Describe the current trends in your sector and how your organisation’s strategy is addressing them, ensuring that this not-specialist audience will be able to understand and learn from your perspectives. (500 word max)
– I work in a news organization ( we run a newspaper, some magazines and a radio station)
– But I work in the digital side of things – managing the websites, building mobile apps etc. We also run a classifieds product that enables people to search for jobs, properties, cars and other items for sale.
– The trend that I want to talk about is on social media and how it has revolutionized the way news is being reported
– Consumers are at the forefront of this change and most breaking news is being revealed via social media channels such as Twitter even before the main stream media is reporting on them
– Also want to cover the impact of social networking and how this has changed the way people buy and research for things and how people decide to buy things
– People tend to reach out to their network first before buying something and trust advice from their peers in the network
– We are embracing this change face on by being more open and reporting news on these new media channels and engaging in discussions with our customers and readers
– We are cross linking between the traditional channels and the new media channels so that everything can be shared on social media and people can have meaningful conversations around editorial content
– We are also changing and rebuilding our classifieds systems and products so that they are in line with the new open environment enabling people to share items for sale with peers in their network before making a buying decision. This is already seeing good traction as our users have activel starting using some of these features.