The specific steps include audience survey, developing a newsletter and enhancing multimedia content production. The team will acquire more knowledge about the audience and develop their technical and journalistic skills.
With this project, we aim to expand our online audience - an area where we have established the potential growth of 200%. We target two groups of people: 1. local residents of Hiiumaa who are not yet subscribers to www.hiiuleht.ee (potentially 2000 people) 2. People who are connected to Hiiumaa but live (temporarily) elsewhere - the large "diaspora" community estimated at 2 x residents' number (appr. 20 000) that has roots on the island but lives and works on mainland Estonia or abroad; people who own second homes on the island or plan to settle.
We will conduct audience research and test our existing ideas to offer additional and better products. We will create (1) a newsletter and add high quality (2) video content to the website.
With these steps we hope to approach new subscribers who are currently not well informed or not interested in traditional print media (young people, people relying on social media only). We can offer the wider diaspora an opportunity to form a stronger bond to the island community.
By tapping new audience segments these steps will guarantee the sustainability of the only independent news outlet of the island and at the same time improve the information quality of the community.
Goals of the project
Audience research in the form of an online questionnaire and in-person interviews to find more specific information about expectations.
Testing the "working idea": Newsletter form development for the online website (by our IT partner), newsletter content development (as a workshop), training for the newsletter editor, also on AI tools that can be implemented for the newsletter production. Video editing training for the responsible editors, video embedding tools and forms for the website. Development of new workflow routines to incorporate multimedia output of all suitable content.
The newsletter will be the main separate product that will be shared and used after the project has finished. New technical tools and skills for multimedia production will form an integral part of our regular online output.
