‘Why traditional media must integrate digital platforms’

TO continue to grow its impact, including reaching wider audience instead of a dwindling audience reach, traditional media must integrate digital platforms into its operations. This is because digital publishing will continue to expand its relevance in the area of information dissemination and engagement with the audience.

Different speakers at one of the panel discussions during the Day One of the 2016 Social Media Week in Lagos toed this line. The Guardian, Nigeria, hosted the session with ‘The future of digital publishing’ as theme. The panellists were also of the view that value creation is critical for any digital platform to make the needed impact and resonate with the audience.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Ventra Media Group, Daryn Wober, who noted the huge amount of growth and the speed with which Nigerians migrate to the digital platforms within a few years, stated that more innovations, investments and contents would continue to shape digital publishing in Nigeria. He, however, said that digital publishers must stay through to the audience to ensure their platform remains relevant.

Another panellist, Senior Brand Manager, Nigerian Breweries, Adetomiwa Adedekomo, noted that no new media platform replaces an old one completely as the older platform would still be relevant, only not making the amount of impact it used to. He, therefore, enjoined publishers to be more digital savvy in order to help brands better reach audience who are now more available on the digital platforms.

On her part, Teju Ajani said that many people are now on the digital platforms and are going on the digital platforms, including the traditional media. This was why she felt that traditional media must continue to evolve or they die.

For Tolu Ogunlesi, digital platform is shaping the taste of audience, though he felt that the traditional media are not taking advantage of the digital platforms. “If you look at the traditional newspapers, none of them has focused on digital publishing.”

He enjoined the traditional media, which he dubbed the legacy media, to begin to explore the advantages of digital platforms, including having videos on their platform. He also believed that digital publishing takes different formats and digital platforms have varied effect with audience. He said some communities might be very in tune with Facebook, Twitter and Instragram, while in some other communities, it could be just downloading video content and sharing it through phones.

Commenting on content, Ajani said content is key though it is a must and relevant content made available to the audience consistently.

Ogunlesi said that authors and creative minds should not be scared of their works being pirated or stolen on the digital platforms because what is most important at the initial stage is having their works in the public domain so that the audience could appreciate it.

According to him, it is when the audience appreciates the works that the benefits and monetisation of the works become an issue. For him, nobody would see and appreciate a poem or a creative work written in a book that is kept at home.

He, however, said that authors whose works had been infringed upon or stolen on the digital platforms should start going to court to seek for redress.

In moving forward, Ogunlesi said that cost of access and speed are two key issues that are limiting the use of digital platforms in Nigeria. For him, the two issues will always continue to define the use of social media platforms in the country. According to him, it took almost a day for him to get linked onto the Instragram platform when he visited one of the state capitals within the South-West.

Adedekomo said that brands are looking for opportunities to reach the consumers more creatively with the arrival of digital platforms. He, however, said that for advertisers to lash onto a platform, publishers must have in mind how to help the brand reach its target audience, maintaining that the challenge digital platform is creating for consumers and publishers, especially in daily reshaping the way things are done, is not peculiar to Nigeria, but a global one.

He said if publishers give value, it would be paid for whether by consumers or advertisers.