I’ve been doing a lot of reading about weblogs today and just came across the following about the Wall Street Journal Online and their plans for attracting and keeping more traffic:
At The Wall Street Journal Online, Bill Grueskin, the managing editor, looks at it more philosophically: “How do we make reading news online as easy and elegant and serendipitous as it is in the newspaper? How do you make the Web site even more compelling for people, so it’s a must-read rather than a can-read? And then, once you get them there, how do you sink your claws into them so they don’t want to go away?”
Like his counterparts at other papers, Grueskin is looking at “things in terms of the design of the site, the design of the story pages” to help move readers more effectively and efficiently through his site, and to better capitalize on those readers directed to them from blogs and elsewhere.
WSJ.com faces particular challenges in attracting and fully exploiting link-directed readers, as it is largely a subscription-only site and many bloggers prefer not to link to articles that aren’t openly accessible. It’s interesting, then, that the Journal’s has been among the most aggressive sites in recruiting blog traffic.
Starting in May 2004, Journal Online editors decided to make a certain number stories available for free each day, based on which stories they thought bloggers would be interested in linking to, and they do e-mail blasts, notifying them of the available stories. Two or three stories are made available for bloggers each day, and sometimes Journal Online staff will make other stories free when bloggers request them.
Starting soon, Grueskin plans to target bloggers more specifically, “engaging” them, as he puts, in a variety of areas — technology, business and finance, media, and others — with appropriate content.
I find it interesting that this is the first I’ve heard of them doing e-mail blasts & the like. I wonder which bloggers they’ve been targeting. I don’t recall seeing any of the other stock bloggers linking to the WSJ either — with the exception of when they did their free week. Curious indeed.
It looks like they plan to make available a few “teasers” for free, which they spam to high-traffic blogs. The ensuing traffic spike is basically free advertising for their subscription service.
That sounds like a pretty good plan. Or why not just set up a free article/s of the day site? The bloggers would link to it anyway.