Sits can build breadth, depth and audience by building strengths in key content categories.

A media Web site can do only so much before it runs out of resources — time, money and staff. One benefit of working for two networks of TV and newspaper sites was the opportunity to see how different sites utilized those resources and created key strengths. But those strengths often varied from market to market even when the traditional media partners were all TV or all newspaper.

TV sites always do exceptionally well in news and weather. They are perceived locally as being primarily breaking news and weather sites. Yet a number of TV sites across the country have made a concerted effort to build out other content strengths, even though it takes a long time before the market perceives it as a strength.

Natural extensions for TV sites include health, entertainment, travel and recreation. Increasingly, they are building classifieds into viable and competitive products. It was not long ago that some of us working on TV sites started to build classified products with few listings or page views. It was a discouraging time. Now some TV sites have hundreds of listings and strong products. Classifieds don’t fit on TV station broadcasts, but they certainly fit on station Web sites.

Newspaper sites of course do well with news, sports, obits and classifieds, but they tend to do poorly with weather, business and features. Entertainment is a tossup and depends on the staff and the local competition. But as stated in a previous post, feature content such as entertainment, health, travel and recreation are crucial for building a more robust product with wider appeal to visitors and especially advertisers.

Take a step back and ask yourself if you have a product with many category strengths or just a few. How many categories generate more than 10 percent of total page views? The more, the better. Do any exceed 30 percent? That’s a sure sign of too many resources devoted to it. A well-balanced product is like a well-balanced stock portfolio. The performance will be better in the long run, and you will sleep better at night.