A couple of years after the Moose Jaw Express weekly newspaper was launched, Yours Truly was on one of my occasional visits to the office shooting the breeze with publisher Rob Ritchie.
Although quite pleased with the Express’ success he wanted to know if this longtime Moose Jaw resident had any ideas to improve operations.
“Well,” I ventured, “You should be on Facebook. It’s a great way to connect with readers.” I didn’t tell him how little I knew about social media.
Rob, a print media guy, wanted nothing to do with Facebook.
Fast forward to 2018. Rob told me about a new online news site coming. Every month he mentioned the site until I was thinking about that old bride groom wedding joke where the groom boasted all wedding night but never performed.
Last February the news/advertising site moosejawtoday.com was launched building to 45,000 unique monthly users in a year. It takes time to get it right.
The site offers regularly updated local news and sports, national news and sports, world news, business news, obituaries and free classifieds among other interesting items.
Using the Express’ connections with news publisher Glacier Media, the Express is offering a new service to assist businesses with online marketing campaigns.
The service was introduced locally last week by Glacier’s digital marketing director David Gordon Smith. Smith, with 15 years’ experience, started with eBay, then worked with a company doing global workshops for businesses using the Internet, later with Rogers Communications and Yellow Pages, now with Glacier, which is Canada’s largest publisher of community newspapers and online news sites.
Most business websites are outdated, according to Smith. They are often loaded with photos when today’s user wants text.
And the address and phone number are often hidden on an inside page by the website developer to generate more page views.
Most people landing on a business website are looking for a phone number or address.
The landing page, or website, is crucial to developing leads for new customers. People accessing the sites only take two or three seconds to find what they want before moving on.
Few web site developers connect with a free Google service that provides reports of use and user behaviour.
Analytics is the newest big thing in online marketing, allowing the business to obtain all sorts of information to develop leads and new customers.
Readers may remember analytics was used in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to send targeted messages to individuals based on their dislikes.
That kind of targeting for customers is now available to local businesses. Just contact Moose Jaw Express.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
