Digital strategy phase two

DIGITAL STRATEGY PHASE TWO 2018

Why did we want a digital strategy?
It wasn’t about replacing the print publication we love, but to:
Raise the profile of Opera Canada magazine
Improve the dated look of our on-line presence
Reach new readers/opera fans who were not currently subscribers
Sell subscriptions to our print publication through the web and social media
Prepare incrementally and prudently for diversification in a digital future with declining
numbers of subscribers to print publications

Why didn’t we invest in a professionally
designed site?
Professional Site
Estimated Budget $25,000 to $30,000, money
we didn’t have and money that was needed
elsewhere if we could obtain it
Proprietary Designs are difficult to
update/edit/move
Costly Updates if not able done in-house
Difficulty in training staff to take over updates
Volunteer Site
 Savings: Estimated Budget less than $500
inc.premium template ($50 to $75) 2-3
premium plugins and possible new
hosting/domain name purchases.
 Opportunity: We had someone on the Board
willing and able to do it
 Longterm Benefits: There was the potential to
train staff as we built the site making for
sustainability/resilience.

What did we have in place prior to phase 1 of digital plan?
How bad was it? Pretty bad.
A site consisting of basic contact information and non-interactive subscription forms
A landing page consisting of the logo, the current issue cover and 1 paragraph of history
A moderately active Twitter channel but with no strategy or connection to website content
A defunct Facebook page with no postings in two years and fewer than 50 followers.
No email lists of subscribers, no digital communications (e-blast) strategy or process

Screen capture of site from 2012

How not to do
Social Media
Unengaging stale content. Almost no
followers or comments.
In 2016, the most recent post was 3
years old and it was a dump of old
cover images.

Having determined our starting point:
what did we hope to achieve in Phase 1
Modest achievable plans:
Update the look of the website
Increase content (initial plan was to use back issues)
Increase graphic interest through more images
Make it easier to buy subscriptions online
Connect and expand social media channels
It took longer and was harder to achieve than we anticipated, only gaining traction with change
of leadership.

Hidden Roadblocks
Inadequate, expensive and incompetent web-hosting service
Content from back issues was less available than anticipated—never provided.
The “many images” discussed never materialized.
Subscription forms were being created by distributer who resisted any changes to process
Many cases of missing passwords and general lack of information
Contacts for emailers were not being provided by the distributor and no priority was given to
obtaining email contacts.
The Good News is that we got past all this.

What’s been accomplished?
All of our Phase 1 goals have been achieved (and more)
Newspaper premium web theme was installed in 2016 and has been kept updated
Site has been migrated to a new hosting environment (All Canadian, supportive, reasonable rates)
The site is vibrant with new content and aggregated news from around the opera world
Basic PayPal integration for donations and set up for Rubies online ticket purchases this year
 We’ve seen website users grow from 50 a month to 1,600, making about 7,000 page views
A new Facebook Page was created that has attracted almost 1,000 followers in less than a year
Social media channels are robustly connected to the site: Facebook is a leading source of visitors to the site
 Contacts have been imported into MailChimp and a monthly newsletter with articles connected to website content has
been launched ( Nov and Dec issues).
A new Canadian Opera Calendar is available online with submission form for opera producers.
http://operacanada.ca

New and curated content under section headings.

Digital Advertising Decisions
While adwords and other auto-content
advertising has low return and some risks, we
already have interest in digital ad buys:
Propose $150/column width header advertising
per week for digital buys only
 Incentives for print buys: One free week for
quarter page print ad buyers
$250 for 2 column width/week, 1 free week for ½
page ad buyers
$300 week for full banner advertisement or
feature block ad, 1 free week for full page ad
buyers.
Additional potential to sell advertising in
Cadenza and to exchange advertising with
partners to promote Opera Canada subscriptions.
We already have an advertiser!

Digital dissemination of print advertising rates:
BACKGROUND: previously a “national rate card” was shared publicly but no one actually paid
those rates. The private “partnership rates” are closer to actuals and only that card has been
updated with current information.
Should we share this online?
Do away with the two rate system but be open to negotiation?
Only post general statements about print advertising?
Draft page is awaiting decision(s).

Automating Online Subscriptions
Steps have been taken towards automating online subscriptions but some thorny problems remain,
as well as some simple time-investment:
Step 1: Need to invest about $50-$75 in secure professional version of our form-builder to create
more sophisticated, secure payment forms connected to our PayPal account (this has already been
approved and some of the spadework has been done)
Step 2: Need to create the forms and inventory options on PayPal that correspond to new
subscription, volume subscription, renewals etc.
 This presents a problem: We don’t control the creation of subscription forms/offers. In the past few months,
our distributor has created 11 different subscription forms, each one corresponding to a particular offer he
has made.
 Administrative access to our website and creating new subscription forms at will has been prior practice.
 In order to 1) secure access to our payment account and 2) make the job of maintaining an online payment
system manageable we should ideally have one subscription form (with defined options) or 3 at most.

Subscription content online
We’ve reached a decision
point with the quantity,
quality and depth of content
on our website and we can go
in 3 distinct directions:
Web content is geared to promote
the print publication and does not
duplicate any of the print content
Web content has both free and
subscription content online: while
this was an original part of Phase 2
development, learning about the
Zinio edition of the magazine
circulating in libraries could undercut
potential sales.
Web content offers
some teaser content
related to the print
publication or perhaps
1 feature article with
the rest only in print
publication.

Summary of decisions and steps
1. Online advertising: What kind do we want? How much? Web only or Web and e-blast?
2. Print advertising rate card. Do we publish the partner rate? Both? Neither?
3. Automating subscription forms and limited proliferation of forms.
4. Going to a paywall for online subscription content or keep separate.
5. Partners and new content development: Guest bloggers, Podcasts, educational content

Digital strategy phase two

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Digital strategy phase two