10 Social Media Ideas To Save Newspapers

Social media strategist Woody Lewis believes that newspapers can help save themselves by engaging with the social side of the Web.

He writes on Mashable: “Social media gives any business an interactive channel to communicate with its current and future customers.

“For newspapers, that channel can increase the chances of survival in a market where commoditised information has diminished the value of individual brands.”

And to drive the point home, he has produced a list - “Ten ways newspapers are using social media to save the industry”.

Here are some of his suggestions:

*Online-only Events

Lewis points to Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as an example of this. The newspaper recently promoted a novel by streaming content of an actor reading aloud passages from it and then encouraging users to discuss it via forums.

*Twitter Headline Channels

He singles out the New York Times for praise on this one as it has also set up feeds for sections such as movies and books.

*Publishing APIs

Again, the NYT is singled out for making application programming interfaces available on its website for developers, who can then use them to create new social media tools.

In the UK, the Guardian has opened up some of its content to software developers through its Open Platform project.

*“Promoting and monetising UGC”

An interesting example supplied by Lewis is CaptureCincinnati.com, a local photo-sharing website created by the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The Enquirer then collected together the best photos and made money from them by putting them on a DVD and in a photo collection book.

*All-Out Online

Basically, this means totally quitting the print world and producing web-only content.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t the most agreeable method for many, but social media applied to a smaller, virtual organisation might be the way of the future,” writes Lewis.

See the rest of the list on Mashable.com.

[HT – Editor & Publisher]