Daily Circulation: 8,239
Sunday Circulation: 9,224


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
We have enhanced the variety of our content. We added a new section called Sunday Brunch, a feature-oriented section. It has a weekly profile of a local person with an interesting background. It also contains a page of photos of local people in every-day activities. No high-society, just regular folks doing regular things. We geographically expanded our coverage, so we offer communities within our circulation more news about their localities. We added a lot of advertising-driven content: A Friday automotive section and real estate tab, a weekly dining guide, a bridal directory (in our Sunday Brunch section), and a greater volume of local ads in general. Our biggest initiative was a complete redesign that made our paper much more "navigable" and we now have a front page rail that teases readers to stories inside our paper.

Brand
With our redesign, we changed our name (from Greenville Herald Banner to Herald-Banner.) We have worked aggressively at reinforcing our new nameplate, and associating the name Herald-Banner with "Hunt County's Best Read Newspaper," as we want to be a county newspaper more than just Greenville's newspaper.

Service
Has improved markedly, both on the circulation side and the advertising side. A new phone system, better and additional staff, and positive carrier turnover have all led to our growth in circulation and advertising revenue.

Culture
Has been the toughest thing to change. With some of the other changes we've made, we had turnover among some long-time employees, and so the mood here was tense for a while.



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 in a unique situation, in that the single most important thing we have done to enhance readership had nothing to do with the RI, although the study obviously brought to light other things that have, and will, help us drive readership. Our big initiative: We woke up! We had been a sleepy paper, good at covering meetings and rewriting press releases, but now we vigorously dig for stories, and it has paid off. People are talking about what they read in the H-B, and we have impacted city policies and elections as well. But the proof is in the pudding, and that's covered in question 3.



What is the most persuasive indication you have that your readership efforts are producing results?
Daily circulation is up 10% over our last audit period. Ad revenues are up 21% YTD. (I listed ad revenues because is shows how much additional "content", in the form of advertising, we're giving our readers, and it represents the renewed confidence advertisers have in our newspaper, and advertisers know if their ad is read.)



What is the most important lesson you have learned as you have worked on readership in the last few years?
Too many to mention



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?
Better content promotion would definitely help. A lack of focus is the reason, but we now have a marketing director who will change that.

Getting Traction on Readership

Survey Responses by Topic & Newspaper