Content Marketing Today

How a Young SW Florida Business Newspaper Outflanks the Competition With a Great New Website

Timely Business News, Features, Analysis, and Events Deliver a Competitive Edge.

Southwest Florida Business Today is relatively new on the regional publishing scene.  Publisher and owner, Karen Moore, is a newspaper veteran with decades of experience.  Although her first priority at launch was to get the print publication up and running successfully, soon afterward she focused on creating an online newspaper site that would stack up very well relative to its competition.

The site, SouthwestFloridaBusinessToday.com, has a bold design which features timely and easily accessible news stories, well-organized departments, a broad range of resources, and comprehensive site search.

As with all entrepreneurial ventures in startup mode, the publication did not have infinite resources to build out a news focused site that was easy to keep current and to modify.  Thus, they chose WordPress for the fundamental design and content management system, but they customized a standard theme so that it looks nothing like a traditional blog.  Rather, it has all the sophistication in looks and functionality that would have cost $40-$50000 to create just 5 or 10 years ago.

Although Southwest Florida Business Today has two very solid and established print competitors, one a magazine and one a business newspaper– not to mention the Fort Myers News-Press and the Naples Daily News, they deliver what is arguably the most timely, appealing, and accessible blend of online regional business information in the market. This is true even though their online articles are posted a week after the print edition has hit the streets.

Here’s how they outshine their competitors:

• Their business newspaper competitor forces its online visitors to pay for any article they want to read.  They provide so little detail about any article that there is not much incentive to pay the two dollars they demand.
• This same competitor includes only stories pulled from the print publication.  They are not set up to do any breaking news stories.
• Their magazine competitor does post past print articles and makes them available for free.  It also does a nice job of organizing its content.  However, the only current news is a feed pulled from a local television station and is not specific to the business community.
• Content on the magazine’s site is not timely because their editorial deadlines are way in advance of the publication date.  Thus, if there is a major business event, they have no way of covering it contemporaneously.
• The magazine does send out a daily eNewsletter which offers brief paragraphs of business news.  The flaw in the eNewsletter is that its stories do not link back to their website.  Thus, after giving a paragraph to a hot story, there is nowhere to go for more information.
• The local daily newspapers give very little focused coverage to business.  Many local business executives would probably argue that what they do write tends to be negative. This impression is aggravated now that the dailies have opened up all their articles to comments, too many of which seem to come from folks with a little too much time on their hands and a lot of grievances to share.

The shortcomings of their competitors have opened the door for significant competitive advantage online with the launch of SouthwestFloridaBusinessToday.com in August 2008.  Not only does it provide high-quality, newsworthy business information, but it is probably the best reference source for potential advertisers.  All those prospects can go online and get an instant positive impression of the publication.  Moreover, every bit of media kit information necessary to make an ad buying decision is readily available and downloadable.

Last, but not least, it is very easy to subscribe online.  And, that’s an action you’d be likely to take based on the quality of the website and its content.

In the interest of full disclosure, I worked closely with the team at Southwest Florida Business Today to turn their online vision into reality.  The combination of their enthusiasm to create a great online publication and the power and simplicity of WordPress delivers a website that provides significant value for readers and advertisers alike.