As digital media adviser to The Guardian media group, Tom Turcan’s job is to socialise Guardian readers online. This morning he explained to delegates at today’s e-Publishing innovation Forum on how that is currently being achieved.
Achieving hits of 200 million page impressions a month, with 250 news stories and 50 blog post a day. The content generated by the Guardian is vast; there are 7,000 audio and video files in the organisations media library to boot.
Turcan explained how the Guardian has been nurturing its readership into something more than just passive readers. They seem to have had some success; reader comments on the Guardian blog are up by 40% on last year, even though the level of content had remained roughly the same.
After dazzling us with such statistics, Turcan took us through some notions of what a community is and what it isn’t. For starters, he warned on not confusing an audience with a community, they aren’t the same thing. A group of people with similar interests don’t automatically count as a ‘community’ either. Turcan argued a community should be considered as a group of people who form relationships through the platform. A vital element it seems if you are trying to develop your own
With this in mind Turcan took us through a variety of social-networking functionalities the site has adopted over the years, explaining how even something as basic as the Guardian blog “a very thin platform” has encouraged the jump in engaging its user base. By asking people to comment on specific items, rating services or content for example, you engage with the reader and can then reward them accordingly, even if that is through kudos. It makes for a better service all round.
Giving the BBC website as a good example, Turcan explained how as a user he is more drawn to what others are reading about on the bottom right of the beeb news page than the stories chosen by the editor. I have to confess this same habit too, it illustrates his point well.
Turcan also advised the need to recognise the different types of users publishers serve. Some will be casual, new to the site or not using it regularly, other users, those that connect more often, (commenting, rating etc) will be more engaged with the site. The trick, it seems, it is that by engaging those users they then evangelise the Guardian site which in turn will bring in more casual users and so on.
Sounding a word of warning Turcan reminded the assembled publishers that because the internet frequently allows their advertisers to have direct contact to customers. There is nothing to say that publishers can’t disappear from the equation. The media are traditionally used to not being directly in touch with their readers and media organisations that don’t will need to change if they are to avoid this scenario.
It’s not just about reaching to each new user, said Turcan; it’s about engaging each user so they engage more with you and each other.
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