How to create thematic media from scratch and without budget
About a year ago, a small company of like-minded people decided to diversify their professional activities and start an experiment to create from scratch and without a budget a small themed media virtually out of the blue.
The ranks of like-minded people consisted of the editor-in-chief of a regional online magazine, his technical cadre, the head of a regional web development studio and a metropolitan PR man. We all were busy in our main projects and companies, but we really wanted to: a) try to work together; b) make a new project.
Both of these desires allowed us to close our eyes to the original minuses - the lack of time, budget and the complete adventurousness of the whole venture.
It was interesting for all of us to make a content project: one way or another, two of the team always dealt with the content, and two more fully understood how good it is.
')
The question was in choosing the direction - what kind of content. After all, projects that are not made to order should, at a minimum, bring pleasure from the production process.
In addition to industry topics such as the Internet, advertising, etc., it certainly was food and travel (it is asked, and who is not interested in this?).
After the screening, the theme of travel survived, as potentially a trend in the long term.
Having stopped on travels, they began to choose a narrow topic - in our case it would be meaningless to make a collection “about tourism in general”.
It was possible to follow the path of geo-referencing, it could be thematic, for example, everything about the same food. They even threw in a bunch of options for the name of the project, such as “Elk and Salmon”, “Deer and Dumpling”, “Ivan Lasagna”, “Barsik and Belyash”, well, etc. But being honest people, we decided to postpone food for the future - it’s impossible to write about food while traveling, so it would be immediately necessary to do a lot of work with the involved authors.
Geography remained. Our hearts have long been given to Europe, as a repository of many wonderful things - from architectural and cultural to gastronomic and beer. The question was which of the countries should be the object of our attention.
Since half of our team has been dealing specifically with the regional media over the past 10 years, we have been looking in that direction. For the “site for tourists” is a good genre, but it has its own specifics. In short - the content for it must either be collected on site, or endlessly rewrite the existing access. We were bored. Therefore, we began to look for a news niche.
And if there are a lot of sites for tourists, there are much less news sites about countries in Russian, if not to say not at all. It is understandable - monetization is problematic, the stream of readers will be less. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, mass media in the classical sense is a potentially much more long-playing, diverse and interesting story than just a thematic site.
After going through all the countries, they stopped in Slovakia. Why she? The objective here is superimposed on the subjective.
a) Subjective - a couple of years ago, two of us visited Slovakia and were completely delighted with the country. Here they are very benevolent towards the Russian-speaking public, they are interested in it and are very open for cooperation with it. Accordingly, it also makes sense to invest here. And any potential investor needs to get enough information about the country. This is an opportunity for us to get a quality and loyal audience that will come for the news.
b) Objective. There is practically no news about Slovakia in Russian (and not only news). Now the whole issue is packed with Ukraine and gas reversal, before that - with hockey. More or less, you can find information on their numerous balneological and ski resorts - but not in the news. In general, this is all very little. Therefore, for quite a long time the project can work on news translations - press releases of companies, information from all sorts of bodies, local and non-local media. All this is “fodder” content, from which one can begin, delve into the information flow, understand what and how, gradually beginning to supplement news with articles, interviews, reviews and other materials.
c) Slovakia is promoted much less than the Czech Republic (and the topic of regional promotion has also historically been very interesting for us, since we all did a lot of things in this direction in our region). It is confused with Slovenia (which is also the fault of the Slovak version of the name of the country - Slovensko). But this is the case when it is very interesting to do something from scratch. At the same time, in the Russian-speaking field there are not only residents of Russia, but also Belarus and Ukraine, who by virtue of their location know more about Slovakia and also fall into the number of potential consumers of information.
d) The language is so close that even without knowing it, you can read and translate the original sources. Plus use the English versions of this or that information.
d) The range of topics. On the one hand, in Slovakia there is a complete set of all European beauties such as castles, on the other - it is not tied to tourism as, for example, some Montenegro, where everything revolves around the sea, and accordingly, the news flow will also be all about real estate, resorts, etc. In Slovakia there is a powerful auto industry, the steel industry, IT, represented by such a giant as SET, cultural life, and so on.
