Internet Strategies for Community Markets

June 20 - June 23, 2006

AIM THIS PAGE

Featured Discussion Leaders

Bruce Annan Analyst and Consultant, Classified Intelligence, LLC Session: Cost-Effective Ways to Offer Interactive Classified Advertising

Laurence Bricker Co-founder and VP of Strategy and Experience Design, Popular Front Interactive Communications Session: Leveraging Engagement Media in a Web-centric World

Liz George Baristanet Session: Local markets, local models

Robert Kelly Vice President, Community, backfence.com Session: Local markets, local models

Our survival depends on mastering new business models.

It’s increasingly clear that community newspaper organizations, whether daily or weekly or both, must offer their consumers just as rich and multidimensional an interactive experience as the large metros do.  Our survival depends on it.  But how do we do that effectively on a community scale?

The American Press Institute’s new seminar Internet Strategies for Community Markets will help you address those concerns.  The seminar, which will take place June 20-23, 2006, at API’s campus in Reston, Va., will provide participants with market-leading strategies for all aspects of a community online operation.

Join us as we look at ways to assess market opportunities, tools for building community participation, ideas for creating profitable relationships with advertisers, and strategies for realigning the organization around an integrated interactive vision.

Session topics include:

• Analysis: Identifying Market Positions and Opportunities:
  Local newspapers command a strong share of local online advertising – but not as much as they could and other competitors are coming on strong. Where are the opportunities for growth and where are the threats and risks to lose local advertising revenue to competitors?
• Newspaper Next and Disruptive Innovation:
  In a changing environment, risk is high -- but doing nothing is worse. Learn how to evaluate risk, thrive on change -- and survive.
• New Products for New Audiences:
  Daily newspapers are reaching fewer people than they used to, but that doesn’t mean fewer people are interested in the news. Learn about a range of new product experiments underway at various newspapers and the new product strategy they’re embracing to reach “non-consumers” who do not reach for the traditional daily product.
• Ways to Use Emerging Technology to Enhance Citizen Participation:
  Blogs, video cameras, mobile phones, RSS and a seemingly endless slew of new software tools allow ordinary people to create, share and remix media. Learn how newspapers can adopt these technologies and tap the collective wisdom within their communities to create stronger products and stronger communities.
• Local Markets, Local Models:
  Think newspaper “own” local? Think again. Learn how to inspire entrepreneurs can meet unfilled needs – building community, creating a more authentic open and frank conversation about community issues -- and learn how local newspapers can adopt the same attitude in order to more genuinely connect with their communities.
• Cost-Effective Ways to Offer Interactive Classified Advertising:
  Can newspapers compete? Is there a future for newspaper classifieds? If so, what does that future look like and what must newspapers do to build that future?
• Techniques to Improve Web Site Design:
  Learn how to enhance the usability, interactivity, user experience and architecture of your Web site. Take home winning design concepts and principles that won’t cost a fortune to implement and approaches to reinforce and enhance brand values.
• Cost-Effective Ways to Offer Interactive Local Content:
  What does the smartest, cheapest and most effective local content look like? What makes it smart, cheap and effective? And what lessons can any local publisher learn from these best practices?
• Online Sales: Tips for Gaining the Support of the Entire Organization:
  We’ll debunk myths about local online audiences and learn how print and online sales efforts can be combined to offer local market reach that can’t be matched by any other local competitor.
• Putting the Pieces Together:
  What happens when you start from scratch and imagine all the strengths of online media combined with the business strengths of print? Bluffton Today is a powerful experiment that illustrates this concept – user generated content and citizen photos published online first and aggregated into a print product that generates advertising revenue to sustain and validate the online operation.

In addition, participants will spend an evening at nearby Café Mont Martre in Reston, in the heart of a highly interactive local community, to see first-hand all the ways a community can connect.

Who Should Attend?
This seminar is designed for anyone from an organization that operates in community markets -- whether daily or weekly – who has decision-making responsibility for online content, business management, advertising revenue, marketing or citizen-participation efforts.  Participants will return with tools to develop a comprehensive Internet strategy, and with action plans for making it a reality.

Presented in partnership with Suburban Newspapers of America.

Seminar Highlights, June 2006:

How the Internet Can Drive Advertising Revenue

Tale of Three E-Cities

Big Thinking for Small Papers: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Web Site

The Particulars

Please read:
:: API's Registration, Tuition and Hotel Policies
:: Special requirements for international members

Tuition: $ 1,550

Hotel/Meal Package: $597.
This charge is in addition to the tuition fee, and is paid directly to the hotel by the seminar member upon checkout.

Location: Reston, Virginia

(This seminar has already occured)