The start of the year gives us a chance to explore information and ideas that have benefitted local newsrooms in 2014. Here are a few highlights from the last 12 months of KDMC's Tools, Tips & Trends recommendations.

Twitter can be appreciated as a close companion to all publishers -- the first place the range of your readers can visit for fast notifications on your  daily work. Pew's study into the different flavors of Twitter conversations provides a map for social media users hoping to better understand who is listening and how to speak to them. Different crowds mingling in the din can be polarized, centered around a brand or topic, or can encompass a wide support network.

Community engagement is a vital and complex topic for publishers, as is choosing which application should host the comments on your local news site. Lisa Zimmerman, fellow of the American Press Institute, identifies steps undergone in the decision process and gauges the success of different platforms and their functions in media.

How your audience finds your news can also be a factor in the way they interact with your site, according to another Pew report. Direct visitors will be your most engaged community members, staying an average of four and a half minutes per visit and returning nearly 11 times per month. Those finding their way to the site through Facebook will stay a significantly shorter time on average.

While newsrooms will continue to experiment with new ways to reach their audience, upping your numbers via text messaging is a challenging road to take. Publishers will face technical and economic roadblocks if using mobile phones to reach marginalized communities.

Generating and sustaining revenue for local and digital media is a concept revisited with each passing business quarter, and we continue to forge new ideas through a series of innovative talks and summits. A great model for success in the local realm can be found in the Texas Tribune, which began humbly as most independent publishers do and has continued to thrive in the five years since its inception. Key elements to growth: knowing and speaking to the audience, offering complete, enticing digital news packages, and employing a very highly driven staff.

What trends will pick up speed in the new year? We may see more collaborations between local news outlets.