{"id":552,"date":"2009-12-16T20:55:44","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T02:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrissniderdesign.com\/blog\/?p=552"},"modified":"2009-12-16T20:55:44","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T02:55:44","slug":"covering-breaking-weather-news-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrissniderdesign.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/16\/covering-breaking-weather-news-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Covering breaking weather news online"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"weatherhomepage\"<\/p>\n

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<\/a> mode and tried to compete with the local TV stations for readers’ attention.<\/p>\n

And as usual, we learned a few things. Here are some tips for covering breaking weather news online:<\/p>\n

Promote your mobile site<\/strong><\/p>\n

We saw a nice bump in traffic to our mobile site<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

In severe weather, there’s also the possibility of people losing power \u2013 so your mobile site may be their only way to access important information.<\/p>\n

Take the news to the people<\/strong><\/p>\n

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<\/a> to draw them in as important news broke throughout the day.<\/p>\n

Ask readers to submit specific photos<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 \u2013 and we promised we’d run the best in print the next day. And it worked \u2013 we got more than 80 photos<\/a> (and not all were snow drifts).<\/p>\n

Create a Twitter hashtag<\/strong><\/p>\n

Create a Twitter hashtag and use it for all your tweets \u2013 or better yet figure out what hashtag your local Twitter users are already using and join in. Our local community was using #winterdeathstorm<\/a>. Considering that people actually die in such storms, we decided to go with the safer #dmweather<\/a>. We saw quite a few others joining in, so we’ll certainly use that again in the future.<\/p>\n

Check Google Trends to see what people are searching<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to severe weather, people turn first to their local TV station \u2013 even online. Google Trends<\/a> shows this:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Local newspapers \u2013\u00a0Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier and Cedar Rapids Gazette \u2013 never showed up.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Create a live chat for readers<\/strong><\/p>\n

We set up a CoverItLive<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Create a severe weather page<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Dig into your archives<\/strong><\/p>\n

We have hundreds of great photos from past snow storms<\/a>. With more time, it also would have been great to bring back stories from previous huge storms and historic front pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-online-ideas"],"yoast_head":"\nCovering breaking weather news online - Chris Snider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last week, Mother Nature dumped 16 inches of snow on Des Moines. 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