Balancing the Transporter with more district news
helps triple readership

The Transporter is one of the most efficient means of distributing news to and communicating with employees, so with readership dwindling to fewer than 600 unique page views per week about a year ago, I began instituting changes to reverse that trend.

One of the most effective changes has been to do a better job of balancing the stories so they aren’t all Boise-centered, but more accurately reflect conditions and issues in the ITD districts statewide. There are still plenty of HQ and D3 stories, but along with them are articles from our colleagues in the district offices located across the state.

I’ve also started putting bylines on the stories so folks know who to follow-up with if they have questions, introduced a new header (we’d had the old one since 2010), and re-sized the intro images to give it a crisper, cleaner look along with using a small black outline on photos. I’ve also started using more photos of employees and bigger caption lines when possible – more emphasis on people, not just products, policies or priorities.

As a result, average weekly readership has more than tripled, to more than 2,100 unique page views each week.

In addition, instead of employees only reasding the top two or three stories for the week, they are more interested in the stories "below the fold" — beyond just the most initially visible. Two weeks ago there were six stories with triple-digit readership. Last week we had eight.

There are a few more changes I’d still like to make, but it is a good start.

Thank you for reading!

Published 06-15-18