If no one reads it, why write it?
In 2009 a crisis hit the newspaper industry, destroying ten major newspapers and shocking the rest. Every editor learned to fear the words "declining readership," and they struggled to increase their audiences and survive. The internet's been blamed - for stealing advertisers from newspapers - but it could also be a source of some crucial new readers. And the online audiences can grow exponentially through the power of social media, which could ultimately be the key to a newspaper's survival.
Even the New York Times includes a "Share" button on their stories, where readers can re-broadcast the headline to their friends on Facebook and MySpace. But the real potential lies in the friends of those friends, and a good story can be passed along in continuously expanding networks. Both sites have millions of users, and offer discussion forums for specific topics. Even one reader - if it's the right reader - could pass your story on to hundreds of thousands more. And it all starts by adding social media buttons in a prominent place on your story.
It's the classic example of "word of mouth," but it happens in other forms. Some sites, including the San Jose Mercury News, even include a button for Twitter which sends the story's URL into the user's "status updates". One user can instantly become 100, and those new readers can alert their own friends by re-broadcasting the URL. It's the same principle - one reader becomes hundreds - but it's more likely when your site includes an appropriate set of built-in tools.
And that's only the beginning if you've also optimized your site for Digg and Reddit. They're two of the largest "voting" sites, where the most popular stories get featured on prominently on the front page. Both sites have huge audiences - Digg has over one million users - so winning the front-page slot will bring huge spikes in readership. With the right page design, your site's visitors can both read your story and vote for it.
While newspapers publish once a day, breaking news happens around the clock. The New York Times solved the problem by offering weblogs to their reporters. Blog posts can become as popular as the articles themselves, and the readers enjoy interacting with the reporters by leaving comments. Some blogs routinely receive more than 100 comments for each story. And many of those readers will keep coming back just to see who's replied!
There's other ways to alert readers about articles. Millions of people decide whether to visit a site by scanning the headlines on its RSS feed. To attract these readers, clever news sites offer several choices - for example, feeds of all news stories, or just sports scores. Some feeds even collect stories from different sections of the newspaper - and offer them as a feed where readers can follow a specific topic.
But don't underestimate the power of e-mail. Some readers prefer a daily reminder with links to the day's top stories, and thousands of people will sign up for a customized online newsletter. It's easy for them to forward that e-mail, so the "pass-around" audience may be larger than you expect. And there's one other trick which is simple but effective - a link at the bottom of every article which offers to e-mail the story to their friends.
In 2007 the New York Times made a radical decision - they would give away all their articles for free. For years the Times had tried charging a subscription fee to access their archives, until the performed an important calculation. In just one month in 2005, the Times racked up 555 million pageviews - and the ads on those web pages were all bringing in money. Online readers represented that rarest of miracles - a new source of profit - and they may ultimately be a newspaper's best lifeline to the future!