By Steve Schwaid, CJ&N VP of Digital Services
Summer. Finally.
With no big political conventions, national elections or Olympics, this could be a “calm” summer for local newsrooms. Time to take a breath, recharge and look ahead.
It’s also a great time to refocus on your station’s digital apps.
In many shops, the news app is nothing more than a bolt-on. It’s rarely a focus.
The research is clear. Users are relying more and more on news apps. In fact, we see research where those 35 and under rely more on news apps than TV for news and information. It’s time to get those users to rely on your apps.
A required first step is to become a regular user of your own apps. How good is your local news app?
TESTING YOUR APP
Here’s a test to consider.
- How many downloads do you have? Ten, 20, 30 thousand? That download number is insignificant in some ways. You need big numbers to have an impact and create a revenue opportunity. Remember, downloads don’t always equate to usage. There’s no way to tell how many downloaded your app and then deleted it or stopped using it. Data shows less than 30% of downloaded apps “live” on the receiving device for more than 30 days. Instead, you’re probably sending push alerts. Get the data to see how many of those alerts were “opened” by the user. Track this over the summer to see which stories get engagement and which don’t.
- Get feedback. Go around the station – sales, engineering, creative services – and ask employees if they have your station’s app on their devices. If they don’t, ask why not. Is it a content relevance issue? A timeliness or a user experience issue? For those that have it, ask how often they use it. What content are they most interested in? Understanding users’ motivations is part of the process.
- You, along with news managers and station managers, should be using the app several times a day. Critique the content. Engage with the content posted. Is it fresh, and relevant to people outside of the newsroom? Would it draw in your spouse, significant others, friends, neighbors, and family? Pay special attention to your local weather content. Chances are it could be fresher. On many sites, I see local weather posts which are hours old – in one case up to six hours old. That’s an eternity online. We have seen from our own internal research that station producers, and news and station managers rarely engage with their own apps. It’s tough to improve a product if no one is monitoring it and critiquing it. (Would you not watch your own television newscast?)
- In most cases, the content on your app is identical to what’s on your website. Users surfing your website on a PC have a bigger screen and often have different content needs than app users.
During the next week, keep your news app open and running. Use it as other users do. Check it whenever you’re stuck in meetings, at an outdoor event with your kids, shopping or sitting in traffic. Are the top stories relevant? Are they fresh? App users are looking for immediate information, whether it’s about changing weather, traffic information or other breaking stories. Ideally, this information should be on the app’s first content screen.
If the top story on the app is more than an hour old, then it may feel stale. Just adding some facts and changing the headline and reflecting new content is the first step to avoid that “been there, done that” feeling.
Hopefully these steps can help re-energize your digital content engines. Let me know if I can help you in any way. Here’s a tease. In the next blog, I’ll share simple steps for how your app can drive TV newscast viewing.
