Critical
Reflection
It would be fair to say that, as an editorial product, WINOL
is the most popular student-lead news organisation in the UK, which is proven in
the comparison of our Alexa ranking to that of others. This is particularly
impressive for such a small group; with only around 30 students in an area that
is not particularly heavy with news, maintaining the high standard of each
10-15 minute bulletin as well as the website and features sections is certainly
a challenge.
In terms of our popularity, our website’s global traffic has
more than doubled in the last 10 weeks and we have been consistently the top
online student editorial site in the UK for the last month according to figures
on the Alexa website. In the last two weeks we have been tracking and comparing
the ranks of several major student-run news sites. As of today, 9th
December 2012, we are ranked #476,793 globally and #10,338 within the UK,
according to Alexa, whilst our closest rival, East London Lines, are at
#593,839 and #23,814 respectively. Whilst the difference may be fairly slight
in terms of rank, the resources available to our competitor far outweigh our
own; the students working on the publication are all masters’ degree students,
so therefore have a greater knowledge of their medium as they should have already
had experience in the field. They also work in London which is a much more
news-rich area of the country. However, I personally feel that their content is
not as well written as our own; their stories often seem to be reminiscent of a
press release in their tome, which is likely to be the source that they have
come from. There is, though, one aspect that they do seem to be beating us on,
which is their still pictures. However, the quality of our photos are steadily
improving, which may form part of the explanation as to why we have now
overtaken them in terms of global rank. Similarly, our reach is also greater
than that of our closest competitor on a local level, The Hampshire Chronicle;
their global rank is #894,774 and in the UK they are ranked #43,856, showing
that we are almost twice as popular worldwide and over four times more popular
within the UK which, in my mind at least, proves that the quality of our
content is just as good, if not better, than that of professional news
organisations. Overall, our reach in the last month has improved by 70% and
160% over the last 3 months.
Aside from the quality and frequency of our uploads, there
were several other aspects of our site that seem to have influenced the upward
trend in our viewings. Possibly one of the bigger aspects is the much improved features
section that makes our site what many would call ‘sticky,’ meaning that people
spend much more time on the site after finding an interesting feature than they
had initially intended whilst checking on the latest news. The way in which
features have been structured both on the site and within the news room has
increased its success in that their improved organisation allows for greater
quantity and quality of each article. Another factor is the use of live shows
to cover both local and global significance on the site, such as the American
election and the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner debate.
One other new innovation that is likely to be responsible,
at least in part, for the increased circulation is the new and improved use of
social media. As WINOL’s social media editor, I have been in charge of
increasing our followers on twitter, creating and maintaining a Facebook page
and driving social media users towards our websites, amongst other things,
which has helped to maintain and expand our news operation’s internet presence.
As social media has become such an important part of the internet in the modern
era, the role of social media editor has become a vital role within any news
organization; twitter in particular has an important role both in alerting
people to the presence of new articles and to advertise the article through
‘retweets’ where other people share your 140 character post with other people.
In the first week, we began with around 650 followers which has increased to
over 1000 in the 10 weeks WINOL has been active this semester. This impressive
increase in numbers has been largely responsible due to the frequency of tweets
and Facebook updates as well as through the use of a consistent and easily read
style, including links in each direct to winol.co.uk.
Another part of my role is to ensure that my colleagues
maintain some form of twitter presence; by promoting their own work for WINOL
and retweeting things from our social media we can dramatically increase the
number of people our messages reach. This, combined with messages that target
specific people such as interviewees and interested parties, allows us to
portray our articles and their importance directly to those with a specific
interest in a story as well as our regular audience. Whilst it is not
necessarily the most efficient way of contacting relevant twitter users, a
large part of my time each week has been devoted to searching twitter user
names of groups and individuals who may have an interest in our stories. To
improve on this in the next year, however, it would make more sense to get the
journalists working on each story to compile a list of relevant twitter user,
or at least groups likely to have a twitter account, as this would make it a
much quicker process. It would also be easier as the person who wrote the story
understands who would be interested in it much better than anyone else would.
It is also vital that they use their own professional twitter account more
frequently and effectively and ensure that it is kept separate from their
personal one. It would be much easier to increase our followers further through
this; by discussing where they are going, who they are interviewing and
interesting still photos of people and places relevant to their work they keep
up our appearance on the internet and spark interest from followers in their work.
Through this, we can gain further followers and views, especially if the tweet
links to the site on a relatively regular basis.
Where using twitter becomes difficult is getting people outside
of your followers to see your tweet. The normal way of doing this, other than
getting retweets, is to use hashtags. However, many of the ones that are
popular and are “trending” are not appropriate for us, as a news site, to use. TO
try and counteract this, we have started our own hashtag “#WINdeals” which is a
way of people finding deals in the local area. However, this has had very
limited success as local, relevant deals are difficult and time consuming to
find. There has become a definite lean towards the Students Union in these
tweets as well which is a problem as we are supposed to be impartial and
therefore should not appear to be affiliated with any aspect of the University.
As well as the use twitter, I have created a Facebook page
for WINOL which may not be as popular as our twitter site but has still been
fairly successful in its brief existence thus far. Comparatively, it has gained
more followers than that of rival student news groups that have had their Facebook
page for around the same length of time. I have also created a mailing list for
students and faculty within the University, which may not necessarily be
particularly useful in terms of circulation but has been quite helpful as a
method of presenting and reminding people of our presence in terms of giving us
interviews and story ideas. For example, I received a reply from one of the
sports lecturers about having rugby coach Eddie Jones in as a guest speaker and
passed on this information to those working on Sportsweek who interviewed him.
On top of my work as social media editor, I have been
involved in a variety of WINOL run events, often being in charge of live
tweeting the event, including (but not limited to) the HPCC debate, the
American Election special and the BJTC Awards 2012. I have also aided many of
my colleagues in filming and attempted to create a Christmas themed consumer
review of the top toys for the year. After compiling a large number of lists, I
was unable to find a supplier willing to give me the toys to review despite saying
that they would be donated to either a charity or school afterwards. As I
intend on attempting this again next year, I will begin research earlier as
well as start phoning toy companies sooner and more frequently.
Overall, I feel that WINOL has been very successful this
semester and that my role within it has certainly been a fairly vital stepping
stone in our road to this. Of course, WINOL has some flaws that still need to
be ironed out – the website breaks fairly frequently and is still not overly user
friendly (though it is vastly better than it was before) and the turnover time
for features between filming and upload can still be unnecessarily long – but
it has certainly improved which is reflected in its overall popularity and
rank.
