[wpaudio url=”http://LetsTalkSocial.com/wp-content/uploads/Audio/Week12.mp3″ text=”Week 12″ dl=”0″ autoplay=”1″]
Yesterday at 2:00 I receive a text from sources:
Kelowna.com is having serious troubles, I look at my phone with shock. Can this be true?
After confirmation of a few things, I fire out a tweet and more confirmations arrive that employees have been given a weeks notice.
So what happened, did the sharks get them?
Will more heads roll in similar businesses?
Review:
- Forest fires 2003 castantet.net takes off
- Forest fires 2009 Kelowna.com takes off (swear they started them!!! #just saying LOL)
- At the time I was working on a hyper local social media project when Kelowna.com shows up Lots of Money and a Domain name and what seemed a game plan
- Most people were happy to see something new
- The layout of Castenet was getting old
- Everything was looking good
- Social media such as twitter was just starting to get understood
- And the newspapers in Kelowna were scaling back
Adrian was a reporter at Kelowna.com until laid off 2 months ago and writes about his thoughts on the meltdown. He Wrote:
“As journalists we have to get beyond simply delivering the same kind of content that appears in newspapers and on television. I think we have to do more to adapt to the web’s interactive nature. We need to figure out how to use things like social media to not just draw readers to our sites but to bring them into our (virtual) newsrooms and give them a say in what stories are covered and how.”
This statement rang home to me, as I think many people are happy being the reporter.
People are very interested in what affects their lives and their friends’ lives in a very up-close personal way such as the Facebook Status and the 140 Character twitter update.
We are in an era of not wanting to be told anything. We want to do the story telling. Most people who have online blogs consider themselves as a writer or a journalist in its basic form. People want to explore, experience and interact. This is a world of technology with the onslaught of 3D movies and 3D TVs and Wii game interaction.
We did hear from : Marshall Jones Editor at Kelowna.com who sent an e-mail telling us that
Kelowna.com is not going bankrupt, it’s just —most likely—going much, much lighter on local news.
Which I find so ironic when reading Kelowna.coms local news column today I find an article about media heavyweight Corus Entertainment trying hard to arrive in the Okanagan to broadcast its new station Local 1 a TV channel dedicated to hyper –local news. But Kelowna.com is most likely—going much, much lighter on local news. Thus the changes……hmmmm
Anyway
One issue was getting people to go to the Kelowna.com website and getting them to come back, but that did not make kelowna.com money
What I wanted to quickly focus on was revenue stream for them.
It seems that they may not have been making enough money
…. How was it making its money?
Advertising Kelowna business via online ad’s
So why did this not work the way it was supposed to?
Who the hell clicks Ad’s anymore?
Who is not sick of Ad’s on the side of everything they see online?
But the GIANTs are just letting us know they are going to be doing it
iPhone 4.0 release = the iAd Why does apple need to make more money in this way?
Twitter = Sponsored Ad’s will stay in the feed the more interaction they get in a search
Why: because what else do you have to sell except space?
So you have to have the perfect platform and plan for them. Not just throw them up and hope they stick.
It’s about Brand recognition not clicks…..And the people selling the advertising space have to understand that better than anyone.
Analytics, Metrics and Return on advertising dollar are key.
The average small business who may spend money on yellow pages, is not educated as much as they should perhaps be on the importance or how to of online.
I think Kelowna.com did a lot correct but perhaps forgot to educate it’s public on the one thing it needed most the value of brand recognition and association which would provide the $$$ it needed
There is value with online advertising, but make sure you work with a professional that understands how to develop an integrated campaign for you.