are viewing, 50% of the time it is Facebook. We want to be on that list of sites that students visit went they sit down to procrastinate from doing work.
Advice for anyone else considering starting a blog for their business/news paper/organization: To keep a blog pumping with content you need the full support of the staff. People need to be engaged and excited to try something new. Otherwise they will simply think you are trying to spread them a little thinner. Luckily with the Temple News if every staff member only writes once a week, we can have a nice well of content.
Really you are that interested?
Glad you asked.
So, what are you doing?
Sean Blanda is a journalist / entrepreneur living in Philly. Read more