Jim Killam of Northern Illinois, adviser to The Northern Star, who I met in St. Louis, had a good question I want to throw out for others to comment on: #

One peripheral topic for New York and beyond would be innovative ways to promote our interactive media and drive traffic there. We have been OK at times at creating new things online, but our promotional efforts have largely flopped. At least in our case, ads in the print newspaper, or even page-1 promos for what’s online that day, don’t appear to be the best way to draw traffic. But we haven’t hit on other good methods yet. #

It’s something that I’m afraid we’re all going to have to learn how to deal with in the future. Marketing an online site takes a different approach than we’re used to with self-promotion. #

IMHO, the key is to try to build a community around your online presence, in such a way that these people check the site regularly. You can do this in a number of ways. Providing access to audience members to create their own content or share their experiences is one way. Linking to outside web sites – like other student weblogs – is another. Partnering in unique ways with local entertainment groups (musicians, artists, theatre groups and the like) is another. This is social networking, which moves the model of news from “news as lecture” to “news as conversation.” There are some efforts afoot to move into text messaging headlines to mobile phone users – but these are still mostly experimental. If you have the ability on your content management system, you can also set up e-mail notifications when the content is fresh. I get all my NYTimes and WaPo prompts from these e-mails. #

It’s also become somewhat of a trend to use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to attract people to your site. #

Obviously, updating your site regularly and promoting new media efforts on the front page of the site is key as well. #

All of which is going to require some innovative thinking and some extra time and effort. And it’s something we’ll definitely be including in the New York CMA programming somehow. #

Any other suggestions? #

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