Sales call from www.localstars.co.uk

www.localstars.co.uk

Branded local video advertising.

Proposing meeting in April. Sending more details.

"Rise Up! A Classifieds Manifesto"

http://www.reinventingclassifieds.com/rise-up-a-classifieds-manifesto/

Some good ideas on improving the classifieds service offered by a newspaper group. Including:

"play to your strengths, pull selected ads out of the classifieds section “ghetto” and position them next to relevant editorial content. For example, aggregate all the golf-related liner ads and put them in a box near golf stories in the Sports section; this can be done in print or online. You’ll be providing added value to the classified advertisers by applying this to all sorts of categories.

Those ads should still be included (also) in the main classifieds section, but repeated in editorially contextual placements. Such added-value placement could be sold for an extra fee (upsell), but it may make more sense to include this as a core part of the service to advertisers to enhance your value to them and compete against free classifieds sites...."

"That doesn’t mean that the upsell is dead, but offering a long list of upsell options is no longer a relevant practice. A better approach is to offer packages or tiers: Good, Better, Best. Upsell features can be added to the Better package; yet more to the Best package. You want potential advertisers to understand what they’re getting and how much it will cost."

The thinking behind the Lawrence Marketplace directory

http://jeffcroft.com/blog/2007/apr/03/ljworld-marketplace/

"I’ve found myself using this thing constantly as we’ve been developing it. It’s really, really useful. But at the same time, it’s a tremendous advertising opportunity for local businesses and a nice money-making venture for us, as well. I think it really goes to show that it is possible to make both advertisers and users happy. These two groups don’t have to be at odds with one another. Give users honest and tasteful advertisements for products and services they may actually be interested in, and provide them with a lot of useful content along the way, and I suspect you won’t hear many complaints from either party."

Demise of Newspapers Inevitable?

http://themediabiz.blogspot.com/2009/03/demise-of-newspapers-inevitable.html

"Newspapers had to stop thinking of themselves as the MASS MEDIA in a world of niche, targeted marketing and advertising. Newspapers had the content, just didn't use it wisely. Instead of thinking of the sports section as a mass media vehicle, think of it as a conglomeration of niche markets, those who are interested in golf, basketball, or football. Take all the content--you've got tons of it--in each area and reconfigure it for microsites and email newsletters on specific topics--then go after advertisers who never think of buying the newspaper."

Be relevant

http://www.foliomag.com/2009/role-print-disaster-be-relevant

Personal piece from Diane Burley of Nstein about the Buffalo plane crash and the relevancy of local news teams. Nothing replaces having real people on the ground who know the place, and know the people.

Journalism's fatal disconnect with business

Good article on the potential of getting editorial/advertising/technical people together to create something of genuine use to users and advertisers.

http://www.lostremote.com/2009/02/26/journalisms-fatal-disconnect-with-business/

"By splitting journalism and business into two buckets separated by a longstanding cultural divide, the two groups fail to collaborate on ideas that tap the strengths of both. And neither have a track record of understanding how technology enables community, the greatest opportunity of all. In fact, nearly three-quarters of local online news consumers say newspapers have failed in providing a sense of community and “connective tissue” in their local cities and neighborhoods (Forrester Research 2009). After all, most journalists want to control the conversation. So do the sales folks. So you need a third element: creative technology folks, empowered with resources, who can infuse community in content and revenue generation, providing value to both users and businesses."

Yahoo Apt Platform

Interesting articles on Yahoo Apt platform successes with regional newspapers in the US.

Yahoo-Newspaper Consortium Producing Some Mutual Gains

You can't do it if you don't try

Alas UK launch is not planned until Q4 2009