There were also, apparently, various factors, but it would be rather pointless to list them all - the way we walked is understandable in general terms.
In order for things to get down to business, a plan was developed that included several important points.
Point one: understand whether we can get some support from the Slovak side. To this end, our Moscow team member before the New Year went to a meeting at the Slovak Embassy in Russia. There, we identified the existence of our project team, talked about what we were planning to do and showed some analytics about the interest in Slovakia on the Russian-language Internet. Then there were a couple of spring meetings, during which we received a certain amount of information for consideration and a promise to arrange for us a press tour of Slovakia in September 2014.
Title
After such an inspiring start, in the spring we started the actual development.
Deciding on the name, they decided to immediately separate themselves from tour sites, emphasize the informational orientation and subconscious recognition. From here - The Slovakia Times.
Actually, the name itself influenced other things, for example, identity - again, to maintain the traditional spirit, they chose the fracture:
The option that exists now is not final - over time, we will redraw manually.
Site
The site in the first approximation made about three months, trying to take into account in it all those things that they had to face on their own experience.
Of course, we were very lucky with a highly professional team of like-minded people who worked with us on the project. In addition to the four of us, two very talented designers with different competencies and an excellent layout designer were directly involved in the development.
Initially focused on adaptive design, I wanted it to be quite easy and usable. But at the same time, had a conservative flavor.
Long chose between two strategies - either a loadable tape with large illustrated announcements in the spirit of Look At Me, or a more newspaper fine grid like that of The New York Times. In the end, won the first option. Somehow, I also wanted to emphasize the regional specifics, therefore, we chose a tinted monochrome panorama of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, as a background. Appearing in the first screen, then the background gradually fades away.
The second thing that we began to discuss during the work on the site, and which almost became another parallel project of ours, is the creation of our own web editor. While working a lot with content, we have long been thinking about a certain designer who would allow editors to make complex layout of articles easier when they have quotes, sidebars, comments, sliders and other stuffing. Look At Me does something similar for itself in its editor Article , but, unfortunately, as long as they do not sell it.
After various estimations - is there any sense in parallel to one story to get into another, much more costly and unobvious, we have postponed the web editor project.
To automate the work managed to do a little blood. Our technical director has found a solution: it turned out that in the editor (CKEditor) there is a regular opportunity to write plug-ins to insert ready blocks into the page. We took advantage of it by preparing standard “boxes” for different occasions.
We then implemented a similar thing on another project - it turned out to be very convenient.
Of course, we have a list of what else will be finalized - very important opportunities for us on the format of special projects, longrides, etc. And I still want to return to the topic of a specialized web editor. Because it seems to us that for tools, such tools will become more and more popular, the question is only in competent sales and initial - albeit small, but ... - investment in development.
Meanwhile, in July, the site as a first approximation was launched.
Content
Determining what information should be on the resource, we proceeded from several things.
First: we abandoned the political themes and incidents. The publication is focused on business and tourism topics. Strictly speaking, this is the information that you would like to know about the country, if you plan to go there to rest, get medical treatment, study, work, do business, want to invest a certain amount of money in the company or want to understand with whom and how you can work together. From here comes a stream of news about businesses, investments, IT, real estate, attractions, food, cities, etc.
What was not planned initially, and what they decided to do after some deliberation, is the English version. Since the English information projects about Slovakia are also once or twice, The Slovak Spectator, thedaily.sk, that's all. The rest is either dead, or is a kind of thematic subsection on the “about everything” project. Therefore, it was decided that having the English version in perspective is not bad either.
It must be said, Slovak media have a certain distinctive feature. Some of their materials, the same The Slovak Spectator is hidden behind the paywall. Because it was Slovakia that was the birthplace of elephants, namely, the Piano company, which is now actively promoting the topic of a paid subscription on the world wide web.
