Sunday, September 11, 2011

USQ Online Journalism: #4 Making stories relevant to an online audience


An online audience is a group of people who looks forward to consuming the media through news website produce. The media is any information that gives them what they want and it always comes back to the written word.
Online audiences don’t just want helpful tips or useful services or valuable products from an online news website. What potential website/ blog followers really want from a news website is a vision for transforming their lives or providing them with extraordinary knowledge.
Making an online web article to appeal to ALL audiences virtually impossible. Making stories relevant to online audiences isn’t something that can be done or decided within a day. A writer must first determine his purpose, what appeals to him, what are his or her interests and topics that must be specific enough to appeal to their target markets.
The target markets must also be measured, hence data from a pre-determined period of time must be collected to know what are relevant and appeal to them and most importantly, how to write to appeal to target audiences.
 
Other than that, being an ONLINE article, it must also be easy for the audiences to navigate and have enough of interactive elements to help them in the quest for searching for news.
First of all, at the core of an online journalist’s personal vision should be their vision for how to help others. For online journalists to enable themselves to be of help to their audiences, they should ask themselves these four questions:
  •         What are they uniquely passionate about and what are their qualifications that are able to help people?
  •         How can they help people achieve their vision in a way that no one else is doing?
  •         How will they make following their vision more worthwhile than following someone else’s vision?
  •         How will they explain why their vision is worth following?  
The next step is for the web journalist to identify and really become acquainted with their audience, once they have identified their audiences. It is not enough to simply know who they are. The web journalist need to understand them from the inside out. Their needs, wants and goals and objectives need to be the journalist's needs, wants and goals and objectives. A great way to initially focus on them is by frequenting the same social networks. Another one of a journalist points of focus should also be how they can inspire their audience and make them want to take some sort of positive action in the journalist's direction.
Once a web journalist truly understand their audience well, they need to figure out how to communicate with them in a way that compels them to take action for the journalist and their website. Please bear in mind that not all actions will be the same. It all depends on where the journalist's relationship is with the particular audience. For example, if one of the people with whom they share a relationship is just starting to understand what they are offering, the journalist may want to entice their audiences into visiting the journalist's blog and “liking” it on their Facebook fan page. Their only goal should be to get the audiences to want to move to the next phase of interaction with them. It is all about building trust and credibility with the journalist and their audience.
 
A web journalist main goal is always to make such a positive contribution that their audience’s and community lives will have had improved because of it. The way that a journalist contribute is by offering compelling, valuable, insightful, helpful content that in some way enhances the lives of other people around you. The relationships that a journalist share with their audience must be nurtured and maintained regularly.
 
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