Chris Snider

Last week, Mother Nature dumped 16 inches of snow on Des Moines. And while most of the town simply shut down for a day or two, the Des Moines Register didn’t have that option. We went into breaking news mode and tried to compete with the local TV stations for readers’ attention.

And as usual, we learned a few things. Here are some tips for covering breaking weather news online:

Promote your mobile site

We saw a nice bump in traffic to our mobile site while readers were stuck at home (or elsewhere). We used Twitter, Facebook and our own web site to remind people that the mobile site was available for latest weather news and closings.

In severe weather, there’s also the possibility of people losing power – so your mobile site may be their only way to access important information.

Take the news to the people

If people aren’t at work, they’ve not on their computer. So they’re probably not spending as much time on your site. We used Twitter, Facebook, text alerts, e-mail alerts and RSS feeds to draw them in as important news broke throughout the day.

Ask readers to submit specific photos

We’ve had modest success getting people to submit weather photos, but one small tweak seemed to really help this time. We asked readers to specifically send us photos of their big snow drifts – and we promised we’d run the best in print the next day. And it worked – we got more than 80 photos (and not all were snow drifts).

Create a Twitter hashtag

Create a Twitter hashtag and use it for all your tweets – or better yet figure out what hashtag your local Twitter users are already using and join in. Our local community was using #winterdeathstorm. Considering that people actually die in such storms, we decided to go with the safer #dmweather. We saw quite a few others joining in, so we’ll certainly use that again in the future.

Check Google Trends to see what people are searching

When it comes to severe weather, people turn first to their local TV station – even online. Google Trends shows this:

What was hot on Google Trends during the height of our storm on Dec. 8? The call letters from local television stations (KCCI, KCRG, KWWL). All three showed up for hours as hot trends. These terms also made appearances: KCCI school cancellations, Iowa DOT road conditions, Des Moines public schools, KCCI weather, Iowa road conditions and winter storm.

Local newspapers – Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier and Cedar Rapids Gazette – never showed up.

But that doesn’t mean we should give up on winning the search war. We clearly could rate high for terms like Iowa DOT road conditions, Iowa road conditions and winter storm with a little SEO finesse. Or simply buy keywords for those words.

Create a live chat for readers

We set up a CoverItLive chat and asked readers to share info about their commute, what their business was doing because of the storm, etc. We got a little bit of that, but also found that the chat was a great way for members of our staff to instantly post the little updates they were getting throughout the day.

Create a severe weather page

We’re still working on this, but it became clear there are certain things we always need links to during a storm: road conditions, traffic cams, airport delays, snow routes and energy outages.

So, we’re creating a severe weather page that combines those links with a twitter feed, stories, radar, blog posts, video, photos and traffic cameras. It will be a one-stop shop during severe weather.

Dig into your archives

We have hundreds of great photos from past snow storms. With more time, it also would have been great to bring back stories from previous huge storms and historic front pages.

We don’t have pro sports teams in Iowa. We don’t host Superbowls or NCAA Final Fours. But every year we do get one game that captures our local sports audience like no other.

Iowa vs. Iowa State in football. We call it the “Big Game.” (Clever, huh?) And here’s a look at all of the coverage we do leading up to the game.

Big Game Fan Map: Our attempt to determine what areas of the state prefer Hawkeyes and what areas prefer Cyclones.

Big Game Challenge: Readers get to pick various prop bets on the game – with a $500 prize for the person who gets the most correct.

Jokes: Readers share their favorite Iowa and Iowa State jokes.

Field goal game: It’s hard to actually work the week of the game, so this helps readers slack off.

Past photos: Hugely popular. People love to look at old photos (even ones that are only one year old).

Posters: Readers can print out these posters to decorate their cubicle at work – or their neighbor’s cubicle.

Bars: Sometimes people watch games in bars, we hear. We help them figure out where to go.

Of course, we also cover all of the “news” of the week with stories and videos. But those are the main components that make up a successful “Big Game” week around here. You can see all of our coverage right here.

And GO HAWKEYES!

I stumbled upon a great resource from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the other day. Their Packers bar map helps readers find a place to drink with other Packers fans (almost) anywhere in the world (apparently not South Dakota).

Naturally I wanted to do the same for the sports teams we cover at the Des Moines Register. Digital projects editor Mike Corey was able to one-up the Packers map by making our map completely user-generated. Readers can upload bars directly to the map. The Green Bay example sends bars to a staff member who then adds them to the map.

Here’s our map of Iowa Hawkeyes, Iowa State Cyclones, Northern Iowa Panthers and Drake Bulldogs sports bars.

The great thing about our map is that we simply have to watch it to make sure nobody is abusing it. The great thing about the Packers map is that is uses ZeeMaps, which means that it doesn’t require knowledge of the Google Maps API (full disclosure: I now nothing about any APIs).

I have to admit that I’m pretty impressed with the work the Journal Sentinel has done using ZeeMaps, including this map of dining reviews.

Here’s a fun little interactive that the Indy Star put together for the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament.

It’s a good idea for any city that hosts some sort of post-season basketball tournament.

I’m sure you’ve heard stories about Twitter beating traditional news media on breaking news. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that traditional news media have certain standards for verifying news.

But another factor is that we still feel the need to post a full story. Instead, we should get in the habit of posting just a headline quickly – and adding more details as they develop. Here’s a good example from chicagobreakingnews.com. Notice they started with the most basic of info and grew from there.

