By David Capece, Managing Partner
We believe The Daily Beast is tomorrow’s digital leader: a smart, edgy, fearless site that appeals to a young, tech savvy audience. At Sparxoo, we are big fans of the Daily Beast’s fresh approach to news.
We love your use of cheat sheets, highlight hot topics, and go deep on the “Big Fat Story.” Tina, you have said: “The Daily Beast doesn’t aggregate. It sifts, sorts, and curates. It’s a speedy, smart edit of the web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors.” We think this is the right approach As Daily Beast fans, we were disappointed that you didn’t make our top 25. The truth is that having been around for just 1 year, you haven’t had enough time to build traction to compete with the big guns… yet. While you are building momentum, Daily Beast still has a Google page rank of 7, just under 25,000 Twitter followers and 15,000 Facebook fans, and less than 10,000 RSS subs. These stats pale in comparison to the market leaders. We want to help you, our friends at The Daily Beast, so we are sharing a roadmap to success:
Obsessively Excited Users: In today’s cluttered market, you need to rise above the crowd and make a real connection with your users. NPR is best-in-class at developing deep relationships with their fans as evidenced by tremendous number of Twitter Followers and Facebook Fans. Get your users to share and recommend The Daily Beast.
Build a Multimedia Presence: We know that video and podcasts can be more expensive than writing a blog, but you’ve got to do it. The written word has dominated the Internet for the last 15 years, but we’re moving beyond to a multi-dimensional experience. We see you have videos, but it’s not enough. And how about launching a podcast?
Push for More Quantity: Yes, we’ll take quality over quantity any day. However, as the beast, size should matter to you. Huffington Post has done an amazing job with a content creating machine that makes it #2 on links into site and #1 in Diggs. We did a Google search on “Obama” for the last 30 days, and Huffington Post showed up more than anyone else except USA Today and Yahoo News. If you don’t have the manpower in-house, you can partner with others, and empower your users to create content on your behalf.
Aggregating Isn’t So Bad: You specifically say that you don’t want to aggregate. We understand that aggregating seems so cheap. But in truth, it does have some value. Google has made it to #12 on our list even though they don’t create any content. Think about how you can aggregate in a way that is true to your mission.
Thanks for listening Tina. Keep up the good work, incorporate some of our tips, and we hope to see you surge up the list next year.
Sincerely,
Read the full Digital Influence Report (PDF)
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