At the J-Lab Citizens Media Summit at the Online News Association conference, Mary Lou Fulton, the VP of Audience Development at The Bakersfield Californian, suggests mainstream media sites looking at citizen media think about three ideas:
At the J-Lab Citizens Media Summit at the Online News Association conference, Mary Lou Fulton, the VP of Audience Development at The Bakersfield Californian, suggests mainstream media sites looking at citizen media think about three ideas:
- Personaa: create profiles for self-expression and connection with others who share interests. On the Bakersfield sites, all conbtributors have profile pages and you can read about their interests and see what contributions they’ve made. If you search the site for an “interest” you
can find people who share those interests. “Personas drive a lot of traffic for us. We’re finding that a lot of people enter our site through profile pages.” It also help you identify trends before the media might otherwise be aware of them.
- Multimedia: Audio and video
Fulkton urges sites to think about multimedia. As an example of the
power of it, she pointed to
of the state”.
“If you listen to this it sounds silly, but it’s social commentary about what kids are thinking. Thuis was the talk of the town.”
- Harnessing participation to harness revenue
We need to look for ways to take this passion that people have for their community and turn it into revenue that can sustain our work. The persona interests, for example, have a lot of potential for delivering targeted advertising to individuals that would have value to the users.
