It's hard to move from print deadlines to the 24/7 on the web. What are some ways high school news staffs can attract eyes and still not have a staff of hundreds?
1. How timely is your web presence?
It may not be 24/7, but how close is it?
2. OSMA website entries in 2016
Often all stories and photos were uploaded the same day
Often nothing had been uploaded in at least three weeks. The most recent sports stories on
some were six months old…
Why would anyone go there for into?
3. Why do we care about timeliness?
One of the news values
Your audience wants and often needs to know what’s happening NOW
If your audience sees old content right away, they won’t come back again.
4. Why is it hard to be timely?
Small staff
Complicated technology
Small staff
Other obligations for the staff
Little time in the publications office
5. Define timely
Is it measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days?
What’s something timely you learned about lately? How long did it take the news to get to you?
What platform?
What kinds of things to you want or need to get in a timely fashion?
6. So let’s think about what would bring eyes
They find you with a search engine.
But how does the search engine find you?
Follow these suggestions, and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine
results.
Publish Relevant Content. Quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and
there is no substitute for great content. ...
Update Your Content Regularly. ...
Metadata and keywords
Have a link-worthy site. ...
Use alt tags (words associated with images so if they don’t work, the word shows up.
Stop and think -- when was the last time you read some news on your phone or laptop? Stand up if it’s been in the last 24 hours. Stand up if it’s been the last two days?Think about when was the last time you were on social media? Stand up if it’s been within the last two hours. Now stay standing if your student media site has had something new posted in the last week? Stay standing if it’s been the last two days….. So why do you think I had you do that?
What kinds of things do they need to know now? weather, deadlines, sports scores, signing up for classes
How many of you know what SEO is?
When we do a Google search, we come up with the school’s generic site, the Cleveland.com site, a local paper. But who SHOULD know more about the parade – the background and details, the human interest, etc. – than student journalists? But without including the student media name – Lakewood Times – the student website didn’t show up at ALL in Google’s list.