Boardroom View

The Changing Online Landscape - Reaching Niche Audiences Through Digital Communities

Lori Erdos, VP, Advertising Sales, USA TODAY
Oct 28 2008

The Changing Online Landscape - Reaching Niche Audiences Through Digital Communities

Many marketers are trying to figure out how to tap into social networks and niche audiences. We wonder if our products make sense for the MySpace generation, how we can develop the next application that will set Facebook on fire or how to reach the C-suite on LinkedIn. We bring in fresh faces to help us negotiate the online world, all the while missing the fact that we ourselves are already entrenched in it.

We forget that everyday we are already engaging in social networks and digital communities. We’ve gotten so used to being able to share photos online, send around a funny YouTube video or catch up with old classmates in a chat group that we don’t realize we have become our own target demographic.

We as marketers like what all consumers like and so instead of trying to find the next big thing, we need to slow down and listen to what our audiences are already doing. Instead of trying to create a digital tool that you think will meet the online social needs of your consumers, just make it possible for your audience to tell you what their needs are.

In 2007 USA TODAY launched what we call “Network Journalism.” We were the first major newspaper site to offer social networking applications like consumer-generated content, comments and recommendations. We have continued to build on the tools we make available to our readers, and in the time since we launched the new face of USATODAY.com we have seen other mainstream media sites follow our lead. It makes sense, let the consumer help drive the conversation of your website and you’ll ultimately create a better product.

What we launched as an experiment in social networking has spun out into a series of successful niche audience micro sites. We saw that our readers were building chatter around certain topics and we listened to that. USATODAY.com readers wanted to talk about cruise vacations, so we gave them a space to do that in our online Cruise Community moderated by USA TODAY cruise reporter Gene Sloan. We saw that people were migrating to our website to talk about air travel, so we developed “Today in the Sky,” an online flight community led by business travel blogger Ben Mutzabaugh. We took the opportunity to listen to what was important to our audience and shifted our resources and talent to create a viable digital community that met their needs.

Sometimes when it comes to digital communities, you don’t need to force yourself into a new space. Listen to the customers you have and meet their needs. You’ll find you’re already where you were headed.