Notes from the digital-first playbook

This week's two case studies are from tiny Pottstown, a 23,000 population borough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on the Schuylkill River that survived both an earthquake and a flood this week. 

The case studies are solid, if small revenue, simple ideas. But what's happening at Pottsmerc.com is important for a different reason.

The Journal Register-owned Pottstown Mercury News serves tri-county area, and thus has a circulation of 27,000. Pottsmerc.com on the other hand has 300,000 monthly Unique Visitors (keep in mind, this is not a tourist town), was named by E&P as one of the ten newspapers that "Does it right" - "it" being digital, we assume - and selected as a speaker at the SNA/Blinder Revenue Summit. 

In August, 2011,  that number was 457,000 UV's. Even though analytics overstate UV's and you can cut the number in half, it's still a huge number compared to market size and circulation.

We've covered three small revenue initiatives on this site - the Best Bartender video contest, and now a Holiday Map and Multi-media Dining Guide. Nothing too dramatic except for the obvious: This small staff can kick out a new online initiative seemingly at will.

This is the legacy of CEO John Paton's digital first initiatives at the granular level. Too often we see media companies stuck with templated software that just can't produce these kinds of small revenue generating guides that have a promoted life span of maybe, say, 30 days or six months.

I probably should not be making comparisons to a river running down hill or a flash flood this week. Let's just say that for most media companies stuck in overly-templated software, a back-logged development queue or unresponsive interactive department, the idea of a sales team spawning numerous creative initiatives is just unworkable.

Moreover, most of these products involve video deployed by the sales staff, equipped with Flip phones years ago, or what seems like it.

So kudos to the staff at the PottsMerc.com.

My question for the companies I work with, and for the rest of LMI members, is this: If you cannot deploy, say, a digital video guide with the same ease as, say, a print guide or an on air promotion, what would it take to do so?

Let me put it this way: What structural changes in staff and software would be required to allow the revenue side to effectively participate in, or guide a development team that could deploy initiatives easily and at will?

On the "road map" sometimes we stop short of this question and instead create a list of "to dos" that don't solve the overall problem of creating digital flexibility within the company.

To raise the bar in 2012 takes an advocate in the company, not just for specific digital projects, but for developing this creative capacity.

Thanks again to Jared Semet, Online Sales Director for sharing these revenue initiatives with us. We hope you are staying safe and dry!

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