Stop Giving Your Best Local Content an Expiration Date

Every year, I see radio stations put an impressive amount of work into seasonal publications. Spring gardening guides. Summer boating guides. Fall football previews. Holiday shopping guides. Salespeople sell the sponsorships, somebody gathers the information, a designer makes everything look great, and thousands of copies get printed and distributed around town.

And every time I see one, I find myself wondering the same thing: Why isn’t all of this content on the station website?

I don’t mean uploading the finished magazine as a PDF or embedding one of those page-flipping viewers. I’m talking about taking the useful local information inside that publication and building it into an actual section of the website where listeners can find it, search it, share it and return to it.

Some of these seasonal guides contain more original local content than the station website gets in months. Then we deliberately give that content an expiration date.

The print guide isn’t the problem

I’m not suggesting stations stop producing printed guides. A well-done local publication can still be a great product. People can pick it up, flip through it and hang onto it. Advertisers understand what they’re buying, and salespeople generally know how to sell it.

What doesn’t make sense to me is treating the printed publication and the website as two completely separate products.

Suppose your station produces a spring home and garden guide. You’ve already done the hard work. Someone researched gardening, landscaping, home improvement, lawn care and other useful local topics. You’ve gathered photos. You’ve probably talked with local experts and businesses. You’ve sold advertisers on the value of being associated with that content.

Then spring ends, the guides disappear, and next year everybody starts over.

Instead, imagine having a permanent Home & Garden section on the station website.

An article about when to plant tomatoes in your area doesn’t suddenly become useless when May ends. Neither does information about lawn care, landscaping, pest control, storm preparation or choosing a local contractor. Some of it will need updating, but that’s a lot different from throwing it away.

When next spring arrives, you’re not starting from an empty page. You’re building on a local resource that has been growing all year.

The printed Spring Home & Garden Guide can become a special edition of that larger product.

Build something that gets better every year

The same idea works with almost every seasonal publication stations already produce.

If boating is important in your community, build a permanent section with information about local lakes, marinas, boat ramps, fishing, safety, events and other resources. Your summer boating guide becomes the special printed edition.

High school football may be an even better example. Stations put tremendous effort into football previews with schedules, team information, coaches, stadium details, photos and interviews. At the same time, listeners are going online all season looking for schedules, scores, stadium locations, playoff information and other details about those same teams.

Why would we create all of that information for a publication designed to disappear when we could also be building the local football resource people find online?

Holiday shopping doesn’t have to disappear on December 26, either. Build a permanent local shopping section and use it throughout the year. Christmas can have its special edition, but the same section can support Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, graduation, back-to-school shopping and other opportunities without rebuilding the entire digital product every time.

The important difference is that you’re accumulating content instead of constantly replacing it.

Last year’s useful article can be updated. A guide can be expanded. New information can be added. Over time, the station builds a library of local information that becomes more useful rather than disappearing at the end of every season.

Let print and digital do different jobs

Putting the information online doesn’t mean giving people less reason to pick up the printed publication. I’d go the other direction and give them more reason to get one.

Make the print edition special.

Include advertiser coupons or offers that aren’t available online. Add a useful checklist, calendar or map. Run a promotion or contest tied specifically to the printed guide. Use QR codes to take readers to expanded articles, videos, interviews, schedules and updated information on the website.

Now the printed guide drives people to the website, while the website can promote the special edition and tell listeners where to pick one up.

You’re not asking print and digital to compete with each other. You’re letting each one do what it does best.

You’ve also created something new to sell

There’s an advertising opportunity here that shouldn’t be overlooked.

If a local garden center sees enough value to sponsor your spring gardening guide, that same business is a pretty obvious prospect for the Home & Garden section of your website. The boat dealer buying space in the summer boating guide probably has an interest in reaching local boaters for more than the three weeks your publication is on the counter.

This doesn’t mean a business gets year-round website advertising because it purchased an ad in the printed guide. It means you’ve created another piece of digital inventory that your sales department can sell.

More importantly, it’s digital inventory attached to useful content rather than an empty page created because somebody wanted another place to put a banner.

The audience comes first. The advertising opportunity exists because you’ve built something people have a reason to use.

Your website should accumulate value

This is one of the biggest differences between thinking of the station website as a brochure and treating it more like another station.

A useful website gets better as you add to it.

Someone may bookmark your high school football section. A family might return to your local events section every weekend. A boater may use your lake information throughout the summer. A homeowner could discover a gardening article through search long after you originally published it.

That content can also feed everything else you’re doing. Link to it from social media. Feature it in the station newsletter. Send something particularly useful through the mobile app. Have personalities mention it on the air. Update an older article when the season comes around again instead of creating another disposable version.

And increasingly, useful local information also gives search engines and AI-powered search tools something substantial to discover when people ask questions about your community.

That’s a lot more mileage from work your station has already done.

Don’t start over next season

Radio people talk about doing more with less so often that the phrase has nearly lost its meaning, but this is one situation where it really does apply.

I’m not suggesting adding another giant project to an already busy staff. I’m suggesting getting more value from work you’re already paying people to do.

If somebody has already researched the article, interviewed the local expert, gathered the schedules, taken the pictures and written the copy, use that work everywhere it makes sense. Build it into the website. Pull some of it into the printed guide. Talk about it on the air. Put it in the newsletter. Share individual pieces on social media.

Then, when the season comes around again, update and expand what you already have.

Your station may already be producing some of the best local information in your market. Don’t spend weeks creating it, package it beautifully, distribute it for a short season and then let all of that work disappear.

Give your best local content a permanent home.