News squirrels, start burying those nuts!

Simon Galperin has an insightful and timely article on Medium with advice for online publishers who face the very real prospect of being dropped from the Facebook News Feed. (Oh yea, would Facebook call it something else – like Friends and Family Feed?)

In a nutshell he says …

1. Develop alternative channels — newsletters, notifications (I’d add partnerships and customized content)
2. Emphasize social sharing — get the audience to share more (I’d add utilize reporters’ sharing better)
3. Cultivate Facebook groups — very interesting and might be time consuming, but worthwhile
4. Collaborate and Innovate — yes, big fan of news orgs getting together to collaborate fairly (Good luck with that! Here’s a business opportunity.)
5. Adapt your business — memberships can help balance the revenue

In the long term, I think it’s a good trend for news orgs to wean themselves from the teat of Facebook. You have the ability to create great local content. People will come if you deliver it.