Accordingly, this topic further limits the amount of available materials about Slovakia on the English-language web. On the one hand, subscribers who are accustomed to pay are great, and if we ever do a Slovak version of the project, we will definitely try out the paywall. But as far as English-language materials are concerned, the absence of a closed part with us is rather a plus for now, in terms of obtaining additional. traffic.
As for the content in principle, here we are now solving several problems of growth.
The first problem is that searching for even news content takes a lot of time. These are two non-native languages ​​- Slovak and English, with which to operate longer, especially to a journalist who is firmly tied to the Russian language and is not friendly with English. Nevertheless, thanks to the online translators, the process is underway, plus the other day we plan to start learning Slovak with a teacher.
There are technical issues like the fact that monitoring Google News is not always effective in a situation when Google News Slovakia is absent in nature, and the rest of the regional issue is very specific (all the same distortions in gas, hockey, meaningless mentions in Lists of European countries). In order to collect a pool of subscriptions to news sources like organizations, institutions, companies and other newsmakers, it takes time.
Well, when you want to create unique content, create it remotely and with native speakers of another language, of course, more difficult than going outside your city. It is saved by the fact that in a situation when there is simply no generated information flow in the country, you can start on press releases, news, translations.
The press tour promised to us in the spring was postponed to spring 2015, however, we decided to go to Slovakia ourselves - to sniff the air, gain some amount of content for gradual processing and display, and make some acquaintances. This is what we did in September 2014:
We are convinced that we are moving in the right direction, and what we are doing is in demand, but at the same time, the financial prospects of the project still remain vague. We have some plans on this subject, which we would like to be voiced on the fact - when it will already succeed / fail.
The tasks for the near future are to increase the amount of materials, attendance, recognition - in general, there is a lot of routine, long-playing work that will lay a solid foundation for this whole structure. The next moment, after some hesitation, we decided to register the media, which resolves the issue of the status of the representatives of the publication. Well, in our experience - any good project of such a plan is a living organism in which you need to pour strength, look for feedback and adjust the course / form / content, depending on the situation.
About money and prospects remote
Since these questions will still be asked one way or another.
What is the project doing? On the personal funds of participants, including their personal time. By virtue of the fact that there is not much to distinguish free finance, forces are allocated. There are not so many of them, and the project is moving rather slowly.
On the other hand, we are not faced with the task of bringing “something somewhere for three months,” we know that organic growth is a slow thing, and here it is necessary to “cut and water”. Faster possible if there is an investor.
Will there be an investor? We think not, at least for now. The project is quite local, its audience will be calculated, at best, by tens of thousands. Nevertheless, as the advertising platform of a narrow focus, it is likely to take place - in part of the same b2b services.
In this capacity, he may, in perspective, be sold to someone who already owns media projects and wants to expand his package. Another scenario is the network development of the project. That is, the creation of local sites for other European countries. But both of these options will strongly depend on the geopolitical and economic situations.
What are we doing this project for?
Starting with the desire to “work together,” the project showed us exactly what we want to do in the future, and where to develop. This direction - the creation of custom content projects or the creation of projects for sale, or complex projects at the intersection of the web, content, PR and marketing. Now we are trying out interaction options, different tools, different platforms, gaining joint work experience and estimating options for turning all of this into a design office.
***
Now, a year after the start of the movements and summing up the peculiar results, we decided to tell about the project here. Because despite all the media binding, we are probably, to a greater degree, an IT team. And the opinion of colleagues in the shop for us is important, interesting and very popular.
There are many things that can not be shoved into one text, and of course, a lot of any project-related reflections and estimations remain behind the scenes. Therefore, if this post seems interesting to you - write in the comments, what else would you like to know.
The ranks of like-minded people consisted of the editor-in-chief of a regional online magazine, his technical cadre, the head of a regional web development studio and a metropolitan PR man. We all were busy in our main projects and companies, but we really wanted to: a) try to work together; b) make a new project.
Both of these desires allowed us to close our eyes to the original minuses - the lack of time, budget and the complete adventurousness of the whole venture.
What to do?
