Big Web Pow-Wow, part 2
Thanks for weighing in last week about where NCPR should be going in exploring new online platforms and future online strategy. The main takeaways so far from listeners encourage us to go slow, to think more deeply about our real strategic needs, and to not lose sight of our core mission as broadcasters. You can read all the conversation so far at this address:
http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/blogs/brainclouds/2010/02/big-web-pow-wow.html
Last week's post was pretty "top-level" in its approach. I'd like to ask you to weigh in now on some specific areas we are talking about exploring.
First is a new approach to the front page at ncpr.org. We propose to make page one more "newsy." Right now, news is available only in headline form there. We'd like to move the news one click closer--putting at least one story onto page one in full, with photos and direct audio links. We'd like to include more timely content about network programs, rotate new features through the home page more often, and make page one run deeper--including some NPR blogs, as well as NPR and other national features. The numbers driving this decision tell us that the average NCPR visitor is coming to the site only twice a month. A more news-heavy approach, starting at the home page, we hope, will encourage more people to put ncpr.org onto their daily news beat.
Second is a different approach to social media such as Twitter and Facebook. To date, our presence there is primarily driven by feeds that automatically put archive NCPR news and blog content into the social media space. We propose to move the clock ahead a little, giving more info about what's coming up instead of what's gone by. And we hope to use these platforms to engage the audience in story and program incubation, and to build such features as our winter and summer reading lists. And we hope to get more of the NCPR staff engaged with these platforms to post about what's happening in their areas.
Third, we hope to reorganize our approach to the music and arts of the region online, creating a more lively and two-way conversation about local music, regional arts, and cultural life--using new blogs, social media, and listener-submitted media in a more interactive way.
There are more areas where we are looking for change, but these three ought to be plenty for today. Give us your thinking in a comment below.
Labels: public radio, social networking, web design
posted by Dale Hobson @ 2/25/2010
5 comments
5 Comments:
Hi Dale,
My comments are on your first point, the front page of NCPR.org. I think you need to move away from a four column presentation. Right now when I go there I am presented with a large number of options as well as a pretty hefty amount of data. I don't think you need to lose it all and like the idea of having a headline story but wonder if you can use the left hand pillar for radio broadcast information using still the 15% of width. Add to that the information like featured events, readers and writers, etc. Those are all "radio" links and right now there is available space as the right column is not as long as the rest of the page leaving a blank spot.
Then use a central width of maybe 60% for the news with a main story, photo and links from NCPR, NCPR blogs, NPR news etc below it.
In the 20 that is remaining to the left, create your links to areas within NCPR.org. I like the functionality of the auto-menu in the orange across the top but I think that makes the page busy as a horizontal banner. Placing them to the left creates the discipline of knowing that the web content is accessible there just as the radio broadcast information is to the left.
Also, if you move those links in orange to the right column you open up the space for a bugger NCPR logo and maybe make it sit over the "North Country Photo" rather than next to it.
I know these are design-y observations but I see much of what is there can be reordered to make a news focused page that also draws people to both the radio broadcast information as well as the underlying web content. Hope these comments are useful.
Alan McLeod
Kingston, Ontario
Dale, we at the Artists' Guild in Saranac Lake absolutely love the way you have posted slide shows of our exhibits - and you leave them online forever! I check my personal and the gallery web site stats and we do get hits coming from your web site. It would be wonderful if people could comment on exhibits, or even individual pieces of art, or provide a review of a show - or ask the artist/gallery a question. And we hope in all your redesign that the arts won't get buried too deeply in your site. Thanks for all you do for us.
Sandy
Whatever you do, don't eliminate Radio Bob's show! ;-)
I agree with the predominant tone of the comments I have read. Stick with NPR radio broadcasting. THAT is your "mission"; it's what you exist for. We insult younger generations when we assume that we will never attract them unless we constantly tailor ourselves to their levels of interest, their attention spans, their latest trends and communication gimmickry. People grow up and grow older, not the other way around. If we present true sterling quality in our news coverage, our analysis, and our music from folk to classical - the best of our culture generally - and show that we appreciate it and enjoy doing it, the young will take our values to heart and make them their own. ... By the way, you encourage us to comment and you request our input. Yet you announce your main decisions as faits accomplis. Do I detect a “Hobson’s Choice” here?
Anon 3:54 said:
"you encourage us to comment and you request our input. Yet you announce your main decisions as faits accomplis. Do I detect a “Hobson’s Choice” here?"
This discussion arises out of a recent station retreat where we sought the best thinking of our staff on how (or whether) we should go forward. We are not announcing anything as a fait accompli. To quote from my post above:
"I'd like to ask you to weigh in now on some specific areas we are talking about exploring."
After developing new ideas internally, it is time to turn to our audience for their views. Our next take at a new strategy will be informed by that process, and we may have some different proposed changes as a result.
That being said, there is a consensus understanding within the station that we can not serve our public media mission effectively in the future without exploring the new media avenues that the audience is using. In a recent in-depth study of 30 younger media consumers--ages 16-28--I believe, only two of the study owned conventional radios--one had an fm radio in their car, one had an unplugged clock-radio on a shelf in the closet.
They did listen to radio, and to public radio--but they listened online. Broadcast-only is a strategy for fading into the sunset, not serving the next generation of public radio listeners.
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