For those of you who are in the Lafayette area and are also on Facebook, I started up a Facebook fan page for WLFI. It updates with our most recent Local, Sports, Interview, and Living Green stories
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Well, as for Facebook, it's mostly about getting our website under eyes that wouldn't usually be watching it, starting from people we feature.
An example... Suppose you lived in the area, and we had you in and did a noon interview on you. Maybe you were tech-savvy enough to know that you could go to our website and get a link, and were planning to send it to show your mom and your sister, for example... Then again, maybe you weren't comfortable doing things like that (and yes, many aren't!) On the other hand, we tell you you can go to Facebook and link our interview with you on your profile, using the tools you're already familiar with in Facebook, and suddenly the 700 people on your profile--many of whom are out-of-state and would never watch our program normally--are visiting our website, increasing traffic and unique visitors.
It's also a bit about outreach to Purdue's campus. We do a lot of news that is interesting and relevant to anyone in the area, including college students, and some stuff that would be more of interest to them than the general public. And yet we're pretty sure that many, if not most, college students don't even know we exist. There are a lot of reasons for this, from lack of TVs to a lifestyle that usually leaves them busy during our newscasts, to the fact that they're only in the area for a few years. But we'd obviously like to be able to add the student body to our viewers.
I'll definitely look at the Twitter link you provided... thanks! =) It's great to talk these things over with another mind.
Well, let me put it this way... pretty much everyone on LJ knows some basic HTML markup, because you've got to if you want to emphasize something or link images or whatever. So it's easy to become unaware of the fact that there are a large number of people who are just scared of technology.
I need more fingers than I have to count the number of people who read a story on our website and then ask me to e-mail them the link to it. And many of them work for the station in some capacity.
On the other hand, Facebook has soft corners. To link to something on Facebook, the procedure is "Find the name of the story! Hit the Share + button next to it!" Most people who can log onto Facebook at all CAN do that, it doesn't take much savvy, and it's the same instructions for every story, and it looks all friendly. You don't see big addresses or ugly code.
It looks like the station's website also has little sharing icons (though that could be improved by changing the wording)...Do people use those? (Judging by your post, I'm guessing the answer is "no.")
By the way, you might want to try running it past a few expected users to see if the little icons would do better under the article instead of being off to the side next to an obnoxious advertisement.
Perhaps you should poke at the website logs a bit and see where the hits are coming from...
An example... Suppose you lived in the area, and we had you in and did a noon interview on you. Maybe you were tech-savvy enough to know that you could go to our website and get a link, and were planning to send it to show your mom and your sister, for example... Then again, maybe you weren't comfortable doing things like that (and yes, many aren't!) On the other hand, we tell you you can go to Facebook and link our interview with you on your profile, using the tools you're already familiar with in Facebook, and suddenly the 700 people on your profile--many of whom are out-of-state and would never watch our program normally--are visiting our website, increasing traffic and unique visitors.
It's also a bit about outreach to Purdue's campus. We do a lot of news that is interesting and relevant to anyone in the area, including college students, and some stuff that would be more of interest to them than the general public. And yet we're pretty sure that many, if not most, college students don't even know we exist. There are a lot of reasons for this, from lack of TVs to a lifestyle that usually leaves them busy during our newscasts, to the fact that they're only in the area for a few years. But we'd obviously like to be able to add the student body to our viewers.
I'll definitely look at the Twitter link you provided... thanks! =) It's great to talk these things over with another mind.
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Good point on the college crowd.
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I need more fingers than I have to count the number of people who read a story on our website and then ask me to e-mail them the link to it. And many of them work for the station in some capacity.
On the other hand, Facebook has soft corners. To link to something on Facebook, the procedure is "Find the name of the story! Hit the Share + button next to it!" Most people who can log onto Facebook at all CAN do that, it doesn't take much savvy, and it's the same instructions for every story, and it looks all friendly. You don't see big addresses or ugly code.
At least, that's my theory.
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Reply
It looks like the station's website also has little sharing icons (though that could be improved by changing the wording)...Do people use those? (Judging by your post, I'm guessing the answer is "no.")
By the way, you might want to try running it past a few expected users to see if the little icons would do better under the article instead of being off to the side next to an obnoxious advertisement.
Perhaps you should poke at the website logs a bit and see where the hits are coming from...
Reply
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