It was interesting for all of us to make a content project: one way or another, two of the team always dealt with the content, and two more fully understood how good it is.
')
The question was in choosing the direction - what kind of content. After all, projects that are not made to order should, at a minimum, bring pleasure from the production process.
In addition to industry topics such as the Internet, advertising, etc., it certainly was food and travel (it is asked, and who is not interested in this?).
After the screening, the theme of travel survived, as potentially a trend in the long term.
- To present in October 2013, that the whole of the next year the Russian tourist market and the topic of outbound tourism will fall, at that time we certainly could not ...
Having stopped on travels, they began to choose a narrow topic - in our case it would be meaningless to make a collection “about tourism in general”.
It was possible to follow the path of geo-referencing, it could be thematic, for example, everything about the same food. They even threw in a bunch of options for the name of the project, such as “Elk and Salmon”, “Deer and Dumpling”, “Ivan Lasagna”, “Barsik and Belyash”, well, etc. But being honest people, we decided to postpone food for the future - it’s impossible to write about food while traveling, so it would be immediately necessary to do a lot of work with the involved authors.
Geography remained. Our hearts have long been given to Europe, as a repository of many wonderful things - from architectural and cultural to gastronomic and beer. The question was which of the countries should be the object of our attention.
Since half of our team has been dealing specifically with the regional media over the past 10 years, we have been looking in that direction. For the “site for tourists” is a good genre, but it has its own specifics. In short - the content for it must either be collected on site, or endlessly rewrite the existing access. We were bored. Therefore, we began to look for a news niche.
And if there are a lot of sites for tourists, there are much less news sites about countries in Russian, if not to say not at all. It is understandable - monetization is problematic, the stream of readers will be less. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, mass media in the classical sense is a potentially much more long-playing, diverse and interesting story than just a thematic site.
After going through all the countries, they stopped in Slovakia. Why she? The objective here is superimposed on the subjective.
a) Subjective - a couple of years ago, two of us visited Slovakia and were completely delighted with the country. Here they are very benevolent towards the Russian-speaking public, they are interested in it and are very open for cooperation with it. Accordingly, it also makes sense to invest here. And any potential investor needs to get enough information about the country. This is an opportunity for us to get a quality and loyal audience that will come for the news.
- By the way, in Slovakia, now one of the most loyal legislations in Europe in relation to business is there it is easy to open enterprises there, which is shown by the latest Doing Business rating. And if you create jobs in the country, everyone will love you very much - from the cook to the state. Of course, there are some disadvantages, which seem to be not the most efficient public sector, which was recently stated by the OECD, however, they also say that Slovakia has gone farther than other EU countries from the 2008 financial crisis. And the local auto industry will start in 2016 produce Porsche Cayenne and Bentley crossovers.
b) Objective. There is practically no news about Slovakia in Russian (and not only news). Now the whole issue is packed with Ukraine and gas reversal, before that - with hockey. More or less, you can find information on their numerous balneological and ski resorts - but not in the news. In general, this is all very little. Therefore, for quite a long time the project can work on news translations - press releases of companies, information from all sorts of bodies, local and non-local media. All this is “fodder” content, from which one can begin, delve into the information flow, understand what and how, gradually beginning to supplement news with articles, interviews, reviews and other materials.
c) Slovakia is promoted much less than the Czech Republic (and the topic of regional promotion has also historically been very interesting for us, since we all did a lot of things in this direction in our region). It is confused with Slovenia (which is also the fault of the Slovak version of the name of the country - Slovensko). But this is the case when it is very interesting to do something from scratch. At the same time, in the Russian-speaking field there are not only residents of Russia, but also Belarus and Ukraine, who by virtue of their location know more about Slovakia and also fall into the number of potential consumers of information.
d) The language is so close that even without knowing it, you can read and translate the original sources. Plus use the English versions of this or that information.
d) The range of topics. On the one hand, in Slovakia there is a complete set of all European beauties such as castles, on the other - it is not tied to tourism as, for example, some Montenegro, where everything revolves around the sea, and accordingly, the news flow will also be all about real estate, resorts, etc. In Slovakia there is a powerful auto industry, the steel industry, IT, represented by such a giant as SET, cultural life, and so on.
