This year, publishers should lean hard on the 2024 elections to grow revenue and readership.
Creative Circle Media Solutions developed a proven tool to deliver that in 2020 when hundreds of publishers enhanced their election coverage with the company’s election app, which works with any web CMS. That app has been updated for 2024.
“Local newspapers aren’t making enough money from local (or national) elections, which is nuts because newspaper readers VOTE. We have to do a better job of making sure candidates understand that and get more election revenue flowing to newspapers,” said Bill Ostendorf, Creative Circle's founder and president. “We built our election app to do just that.”
Prior to the election, the self-service module allows local candidates to post a brief bio, photo and basic information as a public service. For a fee, candidates can then post an upgraded listing with five position statements, a brochure, multiple photos, a video, social links and more.
“Think about how many lesser elections in your market generate NO revenue — the library board or city council or minor judgeships. You likely will have hundreds of candidates for these positions who will never take out a print or web display ad,” said Ostendorf. “But at $25 or $50 or $75, you can get a good percentage of those candidates to post a paid listing in your online candidate directory. The app can also gather info and take credit card payments for print display ads. And it’s all self-service and pre-paid.”
Candidate profiles can be displayed on websites through a variety of attractive widgets and a list view searchable by candidate name, party and local races.
“This will help papers become the go-to source of election-related information,” said Ostendorf. “And the paid, self-service upgrade is a new way to make money.”
The app also has a sponsorship option and opens the door to other advertising opportunities.
Papers that want to create an election tab for print can reverse publish the candidate photos and profiles. The app exports an InDesign file with all the candidates, grouped by what they are running for, that can be flowed onto pages.
Then, on election night, the app helps manage and display election results. Publishers can add vote totals through a special interface in the app’s CMS and create great-looking charts and displays to show who won each local race.
"Elections are a big problem for publishers because most CMS platforms really have no answer for displaying election results in a professional, user-friendly way," said Ostendorf, who has worked as a consultant for hundreds of media companies across three continents and has led the redesign of more than 750 print publications and 1,000 media websites. “Our results templates will look great and get information to your readers quickly.”
The app is available for a flat annual fee so publishers can use it for local elections year-round. It can be used for primary and November elections this year and potentially local elections next spring.
“It’s amazing what you can do when you focus on doing one specialized thing well,” said Ostendorf. “Especially when you combine our custom development capabilities with our deep knowledge of print, advertising, production, content, user interface design and digital publishing.”
All Creative Circle’s software is designed to be easy to learn and use. It’s completely non-technical, but deep and pro-active support is always available.
“We also provide marketing materials and advice on pricing, marketing and deployment for all our apps,” said Ostendorf.
Growing lineup of apps available
Creative Circle is rolling out new specialized apps every year and now offers more than a dozen.
What's Open, the first app released in the spring of 2020 to help publishers showcase what businesses were open during the pandemic, has been deployed on more than 200 media sites. It has been converted into an effective, self-service local directory which many papers use for “Shop Local” initiatives. It’s also a great tool for communities that suffer a natural disaster like a tornado or hurricane, allowing communities to “Find Help” or find out again “What’s Open.” The company has other directoryQ portals and ShopLocalQ, which brings your print advertising online with lots of digital enhancements.
Honor My Grad, originally designed to help parents make a fuss over their 2020 graduates, has been deployed on more than 100 media sites. The graduation app, which works in similar fashion as the election app, allows parents to post a free listing or pay to upgrade their grad’s info to a full page that even allows invited family and friends to add their photos and comments. It can also create print ads and grad information that can be exported as an InDesign file.
calendarQ is an attractive, self-service calendar that allows people posting items to pay to make their items featured. It has a reverse publishing portal.
NativeNewsQ collects press releases along with sponsored and branded content and allows businesses to pay to have their content published online or in print.
Premium Pages, is a digital features wire deployed as 21 dynamic web pages on topics readers are interested in — from pets and health to home improvement and money matters. there are pages about agriculture, automotive, outdoors and puzzles and trivia. These pages get new content daily and new layouts several times a month to keep them fresh. Local publishers can add local sponsors, run-of-site ads, national programmatic ads, targeted local ads or local branded content to generate new revenue. The 1,500 or so stories on these pages at any given time can be in front of or behind your pay wall. The pages integrate seamlessly into any web site.
QuickAds is a self-service classified portal that can also be used to produce simple print layouts.
obituaryQ takes in paid or free obituaries and Honor my mom and Honor my dad are tools to monetize Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. The company has also turned its' flexible paywallQ platform, which can manage both digital pay walls and print subscriptions, was the first integrated pay wall in the industry in 2005.
To schedule a demo of any of Creative Circle’s full range of web site CMS software, print production CMS, print or webmaster outsourcing, consulting or publication redesign services, contact Greg Booras, national sales director at greg@creativecirclemedia.com, 706-600-1776, or Sean Finch, VP/sales, at sean@creativecirclemedia.com, 309-269-7834, or Bill Ostendorf at bill@creativecirclemedia.com, 401-455-1555.
About Creative Circle:
Creative Circle Media Solutions is one of the newspaper industry's leading consulting, training, design and software firms, with a 30-year history of success and happy clients on three continents.
We are dedicated to growing local ownership of community media and making excellence affordable to newspapers of all sizes.
Creative Circle has redesigned more than 750 print publications and more than 1,000 media-related websites. We've led workshops in 23 countries, training thousands of journalists, publishers and ad staffers on a wide range of topics. We are specialists at helping publishers launch print or web media outlets and at helping communities save or resurrect newspapers that have failed or been gutted by venture capital firms.
Creative Circle's software division has created a full line of web software solutions for media companies, including a user-oriented CMS, citizen journalism, classified advertising, hyper-local, pay wall, paid content and reverse publishing solutions. newsroomQ, our print production CMS, helps bring down the cost and hassle of print production software. It works with both Quark and InDesign and is efficient and easy to learn.
A consistent innovator, Creative Circle was the first media CMS vendor to release a wide range functionality. We were the first media CMS vendor to offer an integrated pay wall, user-contributed content, hyper-local sites, reverse publishing capability and flexible page and story templates that better reflect the news. We built the first ad server that defeats all ad blockers. Our sites are the most dynamic in the industry.
We also provide "creative outsourcing" to help companies that don't have easy access to experienced media designers or editors to create high-end content. We can create both high-end advertising designs and produce whole publications. We provide emergency staffing and vacation relief for print production and now offer web mastering services to bring expert management of websites to any size market.