If you work for a newspaper, please take the time to watch this:

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Obviously the Rocky was in a different situation than most newspapers (being in a two-newspaper town). But I hope this opens a few more eyes to the fact we have to adapt to survive.

The way people consume information is changing. And so we must change. It’s as simple as that.

Or be prepared for more videos like the one above.

Need some online inspiration? Just take a stroll through some other web sites and learn from what others are doing. With that in mind, here are five ideas that could benefit almost any news web site out there:

The azcentral.com live module. Nothing complicated here. Just a continuous stream of reader comments as they come into the site. Another great way to get people into the conversation.

NewsOK’s live page. A one-stop shop for current live videos and chats. All in one place, so I always know where to look.

The Miami Herald’s news grid. A clever (and straightforward) way to show the top news in several categories at a glance.

The Austin American-Statesman’s Twitter page. Sure, this promotes the Statesman’s many Twitter accounts, but the best part is that it promotes local Twitter users worth following.

The Des Moines Register’s business blog aggregator. Instead of trying to get the best local business bloggers to post using your blog tools, simply add links to their latest blogs and make them a part of your local blogger network.

What if our number one goal was to publish a great web site? How would we do things differently?

Would our daily news meetings be structured differently? Would our planning budgets look different? Would people sit in different places in the newsroom?

Would we still have a separate online department? If so, would it be bigger? Smaller?

Would we post stories at a different time of the day? Would copy editors read stories before they went online? Would designers work on the web site?

Would we pay more attention to our mobile site?

Would we look for a different content management system?

Would we have different revenue streams online? Would we realize that craigslist isn’t anything special, but that it’s still much better than anything we currently offer?

Would we participate in our own story chat? Would that elevate the discussion?

Would page views go up? Visits? Unique visitors? Time on site?

Would circulation of the print edition go down? Was it going to go down anyway?

Just got an e-mail about the St. Cloud Times’ holiday yule log.

During these dismal times, we decided to offer the online readers a relaxing moment:  A Yule log burning in a fireplace with local holiday music.

The page doesn’t even contain an ad. Holiday spirit, or missed opportunity?

Who says you need a staff of developers and tons of time to make a great web site? These tools are easy to use and easy to add to your site.

1. Coveritlive.com
CoverItLive allows you to blog live from an event (you can even do it from your iPhone). It’s also a great tool for hosting live chats on your site.

2. Blip.tv
There are a lot of tools that can embed video on your site (YouTube.com Vimeo.com, qik.com), but I’m starting to be a big fan of blip.tv. It create a nice-looking index of your videos and make it easy to offer your videos as an iTunes podcast.

3. Mogulus.com
With just a video camera and an internet connection, Mogulus lets you broadcast live video. Also try justin.tv and ustream.tv.

4. Animoto.com
Don’t just post photo galleries. Turn your best photos into a music video.

5. Vuvox.com
Create slideshows, timelines and more that include photos, music and videos. See an example here (below the scroll).

6. Soundslides.com
Easy-to-use tool for adding slideshows with audio to your site.

7. Slideshowpro.net
Another great tool for creating slideshows and embedding on your site. Indystar.com uses this to let reader embed slideshows on their sites.

8. Google maps
We all understand the value of maps and map mash-ups. That doesn’t mean we all have the skills to create them. Fortunately there are some tools that help. Such as umapper.com, mapalist.com, mapbuilder.net, quikmaps.com and fmatlas.com.

9. Polldaddy.com
Creates polls that you embed on your site. I also just discovered Polls Boutique.

10. Response-o-matic
Creates a quick online contact form, or use it to make surveys and multiple-question polls. Also check out surveymonkey.com.

11. Mypodcast.com and gabcast.com
Think podcasting is hard? Think again. Mypodcast records your podcast directly to the web. Gabcast turns a phone call into a podcast.

12. Flickr.com groups
Your readers are already posting photos to Flickr. Why not start a group and embed those photos on your site?

13. YouTube reader videos
Your readers are already uploading videos to YouTube. Create a custom player to put those videos on your site.

14. Slideshare.net
You’re a wiz with Powerpoint and/or Keynote. Don’t you wish you could add those presentations to your site? You can.

15. Wordle.net
Text can be boring. Turn speeches into word clouds.

16. Issuu.com
Want to replicate the “print experience” online? Issuu helps your put your publications actual pages online so readers can flip through them.

17. DocStoc.com
Don’t make your readers download documents and PDFs. Let them read them directly from your site with embed codes from docstoc.

18. 4info.net
Send text alerts to your readers’ phones – and make money for doing it.

19. Feedburner.com
Sure, you’ve got RSS feeds. But can you track how often they are used? Or allow readers to subscribe via e-mail? Or put ads on your feeds? Feedburner can.

20. Widgetbox.com
Create a widget from your RSS feeds and encourage others to add your content to their sites.

21. Sproutbuilder.com
Creates even cooler widgets than widgetbox. Cool enough that you will want to put them on your site, too.

22. Sharethis.com
Make it easy for readers to share your content across social media platforms (see example at the bottom of this post).

23. Mofuse.com
Create a mobile version and an iPhone version of your web site in minutes using RSS feeds. See previous post on mofuse here. Also check out wirenode.com and mippin.com.

24. Odiogo.com
Reading is hard. Listening is easy. Odiogo turns your text into audio.