Heath Ledger dies; Fairfax scores a marketing bonus

During this panel session today, Pippa Leary from Fairfax Online gave us a fascinating insight into the brave new world of marketing online media reportage in a fiercely competitive environment.

According to Pippa, the first step is to choose a SEO-friendly title for the story. Some in the audience didn't know about search engine optimisation so Pippa gave a brief intro and stressed that it is absolutely critical. For instance, the SMH online where the headline writers have been thoroughly drilled on SEO came up with 'Heath Ledger dies', which is ideal. The Age in Melbourne came up with 'dead in bed'. Hopeless, who is going to search for 'dead in bed'. The SMH got many, many more hits than the Age. And more hits, of course, means more advertising revenue.

The SMH also got a boost because news of Heath Ledger's death came through in the morning, Australian time and Australia is at the start of the world news cycle so the SMH was able to get their stuff up online early and in time for it to be picked up by the big north american based aggregators.

Some of that stuff was video interviews taken on a telephone / camera with a satellite by an enterprising journo who went up to the "G'day Australia" function and interviewed people like Cate Blanchett and John Travolta about their reaction to Ledger's death. So fast was the SMH's response that those interviewed hadn't even heard Ledger was dead. As Leary says news reporting online is about minutes and seconds not hours!

But it doesn't stop there. It takes a few hours for the 'links' to do their magic and lift your story up the search engine rankings so the SMH marketing team swung into operation to bid at auction for the right to own key search terms (like Heath Ledger dies) for those critical few hours between news of his death and the algorithms taking over.

Leary seemed deeply impressed by the immediacy and drama of it all, many in the audience were a little uneasy.

Comments

[Bob Meade]

Were the uneasy ones people over 30 years of age?

I think that this shows that Fairfax media is becoming a bit more savvy and adapting to the new world.

[Allan Jenkins]

Everything done here was just good newspaperwork -- that it works well for SEO is just gravy.

1. "Heath Ledger Dies" is a great headline -- unbeatable, in fact. It tells the story; it does its job. "Dead in Bed" is a teaser. Which would you choose: "FDR Dies" or "Dead in Wheelchair"?

2. SMH had reporters and stringers speedy enough to call Travolta and Blanchett. Good reporting! Give them a raise! I don't care a damn about celebrities, but people who do would eat that stuff up.

3. Marketing department bought up Google adwords. OK, 70 years ago, they'd have hired street urchins to hawk "Extras"...

What's depressing is Leary's being impressed by a newspaper doing what newspapers should do (and thinking it has a damned thing to do with SEO).