There were also, apparently, various factors, but it would be rather pointless to list them all - the way we walked is understandable in general terms.
Practical implementation
In order for things to get down to business, a plan was developed that included several important points.
Point one: understand whether we can get some support from the Slovak side. To this end, our Moscow team member before the New Year went to a meeting at the Slovak Embassy in Russia. There, we identified the existence of our project team, talked about what we were planning to do and showed some analytics about the interest in Slovakia on the Russian-language Internet. Then there were a couple of spring meetings, during which we received a certain amount of information for consideration and a promise to arrange for us a press tour of Slovakia in September 2014.
Title
After such an inspiring start, in the spring we started the actual development.
Deciding on the name, they decided to immediately separate themselves from tour sites, emphasize the informational orientation and subconscious recognition. From here - The Slovakia Times.
Actually, the name itself influenced other things, for example, identity - again, to maintain the traditional spirit, they chose the fracture:
- In parallel, by the way, we learned that the "Gothic font" (as the fracture is often called), traditionally associated with the 3rd Reich, was banned in 1941 in Nazi Germany.
The option that exists now is not final - over time, we will redraw manually.
Site
The site in the first approximation made about three months, trying to take into account in it all those things that they had to face on their own experience.
Of course, we were very lucky with a highly professional team of like-minded people who worked with us on the project. In addition to the four of us, two very talented designers with different competencies and an excellent layout designer were directly involved in the development.
Initially focused on adaptive design, I wanted it to be quite easy and usable. But at the same time, had a conservative flavor.
Long chose between two strategies - either a loadable tape with large illustrated announcements in the spirit of Look At Me, or a more newspaper fine grid like that of The New York Times. In the end, won the first option. Somehow, I also wanted to emphasize the regional specifics, therefore, we chose a tinted monochrome panorama of Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, as a background. Appearing in the first screen, then the background gradually fades away.
The second thing that we began to discuss during the work on the site, and which almost became another parallel project of ours, is the creation of our own web editor. While working a lot with content, we have long been thinking about a certain designer who would allow editors to make complex layout of articles easier when they have quotes, sidebars, comments, sliders and other stuffing. Look At Me does something similar for itself in its editor Article , but, unfortunately, as long as they do not sell it.
After various estimations - is there any sense in parallel to one story to get into another, much more costly and unobvious, we have postponed the web editor project.
To automate the work managed to do a little blood. Our technical director has found a solution: it turned out that in the editor (CKEditor) there is a regular opportunity to write plug-ins to insert ready blocks into the page. We took advantage of it by preparing standard “boxes” for different occasions.
We then implemented a similar thing on another project - it turned out to be very convenient.
Of course, we have a list of what else will be finalized - very important opportunities for us on the format of special projects, longrides, etc. And I still want to return to the topic of a specialized web editor. Because it seems to us that for tools, such tools will become more and more popular, the question is only in competent sales and initial - albeit small, but ... - investment in development.
Meanwhile, in July, the site as a first approximation was launched.
Content
Determining what information should be on the resource, we proceeded from several things.
First: we abandoned the political themes and incidents. The publication is focused on business and tourism topics. Strictly speaking, this is the information that you would like to know about the country, if you plan to go there to rest, get medical treatment, study, work, do business, want to invest a certain amount of money in the company or want to understand with whom and how you can work together. From here comes a stream of news about businesses, investments, IT, real estate, attractions, food, cities, etc.
What was not planned initially, and what they decided to do after some deliberation, is the English version. Since the English information projects about Slovakia are also once or twice, The Slovak Spectator, thedaily.sk, that's all. The rest is either dead, or is a kind of thematic subsection on the “about everything” project. Therefore, it was decided that having the English version in perspective is not bad either.
