Ping! Trial - What We Learned
we knew it before but hyperlocal news content has proven itself to be of great value to larger news publishers.
Hyperlocal news is content that resonates with communities because it is specific about them and written by those who live in them. It holds organisations to account; it highlights community issues: planning applications, traffic updates, court hearings, missing people, community events, local business news, sports, charities and politics.
Hyperlocal content helps to increase what publishers are able to offer their audiences. It drives online traffic, increases page views and gets audiences talking.
Over the course of the last two months, Ping News has been running a free trial of its revolutionary platform, Ping! - The Public Interest News Gateway.
What is Ping!?
Ping! is a hyperlocal news distribution platform that works by sharing the stories of hundreds of professional independent community journalists with local and regional publications across the UK to create a more sustainable news ecosystem for all.
There is a wealth of high-quality stories at the hyperlocal level and independent community journalists are struggling to monetise this business model.
At the same time, traditional publishers are changing their focus to adapt to rapidly changing news consumption habits and the never-ending demand for more stories.
Ping! addresses both these challenges by giving regional and national media access to thousands of rich multimedia stories from across the UK on demand from hundreds of professional independent community journalists – all of whom are members of the Independent Community News Network (ICNN).
The Trial
Over the last two months, content creators uploaded nearly 3,000 hyperlocal stories to Ping! as part of a free trial for subscribers.
That's an average of 331 stories per week and around 46 stories each day, a constant stream of high quality, community-driven content, provided exclusively by members of ICNN.
Hundreds of articles were taken directly from the Ping platform and used on a multitude of sites from as far north as Cumbria, to Kent in the South East and Devon in the South West; with many more across Wales.
Among these were stories that dominated the front pages, making page leads and spreads, and stories that were the most-commented and most-read online. Some even went national.
Collaboration between the hyperlocal sector and traditional news publishers was welcomed in many newsrooms, with publishers crediting the journalists and in some cases the publications where the stories were first published.
Hyperlocal journalists expressed their pride at having their bylines in the regional press and were pleased to see their stories reach a wider audience. In a few cases, stories crossed geographical boundaries and were used in multiple different regions.
Stories were used as springboards for larger pieces - some with added AI elements - and others were used in their entirety, including photographs.
At Ping News, we are passionate about providing a reliable and sustainable revenue stream to hyperlocal news publishers. So, we were determined that while content would be provided for free during the trial, hyperlocals pushing stories to Ping! would be paid. We did this by partnering with an angel investor and match-funding the difference.
Finally, we learned a lot in terms of the technical ability of the platform - how it performed, what it did well and where it needed improvement. We were able to be adaptive to our customer’s feedback and tweak the platform to cater to their individual needs - all great learnings for a scrappy start-up.
What’s next?
The team at Ping News is excited to be planning a second free trial period for the Autumn and we are looking for subscribers who did not take part in the first trial to come on board.
We are particularly keen on engaging subscribers in Scotland and Northern Ireland where we have an abundance of high-quality hyperlocal news publishers pushing content to Ping!
If you would like to take part in the second trial, or if you would like more information on the Ping platform and how you can get involved, please contact us at info@pingnews.uk.
A New Way of Accessing Content
The Ping! platform is more than just a news feed; it's an entirely new workflow in the way regional and national publishers access and utilise local news content. Here's how:
Access rich local content: from every region of the UK, dive into a treasure trove of local stories
Trust and quality assurance: all content adheres to ICNN standards, ensuring credible and trustworthy stories
Drive growth: more clicks and traffic mean increased revenue for your publication
Tailored content: request additional information or commission new content to fit your needs
Diversify and drive traffic: fresh and diverse content keeps your audience engaged and coming back for more
Use with confidence: all content, including images from the Ping! platform, can be freely used
Efficient search and analysis: search by keywords, tags, themes, or locations, and identify emerging trends from the regions
Eco-friendly reporting: save on travel time, CO2 emissions, and costs by using reporters embedded in their communities
Be the first: break local stories as they unfold across the UK
Invest in independent journalism: support local reporting in a completely new and effective way.