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📮This week, we bring you the third installment of the Revenue Roadmap series.
With a saturated technology market, selecting the right tools for your media organization has become increasingly confusing. While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, defining the key principles and your media’s needs can guide your decision-making.
The Challenge: picking the right tech for your media’s growth
In the endless pool of tools and with limited funds, the main challenge is knowing what tools to use and how they will solve your usability challenges today and tomorrow.
Where to start?
The Solution: break it down, test, prioritise
To curate your choices – from payment systems to user authentication and publishing tools – it’s critical to pinpoint your organization’s priorities and requirements. Start by researching different software that solves a specific problem.
Consider factors like price, usability, complementarity, functions and features, scalability, security, compatibility, performance, and regulatory compliance. List your needs, prioritize them, and be prepared to make trade-offs between must-haves and nice-to-haves. Fortunately, many software providers offer trial periods, allowing you to test various options before committing.
Just don’t forget to cancel that trial subscription!
Take a CMS – a system used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management) – with 2 main components: 1) a content management application (CMA) – a front-end user interface that allows a user to add, modify, and remove content from a website without the intervention of a web developer; 2) a content delivery application (CDA), that compiles the content and updates the site.
Break down the main features when stacking your tools:
- Price: Evaluate monthly and annual costs, user scalability, and the potential need for additional features over time. Don’t hesitate to negotiate prices with providers.
- Security: Assess the measures in place to ensure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability, along with adherence to regulations such as GDPR.
- Compatibility: Identify the platforms, browsers, and software your system must support. Look at the regulatory compliance and verify that the software adheres to relevant legal and industry-specific regulations.
- Features: Carefully examine the functions each software provides. For example, if you plan to incorporate group subscriptions, select a membership software that supports this functionality.
🔎 WordPress, Squarespace, Ghost, Drupal, and Joomla! are a few options to explore.
Discover the software and tools for production, publishing, distribution, revenue, operations, community, and collaboration in Phase 4 of the Revenue Roadmap guidebook.
Get the Revenue Roadmap series, bi-weekly in your inbox!
Next Step Forward
The latest wave of deactivated X accounts and #ExitRacismOnX #JoinMe campaign led by Systemic Justice NGO makes us think – what will be the platforms our audiences go to tomorrow?
X is not the only problem. For a while now media struggled to get engagement on socials with a sharp decline in traffic from social media along with a rise of misinformation.
- Instagram has been deprioritising news and political content (with and without your consent, allegedly)
- TikTok and other video-format platforms push more feel-good content from individual ‘creators’, in engaging formats
Still, many journalists and newsrooms have put a ton of effort into building their social media presence. It takes time, it takes creativity and for better or worse, it takes someone on your team to be chronically online.
Nicolas Rios, Audience and Community Director at Documented (US) confirms, that being open-minded is key when centring audiences in your media. When Documented decided to launch a Caribbean community channel in Brooklyn, the team wasn’t sure which platform would reflect the community’s needs. First-hand data came from interviewing the community of primarily Black Carribeans in the neighbourhood.
Once the interviews were done, the answer came as a surprise. NextDoor – being infamous as a racist platform, was the place where this community accessed news the most. With a radically different community-driven approach to journalism and information, the Documented team knew that to best serve this audience, they needed to meet them where they were.
“Hadn’t we listened to our audience first, we would have proceeded with preconceptions about the communities we aim to serve”, said Nicolas.
Despite global trends, your local audience might still seek your content through socials. Like with any new product or project, think audience first. So, when social media alternatives appear, you need to have a clear idea of how to allocate your scarce time and resources, otherwise spent on a hungry feed of yet another social media space. You might just find that your organization does not need social media at all and your comms person can finally touch some grass.
Innovation Deck
Apply for IPI’s Innovation Mentorship Programme
Help shape a forward-thinking and innovative media landscape & get peer-to-peer support.
📍Europe, applications on a rolling basis
The mentorship programme facilitates the transfer of knowledge and expertise, fostering a thriving community rooted in engagement, trust, and mutual support.
👉 As a mentor, you get the opportunity to help shape the new generation of media and support the learning journeys of media professionals.
👉 As a mentee, you get access to a space for mutual learning, networking and collaboration between media professionals and newsrooms from different parts of Europe and the world.
Other opportunities:
Empower your media outlet with Business Innovation Synergizer |
Transform your media ideas with the Validation Booster programme |
|---|---|
| 📍Balkans & EE
Apply by September 24, 2024 |
📍Europe
Apply by September 24, 2024 |
Share your thoughts, reach out to the Media Innovation team and help us shape our media support programmes! Say hi – [email protected].
