Improving Engagement and Interactivity Through Social Media Expansion

Here at The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette we are implementing an ambitious, multi-faceted 2012 business plan that promises to build on our recent successes and to accelerate the pace of our multimedia transformation.   I look forward to sharing more of the details of the various aspects of our plan with you in future posts. 

One key aspect of our plan that I’d like to share today is our focus on building upon our hyper total audience growth and further developing our relationship with that audience through deeper engagement and interactivity. 

Our plan is multi-dimensional, but certainly emphasizes expanded use of social media for the distribution and improvement of our content and engagement with our audience.   A first step toward these ends has been the development of social media channels for members of our advertising staff (primarily LinkedIn) and our reporters and editors (Twitter and Facebook.)   Our goal is to expand on the engagment and interactivity of our staff with our various audiences including readers and advertisers.   

For example, in our newsroom we are looking for our reporters to not only distribute their articles to fans of theirs, but utilize social media further to crowdsource for story ideas; as a channel to identify and engage story sources; and to interact with our readers about their content, among others. 

We are also seeking to introduce our own content into social media conversations related to the topics we cover.  As well, our interaction won’t be limited to any one social channel, we will look to expand to other channels where our readers can be found. 

Be sure to check out our HN Twitter Directory by clicking here and follow your favorite HN editors and reporters.

As a further example, we are also seeking to enhance our Opinion pages across multimedia dimensions focusing on engagement and interactivity.  We will look to further engage our audiences in the discussion and debate by creating platforms to enhance interactivity and improve the level of discourse.

We are also expanding our use of social media within our customer service areas to engage with users within the channels they are growing more accustomed to using for intereaction with companies with which they do business.  We will be establishing social media channels dedicated to customer service and will look to become more proactive in our efforts, monitoring social channels for service disruptions and responding immediately…Hopefully resolving service disruptions before you ever have to place a call to us.

These areas represent only a few of the ways in which The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette will look to improve our products and services to you through more involvement, engagement and interactivity.  We look to evolve our business such that we are defined as a true social enterprise where we are engaged in meaningful conversations with our employees, customers, partners and other stakeholders.  We look forward to the mutual benefit of these conversations adding value not only to our products and services, but toward building relationships and trust.  We’re excited about the possibilities these new technologies and platforms represent and are eager to leverage them toward the improvement of your experience with our company.

If you have some ideas about how we might further improve our products and services, I’d love to hear from you.  Please leave a comment here or drop me an email at sburke@heraldnews.com.  As always, your ideas and input are welcomed here.

Related Topics:

http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/04/media-2-0/

http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/02/interactivity-and-engagement/

http://www.blogsofsteel.com/paperclips/2011/02/theheraldnews/

 

 

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