The news business model needs to evolve to take advantage of the digital opportunity. This shift is vital for two business reasons: market share and revenue predictability. That’s why more publishers are using live chat news to stay connected with their audience.
The Top 4 Revenue Challenges Facing The News Business
Increased competition from non-traditional news sources and social media is just one of the news business’s problems. Many publishers are struggling to earn online revenue.
- Minimal Digital Advertising Revenue. Local TV stations in the US only earned about 7% of their total advertising revenue from digital in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
- Election Year Dependence. Many local TV stations tend to earn significantly more revenue in election years than non-election years. That means broadcasters struggle to maintain staffing levels and quality as they ride the revenue rollercoaster.
- Slowing Retransmission Fee Growth. Over the past decade, local TV stations earned billions from retransmission fees (i.e., fees paid by cable and satellite companies to carry local channels). While this revenue source may continue to grow this decade, it is likely to grow at a much slower pace.
- The Rise of Streaming Services. Two streaming services – Netflix and Disney+ – have developed significant audiences in the US and other countries. Every hour customers spend on a streaming service means less attention and revenue for other publishers.
Other news publishers in print, radio, and other media are facing challenges with declining revenue. For example, newspaper circulation in the US has been falling steadily since 1990. Fortunately, some newspapers like the New York Times and Wall St Journal have recovered some ground with digital offerings.
Why Offering Live Chat Boosts Revenue For Publishers
Publishing quality news content online is no longer enough to attract audiences and earn revenue. That’s not the only challenge. There is an increasing challenge with misinformation and fake news more than ever before. For example, 11% of Americans strongly believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” in 2019. By thoughtfully engaging audiences, publishers can achieve two important goals at the same time.
Offering live chat news gives your audience additional reasons to stay on your website and keep coming back. By increasing audience engagement, you can boost your advertising revenue. Best of all, this added revenue requires minimal investments in technology and employee effort.
In addition to growing revenue, publishers can use live chat news events to engage their audiences in thoughtful conversations. A well-considered live chat news event can be done correctly and inspire your audience to think more deeply and become more engaged citizens.
Traditionally, publishers have focused their effort on creating and presenting the news. To engage today’s digital audience, we need to invite the public into the conversation. You can use a live chat news approach to keep audiences engaged.
Getting Started With A Chat News Live Stream
Adding a live chat to news coverage is simple. Follow these guides to install the Arena live chat platform on your website.
Once you have Arena Live Chat installed, you can test your new live chat news internally. For example, you could simulate coverage of an election for 15 minutes with colleagues. During the test, invite some people to participate as journalists while others play the role of the public. Experiencing both sides of a live chat platform is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the features.
Three Tips To Make The Most of Live Chat News
Launching a live chat platform on your news website only takes a few minutes. Keeping your audience engaged takes more practice. To run successful live chat sessions, keep the following tips in mind.
- Experiment with different times. Different segments of your audience will be available to participate at different times. For example, you might be able to connect with a business news audience during the morning of a major IPO (initial public offering) in the stock market. In that situation, inviting investing experts to add to the conversation can make your chat news live stream more interesting. If attendance and engagement numbers are low, try the other tips in this section to improve the quality of the session.
- Enforce your standards. When you open your virtual doors for a chat news live stream, troublemakers might appear. For example, some people might start cursing in the live chat. To quickly handle those problems, use Arena’s Live Chat, which includes profanity moderation.
- Prepare questions in advance. Even live events like elections and sports games have slow moments. In these moments, your chat news live stream might go quiet. If the chat stays quiet for too long, your audience might leave. Preparing 5-6 questions in advance of running the live chat session will solve this problem.
Is Live Chat News Right For You?
Live chat news is a proven way to make news coverage more engaging. However, it will not help every organization. Three situations make it more challenging to make live chat news work.
- You lack an online audience. For live chat news to work, you need a reasonably large online audience. If your company focuses exclusively on non-digital formats like print, radio, and TV, live chat news might not suit you.
- Technical Skills. Installing live chat news is relatively fast and straightforward. Many customers can install it in just five minutes. That said, it does take some time to learn all of the features. If your staff cannot learn additional digital skills, live chat news may not be a good fit.
Offering a live chat news stream is an excellent strategy for publishers with active websites and a desire to build your digital advertising revenue.
Start Your First Live Chat Event For Free
You can start a live chat event in less than an hour by signing up for the Arena Live Chat free trial. In a few weeks, you’ll have plenty of time to run a few live chat news events and discover if Arena is right for you.
Does your online media brand need a larger audience? A large and growing audience is the foundation of every successful online media brand. Yet, many brands neglect the power of a live chat platform to grow their reach. That’s a mistake because your audience doesn’t want to consume information passively.
