good2gether

Articles at Boston.com linking to Do Good.

Neat.

The editors at Boston.com have linked from two online articles back to the Do Good Channel.  This is so powerful for nonprofits - read and Do Good.  Take a look:

Tuned In - Evidence that black-throated warblers use the grapevine to pick nesting sites upends conventional wisdom

Make way for puffins, terns, and laughing gulls

This is the power in our model - an article moves you, interests you, makes you want to do something.  Now you can.  You can Do Good.

Total Newspaper Readership Grows. Yeah for us and our nonprofit partners!

From MediaDailyNews - Total Newspaper Readership Grows

For all the gloom in the newspaper industry, total readership--including Web site visitors--is increasing, according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence, which found a 2.1% increase in audience size to 80.6 million between spring 2007 and spring 2008. The survey was performed by MRI for the Newspaper National Network in the top 100 media markets.

Importantly, this figure includes unduplicated online readers, counting each person who reads both newspapers and online just once.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, the total unique audience for newspaper Web sites reached 66.4 million in the first quarter of 2008--12.3% greater than the same period in 2007. Visitors generated 3.1 billion page views in the first quarter, up from 3 billion last year.

Read the whole thing here.

And here's my comment - NICE!  This validates our newspaper-centric approach. 

Now imagine 1% or 3% or 5% or 15% or more of those page views with the connect2cause widget appearing alongside…that's an astonishing asset to put to work for nonprofits and for our brand sponsors.

Hey! Do Good is on TV!!!

Go here and watch Bob Kempf of Boston.com talk about the Do Good Channel on Fox 25 in Boston. 

Love it!

If you're a nonprofit in Boston, ya gotta be in the Do Good Channel.  Heck, if you're a nonprofit anywhere you need to be in the Do Good Channel!  Go here to join.  Or here to take a webinar and learn more.

The Boston Sunday Globe - page. A14

08-06-22 Boston dot com Kitties, originally uploaded by Middlesex Fells.

Have you seen the Globe today?

We're psyched. This ad appeared today for the launch of the Boston.com Do Good Channel. Pretty powerful stuff.

Go to boston.com/DoGood and check it out. And find something good, no, something great to do!

Newspaper revenue.

Newspaper print ad revenue is declining (quickly). Online is increasing (not quickly enough). We can help. Our Do Good Channels are sponsored. That generates new revenue for the newspaper. Provides an incredible service for their readers (who'd like to do good). And unlocks the huge numbers of monthly unique visitors to newspaper web sites for the benefit of nonprofits and it makes the service free to the nonprofits.

And nonprofits like 'free'.

Where you’ll find doing good at boston.com

We're incredibly excited to have launched at Boston.com. And there's a bunch of places on Boston.com where you can find the Do Good Channel. Here are some of them.

You can do good on the home page of boston.com (ongoing):

• Go to boston.com.
• Scroll down on the right rail.
• See 'DO SOMETHING GOOD' - that links to the Boston.com Do Good Channel.
• And they've provided direct links to three engagement areas: Education Health Environment

You can do good in the Lifestyle section of boston.com (ongoing):

• Go to the Lifestyle section.
• Notice at the top underneath the blue navigation bar (HOME TODAY'S GLOBE NEWS) the secondary navigation (Fashion Food House & Home) on the right you'll find Do Good - Boston.com Do Good Channel.
• On the right rail mid-way down DO SOME GOOD - Boston.com Do Good Channel.

Doing good appears next to a featured article on the home page of The Boston Globe (Tuesday, June 10):

• Go here.
• Scroll mid-way down to the article 'For hospices, an infusion of youth'
• Notice underneath the article: 'HOW TO HELP? Volunteering opportunities in Boston' - that links to the Boston.com Do Good Channel.

And you can find doing good at an article on boston.com (Tuesday, June 10):

• For hospices, an infusion of youth
• Notice underneath the first line in the article: 'HOW TO HELP? Volunteering opportunities in Boston' - that links to the Boston.com Do Good Channel.
• Incidentally, how powerful is that? Read an article. Do something about what's covered in the article. Much more of that coming.

