USA Today, Guest Speaker - Nick Siano

On September 28th, we had a guest speaker during my JOUR 206, Digital Media course. Nick Siano came and spoke to our class about his job at USA Today, the universal newspaper organization that is in charge of numerous newspaper chains such as the local newspaper, The Star Press. The top 3 topics that intrigued me the most from his presentation was Analytics devices, SEO, and visual preferences from their large audience source

Analytics

Nick Siano brought up two main analytics programs that his department uses for USA Today’s different websites. The first program was Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free, online program that analyzes data from websites through tracking digital traffic, ad analyzation, and more. There are 2 main data points that Google Analytics analyzes: User Acquisition Data and User Behavior Data. Those data points are essentially data before and during their website visits (1). The second program was Adobe Analytics. Adobe Analytics is similar to the pro / paid version of Google Analytics called Google Analytics 360 (2). It essentially gives more in-depth analytics of audience behavior and preferences.

SEO

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” Essentially what that means is that there are many different components on every single website that makes it higher or lower on the tier of what shows up first in Google searches. One of those components would be how much traffic your website receives which is where the different analytics come in the help.

Visual Preferences

Throughout Nick Siano’s many years of experience and research, he has found that visuals are a very important component for websites. Hover-over graphics or text is an interactive component that the audience find highly enjoyable as well as useful. Currently podcasts and videos are “all the rage” as it provides a way to not only visually intake the information, but also auditorily absorb the different information being given to its’ audience.