Hyper-Local News Websites, Work-Flow and WordPress. Fall 2019.


What have we learned over the past 6 months of managing hyper-local news sites in the Atlantic City area? Glad you asked.

Driving traffic to local news websites via social media is getting tougher. Unless you pay to boost. Even if you do, most of your followers / fans / subscribers will still NOT see your posts.

What to do?

  • Grow your email list.
  • Better on-page SEO, Search Engine Optimization
  • Be a trusted source of news & info

Leverage variety of tools.

  • Text
  • Imagery
  • Audio
  • Video

Mobile Optimize. Think mobile first.

If you’re part of a traditional media organization like Newspaper, TV or Radio……be careful. Most still have little grasp of how tech companies and pure-plays are eating their lunch….and are slowly gutting them into nothing more than low-end news collectors.

Newspapers still have too much overhead. Still not nimble enough. Still following newspaper ‘leaders’. Following industry vendor recommendations that are too little, too late, too expensive.

Many old school media foolishly shied away from WordPress as a CMS, Content Management System. Industry vendors prefer to keep you in the dark.

Talk Radio still has excellent programming, interviews and other valuable audio nuggets. Too bad they forget to archive their best stuff online, for later consumption.

Local talk radio that features LIVE programming are well-positioned to overtake newspaper as a primary source of news & info. The web allows them to couple their broadcast audio….. with text & imagery.

Problem: Radio is still run by hardcore radio peeps who forgot what business they’re in. We’re not in the radio business ….but the business of connection & communications. Informing. News & story telling. Endorsing of products. Connecting residents with business offers.

Most in Radio still struggling with podcasts. Imagine that.

Local newspapers, especially here in the Atlantic City area, keep making the WORST mistake: too much emphasis on national politics and social justice warfare. Editors, reporters and publishers bleeding half of their audience due to heavy emphasis on partisan politics…..instead of hyper-focusing on local issues and watchdog journalism.

Newspapers would have you believe that readers are stupid. By supporting just one view point, newspapers are blowing off 50% of their potential readership. Publishers are to blame for allowing newsroom activists to kill their business.

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