Integration within the photo galleries (ongoing):

• Go here.
• A note - the photo galleries are largely filled with photos of nonprofit events and get tens of millions of monthly page views.
• Notice on the left rail towards the top - they've integrated the 'DO SOMETHING GOOD' widget.
• Users can select a cause category and/or a way to participate and/or a search term to find the right cause engagement for them.

Boston.com gets over 4M monthly unique visitors. Over 150M monthly page views. If you're a nonprofit in Boston or, for that matter, in New England you can't afford not to be in good2gether. Sign up here today!

Newspapers' 2007: Worst Ad Drop In 50 Years.

Ouch.

Widely reported in multiple places – here's the update on the state of the newspaper advertising business from Silicon Alley Insider:

Newspaper print ad revenues dropped 9.4% in 2007 to $42 billion, the worst one-year drop in more than 50 years. That's according to the Newspaper Association of America, which started keeping track in 1950. 

This is usually the point in one of these items where we insert a silver lining, in the form of rising online revenues. Unfortunately, that's slowing for newspapers, too. Online ad revenue grew 18.8% in 2007 to $3.2 billion. That's down from 31% growth in the each of the prior two years.

Total revenue in 2007--including online revenue--dropped 7.9% to $45.3 billion. Not helping: classified ad revenue dropped 16.5% to $14.1 billion. Thanks, Craig!

good2gether overview: we deliver new hyper-local content – information on nonprofits – in a hosted Web 2.0 platform that can be monetized through advertising and sponsorships…so the good news is that we bring a brand new revenue stream to our newspaper partners. And that explains why we're getting the traction we're getting.

Out of Orlando, over to Phoenix.

Leaving Orlando after a very sucessful NAA.  This was our first time at this show and boy, did our platform ever resonate with newspapers.  Lot's of great stuff will come out of this.

Over to Orlando for meetings and then back to Boston on Friday.

Online News Readership Helps Offset Print Losses: Report

By Amanda Natividad - Wed 20 Feb 2008 01:52 PM PST

From paidcontent.org:

Newspapers have been attracting larger audiences with their websites, partly compensating for the decreased readership of their print editions, according to a new report from Scarborough Research. The analysis of data from 88 newspapers in the top 50 local markets August 2004-March 2007 showed web site growth making up for print losses by 28 percent. Interviews with newspaper executives brought out several common themes among successful news sites, including local coverage, unique and interactive content such as blogs, videos and podcasts, and cross-promotion. Among the highlights:

• Online audience has grown 14 percent, making up print audience losses by 28 percent.
• Readers aged 18-34 who view only the online editions increased 21 percent.
• Online readers are increasingly wealthy and educated; readership among adults with annual household incomes of $75k increased 33 percent.
• Readership among adults with a college degree or higher increased by 16 percent.

The full report isn't available online but the release has some details.

good2gether comment: Given the service we provide to newspapers, this is terrific stuff.

Newspaper Next 2.0 & good2gether.

Newspaper Next is an " ambitious, year-long project undertaken by the American Press Institute to research and test viable new business models for the newspaper industry.".  That's from the Newspaper Next website - click here to learn more. 

They've just issued a new report "Making the Leap Beyond 'Newspaper Companies'" that is a really, really interesting read (especially for us – it's attached or you can click the link).

Editor & Publisher has an article covering the report.  Here's the money quote (for us) from the article (and I've highlighted some stuff):

To get to this next step -- where bigger rather than narrower products and services encompass niche audiences -- newspapers must stop thinking of themselves as newspaper companies, the report argues.

Instead, they should consider themselves their "local information and connection utility."

And their "job to do" -- to use the famous N2 theme from its original report -- is to adopt the audacious goals for consumers and businesses.

For consumers, it must no longer just present news and information, but become the first choice for customers and non-customers alike "to help me know or do whatever it takes to live here."

Newspapers must do that by using all the tools available from social networking, databases, localized wikipedia, "knowledge repositories," and more.

For all the businesses in the market, advertisers or not, the job newspapers must "own" is "help me connect with anyone who lives here, in the most effective way possible."

"Underlying these strategies is an important realization: To engage more consumers and win more business customers, we can't just sell the old products harder," the report says. "We have to identify new jobs among consumers and businesses, and create the products required to fulfill them. That's the key to creating new revenue streams.

For good2gether?  Our timing, quite literally, could not be more perfect.