Audience
The Longmont Leader Experiment Journal and Reporting Data
An overview of metrics for the Colorado local news publication
Experiment overview
Longmont Leader serves the city of Longmont Colorado (population: 97,000) and its surrounding communities.
Site Launch: May 26, 2020.
Current Staff: 3 editorial, 1 Business
Tech Stack:
- CMS: Village Media
- User Management System: Village Media
- Ad Trafficking: Google Ad Manager, Advendio
- Analytics: Google Analytics, Google Data Studio, News Consumer Insights
- Email Engine: Mailchimp
- eCommerce engine: Stripe
- Tax Status: For profit
- Primary Revenue Streams: Direct sold advertising, reader contribution
You can track progress on the project here. We will post regular updates with summaries of major activities, experiments and site performance data.
October 2019
Projects/Focus Areas
- Site visit to Longmont and Greeley, CO.
February 2020
Projects/Focus Areas
- Second site visit to Longmont.
March 2020
Monthly milestones
- Green light decision on Longmont as second site for Compass project.
- Discussed different launch approaches for Longmont given Covid crisis. Decided to go with a plan previously discussed with the understanding that launch may go slower than normal.
- Extended relationship with Village Media for site 2.
Projects/Focus Areas
- Opened conversations to acquire Longmont Observer.
Resources
April 2020
Monthly milestones
- Publicly announced Longmont Leader [Google Keyword announcement]
- Signed agreement to acquire Longmont Observer for archives, email lists and social media accounts.
Projects/Focus Areas
- Recruiting for the editor position.
- Design, naming and basic site set up for Longmont Leader.
- Joined Chamber of Commerce and Latino Chamber of Commerce.
Resources
- Job descriptions for editor, assistant editor, reporters and business development associate.
- Recruiting summary of business and product plan.
May 2020
Monthly milestones
- Launched Longmont Leader
- Acquired Longmont Observer. Arranged tight orchestration of wind-down of Observer and notifying audience about the Leader.
Projects/Focus Areas
- Hired editor, assistant editor, first reporter and business executive. Got a set of freelancers in place to help support early weeks until we can hire our second reporter. Onboarded to McClatchy, trained in Village CMS and editorial model and processes.
- Reached agreement with a well known local weather columnist formerly with the Observer.
- Held a series of focus groups in advance of launch (along with pre-launch survey) to talk about coverage areas, UI/UX site design, and existing newsreader habits
- Starting a test with AP for Colorado news.
- Set ads pricing for Longmont - same rates as Youngstown.
Resources
- Hiring announcement for Macie May, editor.
- Launch coverage and feedback.
- Monthly traffic metrics dashboard
- Monthly Financials
June 2020
Monthly milestones
- Virtual Event\ Discussion about Race, Policing and Human Rights\ 232 Registered, 151 attendees, 969 views on Facebook
- 5 new subscribers
- Partnered with Longmont Public Media and Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce
- 2,400 email subscribers with an open rate of 40% and click rate of 17%.
- 10 voluntary, monthly contributors in first month
Projects/Focus Areas
- Published post on methods and results of community surveys and focus groups
- Launched Spanish language section and began publishing articles in Spanish
- Began site with voluntary pay to see if possible to drive early contributions
Resources
July 2020
Monthly milestones
- Began syndicating stories to other Colorado media via AP Storyshare
- Virtual Event\
What can we expect when schools open?\
254 registrants, 175 attendees, 1.3K views on Facebook
- 223 new subscribers
Projects/Focus Areas
- Facebook user acquisition campaign (Likes and email subscribers)
- Joined as a sponsor of Longmont Chamber of Commerce golf outing
- Advertising campaigns booked: 3-month Community Leaders Program ad package.
- Continued planning for direct-sold and programmatic political ads including video.
- Began sales incentive plan based on sales and audience development goals.
Resources
August 2020
Monthly milestones
- 47% more users from July, and traffic is up across all channels. Direct traffic is up 200% from July.
