250 short story analysis

The Alligator was established in 1906 that was an independent, owned by university students and created with an aim to serve the University of Florida which was actually opened in Gainesville. Later on, in 1912, it became the part of administration of the University of Florida and was it was renamed as Florida Alligator. At the start, it was being governed by the Faculty Committee on Students’ Publications however, in 1930’s it was a replaced by another committee which was consisting of both students and faculty. For many years, the Committee published many publications on the topics ranging from humor, literary and other common interest magazines (Alligator, 2018).

The Alligator is actually being distributed on the university campus and around the city of Gainesville in Florida. The newspaper basically contains a mixed news of the campus as well as the locality. It also includes both national and international stories from the wire services. The newspaper also contains a separate section for sports and a section for entertainment which is known as “The Avenue” and being published on every Thursday.

The college market in Gainesville Florida consisting of more than 80, 0000 individuals who are involved with on of the tow major educational institutes. This huge number of readers use to spend more than 600 million dollars annually on different goods and services. Gainesville has the highest rate of individuals who are at the age of 18 to 34 years of any major market all over Florida. University of Florida is being ranked on number 9 in top Public Schools by the US News and World report.

The Independent Florida Alligator is enjoying 93% readership by the students of the University. It is considered as one of the traditions in the university to be informed by the Alligator. University of Florida consists of more than 55,000 students and having mora 14 hundred staff and faculty members. The students and faculty of this university are considered as the most powerful buying force in the area (Alligator, 2018).

Independent Florida providing intensive opportunities to the students in Gainesville, Florida. It hires the students who may currently be enrolled in the university even in first or second semester and provides them with an opportunity to work in real life setting in its advertisement section which is the main source of revenue for the Newspaper. Furthermore, it provides opportunities to the students and other people who have writing skills to become freelance writers. Furthermore, through its content management on its most updated website, Alligator provides an opportunity to everyone who wants to submit news online.

The Alligator further is one of the incredible examples of potential greatness of online newspaper that can truly be called as a student newspaper. The design of its website is black and white makes the fine journalism to be happened on the site that even look much better. The different sections and stories are also scannable easily and the headlines on the website are even larger enough thus, are more able to catch the eye of the visitors. Moreover, the Alligator has also made great use of it’s site footer by making it contrasting back to the other parts of the page which is something can be found very rare in any student paper design online. Another important fact about the Newspaper is that, it is solely being funded by ad sales and not being funded by the university. Hence, there is a need to improved the ad section through comprehensive content management plan.

In an editorial posted on the website of the Newspaper in 2017, the editors of Alligator argued that the new changes make the reporters able to post breaking news and stories on social media and the site of the paper more frequently. Since then, the paper began a free subscription-based newsletter online everyday of a week (Caplan, 2017).

As already stated, the only source of Alligator’s revenue generation are the advertisements that it publishes on daily basis. The target audience of the Newspaper are mainly the students of the University of Florida. Online content marketing needs some information related to the consumers to be accessed for the purpose of promotion of different products and services. Traditional newspaper can be made more effective if they are linked with technology and content marketing techniques. Today, information technology has made it more cost effective by bringing information about the customers as well as prospects together in a single database that is integrated in nature that helps in recognizing current relationships, relevant transactions along information required for contacting such as address, phone number and demographics of the customers.

Here, a content marketing strategy that is needed to adopted by the Alligators is to build a standardized database. The journey to such an integrated database may begin with standardization of information that should be collected and retained in a single place. The data can easily be gathered from the University of Florida. Furthermore, there is a need to establish privacy policy that helps in protection of consumers’ information and to dictate them how to share and use it. Such an integrated system helps in making relevant information available to the relevant individuals (Stines, 2018). After making an integrated system, visitors will be given with an option to sign up themselves on the site either directly or with their social networking accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram etc. to create multiple impact.

The long stories or signature stories must be developed based on the following ideas:

1. The story must be short and succinct as short stories have more impact. It will help in attracting everyone’s attention but keeping in mind to include a start, middle and end. Whatever does not contribute to the story must be deleted in order to reduce length.

2. The story must offer a lesson for instance no one will be interested in knowing that how a business went bankrupt if the story unable to tell that how the business revived from the situation,

3. It is a human nature that everyone loves a happy ending so, ending of the signature story must be upbeat. Such stories must have a moral lesson.

Following ideas can help in creating powerful short stories by the Alligators in future as a part of its content marketing strategy.

2. An impressive story must include an experience being faced by the brand itself.

3. Brands that are having a clearer identity and aim are more able to create meaningful connections. It means that a good story must personify a brand and make that a part of the lifestyle of the readers.

It will take 1 year to create a database of audience/readers and then connecting them via social networking sites.

.

References

Alligator (2018). About US: History. Retrieved November 6, 2018, from https://www.alligator.org/site/about.html

Caplan, A. (2017). Alligator to scale back circulation, shift focus online. Retrieved November 6, 2018, from https://www.gainesville.com/news/20170523/alligator-to-scale-back-circulation-shift-focus-online

Stines, S. (2018). Newspaper marketing success requires 4 steps. Retrieved November 6, 2018, from https://www.inma.org/blogs/main/post.cfm/newspaper-marketing-success-requires-4-steps