Newspaper publishers and advertising managers routinely toss around print and online readership numbers, but sometimes in ways that don’t make sense, and that might even miss opportunities to build revenue, business and community.
Dan Thornton, community marketing manager at Bauer Media, explained in his blog last week why it’s dangerous to compare print figures to Web site statistics.
Thornton points out that in the UK, sales figures for print copies of the Guardian and Observer newspapers typically are multiplied by three to take into account shared readership based on circulation research. However, online readership statistics generally fail to account for online reading that happens beyond the news organization’s Web site.
“It’s easy to overestimate the online figures in comparison to print products,” he writes. But, “I have to say that I think comparing print and online readerships directly … is equivalent to comparing the number of people who drive cars with the number of people with vowels in their name.”
Thornton suggests that if your newspaper factors shared readership into its print circulation, then to be fair you should also try to estimate how many people encounter your online news without ever logging into your site as a visitor. This includes people who:
- Block cookies
- Use a feed reader or personal home page (like MyYahoo)
- Get news or headlines via social media or news aggregators
- Access mobile or cached versions of your news (which often aren’t estimated adequately)
- Read reports of your news stories elsewhere online
Thornton has a good point. If you think your online readership (as estimated by direct Web site traffic) represents only a small percentage of your estimated print circulation — think again. When considering the future of your business, how many people visit your site ultimately may be less relevant than how many people connect with your news content and brand via any online or mobile channel.
The catch is recognizing the opportunities inherent in this broader view, and (in the short term) communicating that value effectively to advertisers and other potential partners.
To illustrate how online distribution of your content can build your brand and attract readers, I first heard about Thornton and his post via this OJaggregator tweet, a headline service from fellow Tidbits contributor Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog, which republished Thornton’s article.
A link from that repost led me to Thornton’s blog, The Way of the Web. I liked what I saw there so much that I’ve subscribed to that blog’s RSS feed and am now following Thornton on Twitter. So he’s now part of my regular fodder for Tidbits, my own blog Contentious, and for my tweets, which about 3,300 people follow.
This just goes to show how potential ripple effects from distributed online or mobile encounters with your content (even just your headlines) can yield surprising benefits for your brand.
