IMS and Suara.com Hand in Hand to Support Local Media

TheIndonesia.id - International Media Support (IMS) and Suara.com held a Business Continuity Workshop for Local Media in Yogyakarta from 13-15 January 2022. The workshop entitled Startup for Media Startup (SMS) was attended by six local media from various regions in Indonesia to discuss various steps to maintain the sustainability of local media.

The number of local online media in Indonesia is growing very rapidly. It can reach 100 times the number of print media that ever existed in the country. However, the presence of a large number and massive local media is not matched with their knowledge of media management or media business.

These local media can produce good content, but the background of the founders are mostly journalists. They have lack knowledge of management, business, distribution, and technology.

Although Press Council estimates that there are 43,000 online media, only a few are managed professionally. The sustainability of the local media business is a question as they are a center for public information, social control, and local governments monitoring.

According to Suara.com Chief Operating Officer, Suwarjono, these new media are needed to replace what has been done by local print media. “Media disruption has had a major impact on local media in Indonesia, to content, production, distribution, to the business landscape. The media no longer controls upstream to downstream. The phenomenon of homeless media appears. Many new challenges such as digital platform giants. This is interesting to discuss and prepare for the new generation of digital media users,” said Suwarjono.

SMS Program

IMS through the Startup for Media Startup (SMS) program is hand in hand with Suara.com to support this threatened local media. Through the Business Viability Workshop, IMS and Suara.com provide key material so that local media can continue their business, have good engagement with the audience, and master better technologies.

“This workshop aims to support local media in addressing the most significant challenges of financial sustainability and readership decline. This workshop will improve participants' business skills,” said IMS Indonesia Program Manager, Eva Danayanti, during the event which took place at Artotel Bianti, Yogyakarta.

This workshop invited six local media from four regions in Indonesia, namely West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, West Java, and Central Java. One of the media involved is Mangle, a legacy print media based in West Java that is undergoing a digital transformation from print. IMS introduces the Six Pillars of Business Capabilities as a Theory of Change to strengthen media organizations.

The six pillars are audience, content & product, organizational capability, business, revenue, and ecosystem. “Our approach to business viability at IMS is to ignite interest and enable capabilities in local contexts for future-oriented responses so that our media partners feel more confident in the business side of their operations. We offer tailored support against partner needs for meaningful actions that maximize digital technologies to leverage technological advances,” said Clare Cook, Media Business Advisor, IMS, in a virtual meeting delivered live from the UK.

Know Your Audience

This workshop encouraged local media to start their efforts with a focus on audience development. The know-your-audience principle will strengthen media operations. Understanding the audience will help the media build an engagement with readers or viewers.

Emilie Lehmann Jacobsen, IMS Advisor, explains the importance of Know-Your-Audience through audience research. Audience research is to find out who is consuming, listening to, or accessing content. Research can also find out when the audience accessed the content, how the content was received, whether they knew about the content, and what their experiences with the content are.

“Audience research will help you get to know the three most basic elements of awareness (how many – and who – knows you?), reach (how many – and who – do you reach?), and trust (how many – and who – trust your media?). Those three alone can help you to understand where your media is positioned in the market – and which report you to have built with both existing and potential future audiences,” says Emilie Lehmann Jacobsen.

While Suara.com emphasizes several aspects that must be explored more from the Six Pillars approach, namely product development and revenue. Suara.com mobilized several experts to speak before the workshop. Besides COO Suwarjono, Suara.com also presented Dimas Sagita, Head of Social Media and Traffic Growth; Rendy Sadikin, Head of Yogyakarta Suara.com Bureau, and Bram Bravo, Digital Ad Ops & Programmatic Manager. Also presented was Edy SR, a branding expert.

Dimas Sagita explained that local media should operate social media and several tools to develop content and distribute it effectively. Dimas mentioned several content distribution channels ranging from web-based ones such as push notifications, social media (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and others), and aggregators.

"Currently, aggregators are increasingly being left out because their effectiveness is decreasing, while platforms such as Google and Facebook are increasingly effective in disseminating content and at the same time generating revenues," said Dimas.

Meanwhile, Suwarjono added, the challenges of managing digital media are tremendous. The digital ecosystem and businesses controlled by the platforms, make media managers need to think beyond media business. “Currently, there are new sources of revenue that need to be followed. From programmatic advertising, revenue sharing with platforms, to aggregators. Also, revenue models from services, communities to data are very diverse," he said. Suwarjono also urges local media to use "collaboration" as a credo to expand.

The workshop closed with an action plan session. Local media are expected to design an audience research plan, determine content choices, choose the appropriate distribution channel, the right business model, and of course, revenue channels.