Nigeria’s Online Publishers have started again to publish similar news items and use the same formula to circulate it. “The WhatsApp Sharing”, X sharing and other social media platforms to optimise the SEO.”
It is good, yet it raises questions of investment and creativity.
May I say that only publishers who can give this online publishing what it takes will have a breakthrough this year, there is no other magic about it.
The virus that killed the traditional media outfits has already crawled into the online space.It is “LACK of INVESTMENT.”
I observe that many journalists and non-journalists who now own news websites hardly invest in the platform, yet they are in a hurry to reap, forgetting that every website has a gestation period.
Developing a website is not enough. It is like putting a seed in the ground and allowing it to grow and become a crop. It will not just develop to a big tree that yields fruits. It requires nutrients and enough water to grow and be green.
Posting stories only make a website to exist , investments make it to live and more investments make it to produce.
My observation is that publishers create a website and send it to the market to sell their posted stories when the site is still at the crawling stage. A crawling toddler cannot compete with a grown-up child. That’s exactly what is happening in online publishing.
Of course a crawling website may earn some money using the goodwill of the publisher, unfortunately, most of these seeds are eaten instead of sowing it back to the site for growth.
What kills website mostly is the idea of copy and paste and this formula of recycling similar stories across media space by almost all our online outlets.
There are a few who do “Organic stuff” while almost all the websites I have visited use very weak server to display their “copied News.”
The scope of online media space is too wide but then most publishers have narrowed down their news items to only politics and business.
Despite the robustness of the Nigeria’s media, journalists have not given “Specialised website” the required shot as they all concentrate on one side, which only occupies less than five per cent of what the website can offer.
What are we doing about websites, specially created to report Climate, Environment, Health, Education, Crime, Fashion, Entertainment to become authority in these fields and information banks for readers and researchers?
Although there are a few websites, like the Echonews, MediaCareer, MarketingEdge that are specialised, many online publishers will need to spread out this year and break new grounds to excel. There is enough space for “Specialised Outlets” to gain more traction, the question is how much have the publishers invested on both human and technical aspects of the job?
Only a few websites have their posts sponsored to drive traffic while they are loaded with common stories that are already in circulation,either in some other websites or social media platforms.
The Google Algorithm keeps on changing as publishers continue to commercialise their websites. For any publisher to earn, he or she may have to wait until his or her cup is over flowed.
Posting stories daily is like pouring water in a cup until it begins to over flow. It is what drops from the cup that the publisher gets after years of posting stories.
This occurs more when a publisher has refused to invest on the site but only seeking traction from the stories he had put, many of which are recycled stuff from many other platforms.
There is need to invest on Search Engine Optimisation, which of course requires the expertise of a web developer to perhaps use a stronger server; index the stories directly to google to pop it up at every search.
There is need to spend on promotion of the site and the stories therein, funding the personnel who are saddled with the responsibility of generating stories regularly.
A single story with enough promotion can generate traffic that will attract advert to the site while hundreds of stories without strong SEO and sponsor will lay helpless at the site.
This season will favour those who will work smart. Those who will make their business a priority and give it the life it requires not those who will work hard in a movement, sweat without motion.
It requires a lot of investments and of course there will be a return on investment. Let us water the seed to germinate and grow before taking it to the market.
