3 Reasons you Must Cover Topics Beyond News

News should be a very important part of your content strategy as a local publisher. Especially in a local context, readers take a sense of pride in being informed of what is going on in their community. With digital, you have the opportunity to cover news stories quickly and efficiently to create more content.

With that said, there are many different forms of editorial content you should cover to dig deeper into your community. Great sources of content that go beyond news include: feature articles on local businesses, local guides, rundowns of events going on locally, and inviting community bloggers to write guest articles.

By covering stories that are more than just local news, you are taking advantage of some of the biggest opportunities in your market. Here are a few clear advantages that come from covering stories beyond the news:

Community

We are firm believers that local print publications are the cornerstone for creating a sense of community locally. By engaging readers through unique local stories, you will help to establish you publication as that cornerstone.

Show readers that your publication is more than just a way to pass time; that reading it is a way to be a better local citizen. Shine a light on parts of the community that other outlets may miss by covering local events and organizations not covered elsewhere. In doing so you will be providing a valuable service to readers.

Variety and Reader Interest

Features, community events, and local guides are all great types of content that will help drive readers to your publication. Larger publications often shy away from this content or don’t do it justice. By covering a broad variety of topics you will be able to draw many different types of reader's and keep them interested.

Some readers may come for very specific reasons i.e. one group may be interested in local restaurant reviews, but others may be more concerned with kids guides for the season. Try to appeal to as many groups as possible. You are giving yourself multiple ways to win more traffic by providing diverse types of content.

Creating many different stories is also important because you never know what type of content will do well on the Internet. A report on health inspections of local restaurants resulted in over 30,000 views for one of our publishers in a community of only 50,000 people. That is huge for a local story. This is local information that is publicly available, but no one was covering it and not in that way. It’s not necessarily news, but by presenting it effectively the story reached a huge audience. Think about the content you can create that isn’t covered locally but still has mass appeal.

Long Term Value Created

One thing that news stories don’t help with is long-term traffic. News stories come and go quickly, and after just a few days they will provide little to no traffic for your site. Content like community guides, or features can be updated and continually promoted on your website. That means that your content will be providing value for you long term. It can be shared on social channels contextually i.e. share an article about best Irish Pubs leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, or shared multiple times year round i.e. a rundown of children’s activities to do locally.

Most news stories can only be shared once, but "evergreen" content can be shared over and over with your audience as long as the information is still relevant. This means you can drive more traffic to your site with almost no extra effort.

These are just some ideas that you can use going forward. There are nearly endless opportunities to cover local content in unique way that goes beyond news. It is one of the biggest opportunities for a local publication, because these are the stories readers love that aren't covered anywhere else. Keep an eye out for stories that will fill a unique void for the community. If a story you want to cover goes beyond news and it fills one of these categories, you will be in great shape!

What is one example of a story that went beyond news that has been successful on your site?