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USA Today targets college students with customized campus news app

USA Today is marketing to college students by introducing The Buzz, a mobile application designed to deliver customized national, regional and campus news to colleges in the United States.

USA Today claims The Buzz is a first-of-its-kind app that offers on-the-go students targeted and relevant information drawing from professional news publications and college newspapers. Developed in conjunction with the Collegiate Readership Program, an initiative to provide university students with daily access to newspapers, The Buzz marks a strong push by the publication brand to encourage students to stay informed and participate as USA Today consumers.

"We expect college students to respond very positively to the app," said a project manager at USA Today, McLean, VA. "Most college students consume news digitally and The Buzz incorporates all the news in their world ? national, local and campus-related. We expect download rates to take off as news of the app spreads."

Mobile extension
The Buzz was created to be a mobile extension of the Collegiate Readership Program, due to the frequency with which college students consume content from their mobile devices.

The Buzz app is personalized specifically to each college, and is currently available at the first wave of universities implementing it, including Villanova University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M-Kingsville, Sam Houston State University, Carnegie Mellon University and several branches of the University of Wisconsin.

Users will be able to filter news by subject areas such as sports, technology, news and opinion. The Buzz?s campus news will be pulled mostly from student-written publications of more than 3,000 contributors from USA Today College.

The app is available for iOS and Android platforms. Students will be able to share stories of interest via social media channels, text messages and emails.

USA Today is hoping that the simple-to-use mobile interface will inspire a digitally inclined generation to benefit from content generated by users and respected news outlets.

?Accessing news and entertainment content is one of the most prevalent activities on smartphones and with college students as some of the most connected consumers, this a smart move by USA Today,? said Puneet Mehta, CEO and co-founder of MobileROI, New York. ?By extending its Collegiate Readership Program into mobile, the publisher will capture the imagination of a new generation of students who are not yet USA Today readers and increase engagement among existing readers.

?Furthermore, relevant and bite-size content is critical for content media success on mobile, so by adding campus news alongside national and world news, USA Today will drive engagement by personalizing the experience and encourage content vitality.?

Encouraging global awareness
The Collegiate Readership Program was developed to encourage college students? media literacy and civic engagement as well as increase global awareness of important topics. The app functions as a reimagining of the program by including a digital product designed for the way that students prefer to consume news and other content.

The Buzz app marks the latest push from USA Today?s effort to facilitate engagement with a younger demographic. Earlier this month, the news brand rolled out a Political Issue Index in partnership with Twitter to streamline political tweets, relevant information concerning elections and feature commentary from political pundits and experts (see story).

?One aspect that needs to be considered by USA Today and all marketers is to drive relevance with advertising within the app. Too often, a great mobile experience is ruined by harsh, irrelevant ads,? Mr. Mehta said. ?If USA Today extends its focus on personalization to align advertisers when and where relevant ? i.e. a local restaurant within the dining section ? the user experience will be much greater.?

USA Today hopes to use Twitter as an arena for political conversation. With many Millennials and consumers of younger demographics active on social media, leveraging Twitter and The Buzz will likely result in higher consumer conversion for USA Today.

?USA TODAY has award-winning apps with a growing digital base and nearly 7 million unique visitors each month, but we certainly hope that new consumers exposed to the content through The Buzz become fans of USA TODAY?s digital content as well,? USA Today's project manager said.

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York