Using chat or a call center to help your audience

Personal finance writer Harriet Johnson Brackey of the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., helped set up a call center and online chat to give readers access to eight financial-planning experts. The result was a full-page Sunday Q&A, online questions, blog entries and an opportunity to hear from about 400 readers, she says.

“People need help. They don’t have a lot of places to go to get objective advice,” Harriet says.

As part of Financial Planning Week Oct. 5-11, the local association of financial planners wanted to do a community service project. Harriet suggested its members come into the newsroom to take reader calls for three hours. She says reporters and editors willingly gave up their desks around lunchtime to make it happen.

Today’s Tip: Set up a call center and/or take advantage of online chat with experts to answer your audience’s questions about personal finance or the economy.

In the Web 2.0 world, audience members are seeking a relationship with news outlets. Technology makes it easier than ever to engage them in a dialogue with you and with outside experts.

“When you think about the decisions you have to make in your life, your readers have to make them, too. Instead of preaching about economics, get right in there next to the reader [and ask], ‘What resources can I bring to that?’” she says.

Harriet says some may see the project as advocacy, but she sees it as addressing an issue that hundreds of readers have.

Story Lives On with Audience's Help

BusinessWeek has found a way to keep some stories alive: update them with its audience’s help.

In 2005, the magazine did an article called, “Blogs Will Change Your Business.” When editors realized the story was still getting major hits online, they updated the story in 2008 with blue icons to alert readers to new data and called it, “Social Media Will Change Your Business.” But they’re not done: they want to do it again and have posted a video seeking audience participation.

“We have to keep the story going, and we can’t do it alone,” Stephen Baker, who co-wrote the article, says in the video.

Today’s Tip: Dig through your archives and see what needs refreshing. Look for articles that particularly resonated with readers. Think about how technological and economic changes have changed the story and seek reader input. If you’re working on an evolving story, keep it on your to-do list to update down the road.

John A. Byrne, BusinessWeek.com’s editor in chief, talks about its strategy of differentiating itself with high levels of audience engagement in a Q&A on Econsultancy.com. Speaking of the social media article, he says:

“Even though it was published in February of 2008, it remains one of the three or five most-read stories every month. Why? Because Steve and Heather [Green] asked for and got heavy audience collaboration on the story.”