The Future of Online News: How To Convert News Junkies

The future of online news is shrouded in clouds.

As a seasoned PR pro­fes­sion­al, I depend on keep­ing up with the news. I would pay for access to a news site… if the news site could give me what I want.

This art­icle will demon­strate just how much a news pub­lish­er has to offer — without resort­ing to hid­ing news stor­ies behind pay­walls.

Let’s get into it:

Journalists Need Smarter Paywalls

In my digit­al-first uni­verse, such as it is, a premi­um busi­ness mod­el for journ­al­ism does­n’t include pay­walled news. 

Instead, we should entice news lov­ers with a fuller exper­i­ence of what drew them. For a news pub­lish­er, the news is the equi­val­ent of con­tent mar­ket­ing for a reg­u­lar busi­ness. It’s not some­thing you ask users to pay for; it’s what makes users favour you with their attention.

However, as a news junkie, I’d love to pay for premi­um access!

But news pub­lish­ers must rethink how they con­vert news junkies into premi­um subscribers.

Read also: Dear Journalist,

Examples of Premium-Only Features

A premi­um com­munity for news lov­ers. The future of online news must attract “news junkies” (news con­sumers who crave a deep and total news exper­i­ence. The value pro­pos­i­tion should include some of the fol­low­ing fea­tures for premi­um-only users:

Please note that none of the above add-ons includes hid­ing news stor­ies behind paywalls.

A premi­um com­munity for busi­ness accounts. Many brands love news. The value of a brand premi­um sub­scrip­tion could be sub­stan­tial. Here are a few examples of a bet­ter news exper­i­ence for busi­ness accounts:

Please note that none of the above add-ons includes hid­ing news stor­ies behind paywalls.

Prerequisites for the Premium Model

News must be freem­i­um. All edit­or­i­al con­tent (i.e. the news) must be free and not pay­walled. The premi­um offer­ing is focused on fea­tures extend­ing and deep­en­ing the news experience.

Old ad mod­els must be replaced. The primary pur­pose of ads is to drive freem­i­um users to premi­um con­ver­sion, and the sec­ond­ary goal is to allow premi­um busi­ness accounts to place pro­gram­mat­ic ads.

News pub­lish­ers must learn online con­ver­sion. The future of online news must know to con­vert freem­i­um users (news read­ers) to premi­um users (fea­ture users) at a com­pet­it­ive level which means con­vert­ing 1% of all unique vis­it­ors at a min­im­um. This is a far cry from what the industry is cap­able of today. ¹This also becomes a chal­lenge to keep­ing premi­um users on a monthly sub­scrip­tion mod­el (churn).

The Engagement Pyramid

The 1% rule of online engage­ment was mainly an urb­an legend on the inter­net. Still, a peer-reviewed paper from 2014 entitled The 1% Rule in Four Digital Health Social Networks: An Observational Study con­firmed the 1% rule of thumb.

Active pub­lics dis­trib­ute them­selves in a way proven sci­en­tific­ally by soci­olo­gists — long before the inter­net and social media emerged. 

The engage­ment pyr­am­id divides pub­lics into three dis­tinct groups:

• Creators (1%)
• Contributors (9%)
• Lurkers (90%)

When study­ing inter­net for­ums spe­cific­ally, it’s not uncom­mon to find that 90% of users have nev­er pos­ted (lurk­ers), 9% are adding only to exist­ing top­ics and threads (con­trib­ut­ors), and 1% are act­ively start­ing new sub­jects and threads (cre­at­ors).

The engage­ment pyr­am­id is some­times called the 1% rule or the 1−9−90 rule.

Learn more: The Engagement Pyramid

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Change: The Future of Online News

Why are journ­al­ists so slow to adapt? 

Most news pub­lish­ers are homeschooled in tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing. They haven’t been exposed to high-level online busi­ness mod­els in highly com­pet­it­ive areas like e‑commerce, fash­ion, or enter­prise software.

Online busi­ness mod­els seem pro­voc­at­ive for most tra­di­tion­al news cor­por­a­tions. They’ve been enjoy­ing the tra­di­tion­al role of hav­ing pass­ive news consumers. 

News cor­por­a­tions are not accus­tomed to giv­ing their read­ers any influ­ence over their news exper­i­ence, nor are they will­ing to grant super-users (“news junkies”) any extra favours. This has got to change.