- Launched the first CLP vertical - Outside. Sponsor, Longmont Shuttle, is already very pleased with the click-through traffic.
- Secured 2nd annual advertiser: Niwot Wheel Works (starts in September)
Projects/Focus Areas
- Obituaries: Continuing to zoom out from Longmont for permissions from area funeral homes. Volume is low compared to our first site.
- Started weekly column from local influencer and finance blogger Mr. Money Mustache
Resources
September 2020
Monthly milestones
- More than 25% traffic is direct, showing strong name brand recognition and the Observer buy paying off from an acquisition standpoint
- Nearing 4K email subscriber milestone
Projects/Focus Areas
- Hiring on part-time bilingual reporter Silvia Romero Solis to full-time
- Voter guides and election landing page launched week of Sep. 25
- Voter guides in English and Spanish
- Candidate bios and surveys
- Election 2020 landing page
Resources
October 2020
Monthly milestones
- Launched EOY fundraising campaign with goal of 100 new donors
- New values statement/about page written by the team, helping with fundraising drive
- Standout work in covering local wildfires
- 21% of monthly PVs was to one story on changes to local RV ordinance (primarily direct)
Projects/Focus Areas
- Awarded two small grants from the Community Foundation of Boulder County for COVID coverage and Spanish language translations
- Awarded grant from API for translation of our voter guide and election coverage into Spanish
- First giveaway completed Alfalfa's grocery gift cards
- We experimented with Social News Desk, which VM uses, for 2 of the weeks
- 178 new sign-ups from the campaign at $1.96 a sign-up (In the US, their average cost per sign-up ranges between $.75 to $3.00)
- Got some negative feedback about having this signup campaign as an interstitial to see breaking news content
- We experimented with Social News Desk, which VM uses, for 2 of the weeks
Resources
November 2020
Monthly milestones
- Traffic settled back to a normal growth level without a "viral" story surge - PVs +15% from September | Users +20% from September
- New ad campaign sold to start in December (eBikes)
- On track to meet EOY fundraising goal of 100 new donors
Projects/Focus Areas
- Good buzz around Spanish voter guide via interview on KGNU
- Election coverage concluded with positive results and learnings:
- Traffic trends lean to early voting: In Colorado, interest in the voter guide and election content peaked the week of Oct. 11-17, the week before early voting started.
- Readers spent time with voter guide content: Time on page ranging from 7:30 to 10:50 for English and Spanish respectively.
- Organic search drove the bulk of views to voter guides and election results.
- Newsletters were welcomed, performed well in terms of open and click rates.
- Results underperformed: We did not see a lot of traffic to live results on election day, nor did they draw a long tail of views in the days following, as we would expect.
Resources
December 2020
Monthly milestones
- Exploring membership in the Colorado Press Association for 2021
- Completed integration with SmartNews for syndication revenue
Projects/Focus Areas
- Started community meetings with Latinx leaders and cultural brokers ahead of wider audience research in early 2021.
- End of Year fundraising campaign raised more than $10,000, with 147 new contributors (our goal was 100).
Resources
January 2021
Monthly milestones
- Decision to divest in Longmont Leader
Resources
February 2021
Monthly milestones
- Announced changes to Compass project publicly
- Agreement from Village Media to acquire Longmont Leader
- Mandy Jenkinsexits Compass/McClatchy
Resources
March 2021
Launch day:
- Moved to Village Media platforms (moved Mailchimp, ecommerce, GSuite, Analytics, etc.)
- Started $100/day Facebook page "like" boost campaign
- Sent instructions to Social News Desk for $100/day email acqusition campaign (expected to start by March 3)
- Removed "support" and email sign up red boxes from header (de-cluttering)
- Modified widgets at bottom of articles - back to standards (hoping to improve recirculation)
- For personal reasons, we are down two reporters for the week - so slow start in editorial
- Implemented VM Ad Tech / Stack + Moved existing client ad campaigns to VM environment
