#IMA09: MPR’s Mike Reszler: Enough with the web pages

Mike Reszler, Director of Digital Media at MPR, was one of the panelists in the “New News Model” panel. I didn’t get good notes from his talk (audio and his powerpoint will soon be available) but sifting through the twitter hashtag provides some detail, and I’ve added a few things.

Organizational must haves: Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Information Architect, Chief Social Officer and Chief Search Engine Optimizer.

It’s important to set online targets. Innovation doesn’t happen on its own. MPR doesn’t set its pageview targets by comparing itself to others in public media: it compares itself to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which still has much higher monthly traffic.

Their innovation plan: “enough with web pages.” Because the next horizon is mobile, organizations should stop building new static web pages, and instead structure and break out content for microformatting. The structure helps create meaningful search results for users and causes your content to rise higher in search.

This thinking extends to site design. Reszler says about 40% of all traffic to the site comes from search engines, so your next redesign must begin with the article page and NOT with “home” because that will be the landing page for close to half of your users. What navigation and links do you have on the article to encourage 1) deeper exploration and 2) a click to the home page?

Reszler recommends the following internal process: Invite, Innovate and Instruct. Brainstorm with staff: what do we have to do in next 3 months to meet audience needs? Empower staff to act on the good ideas.

Interesting aside: MPR mobile site traffic is <1% of all traffic. It’s a growing component of online service and has shown huge growth in the past year, but not yet at MPR.

Thanks to the following twitter people: @candacejeanne, @jsheppa, @mcranevt, @aschweig, @stacybond, @beyondbroadcast, @juliaschrenkler, @matthewtift