For a few years now, there's been this slowly building trend of media organizations sharing what they'll be covering online that day.

Some magazines, like Time, have featured the content on a page in the front of their magazine, promoting the chats and such that they will have each day of the week. Others, like the example here, of Rotoworld, a fantasy sports website, sort of does the same thing, but they're an online-only product.
 

Actually, GateHouse Media's Observer Dispatch does this well. They feature short snips of what they're covering online on their Page 2. It usually tees up something that the paper will be covering live, along with the online platform they will use.

It clearly does take some planning to make this work, but is it worth it? Do you get a return? Yes and yes. While online readers don't have the same patterns as print readers in terms of going to your website at 11 a.m. on Thursday because they know they're going to get to read their favorite local column, the way print readers are accustomed to seeing the same content on the same day, pushing online readers to your website at specific times for certain features, is just smart.

It would be foolish to think that there's going to be a ton of value in publishing a week-out schedule of what you're covering online and that's because web readers are so about what's happening now and today. They don't plan their week around your local website. But they are likely to schedule some time around today if they know something is coming.

Utica's promotion idea works well, but you should also have it online, in an early-morning post telling readers what they'll find that day. You could do this a few ways:

1. If you're planning a live chat or you will have a reporter at an event, your promotion could specifically name the event or the topic and what reporter or editor will be leading the coverage or conversation. As more reporters start Tweeting, this will become a natural promotion.

2. If you're covering a high school baseball game and you know that you will have photos available after the game, it would be tremendous to tell readers when they could find them. Same with video.

I wouldn't promote that you will have the City Council or high school baseball game story up by a certain point, based on the time it could take you to get it posted after it's wrapped up. What would be valuable is to note that you will have updates throughout the game on your website or through Twitter. Again, it's about the now element for online readers and if you're asking them to come to your site at a specific time, it has to be extremely timely. No one is engaged to get the score or highlights five hours after the fact.

The follow through is where this is tricky. The first time you tell readers you're going to have something and you don't, you lose credibility. So start slow and build up. Readers need and want reasons to come back to your site. Today, it basically happens organically. We can create steps to create more purpose for why readers would come back, by giving them specific reasons to do so. It will send a message to readers that you believe you have quality content they need to see and that you're a 24-7 operation.

David Arkin is Vice President of Content/Audience  for GateHouse Media. Contact him at darkin@gatehousemedia.com

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