Where Will The Conversation Happen?
Whether you cover a major political event like an event, a breaking business story, or a sports game, your audience is talking about that event. People are going to share their thoughts on social media, text, email, and beyond. As an online media brand, you can approach conversations in two ways.
The traditional or “broadcast only” approach to the audience is the most common choice. With this line of thinking, your audiences have no way to interact with each other on your website. That means conversations almost always happen somewhere else, like Twitter or Facebook. That means people are spending less time on your platform.
The inclusive approach to conversation is the better way because it builds your reach with a live chat platform. Imagine covering a significant event like the annual CES event – a must-attend event for the electronics industry. By giving your audience a live chat experience, they are more likely to stay on your website. There is also a good chance they will invite their friends and family to join the conversation.
Live Chat Strategies To Increase Your Reach
Use these strategies to make the most of your live chat sessions. Pick and choose among the different strategies for the best results until you find the right approach for a chat news live stream that appeals to your audience.
Reach Building Strategy 1: Become a community hub
Think about the community hubs in your city. For example, parents and families regularly gather in parks for their children’s sports games. Everybody knows when and where the game will happen, week after week. Church services have a similar community dynamic – everybody attending a service knows when to show up on Sunday morning.
To apply the community hub strategy to your brand’s live chat news , use the following steps.
- Pick a consistent day and time. If people always know when to attend your live chat session, they can add it to their calendar and look forward to it.
- Focus on one segment of your audience. When you first get started, don’t try to appeal to everybody in your audience. For example, you might run a sports-focused live chat on Mondays and a stock market-focused live chat on Wednesdays.
Offering a small, focused live chat experience makes it easier for your audience to feel connected with others who share their interests.
Reach Building Strategy 2: Invite influencers as guests
Collaboration with others is one of the best ways to grow your audience. Specifically, consider inviting relevant influencers to your live chat. Encourage each influencer to promote the event to their audience. Over time, you will have the opportunity to grow your reach.
To make the most of the influencer-themed chat news live stream event, keep the following tips in mind.
- Brand Relevance. Inviting a fashion influencer to a business-themed news website probably would not make sense. Avoid the temptation to invite any influencer you come across with a large audience. Instead, use tools like Klear or Upfluence to identify relevant influencers. In particular, look for similarities in audience demographics. If your online media site audience is mainly women over the age of 30, seek out an influencer relevant to that audience.
- Influencer Audience Size. Only a tiny fraction of an influencer’s audience will join your live chat session. As a rule of time, use the 1% rule. Assume that 1% of the influencer’s followers will join your event. That means 1,000 live chat participants if the influencer has an audience of 100,000.
- Make The Influencer Feel Special Before, During, and After The Event. Making the influencer feel special doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, you could assign them an assistant during the live chat session and dedicated tech support. After the event, give them a report on how the event went covering how many people attended the event. You might also want to send a gift to the influencer to thank them for their participation.
If the influencer asks to be paid for participating in the live chat, consider the request. Before agreeing, ask them about previous collaborations they have participated in.
Reach Building Strategy 3: Offer a family-friendly environment
The Internet is not always a friendly place for families and children. As a publisher, this sorry state of affairs is an opportunity for thoughtful publishers. Your website can become a destination for parents concerned about appropriate Internet use by offering well-moderated live chat news sessions.
A significant number of families are already applying restrictions of some kind on how their children use social media, mobile devices, and other services. A March 2020 survey of 3640 people found that 72% of US parents use parental controls on screen time. The same survey found that 49% of parents look at call records and texts on their child’s smartphone. Publishers who create moderated live chat sessions can build their reach by appealing to these audiences.
With Arena Live Chat, you have operations to keep live chat sessions family-friendly. Profanity moderation is built in. In addition, it is easy for moderators to remove participants who do not follow guidelines quietly.
Reach Building Strategy 4: Exclusive chat experiences for subscribers
In some cases, your goal may not be maximizing pageviews or raw audience numbers. For instance, you might focus on promoting exclusive programs for subscribers. For example, the; New York Times offers offline access to content for paying subscribers, among other benefits.
Consider setting up exclusive live chat news experiences for your paying subscribers. For example, you might offer pre-game interviews with VIP athletes right before a major game. To make the live chat experience more enticing, consider limiting attendance to a small group of 50-100 so each participant can be heard.
Start Expanding Your Online Media Reach Today
Getting started with Arena Live Chat is easy. You can install it on your website in less than 10 minutes. You can get started for free and start building your reach with a free trial. That’s enough time to hold a few events and grow your audience.
