The Cobb County Courier is launching a twice-per-week streaming video show. I’ve tentatively scheduled the half-hour show for Thursday at 7 a.m. and Sunday at 8 p.m. I have it set up to run on Facebook and Twitter now, and I’m working on connecting the stream to YouTube.
I chose those times based on the statistics on when the most Facebook followers of the Courier’s page are online. I chose the heaviest early morning time, and the heaviest evening time.
I made the decision to do this based on the considerations in the next section (“Why is the Courier doing this?”).
But the timing was on pure impulse. I decided we need to run video in our mix, since video increases Facebook engagement.
While looking over some of the options available to me yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, I remembered that a number of my publisher friends recommended Steamyard. The advantage is you can draw from multiple inputs (cameras, microphones, online stuff) and broadcast to multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube).
So following that impulse I bought a Streamyard subscription, set it up, and launched an off-the-cuff Facebook Live through it. The first attempt got no viewers, since I hadn’t publicized it, so I decided to kill that session, and schedule another one a half hour out.
It picked up a few views, and despite no preparation, my delivery wasn’t totally embarrassing. In fact, since I value informality when I’m talking to people, it probably wasn’t much more amateurish-looking than future, better-prepared episodes will be. I’m just an affable elderly Southerner, and that’s my “brand” if I have one.
Why is the Courier doing this?
As the Editor and Publisher of the Cobb County Courier I spend a lot of time looking over our statistics and developing plans to grow our audience.
We get a lot of traffic from referrals (apps like newsbreak and smartnews pick up our stories frequently) and from Google web search.
Those sources have built us enough of an audience base that we now range between 130,000 and 200,000 page views per 30-day period. This morning we have just over 163,000 page views for the past 30 days.
So I’m focusing on two ways to grow audience.
One is our free daily newsletter (if you haven’t signed up for that already, please do by following this link).
But the other way I’m working on audience growth is by increasing our reach on social media.
At one time social media, mostly Facebook, accounted for over 90 percent of our traffic. Now it’s under 7 percent for the past 30 days.
And every expert I’ve talked to about Facebook reach and engagement, and every guide I’ve read to increasing Facebook traffic, stated that video gets more engagements than any of the other forms of content.
So I hope you’ll pay a visit to the Cobb County Courier Facebook page on Thursday morning at 7 a.m., Sunday evening at 8 p.m., or even better, both.
I haven’t settled on a name for the show yet, but I’m open to suggestions. Email them to me at larry.johnson@cobbcountycourier.com.