It must be said, Slovak media have a certain distinctive feature. Some of their materials, the same The Slovak Spectator is hidden behind the paywall. Because it was Slovakia that was the birthplace of elephants, namely, the Piano company, which is now actively promoting the topic of a paid subscription on the world wide web.
- Looking ahead, I will say that we visited Piano, as well as ESET, we visited in September, and we will definitely write about it very soon here and on The Slovakia Times.
Accordingly, this topic further limits the amount of available materials about Slovakia on the English-language web. On the one hand, subscribers who are accustomed to pay are great, and if we ever do a Slovak version of the project, we will definitely try out the paywall. But as far as English-language materials are concerned, the absence of a closed part with us is rather a plus for now, in terms of obtaining additional. traffic.
As for the content in principle, here we are now solving several problems of growth.
The first problem is that searching for even news content takes a lot of time. These are two non-native languages ​​- Slovak and English, with which to operate longer, especially to a journalist who is firmly tied to the Russian language and is not friendly with English. Nevertheless, thanks to the online translators, the process is underway, plus the other day we plan to start learning Slovak with a teacher.
There are technical issues like the fact that monitoring Google News is not always effective in a situation when Google News Slovakia is absent in nature, and the rest of the regional issue is very specific (all the same distortions in gas, hockey, meaningless mentions in Lists of European countries). In order to collect a pool of subscriptions to news sources like organizations, institutions, companies and other newsmakers, it takes time.
Well, when you want to create unique content, create it remotely and with native speakers of another language, of course, more difficult than going outside your city. It is saved by the fact that in a situation when there is simply no generated information flow in the country, you can start on press releases, news, translations.
Perspectives
The press tour promised to us in the spring was postponed to spring 2015, however, we decided to go to Slovakia ourselves - to sniff the air, gain some amount of content for gradual processing and display, and make some acquaintances. This is what we did in September 2014:
We are convinced that we are moving in the right direction, and what we are doing is in demand, but at the same time, the financial prospects of the project still remain vague. We have some plans on this subject, which we would like to be voiced on the fact - when it will already succeed / fail.
The tasks for the near future are to increase the amount of materials, attendance, recognition - in general, there is a lot of routine, long-playing work that will lay a solid foundation for this whole structure. The next moment, after some hesitation, we decided to register the media, which resolves the issue of the status of the representatives of the publication. Well, in our experience - any good project of such a plan is a living organism in which you need to pour strength, look for feedback and adjust the course / form / content, depending on the situation.
About money and prospects remote
Since these questions will still be asked one way or another.
What is the project doing? On the personal funds of participants, including their personal time. By virtue of the fact that there is not much to distinguish free finance, forces are allocated. There are not so many of them, and the project is moving rather slowly.
On the other hand, we are not faced with the task of bringing “something somewhere for three months,” we know that organic growth is a slow thing, and here it is necessary to “cut and water”. Faster possible if there is an investor.
Will there be an investor? We think not, at least for now. The project is quite local, its audience will be calculated, at best, by tens of thousands. Nevertheless, as the advertising platform of a narrow focus, it is likely to take place - in part of the same b2b services.
In this capacity, he may, in perspective, be sold to someone who already owns media projects and wants to expand his package. Another scenario is the network development of the project. That is, the creation of local sites for other European countries. But both of these options will strongly depend on the geopolitical and economic situations.
What are we doing this project for?
Starting with the desire to “work together,” the project showed us exactly what we want to do in the future, and where to develop. This direction - the creation of custom content projects or the creation of projects for sale, or complex projects at the intersection of the web, content, PR and marketing. Now we are trying out interaction options, different tools, different platforms, gaining joint work experience and estimating options for turning all of this into a design office.
***
Now, a year after the start of the movements and summing up the peculiar results, we decided to tell about the project here. Because despite all the media binding, we are probably, to a greater degree, an IT team. And the opinion of colleagues in the shop for us is important, interesting and very popular.
There are many things that can not be shoved into one text, and of course, a lot of any project-related reflections and estimations remain behind the scenes. Therefore, if this post seems interesting to you - write in the comments, what else would you like to know.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/288962/
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