Local News feeds The Newspaper Habit

News and local news in particular are the main reasons that people continue to subscribe to their local newspapers.

Doing so out of habit doesn't figure prominently but seeking incentives through coupons does.  This makes local newspapers particularly vulnerable to the rapidly rising popularity of social media coupons through sites such as Groupon and Living Social.

So while local newspapers delivered online have been less than successful, the paper variety still pulls the punters; the question is, for how long?

And if you were a local newspaper columnist now might be the time to look for another job as the obituary column is proving more popular than you are.

The observant amongst you may also have noted that the percentages on the pie chart above add up to more than 100%. The reason given by the company reporting the result is that participants were allowed to choose more than one option.

The data was collected from a monthly Internet survey of 1,000 households conducted for Ad Age by Ipsos Observer.

Local journalism has embraced digital media and the opportunities that this presents.  Take for example Tackable, a free app for iPad, which has been up and running since the start of the year in San Francisco.

People take smartphone photos of the interesting things they see, which get placed on a live map. Newspaper reporters and editors create photo assignments, directing the action and article get written faster with better content.

As co-founder Luke Stange described in the recent interview belo: “Imagine cutting up your newspaper into ten thousand little pieces and putting the best of the best on a map…and also bringing in community… what your neighbors are talking about.”



The future of local news is looking more exciting (and literally) by the minute.

Facebook Deals And The Alternatives

The primary motiviation for people visiting a business's Facebook Page is to locate an incentive -  what is the company able to offer me as a consumer?

A big hang-up for businesses wanting to use the power of online group deals and coupons is that they lose up to 50% of any revenue they make from their deals to the online providers providers, such as Groupon, and LivingSocial or Google Offers.

Facebook Deals syndicated partners take similar sized commissions but the return to business is that they, and the major providers mentioned above, can offer vast distribution power.

There are now new alternatives for SME's and companies to offer online deals without using the major providers and paying such a large chunk of their revenue as a commission.  If you have a large fan base already then then you might well consider using them.

Thrusocial has drag-and-drop  functionality and easy distribution to Facebook and Twitter.





Thrusocial's four pricing models range from the free option to a full enterprise solution for $US1,00 per year. For most though their Premier plan at $US34.99 per month will suffice, as it includes the coupon creator and a 30 day free trial.

It is worth having  a look at their showcase and they also provide a Message and Promotion Centre where you can automatically create promotion campaigns with landing pages that live on Thrupons.com.

These in turn are automatically promoted in updates published by the app to your Facebook Page and Twitter account, getting rid of the need for time-consuming manual promotion.

Another option is FaceItPages which features an ecommerce storefront app; you can sell your merchandise from your Page as well as proving deals, but it has fewer distribution options.





Their Promo module allows  a compnay to provide a special offer, discount, or giveaway and it appears that it is included in their Premier plan for $US15 per month.

In their application you are able to link the buy button to your buy url and control what text the buy button has on it.

According to FaceItPages, the coupon app. is best used with their reveal content module, which allows you to display different content to fans versus non fans.  This gives an added incentive for non-fans to sign up.

They offer a couple of pre-designed templates (below) to make the coupon offers an easy exercise. Examples can be viewed here.

Coupon Templates

So is using an alternative coupon provider worth the investment consideration?  For those with a proven social media profile and a large fan base the answer is probably yes.

For the smaller company at the online coupon 'starting line' you may still need the vast distribution network of Groupon, Google Offers or similar, to extend your reach / scale up your offer.

Related articles

• AT&T Launching Groupon-Style Daily Deals Site (techland.time.com)
• The scale Facebook brings to the social coupon market is staggering (marshallstanton.com)
• Bye Bye Groupon, Hello... thruPon? (gigaom.com)
• Explaining Facebook's new online coupons (cnn.com)

What's A Coupon Worth?

We all love a good bargain and in these recessionary days even the most staid and traditional department stores seem to be offering a never ending round of 'sales' to improve their cash-flow.

Customers respond to these incentives and the tills ring a happy tune. It is this same motivation that drive the success of coupons and online daily deals continue to influence retailing practice.

Source:Gordon Borrell

Note the rapid rise for online coupons which highlights how incentive sites such as Groupon will continue to not only survive, but thrive.

52% growth and the second highest face value indicates the importance of online coupons for advertisers.  Remember also that one of the key motivations for visiting a business Facebook sites is to receive offers.

Even Microsoft is reacting to the online coupon frenzy with a new product, Bing Deals.  They are now adding results about special deals to their Bing search engine, accessible both on its desktop and as a mobile version.

The company is promising access to more than 200,000 unique offers in over 14,000 cities and towns across the U.S.

Bing deals assembles leading offers from Groupon, Living Social and Restaurant.com (and others), "making it easier to discover, share and search for the best deals in your area – all from one place".


<br /> <a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&amp;vid=2d427226-041b-40e8-ba91-5c1ae7a8130a&amp;src=SLPl:embed:&amp;fg=sharenoembed" target="_new" title="Bing Launches Deals">Video: Bing Launches Deals</a>

The online coupon craze is also dramatically changing the face of retailing.  A recent New York Times article from Jay Goltz identified these potential threats to small businesses:

• While coupons can drive an awful lot of people into your store, not every store is prepared for the onslaught. 
• The daily-deal sites are also training people to expect that they can get a coupon for almost anything
• For many SME's few of the sales have turned into repeat customers so is there potential damage a daily deal can do to a company’s brand?
• What of price integrity? Charging some customers full price and others half price makes some happy and others unhappy. 
• The regulars are unhappy because they feel they overpaid and the discount customers are happy but will probably not return because they have got into the half-price habit.
• Daily deals train your existing customers to wait for the next coupon

Despite these reservations, the reality is that Groupon and other daily deal coupons are not going to go away so the business model needs to adapt to meet this customer expectation.  Retailers will probably end up with higher percentages for coupon redemption in the future due to competition between the online daily deal sites.

Wedbush analyst Lou Kerner believes there will be about $5 billion spent on LivingSocial and Groupon daily deal-style coupons this year

However a Yipit study shows that people who buy those coupons only redeem them about 80% to 90% of the time. So maybe the worry for small businesses is not as great as first supposed.

Related articles

• Groupon Could Break Google's Record With $25 Billion IPO (pcworld.com)
• Bing jumps onto daily deal bandwagon (theglobeandmail.com)