(Annette Moser-Wellman) In the war for the time and attention of consumers, news organizations face some pretty fierce competitors. And in the wild and wooly world of the Web, the competitors to beat arguably are social networking sites.

In terms of spent per visit, we can crown Facebook as the winner in the battle. Last year hitwise.com estimated the average length of a Facebook visit at 21 minutes, three times longer than the average news and information site. Twenty-one minutes! It begs the question: should news sites just admit defeat in the war for time and attention? Or is another strategy called for?

Increasingly, news organizations are finding it more productive and profitable to work in a symbiotic relationship with others - with aggregators and with social networking and bookmarking sites. Fully two-thirds of the traffic to NYtimes.com now comes, not through the home page, but through aggregators, blogs and outside links. Many more readers come to the site from search engines and links on other sites, instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com.

These indirect readers, or readers from other sites, are proving more valuable in terms of advertising revenue than even potential subscription fees. Thus, the 'walled garden' or 'gatekeeper strategy' is being replaced by a new rallying cry: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I asked the creator of a social network how he thinks news organizations should view social media. Nova Spivack, Founder and CEO of Radar Networks, recently launched Twine, which he calls an "interest network." Based on semantic technologies, Twine helps users organize, share and discover more about their personal interests.

"Social bookmarking is the best thing for news organizations because it sends them traffic," he said. "They should be eagerly embracing as much of that as they can... They should be getting their content to every social bookmarking app there is. We distribute their content and [drive] the audience back to them. They are getting the clicks. News sites and publishers really need to view [social media] as complementary and as the other half of what they are doing," he said.

But driving audience to a site isn't enough. Fighting to win becomes less about competing for eyeballs and more about increasing the quality of engagement with your audience.

Hansen Hosein, Director of the Master of Communications in Digital Media Department at University of Washington, asks the question, "Is it as important as it was in the 20th century to get as many people as possible to consume your content, or it is important to get a more engaged quality of information consumer? Many people now believe it's the quality of engagement rather than the quantity of the engagement that matters.

"What that means is that you need to know your audience very well and develop and nurture that audience," he said.

In other words, news organizations need to ensure their content is so wildly compelling that it differentiates itself, draws in the audience and holds them there.

Deep knowledge of the consumer makes for competitive advantage in this environment. How can news organizations deeply understand their audience and provide exactly what they need and want? How can they partner better with social networks to distribute their valuable content. How can they leverage what the networks do best without duplicating efforts?

Spivack believes news organizations are far better partnering with than creating social networks. For example, Forbes Magazine is launching a social network for CEOs called AnswerNetwork, designed for the exchange of ideas.

Spivack weighs in on this approach: "News sites should not attempt to make their own private social bookmarking networks, the way Forbes is doing. That's a big mistake because people don't want to have 50 different accounts. They want everything in one place where they can manage and track all their interests and then click out to view the content in the publisher locations. Publishers should try to get their content spread virally and drive traffic back to them from as many places as possible. If they take the inward-focus, defensive way of looking at things, they are going to create a little tiny community. What they really should be doing is thinking of the whole Web as their community."

So the key for news organizations is to partner with those networks that can serve customers best and allow them to share content as widely and naturally as possible. Which networks will be able to capture the sustained interest of the audience? How can you spread your content virally and get it picked up on a more regular basis? Here's where the role of the marketer is so vitally important to the news organization. Spreading the information becomes nearly as important as gathering it.

Because the online marketplace is a battlefield like every other in history. It's finally a war for the heart and mind of the consumer.


What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.

Annette Moser-Wellman is President of Firemark, Inc., an innovation consultancy, and author of Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy To Win In The Digital Age, published by the Media Management Center. She teaches in MMC's Advanced Executive Program and Digital Strategies for Media Executives seminar.

This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. A book, "The Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," and workshops – both based on the TechScout research – will debut this fall.

Click here to view other articles in the TechScout series.

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