Creating Effective Content involves analyzing the market and competition, defining the target user base by segmenting audiences, mapping the media situation and access levels of audiences, planning the site's internal workflows and external interfaces for different platforms, testing usability, and crunching user analytics numbers to understand actual audiences. The key is to focus on journalism and story building over fancy technology, engage users in content creation, and continually test and adapt the site based on data.

1. Creating Effective Content Mark Comerford http://www.retaggr.com/page/markmedia Created with help from my digital network where many of the better ideas came from: thanks

2. Conventional Wisdom It is not your friend Its conventional Is it wise? Question everything you do

3. Creating Effective Content Its not just what you say its also how you say it When you say it Who you say it with

4. Creating Effective Content Analyze the market Who are the competition? Here it is important to understand that the competition is not another news organization. It is anyone who produces the kind of content you wish to spread . This could mean everything from government agencies to Craig’s list to individual and community blogs and microblogs. What do you bring to the area that is not already there?

5. Creating Effective Content Define your user base Here there are two categories: Your target audiences {want/need} your actual audiences {have} [see “crunch the numbers” below]. There will in all probability be a number of differing audiences particularly within your target audiences. This will involve segmenting and day parting

6. Creating Effective Content day parting How does bulk, timed uploading affect day parting? Are they compatible with continuous story building? “ because you have to be brave and release all your content without timed uploads, to then have enough accurate, relevant data for when people are logging on. Otherwise, how do we know they're not just showing up like cats at certain times when they know their dishes are filled” (comment by Alison Gow)

7. Creating Effective Content Map their media situation In this case you are particularly interested in the levels of access to technology. Again there are two categories: Their present level of access their planned levels. You need to plan for the best foreseeable future [for ex. In ZA the new cables and the World Cup, in the UK the Carter Report “ Media situation” should be a broad term encompassing not only Internet access but also mp3 players, cell phone penetration etc.

8. Creating Effective Content Map their media situation How do they use it? Hard data on media usage in your target audiences Give a reporter this as a beat as there are stories there as well

9. Creating Effective Content Plan your site There will be two levels to this. Internal External

10. Creating Effective Content Plan your site Internal work flow issues the relative weight of different media in the publishing process When is video/sound/slide show/graphics/text appropriate and who decides? Routines how to spread information internally publishing policies user-driven content digital collection of material, video/TV, sound/radio, databases, archiving etc.

11. Creating Effective Content Plan your site Advertising issues need to be looked at What is effective commercial content? How do you integrate the commercial and the editorial? packages over all media types, geographic targeting etc. Who are your strategic partners?

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13. Creating Effective Content Plan your site Have a taxonomy!! This allows for search and delivery across platforms Database driven journalism and the interactive mash-ups this allows are becoming vital. Sent some journalists on a programming course Have journalism savvy techs to help and involve them from the inception in the journalistic process

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16. Creating Effective Content Plan External what the consumer sees and gets. This is where you need to gear your site to the technical levels of your audiences. A more (technically) sophisticated audience will want some advanced applications (photo shows, illustrations, podcasts, blogs etc), whereas a less (technically) sophisticated audience will possibly find these extremely annoying. Differing platforms demand different design. Mobile delivery and interactivity vital components (see taxonomy) Judging the correct levels is an ongoing task and as levels of access and sophistication rise the site will have to be tweaked to adapt.

17. Creating Effective Content Plan A number of policy and legal issues such as copyright, payment, libel etc. need to be resolved during this process. Ethics Should reporters have work and private accounts on Twitter and other social media services? How do you deal with user information in a public/private sphere? (think ripping images and quotes from facebook etc) Moderation of interactive sites: Terms of use (must incl. branded Flickr and YouTube groups etc ) Creative Commons Licensing (Liverpool Daily Post Flickr Group as an example) Trusted users