Daily Circulation: 13,364
Sunday Circulation: 14,066


List the major steps you have taken in the last four years to increase readership. Please organize your response under four headings: content, brand, service, culture.

Content
Have made great strides in obtaining and printing as much local news as possible. We get into publication local news that no one else in our area has - from the major breaking news stories to the honor lists for the local elementary schools.

Brand
We tout ourselves as "Your Local Source" which is our way of telling readers that they are to come to us as their source for local news and advertising. Our Advertising Department works diligently to get as many local advertisers into the paper as possible from the major department stores and car dealerships to the small shops downtown.

Service
A Customer Service Department was created a few years ago. They answer the phones and can handle Circulation and Classified Advertising situations at their desks so there is no transfer of calls to another line. We also make it as easy as possible for our local schools to participate in Newspapers In Education.

Culture
The culture of our company is to be a helpful one and to put our readers first.



What is the most innovative, successful or noteworthy thing you have done on readership that you think other papers might learn from or want to emulate?
We are trying to get our readers more involved by being a part of the newspaper and its content. More than a year ago we started running a photo from the past that we call Portraits of the Past. These are pictures from Aiken County's past, and we solicited additional photos from our readers. The response was overwhelming. We soon had a backlog of well over a month (Portraits of the Past is a daily feature with one picture running each day). The pictures continue to come in, and readers constantly remark about photos of the people and places of Aiken County's past. A lot of them are baseball team pictures, family portraits or photos of old buildings that no longer exist. But most readers look at the pictures each day.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Circulation has increased over last year, and people are constantly reminding us how much they enjoy some of our features.



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
We need to listen to our readers and see what they want. Sometimes their idea of news and the idea of us "professionals" is not the same. In the end, if we don't pay heed to our readers, we will have no readers to be working for.



What would you like to do on readership that you have not been able to do and why haven't you been able to do it?
Continue to investigate what our readers want and what would make our non-subscribers pick up the newspaper on a regular basis.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper