The news media face significant challenges in today’s market, particularly in engaging large, diverse audiences and ensuring that their content is trusted and valued. While much of the discussion around consumer disengagement in news focuses on issues like bias and clickbait, a new culprit has emerged: the public’s perception of profit-driven news.
Some people believe that news companies are increasingly compromising their integrity by prioritizing profit and financial gain, even as the industry struggles to improve its public standing and economic sustainability. Journalism scholars Jacob L Nelson,Seth C Lewis, and Brent Cowley explore factors influencing the perceptions of news trustworthiness. Their research, Money is the root of all evil.’ How the business of journalism shapes trust in news examines how perceptions about news funding influence trust and engagement with news content.
Trust, bias, and skepticism of the news
The authors interviewed 34 news consumers, using the folk theory—a generative approach to uncovering the narratives people construct on any given topic. The root causes of trust understandably vary among individuals. Some respondents attribute their distrust of the news industry to the rise of populism, others to the influence of digital technology, and some to the lack of diversity in traditional newsrooms.
However, despite these varied perspectives, many perceive news reporting as biased. While discussions on bias typically focus on political leanings, economic bias can play an equally significant role. Economic pressures influence public trust; many today believe news organizations prioritize profitability over accurate reporting.
Skepticism toward journalism also stands as a barrier to trust. Respondents highlighting their skepticism and concerns often feel compelled to fact-check and corroborate news stories. They view the news as ideologically biased rather than objective, leading them to consume it critically and avoid accepting journalistic perspectives as entirely truthful.
Is the news profit-driven with an economic bias?
The research participants assume news organizations primarily make money through advertising, leading to a focus on attracting large audiences. They believe this economic pressure results in sensational and often ideological biases in news coverage. The perception of journalism as profit-driven contributes to consumer distrust of news, as they view the news media as prioritizing profit over accurate reporting.
Further, respondents frequently point to journalism’s pursuit of profits as a reason for their deep skepticism. They observe news organizations striving to secure advertising deals and attract large audiences, thinking this will influence the journalists’ reports. Those who see ideological bias in the news perceive it as economically motivated rather than ideologically driven.
Perception controls reality
Audience distrust stems not necessarily from the news media’s actions but from the perception that news organizations prioritize profits above all else. While skepticism towards commercial influence is justified, this study indicates that audiences overwhelmingly view economic interests as dominating journalistic integrity. The respondents’ perception suggests that audiences believe profit-driven priorities significantly compromise journalistic quality.
News without profit-motivations: Non-profit or publicly-funded
The authors believe journalists will not restore public trust solely by maintaining objectivity and avoiding political bias. They recognize the need for news organizations to have revenue goals. However, they recommend addressing the economic model of journalism and demonstrating a clear separation between financial motives and journalistic integrity.
They also see options in non-profit or publicly funded models, which can reduce perceptions of profit-driven motives in the news. While trust in publicly funded outlets like the BBC dropped, a structural shift across the could improve trust. Public funding could especially benefit local newsrooms, which are perceived positively but are financially vulnerable.
It is essential to understand public perceptions of newsroom economic motivations and their impact on trust. Further examination of the assumptions that journalism’s commercial interests shape people’s trust in news is key to understanding the nuances of the industry’s credibility challenges. Meanwhile, increasing transparency can help address audience concerns about revenue and profits influencing journalistic work.
The data is clear: a chasm exists between what traditional news offers and what younger audiences crave. Decades of research haven’t bridged this gap, and proposed solutions often fall short. Blumler and McQuail’s (1970) Need for Gratification Theory suggests people use media to fulfill specific desires. You do have to wonder if the problem a mismatch in needs. Perhaps traditional news fails to satisfy younger generations’ hunger for in-depth analysis or a more positive outlook, driving them to seek information elsewhere. This disconnect demands a fresh approach – one that bridges the gap and fosters genuine connection.
A Spring 2023 Harvard Youth Poll reveals that young Americans prioritize economic concerns like inflation, healthcare, housing, and job availability, alongside social justice and environmental issues like reproductive rights, climate change, and immigration. This focus mirrors global trends. However, traditional media coverage often falls short on these topics. The rise of “alternative platforms” and the demand for short, relatable, and authentic content signals a broader shift in news consumption. Furthermore, Gen X’s declining interest and the perception of traditional media content as distant, pedantic, and delivered on outdated platforms underscore the need to completely rethink how we deliver news.
Despite the challenges, a bright future awaits news media built on growth and audience engagement. The key lies in a shift towards hyper-local coverage. This doesn’t mean abandoning national and global news. Rather, it means prioritizing content that resonates with the local audience. Imagine relatable journalists delivering stories on local issues through engaging formats like social media posts, listicles, explainers, and high-quality video content. This focus has demonstrably built loyal readership and increased audience size for news organizations around the country.
A decline in news interest among Gen X and Millennials, as reported by the Pew Research Center, and a growing preference for authenticity in news presenters, according to Reuters 2022 Digital News Report, paint a clear picture of the current news consumption landscape. Addressing these audience preferences and tailoring content to local issues can foster greater trust and engagement with news media.
The solution seems straightforward: connect the dots between state or regional events and their impact on local communities. However doing this effectively is harder than it seems. News outlets must transition from high-level reporting to a more responsible and objective approach. This means translating complex issues into clear, concise explanations that highlight the specific impact on people’s daily lives. For example, a national story on rising gas prices might be tailored locally to show how much transportation costs have increased in your city and how residents are coping.
Take, for instance, the Miami Herald’s recent spring climate change article on sea levels rising. This article uses multimedia storytelling to explore the rising sea level’s impact on Miami, a city particularly vulnerable to coastal flooding. The article features data insights from local scientists and researchers and explains how climate change is affecting the city’s infrastructure and communities. By connecting the global threat of climate change to the specific challenges faced by Miami, this article highlights the urgency of addressing sea level rise. This focus on local impacts can potentially empower younger audiences to engage with the issue in their city, and “actionability” is something that is particularly resonant with this group.
As we navigate the evolving media landscape and changing news consumption habits, traditional media must redefine its role. It should not only inform, but also serve as a vital resource for today’s and tomorrow’s generations. This shift is crucial for both local and national news outlets as they strive to bridge the generational gap and earn trust.
Younger audiences increasingly seek news that offers practical and useful information for their daily lives. This demand highlights the need for journalism to evolve beyond reporting. News organizations must provide guidance and resources on various topics, offering actionable insights that empower readers.
The challenge lies in transforming news into actionable resources that not only inform but also empower and engage audiences. Organizations like NPR have shown the way by expanding their coverage to include comprehensive guides and interactive tools on topics like financial planning and mental health resources. These resources equip readers to make informed decisions and take meaningful action based on factual reporting.
By providing practical resources alongside factual reporting, news organizations can empower readers with deeper understanding and the tools they need to take action. This ensures content remains informative while upholding journalistic integrity. In an era where accessible knowledge and meaningful impact are highly valued, this approach fosters informed decision-making and strengthens audience engagement.
Embracing hyper-local coverage and authentic storytelling will enable news organizations to bridge the chasm that separates them from Gen X and Millennials. Focusing on issues that directly impact these audiences’ daily lives fosters a sense of relevance and connection. Authentic voices, relatable formats, and clear explanations that empower readers with actionable insights will cultivate trust and engagement. This also translates to a more valuable audience for advertisers, potentially leading to increased revenue streams.
In essence, a focus on local issues and a commitment to genuine storytelling that makes issues personally relevant represents a strategic investment in the future of news. By prioritizing content that resonates with younger generations, news organizations can not only ensure their long-term sustainability but also cultivate a more engaged and informed citizenry. A future where news is relevant, sustainable, and fosters meaningful connections between audiences and journalists is entirely within reach.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics heralded the digital transformation of Games coverage. Fans no longer need to stay glued to the TV to see what they want. Nor do they have to or solely rely on news titles to keep them up to speed on the big picture. Younger audiences in particular consumed highlight clips rather than watching linear coverage and followed their favorite athletes on social media to gain a more in-depth, behind-the-scenes insights. In fact, the IOC clocked6.1 billion digital engagements on Olympic social media channels during the competition.
Four years later, as we approach the Paris event, these trends are again set to influence international consumption of Olympic content. News and sports organizations have already learned from these new social media-inspired audience dynamics, with live blogs offering a valuable means of competing with social channels for mainstream media share of voice. The delivery of real-time, snackable content that enables interactivity will continue to be essential in 2024 Olympics coverage. Still, there are also new, broader issues to address to capture audience share – particularly among Gen Z, or ‘the purpose generation‘.
Beyond the sport
Olympics coverage is no longer simply about sport. Athletes and governments have always used the Games to spotlightpertinent social and political issues, from Black Power and anti-apartheid to LGBTQI. Now, younger generations increasingly see the potential for activism from the sidelines. Environmental sustainability and the participation of transgender athletes have emerged as important topics for Paris 2024. There’s also likely to be an impact from the substantial political tension caused by the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts on the event. Newsrooms will need to have one eye on the sport, and one eye on the bigger picture to ensure audience engagement.
News providers covering the Olympics must, therefore, up their game (pun intended), adopting audience-first strategies that cater to theneeds of Gen Z and beyond to ensure they compete in the race against social media for audience share. They must deliver authentic, personalized, and interactive content that addresses both the event and the wider issues surrounding it.
Incorporating multiple, intertwined storylines to provide greater depth and insight and encourage engagement will be vital. By doing so, they can boost traffic, dwell time or subscription conversions and encourage brands keen for Olympics association to spend money on advertising.
Prepare for the marathon, not the sprint
However, with the Games lasting two weeks and spanning 320 different competitions across 32 sports, it’s no easy feat to keep audiences up to date on the sports that interest them, provide athlete and behind-the-scenes insights and tune into the wider news stories that intersect with the Olympics. Newsrooms must, therefore, box clever when it comes to delivering on audience expectations.
Live blogs offer an important starting block to help reach this goal. They allow newsrooms to create an engaging and responsive experience tailored to the audience’s preferences by offering real-time updates, encouraging active participation, and enabling a multimedia-rich format. But live blogs can also go beyond real-time news to deliver much more.
Curated content to meet multiple audience needs
The beauty of the live blog format for long events such as the Olympics is that it allows content to be curated, drawing on a range of mixed media to tell the wider story and showcasing numerous perspectives in easily digestible snippets. From integrating Q&As with athletes and coaches for greater depth of insight to fans’ social media posts, multimedia clips of key moments or retrospective and contextual news bits relating to the environmental, political and social issues surrounding the games, live blogs can effectively serve a wide range of audience expectations.
The 2022 European Championships ably demonstrated how live blogs can communicate complex event information in simple terms for spectators, volunteers and employees. From rain delays and available transportation to coverage of medal winners, funny anecdotes and heart-wrenching athlete stories, reporters delivered both range and depth of coverage, harnessing the live blog’s visual storytelling power to share close to 600 photos of what made the event so unique. Custom tags allowed each post to be categorized so that users could easily search for and access the information they wanted.
User-generated content (UGC) creates a more engaging and inclusive narrative beyond just text. Surveys, polls, unique social media hashtags, and live comment blocks all enable a two-way flow of information. Stufffrequently uses this to good effect in their live blog coverage, giving its passionate sports community the chance to engage on topics such as the All Blacks World Cup Squad Announcement, and the team’s return home. This involves audiences in the reporting process and establishes a sense of community to strengthen the media-audience relationship.
Live blogs also allow individual journalist and editorial styles to shine through, creating further audience bonds. We see many young journalists creating social-style videos to tell stories, with their personalities influencing how viewers consume content. DER SPIEGEL’s reporters demonstrated the power of personality intheir coverage of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2023, expressing personal opinions, cracking jokes and reacting with emojis in a lively dialogue. This gives the audience a deeper understanding of the people behind the content, injecting personality and making it more relatable and authentic.
On your mark, get set, go!
The evolution of Olympics coverage reflects the changing preferences of audiences, particularly younger generations. As we look forward to the Paris 2024 Olympics, it’s clear that news and sports organizations must continue to adapt to digital and social media consumption to compete. In order to capture and maintain audience engagement, a focus on delivering real-time, interactive, and curated content that addresses both the sporting events and the broader social, political, and environmental issues surrounding the Games is crucial.
Live blogs have emerged as a valuable tool for providing both real-time and in-depth coverage while catering to diverse audience needs and preferences. As newsrooms prepare for the marathon-like coverage of the two-week event, prioritizing audience-first strategies will be essential to ensure a meaningful and immersive Olympic experience for all. Leveraging live blogs during the Games enables publishers to inform, educate, engage, and connect with audiences on a new level.
Media companies say they want to grow their younger audiences. So, why aren’t executives making more of a concerted effort to lean on that same generation for guidance on how to reach that audience?
Earlier this year, I attended an industry conference event in San Francisco where leading executives from the fields of advertising, marketing, broadcasting and streaming came together to exchange thoughts and ideas on how their industries are converging and where things are headed next.
One of the presenting panelists was Jasmin Corley, a 20-something billed as a “social media influencer” who, in fact, has spent the formative years of her young life establishing and building her own fashion and beauty media brand across social video platforms. Hundreds of thousands of people follow Corley across Instagram, YouTube Shorts and TikTok. Her best-performing clips have north of 1 million views — not an easy thing for anyone to pull off.
Corley shared the stage with executives who hailed from a leading electronics company, a television start-up and an advertising manager from a streaming-focused joint venture. Each of those panelists got more time to speak than she did. In fact, even the moderator — a well-known former reporter for an entertainment trade publication who now covers the free streaming space for a media research company — spoke more than Corley did.
She was asked just two questions, one from the moderator, one from a panelist who sought validation in his own product. The tone seemed to be this: Corley was lucky to share a stage with such esteemed executives in the media and advertising industry. Really, though, they were lucky to share a stage with her. Ultimately, it was a lost opportunity to hear from someone who not only reaches the younger generation on a regular basis, but who walks among them, too.
The same old management
If Corley was frustrated by the experience, she didn’t show it. She graciously exited the stage and went home. I wish I had been as graceful in my 20s. When I was hired to oversee digital initiatives for a Tribune Media-owned newsroom in 2008, I was a baby-faced 21-year-old who was still in college. I thought the company was hiring me for my ideas. Over time, I came to realize they brought me on because I could do a lot of work quickly. And they didn’t have to pay me very much to do it.
Every week, the station assembled different department heads for a meeting. In my first few meetings, I said nothing, though I had a lot of thoughts. Eventually, I spoke up, but it seemed like things were always being shot down. Conversations usually ended with the message that “it isn’t the way we do things here,” or “things are done for a reason,” something along those lines. The meetings did little to accomplish anything, except that everyone seemed annoyed with me toward the end. It was mutual. They mistook my confidence for arrogance; I mistook their arrogance for incompetence.
Times change but too many things stay the same
Perhaps if all sides had gone in with more of an open mind, things would have been different. Back then, media companies had very little to lose — traditional platforms were doing as well, if not better, than emerging digital ones. Today, the opposite is clearly true. Traditional platforms like broadcast radio and television are struggling to address a downturn in their advertising businesses. Meanwhile, next-generation platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram seem to have more money than they know what to do with.
The reasons are numerous, and not too hard to understand. Take TV, for instance. While traditional TV still frames itself around a 30-minute or 1-hour episode, content creators on YouTube or Instagram can go as long as they want, unencumbered by schedules or time limits. They can 30-second clips three times a day, or a 30-minute tutorial twice a month, or any combination or variation in-between. While traditional TV might require a fully-developed script or outline, along with numerous pitch meetings and ad sales justifications, young people can simply grab their phone and create whatever they want to bring into the world.
The proliferation of tablets and smartphones, coupled with the abundance of social video platforms, has lowered the barrier of entry for content creation and distribution. No one understands this better than the generation who grew up with a mature Internet and digital toolset capable of handling those things. And they are taking full advantage of it.
The end result is highly-engaging content that connects with younger consumers, and influences them in many ways, including purchase intentions. A survey by Nerds Collective as reported in The Drum found that 45% of young Europeans who identify as Generation Z “want brands they’ve seen an influencer or celebrity wear,” while just 18% say they’re influenced by what their friends wear.
Young people turn to TikTok
Fashion is one thing. News and information is another. But similar trends apply. Young people are increasingly turning to TikTok and Instagram over Google to find things online (and, to be honest, you can’t really blame them, because Google is a hot mess). When it comes to news and current events, younger audiences are gravitating toward unfiltered personalities and curated experiences that podcasters like comedian Joe Rogan, radio host James O’Brien and French YouTube channel Hugo Décrype offer.
Why is this happening? Over the past few months, I’ve reached out to a number of key figures in media and entertainment to find out. Three executives told me they had to run things up the chain before they could speak with me — suggesting corporate bureaucracy has changed little since I worked in that TV newsroom all those years ago. I managed to secure interviews with three others. But it seemed that they either didn’t understand the situation or could only offer answers that didn’t address the issue at hand.
Change in strategy
I spent more than a month doing precisely the wrong thing: Trying to secure interviews with people with nice executive titles at well-established places, but whose businesses embody many of the problems that this column is trying to address. About two weeks ago, it finally occurred to me that I needed to reach someone who wasn’t involved in media and entertainment, but who spends a lot of time thinking and writing about these problems: Charles Benaiah.
Like me, Benaiah spent his early career working for established media brands before venturing out onto his own. Today, his job as the CEO of Watzan is to observe the landscape and dream up ways for it to improve.
“There are decades of ingrained expectations that are going to have to change,” Benaiah told me in an interview, after I filled him in on the above issues. “It’s not going to change quickly.”
Benaiah agrees that one way to attract and engage younger consumers is to create content that resonates with them. To do so requires hiring young people into key decision-making roles. It also means allowing personality to bubble through. He likens it to the better days of the newspaper industry, where someone might pick up a copy of the daily edition to read the latest clip from their favorite columnist. In the process, they have to flip through several pages of news, and might stop on a story here or there that is connected to, but otherwise separate from, the editorial section.
These days, the editorial page is X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “We’re 25 years into social media, and I’ve always looked at Twitter as being the social media place for journalists,” Benaiah remarked. “Journalists are writing somewhat dry stories, because that’s what they’re asked to do. They’ve got these great, brilliant quips, and they toss them out all day, but they don’t work their way back into the personality of the newsroom — they make their way onto Twitter.”
Personality and connections
Newsrooms didn’t have a chance to embrace the idea of Twitter before young journalists gravitated to the platform on their own. Once news organizations saw that young journalists could attract a blockbuster following on the platform, they encouraged their reporters to link to their stories, as a way to drive traffic to their website.
The growing pains came when journalists really started to stretch out and let loose on Twitter. Controversies followed. Suddenly, a reporter’s off-hand remark or poorly-landed joke became fodder for another reporter’s mini exposé. Newsrooms that had never developed a framework of acceptable use and best social media practices suddenly found themselves cleaning up a lot of messes.
Some news organizations handled that better than others. However, for the most part, the industry really struggled to find an appropriate balance between giving young journalists the freedom to be themselves on a public platform and applying standards and ethics policies in a non-constraining way.
Striking that balance is important, Benaiah says, because newsrooms that are too rigid risk losing authoritative voices, many of which are deeply engaged with younger audiences. But a free-for-all is also problematic, because authority in news requires trust, and to be trust-worthy, one must be honest and believable.
Supporting young leaders
Young journalists can build authority and trust by being mentored by industry veterans who impart the best practices while embracing the idea that the way things have traditionally been done might not be the best way of doing things in the future. It won’t keep a young journalist from making mistakes, but a guiding hand can encourage them that it isn’t the end of the world. The payoff for giving emerging reporters the space to be themselves and the guidance to be accurate and reliable will be recognized in the long term, in a way that benefits both individual brands and companies at large.
Likewise, media companies that want to reach younger audiences have to hire young people into leadership roles and allow them to be an integral part in content creation and audience engagement strategies. That is the first step, and it is a substantial one. Not engaging young professionals as part of the process is a bit like asking someone who speaks English to create a product slogan in Greek. It makes no sense, yet this is what corporate America has done for years. It is not a winning formula.
At the industry conference I attended earlier this year, everyone in the room should have been clamoring to give Corley their card. They should have asked if she was willing to be a brand ambassador, to help put their product or service or company in front of her audience. They should have asked her for a little insight into the secret sauce that makes her content so tastefully appealing to thousands of viewers.
But no one did. Not that it mattered much to Corley. She went home, and immediately started working on her next project: The “Fr$h Editing Bootcamp.” Over the course of 30 days, Corley educated her followers on the best ways to make short-form videos really pop on social platforms. To date, those videos have amassed tens of thousands of views, and likely influenced the next batch of content creators. It is tough to predict what platforms those videos will live on in 5, 10, 20 years — but if traditional media companies are smart, they’ll do whatever it takes to bring those content creators in before they’re left in the dust.
Twitch – the go-to platform for gamers and live streamers – may have something to teach the media about as a news production and engagement. New research shows a generational shift in live news production, emphasizing community-driven storytelling and interactivity and real-time engagement. Amazon-owned Twitch’s popularity among young audiences challenges traditional journalism to confront the realities of how news consumption is changing.
In their paper, Recasting Twitch: Livestreaming, Platforms, and New Frontiers in Digital Journalism, researchers Maxwell Foxman, Brandon Harris, and William Clyde Partin explore Twitch as a new platform for journalists and examine how the platform influences journalistic practices. They analyze three popular Twitch channels: The Washington Post (WaPo), Hasan Piker, and Patriots’ Soapbox (PSB). The authors chose to focus on these three channels due to their popularity and distinct modes of news production thereby offering a comprehensive view of the platform’s impact on journalism.
The research highlights several themes regarding news production on Twitch: the concept of liveness, various styles and formats used, engagement with the audience, professional identity and boundaries, and the platform’s relationship with digital intermediaries.
A Twitch approach to live news and entertainment
Central to Twitch’s influence on journalism is its unique approach to “liveness.” Liveness refers to audiences routinely tuning in and interacting with creators. The platform encourages viewers to actively contribute during streams through Chat, which also becomes content that hosts react to aloud. The real-time back-and-forth entertains users.
While WaPo relied on exclusive coverage and traditional broadcast formats, Piker and PSB (which appear to no longer be on Twitch at all) integrate pre-existing content and engage directly with their audiences, fostering a sense of community and immediacy. This dynamic interaction blurs the lines between creators and consumers, redefining the traditional roles of journalists and audiences.
Media style and format
Each channel exhibits its style and format, reflecting the diversity of content on Twitch. The Washington Post’s channel (which hasn’t broadcast since May 6, 2024) took an approach that resembles traditional broadcast journalism. Piker’s is a social media-inspired mix of news and entertainment. PSB offers hyper-partisan commentary. Twitch provides a wide range of approaches to news production, which allows news brands to cater to diverse audience preferences.
Professional identity and boundaries
Each channel navigates journalistic boundaries differently. WaPo adheres closely to traditional journalism practices. However, Piker and PSB embrace their roles as ideological commentators, blurring the lines between journalism, entertainment, and political activism. This fluidity in professional identity can challenge traditional journalistic integrity and objectivity norms.
Audience engagement lessons for media
Audience interaction is central to all channels, with each streamer fostering a collaborative relationship with their viewers. Piker and PSB rely on audience contributions for content and validation, while WaPo maintains a more traditional broadcast format with limited on-air engagement. This direct interaction enhances viewer engagement and fosters a sense of community, continuing to blur the distinction between creators and consumers.
Twitch and media audience engagement
This study recognizes Twitch as a way to offer new and innovative forms of journalism that challenge traditional norms and practices. Its unique approach to “liveness,” diverse styles and formats, and dynamic interaction with audiences could impact how journalists produce news as it reflects how audiences engage with information they enjoy.
ESPN’s Esports channel (active almost daily as of May 2024) has 88.8k followers https://www.twitch.tv/espnesports
However, while Twitch has lessons to teach legacy news organizations, it seems few have found a sustainable model on the platform. In addition to the sites included in the research, it appears that channels for Wired, Complex, Rolling Stone, and Vice have all gone dormant. In any case, this research highlights the evolving relationship between live streaming, entertainment, and news.
The popularity of Twitch (as well as other social platforms) among young audiences needs to offer more than competition for media brands. It is important that we experiment by going where the audiences are. However, it is also important that we begin to understand the reasons audiences gravitate towards these platforms to find ways to better attract and engage them.
n the rapidly evolving digital landscape, content producers constantly seek new ways to engage with audiences and promote their brands. That’s especially important right now as traffic continues to fall from sites such as Facebook and Twitter/X.
One weapon in their arsenal with some powerful potential is LinkedIn, a site that may offer a higher likelihood of referrals and engagement than some publishers have historically considered.
2. LinkedIn users tend to be millennials and professionals
LinkedIn is typically described as a social network for business professionals. As a result, it doesn’t yet attract much of Gen Z, but it is a site they transition to as they enter the workforce. Worldwide, 60% of users are in the advertiser-friendly 25-34 age bracket.
In the USA, a 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 40% of 30-49-year-olds had used the site. That’s on a par with Pinterest (40%), TikTok (39%) and WhatsApp (38%) and some way ahead of Twitter/X (27%) and Snapchat (30%), platforms many publishers continue to invest considerable energies in.
3. Around 1 in 5 American users harness LinkedIn for news
Further data from Pew finds that 17% of U.S. adults using LinkedIn regularly get their news on the platform. Interestingly, in contrast to other social networks, LinkedIn has the greatest gender parity among news consumers.
Its news audience is not huge, c.5% of U.S. adults. However, this is on par with Snapchat (4% of the total adult population) and WhatsApp (3%).
The site also offers a more educated demographic, 60% of regular news consumers on LinkedIn have a college degree, and just over half (53%) of their users enjoy a household income over $100k per annum. For many media companies, these are appealing demographics.
Many media companies will already be using some of the most obvious functions on LinkedIn. This includes posting job ads, sharing company news and creating business landing pages.
Those functions will continue to be useful. However, they only scratch the surface of some of the wider potential the site potentially affords publishers and creators.
Tactics for publishers to try on LinkedIn:
1. Publish newsletters
Image via The Economist on LinkedIn. Screenshot 3/18/24.
“In the past year, LinkedIn has seen a 150% increase in the number of newsletters being published by publishers and journalists on the platform,” Axios reports.
These newsletters might be native to LinkedIn, offer a remix of content produced elsewhere, or simply be republished on the platform. Audiences can read them on the site, or have them emailed to them. Either way, they can potentially reach large, professional, audiences. Users have more than 450 million newsletter subscriptions on the platform. That’s up 3x year-on-year.
The Wall Street Journal’s Careers & Leadership newsletter, for example, has nearly 3 million subscribers and over 100 editions on LinkedIn. With the WSJ’s company page enjoying 9.7 million followers, that’s a high percentage of users who are digging deeper.
Another LinkedIn behemoth, The Economist, reaches over 3.1 million weekly subscribers with its “week ahead” newsletter, while Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip of the Week reaches over 5 million subscribers with a short article that takes just 1-2 minutes to read.
The pandemic demonstrated the potential for publishers to livestream events. Although we have seen a renewed interest in the ability of in-person events (particularly to diversify revenues), many media companies have retained an online component. Some media providers, like Harvard Business Review, continue to run live events that remain 100% virtual.
The Forbes Sustainability Leaders Summit & sponsor list, via Forbes
Online-only, or hybrid events, are more inclusive, helping to overcome geographic boundaries. But they also present additional income streams.
Forbes, for example, attracted several blue-chip sponsors for their Sustainability Leaders Summit last Fall. If you were unable to attend in person, you could view a live stream on various platforms, including LinkedIn, sponsored by Toyota.
Events, newsletters and posts by a company – or its staff – offer multiple means to engage with users on LinkedIn. Aside from blasting them with news and information, they’re also a space to dig beyond the analytics to garner insights from your audience.
As Meredith Turits, the former editor of BBC Worklife – a vertical that includes the Worklife 101 newsletter – explained to Nieman Lab last year “content that does well is, of course, shared and clicked on, but some of our most important insights come from the comments on the newsletter,” she said. “We’re always looking at conversation in the comments or shares.”
These audience insights can shape future editorial efforts. Moreover, by sharing content that stimulates discussion and offers insights from LinkedIn members, publishers can act as a convener for conversation. That’s an approach in line with the goal of many publishers to move beyond scale by developing direct relationships with audiences.
“Don’t treat it as a traffic play, full stop,” Turtis advises. “One of the things that’s most unique about LinkedIn is that people want to talk, and will talk — it’s UX makes that easy and encourages it.”
4. Drive referrals, subscribers and registrations
Posts on company pages, the feeds of the people who work at them, as well as newsletters published on LinkedIn, can all play a role in encouraging audiences to dig deeper.
USA Today’s weekly consumer news newsletter, The Money, breaks down stories from the past week, and includes links to other USA Today stories. It also highlights that you can sign up for a daily newsletter offering more of the same, more often.
Other outlets, like CNN’s PM Plug In, lean into when audiences might be using LinkedIn. In this instance, providing “a weekday newsletter to catch you up on important news you may have missed during your busy day.”
Meanwhile, Business Insider uses the platform to offer a “shorter version of our flagship newsletter,” which they then encourage readers to sign up for.
The Economist ends their newsletter with a registration link offering three free articles a month, as well as linking to their main subscription page.
Collectively, these approaches demonstrate some of the different ways that publishers are using LinkedIn to support their wider engagement and revenue strategies.
5. Humanize your brand and staff
In some instances, LinkedIn may be your first engagement with a company. A good initial impression can matter, therefore, in terms of attracting potential consumers, subscribers and prospective employees.
Because of this, some media companies are making their LinkedIn presence more personal and approachable.
The Editor’s Digest, a newsletter from the Financial Times, sees an editor pick their top stories from the FT that week. Each hyperlinked newsletter is simply signed off by the author using their first name (e.g. Patrick, or Roula). It offers a casualness one might not expect from such an august brand, even if I personally would love to know their surname and job title!
Elsewhere, Nicholas Thompson the CEO of The Atlantic publishes a monthly newsletter that highlights his picks of The Best Things To Read. Most of this content is from places outside of The Atlantic, increasing its usefulness and making it feel much less like a PR exercise. Thompson also posts casual hot-take videos on different topics, which also makes him – and by osmosis his publication – more accessible and relatable.
Moving forward
According to Daniel Roth, LinkedIn’s Editor in Chief, the platform works with 400 preferred news partners to help maximize their work on the site. These efforts, as Axios reports, include sharing trending topics with partners so that they can tap current audience interests, as well as featuring content on LinkedIn News.
However, for content creators not in this club, there are still multiple things you can do to leverage LinkedIn more effectively. Journalists can get free training on how to use the platform, as well as a free premium membership. They can also use the platform to promote their work, and the work of others, as well as engage directly with audiences.
Your digital and social teams can – and should – do that too. Newsletters, events and posts can create high-quality, relevant content that resonates with LinkedIn’s professional user base. In doing this, outlets may reach new audiences as well as serve existing ones. That can drive traffic and engagement, increase subscriptions and take-up of other products.
Image via Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
As a result, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more media companies are investing in LinkedIn. A survey of 314 media leaders in 56 countries, revealed that four in ten (41%) of executives said they would be putting more effort into the platform in 2024. This is only just behind the proposed prioritization in YouTube and Google Search.
As Sara Fischer the senior media reporter at Axios recently put it, “LinkedIn alone won’t be able to make up for the dramatic reduction in traffic referrals from social media sites to news publishers, but it does offer outlets and journalists a platform to meaningfully grow their audiences amid a broader tech crackdown on news content.”
Put another way, as the tech journalist Ryan Broderickoutlined earlier this week, “the traffic firehose days of the 2010s aren’t coming back. And LinkedIn is not the secret to infinite pageviews.” But, he adds, “finding a home for news publishers in 2024 isn’t about finding a perfect fit, but rather finding one that’s close enough.”
For some content creators and media companies, that might just mean leaning more into LinkedIn in the year ahead.
As publishers look for ways to accelerate audience growth, engagement, and monetization in 2024, they have a multitude of options for driving change and innovation. Last year I worked with Nick Nyhan, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Upside Analytics, to develop a model for roadmapping the innovation journey in the publishing industry. As part of that effort, we uncovered some key strategies and ideas that publishers can use to accelerate their organizational velocity in the coming year across three areas: audience growth, audience engagement and monetization.
Grow audience reach
Most publishers are already working on the obvious top-of-funnel audience growth strategies, like social media and SEO. But we identified some opportunities beyond those obvious strategies that we encourage publishers to consider.
Idea #1: Add new sites or apps for specific audience segments
Breaking your audience down into sub-segments is a critical tactic for any publisher. When you’ve identified sub-segments with strong subjects of interest, you can build on that knowledge with more advanced strategies for targeted growth in each segment, including adding new properties.
A great example of this is Gray Television, one of the largest broadcasters in the U.S. Gray owns a large number of television stations across the country, and they decided to launch “City Weekend” sites in each of their local markets featuring location-specific lifestyle content on events, food, art and culture. This segmentation-based strategy helped Gray expand its audience, increase traffic, and boost ad revenue.
Following Gray’s example, you could identify a segment of your audience that’s very interested in sports, or local business, or any other specific topic, and introduce a microsite that’s easy to market to that audience.
Idea #2: Create mobile apps for fans
Your brand’s power users – the segments of your audience that engage with you the most – are also the most likely to download your mobile app. To take your mobile strategy to the next level, tailor your mobile app to hyper-engage your power users.
This presents the opportunity to align other elements of your business with your mobile strategy. For example, you can use your website mainly to attract, engage, register, and then drive new users to your mobile app, where you can employ additional strategies to keep them engaged.
Increase audience engagement
Once you’ve gotten your audience onto your site, you need to get them to stay there and have longer session lengths. More content views and more time on site equals more affinity to your brand.
Idea #3: Cater to multi-scenario consumption
People don’t just ingest news while sitting at a computer. They could be stuck in traffic and want an audio option. They could be on the go in a subway and need an offline mode. Some people want to save stories and listen to them later on audio or watch on video when they’re sitting in front of their TV at night. There is a lot of churn going on across all of these modalities, so publishers need a strategy to consciously cater to different audience scenarios for consuming content.
At the simplest level, this might involve letting users create reading lists of stories they can access later. At the most sophisticated level, you could have a completely native team building a custom OTT app. In between are opportunities to experiment with and test modalities for various content consumption scenarios, from podcasts to mobile to TV “sit back” options.
Idea #4: Use AI to suggest related stories
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) presents an exciting opportunity for publishers. In its current state, AI is well-positioned to take on some of the more tedious or repetitive tasks in content creation workflows. For example, AI-powered tools are emerging for auto-summarization and auto-tagging.
Your content creators like to write and create content. Maybe they don’t mind summarizing. But nobody likes tagging—so why not let AI tools do that work? Auto-tagging for text, video, images, and captions makes it easier to suggest related content to your audience, keeping them on your site longer and increasing the amount of content they consume.
Monetize by segment
Before you start trying advanced monetization strategies, make sure you have the basic building blocks in place. That includes the ability to enable and measure customer loyalty, clear calls-to-action across all of your properties, and an optimized checkout process. Beyond those basics, we identified some innovative strategies publishers are using to monetize audience segments.
Idea #5: Provide special content consumption options for subscribers
As I covered in the last section on audience engagement, your audience is consuming your content in many different scenarios, whether it’s sitting in front of a computer, on a mobile phone while on the go, or in front of their TV at night. Providing special consumption options that cater to these preferences can be used to entice people to subscribe.
For example, The Irish Times uses a text-to-speech provider to convert most of its stories into an audio version. A small headphones icon appears in the corner of these stories to indicate that an audio option is available—but only for subscribers. The Irish Times incurs a cost associated with doing the text-to-speech conversion. However, by enticing higher value users to subscribe, this cost is balanced out by the revenue gain.
Idea #6: Try a freemium approach
With a freemium strategy, publishers offer a selection of content that’s available without a subscription, but make higher-value content available only to subscribers. Readers are able to see headlines and short snippets of the high-value premium content featured amongst the free content, enticing them to subscribe to get full access.
We believe that sports-related content, especially if it’s local, will be among the highest value content that publishers can offer in the future. Sports-related stories would therefore be a great candidate to offer as premium content in a freemium model (and also a great testing ground for new monetization approaches).
Ultimately innovation for media companies comes down to having the courage to try, whether it’s one or more of these ideas, or any other tactics for growing your audience and increasing your revenue. We recommend crafting a one pager that outlines the new ideas you’ll test in 2024, including where you are today, where you want to go, and the KPIs you’ll use to measure your progress. Then share that document throughout your organization and take the next steps on your media innovation journey for 2024 and beyond.
I have a request: Please stop the fearmongering and exaggerated claims surrounding the future of local news. Local news is still here, and it’s going to stick around.
With approximately 15 years of experience in news media revenue sales leadership, I am driven to address the frustrations and challenges faced by local news outlets in connecting with advertisers and audiences.
Yes, local news is still here, but it is facing challenges. The ad model that supported it for hundreds of years has been critically impaired. So, while I believe in the importance of local news and see its value on a personal and professional level, I also see some issues that need to be addressed to turn things around.
The ad business will never be the way it once was. But whether the revenue that sustains local news comes from advertising, subscriptions or other means, it all starts with serving local communities.
My perspective stems from countless conversations I’ve had over the years with local organizations, sponsors, and community members who genuinely express concerns about the content produced in local news media. They find it frustrating when local news outlets overlook crucial community topics. However, overcoming these challenges requires a complete rethink. While that’s no small ask, reconnecting with the community, attracting more subscribers, and increasing revenue are achievable goals.
Audiences of all ages
But let’s think about audience for a moment. Media companies are often focused on “attracting younger audiences.” Ok, sure. On the surface that makes sense since keeping that audience funnel full should maintain audience size or help it grow.
However, I’d say that, instead of patronizing and pandering to the youngs (i.e., hiring some younger people to communicate with the younger people, and maybe one day they’ll have a story on page three), local news organizations must strive to be authentic and become an integral part of the entire community served.
Though subtle, a slight condescending undertone related to younger audiences has become apparent. Fact is, these so-called “younger” people are fully grown, adult, tax-paying audiences with their own families, income, and ability to afford subscriptions and the products advertised in publications. They should be treated as such.
This type of thinking is applicable to other generations and demographics as well. Rather than overly-segment coverage, think about serving broader audience needs. There are informational resources that are universally sought after, regardless of age or demographic. These extend beyond the traditional topics of weather and politics, encompassing areas such as finances, health, entertainment, local culture, and advocacy.
For instance, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have young grandchildren and/or children and they universally seek entertainment events and activities to enjoy together. They are all concerned with local greenspaces, educational funding, maintaining infrastructure, sustainability, and much more. In terms of the local news, they have a lot in common.
It is crucial to invest time in understanding the needs, interests, and concerns of the entire community. By providing content that resonates with their daily lives and challenges, engaging in meaningful conversations, listening to their feedback, and addressing their worries, you establish trust. You foster genuine community connections instead of fragmenting content to target certain groups.
This approach is going to be uncomfortable because it requires a creative shift in outlook. Think of this perspective as something like: Star Trek fans are Star Trek fans regardless of age group or generation because it appeals to a consensus of wonder and exploration inherent across generations. For local news, this sense of shared engagement can arise from pride in the community and access to informative resources.
Furthermore, the current structure of local news heavily relies on a skewed interpretation and representation of news. While it is important to cover national and regional political issues, a lack of local community coverage and insight can lead to subscriber and advertiser avoidance, resulting in churn and attrition. Additionally, there are numerous outlets competing for attention on the national stage.
If one is in the local news business, the mandate is different. It is essential to deliver reliable, informative, relevant, and resourceful information that is specific to the community and audience. This approach is a vital component in enhancing subscriber engagement and retention. Your goal is to establish a platform that fosters a profound sense of connection, where the community feels anchored and takes pride in supporting it.
Also, while disasters often dominate the headlines, it is equally important to remind people of the positive events occurring, especially within their communities. People need hope, a sense of connection, and pride. These can be found in the contributions made by ordinary citizens, organizations, and companies that enrich and inject vibrancy into these communities.
From a revenue standpoint, this shift will transform your platform into one that people genuinely esteem and feel compelled to support, rather than feeling obligated (or worse, disinterested).
And, once a local news organization re-establishes its value proposition with the community and engagement picks up, interest in advertising sponsorship will follow. Businesses are always looking for engaged audiences to enhance their brand value and generate interest in their products and services. This means they “fish where the fish are.” Tethering a local news organization to the community provides clear value to advertisers, along with a sense of belonging and support they’ll get from being associated with a trusted local news brand and supporting something of value within their community.
Delivering the news
Moreover, the traditional approach to presenting news assumes that one or two distribution methods can meet the diverse needs and interests of a growing audience. However, serving your whole audience goes beyond a print and digital reader dichotomy. The key lies in finding different ways to conveniently deliver information and create an excellent user experience.
Transforming local news involves becoming a reliable source of information, whether it’s on a weekly, daily, or even hourly basis. Since (valuable) information is not bound to any specific medium, it can be effectively shared across all platforms.
For instance, imagine a subscriber who reads in-depth content about well-researched parenting tips specifically tailored to children diagnosed with ADHD in their local community newspaper. They can keep that issue of the newspaper and refer to it whenever they desire. Additionally, they receive a newsletter highlighting family activities in the community, condensed online articles, podcasts, and social media posts related to parenting. They may also receive text alerts to inform them about topics or events that matter most to them.
This comprehensive approach enables community readers to stay well-informed, nurture personal development, and maintain a strong connection to what matters. However, the key ingredient in all of this lies in identifying and utilizing the most valuable information available, with the local community as a resource.
It all comes back to the audience
That said, it’s important to note that while this multi-medium communication approach has become more commonly employed, what it often lacks is relatability and cohesion. Relatability stems from the understanding and belief that local news organizations genuinely comprehend their audience—knowing who they are, what they look like, what aspirations they hold, and what truly matters to them.
Cohesion is about enhancing the overall experience and connection with the subscriber in a way that is simple and easy to digest. Create an atmosphere that makes readers feel as though they’re being met where they are with the most topical and relevant information, which helps them navigate their daily life.
The single most important part is to ensure content is topical, relatable, and relevant to the impact of the day-to-day life of the reader. Unfortunately, this essential essence is still missing in many local news platforms.
Here is the sticking point: authenticity and genuine engagement are key to unlocking this. News organizations across the country are striving to engage with their audience, but it’s crucial to stay true to the identity as a community news organization. It is essential to embody and reflect the values and aspirations of the audience they serve. Celebrate the vibrancy of the area, acknowledge the past, embrace the present, and look to the future with innovation and creativity.
Successful news organizations are deeply connected to the community. It’s not just about providing resources or making efforts to be inclusive; it’s about genuinely loving and connecting with the audience you serve.
Media Voices co-host Peter Houston is tired of hearing the same old industry buzzwords. The publishing platitudes are starting to wear a bit thin, and he’s decided to see if he can shake the conversation up a bit by speaking to some of the biggest characters in the business.
The latest episode of Media Voices’ Big Noises podcast features Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director at Digital Content Next (DCN).
Michelle started out as a journalist. The rise of digital media saw her embrace the changes and after working for a range of publications, from alt weeklies to B2B titles, she joined what was then the OPA to help premium publishers with their ongoing their digital evolution. She now manages online content and events for the group, which is known as DCN.
More than a decade in, Michelle still has hope for the media, but is frustrated by many of the publishing practices she sees. “Now we’re in a world where two thirds of our job is to rise above the noise. ‘Listen to me. Look at me’ right? Are we providing a value exchange? When people give us that gift of their attention, do we provide them with value… was it worth their time?”
In an era where journalism faces a crisis of trust among audiences, Insider has taken to Twitter.
Since 2021, Insider has done over a dozen live Twitter conversations called #TheInsideStory with its staff – from its Singapore bureau chief, to travel and entertainment editors, to reporters covering finance and health. The goal of the series is to help its audience connect with the newsroom and better understand why its staff are passionate about the beats they cover, says Alexandra Cancino, Insider’s Marketing Communications Manager.
In June 2022, Insider did a proprietary study with its readers called Minding the Generation Gap: Media Usage & Trust Across Generations, to better understand how different generation demographics consume and trust media. They found that 94% of Insider readers feel that trustworthiness of a source is important, which reinforced the idea behind The Inside Story according to Cancino.
The series kicked off in September 2021 with a live Q&A with Conz Preti, Insider’s parenting + health editor. The goal of the series is to give the audience a behind-the-scenes look at how Insider’s journalism is done. It also gives Insider’s journalists and editors a chance to talk about work, their networks, and their interests.
With six more scheduled through to the end of the year, the series outlines how reporters and editors work. They showcase the breadth and depth of reportage and help grow journalists’ profiles.
“We’re able to use these Q&As as a way to give readers a ‘behind-the-scenes’ peek at who our reporters and editors are, as well as how they perform their craft, including how they source, vet, and share information,” Cancino says. “We want them to feel what feels like a personal relationship with Insider and get to know the correspondents and editors better and why they do what they do.”
Insider view
In one Q&A, Insider spoke with media correspondent Reed Alexander, who was a finance reporter at the time of his Twitter conversation. As a finance reporter, Alexander wrote about the global economy, Wall Street, banks, and markets. The Inside Story gave Alexander the opportunity to get his work in front of a potentially broader audience. It also allowed him to share a side of him that his colleagues didn’t often get to see.
“I had the opportunity to share with our Insider community some of what makes me passionate about business reporting, as well as to share insights into my other undertakings, like teaching a journalism class to undergrads at the University of Miami,” he said. It also “allowed me to share a side of my life that my work community doesn’t often get to see — for instance, pointing out some of my mentors in the newsroom, and explaining how I transitioned from the entertainment industry to a life in journalism.”
Earlier in October, Insider also did a Twitter Q&A with Health Correspondent Hilary Brueck focusing on what was happening in the public health sphere. As a health correspondent, Brueck writes about all facets of public health, including debunking health misinformation and reporting on health-related news.
“The Q&A was a nice opportunity to highlight some of my recent work and share how I approach stories on my beat,” she said. The best part of the Q&A, according to Brueck, “was probably the unexpected opportunity it gave me to connect and reconnect with colleagues and sources who I’ve worked with through the years.”
Evaluating engagement
The live Twitter Q&As have had a knock-on effect in terms of engagement following the events.
Cancino said the Q&As generated thousands of impressions on Twitter and a strong engagement rate — more than 100x Twitter’s benchmark. (According to Statista, the overall Twitter engagement rate is .04%.)
“Our reporters do a great job engaging with and tagging people, groups, and organizations they work with, and those accounts often engage back via retweets and replies,” Cancino said.
“I definitely saw an uptick in likes and retweets on my tweets generally,” Alexander says. “It’s always difficult to isolate or pinpoint one reason for anything as a driver of a broader phenomenon, but certainly I would say it was a benefit for engagement.”
Perhaps the industry should do showing, not just telling. Insider has found that its Inside Story Twitter Q&As offer just such an opportunity.
“As journalists we should be coming out behind the veil and making ourselves available. We are asking sources … to avail themselves and be open with us. I do think there is an expectation or a best practice of doing that reflexively for our audience and giving them a sense of who we are,” Alexander says.
Being accessible and visible to the audiences and communities that journalists engage with will make them better practitioners of journalism, Alexander says. “I think it’s a great thing for other journalists to be doing… We want people to come to us for various reasons, to engage with us, to read our content, to share information. You know, how do people know where to find you if you are not really available to them and readily accessible?”
In the 18 months since social audio spaces were introduced the media landscape, digital content companies have experimented to uncover their purpose and how they can best serve audiences. For The Washington Post, the answer was revealed amid the discussion of a massive leak of offshore data, which exposed the secrets, deals, and assets of the world’s rich and powerful.
The Pandora Papers investigation was not The Post’s first use of social audio. They’d experimented with Clubhouse in mid-May 2021 and held their first Twitter Spaces event June 10, 2021.
It was, however, one of their most ambitious experiments as it involved other global news organizations simultaneously joining the Twitter Spaces event. The Pandora Papers investigation spanned five continents and involved 600 journalists in 117 countries.
“The Pandora Papers was the largest reporting consortium in journalism history. We’re talking about [journalists examining] 11.9 million documents and financial records,” said Michelle Jaconi, head of news talent strategy and development at The Washington Post.
That’s a wealth of information – but a challenge to present given its scope and depth. “The amount of nuance that you can go into in a platform in audio where you don’t have the set limitations of an article is wonderful.”
“Twitter Spaces has been an incredible playground for creativity and exploring ways where we could stretch that platform,” Jaconi said. “That one was one of the biggest and most ambitious spaces we’ve done, because we did it across different newsrooms. It was an incredibly fascinating test and stretch, and incredibly well received.”
Space(s) for transparency and engagement
Social audio allows The Post to share the teamwork and collaboration that takes place in their newsroom, Jaconi explained. The work that goes into a large scale, investigative report is largely invisible to readers. However, the audio format allows the journalists to communicate the process and passion that goes into a project like this one. As Jaconi points out, “The voices humanize the work, effort, the passion and the care that goes into every piece of journalism at The Post.”
One thing the team at The Post has learned through its use of social audio is that the audience is incredibly curious and wants to learn more about the journalistic process.
“We learned, wow, there is an audience for this, and [social audio] is incredibly good for things that are so complex that you need extra time and nuance and care to explain,” Jaconi said. “And, especially with Pandora Papers, we were testing the platform and how much we could stretch the production capabilities of an audio event that was truly global. We had some issues. But I think Twitter’s even gotten better since then at the product and the production aspect of doing massive events.”
Attracting and engaging audiences
Like all publications, Jaconi says The Washington Post not only wants to increase the size of its audience, but also engage younger, next generation, diverse and global audiences. For the use of Twitter Spaces grew the following of @washingtonpost on Twitter, as well as the following of their reporters.
“I think one of the things that social audio is incredible for is that social platforms convene audiences of curious people – or sometimes just bored people who become curious when they see a trending hashtag,” Jaconi said. “Every time we do one of these spaces, our reporters get new followers. That shows that we’re building audience.”
Social audio spaces create an intimate connection between The Post and their audience, on a device that many use to interact with their family and friends. “That is a wonderful way for us to not tell our expertise, but instead to show it. We do it in a way that provides intimate connection between our reporters and their audience,” Jaconi said.
For reporters who often work in text-based mediums, one of the things that makes social audio fun is that they get to know their audiences more personally and engage directly.
“While you’re talking, you can actually see avatars and photos of people joining in that conversation right there with you. And that is something that I love for reporters to know,” Jaconi said. “Who doesn’t like telling a story and looking at the avatar of someone and saying, ‘oh, thank you for listening. That’s so interesting that you’re popping into this conversation and listening to me.’ That has been really rewarding for everyone who’s participating.”
And, as it continues to improve the functionality of Spaces, Twitter is now surfacing live audio to users when they first log in and providing beacons to audiences indiscriminately. This adds value for digital content companies because previously, Twitter had only surfaced Spaces to an organization’s existing audience.
“Social audio is one of the most exciting playgrounds right now to gather new audiences because the product keeps getting better,” Jaconi said.
Adoption, addiction, affection
In helping Post reporters reach new audiences, Jaconi looks for a funnel of adoption, addiction, and affection. With The Post’s recent reporting on the war in Ukraine, Jaconi said they are seeing an uptick in followers, but also affection. Social audio plays into this by increasing the personal engagement between audience and reporters.
In particular, The Post has sees a trend of audience members sending deeply moving messages. “People have been following reporters for the first time and posting comments like: ‘I am praying for your safety. I hope you’re okay. Please be all right.’ That is affection and concern for our journalists,” Jaconi said, noting that she’s never seen this kind of thing take place at this scale before.
“To have that be the overwhelming chat response to an audio space from our reporters covering the war, boy, is that a different experience for our journalists and reporters,” Jaconi said. “It means that we we’ve done a really good job and reaching people who are interested in information and are interested in building that relationship with us and our reporters.”
Lessons learned
Jaconi explained that there are a few best practices in the social audio space that digital content companies ought to think about.
First, update your Twitter app. Jaconi explained that Twitter often updates Twitter Spaces and improves and fine tunes its functionality. (We covered some of those in our last social audio piece.)
Second, remember that audience members can join Twitter Spaces mid-stream. It’s possible those audience members have never met you before. Hosts should make a habit of re-introducing themselves during the course of an event. This should include addressing new people joining the Space and telling them what they’re speaking about, their name, background, expertise, and the topic of discussion.
“It doesn’t have to be boiler plate. It can be done in a casual way. But also, because there’s audiences that are listening while they’re multitasking, I really urge people to introduce themselves again,” Jaconi said.
Thirdly, Jaconi suggested that digital content companies who engage in social audio spaces ought to “feed their audience.” This means give your social audio space a thread of everything you covered in that space. If you’re using social audio to discuss investigations, mention the methodology of your investigation, the complexity of doing the investigation, biographies of speakers or guests and the like, in a thread. This assures that the listening experience isn’t just a one-off that happened in the Twitterverse, and instead is and can be connected to other content, events, or used in the future.
“It is so rare, and so exceptionally powerful, to be in the same place as your audience at the same time, with everybody convened,” Jaconi said. “You’re convening the curious at something that you’re an expert in. So feed them when they’re there, because it might be a while before you convene them again.”
If your media company is directly monetizing its audience in any way or form, odds are, your registered users and subscribers are your biggest money-makers. Even so, the largest portion of your audience is probably made up of unknown readers who aren’t contributing much to your overall reader-revenue growth.
According to recent research we conducted at Viafoura, a shocking 99.6% of publisher unsubscribed audiences, on average, are anonymous visitors. While most of these visitors are passive readers who are less committed to a company’s content than known audience members, you can still get tremendous value from them.
In reality, your anonymous audience is far from worthless. It’s an untapped goldmine of information and revenue just waiting to be activated. But before you can extract the full value of your unknown visitors, you need to know exactly why and how they can become loyal and lucrative audience members.
Prioritizing anonymous to known audience conversions
Naturally, known audience members give your organization far more data and monetization opportunities than anonymous visitors. Viafoura’s research finds that engaged registered users offer publishers five times more return visits than non-registered users.
Rather than waiting for registered users to appear magically, successful publishers have recognized that the key to better monetizing audiences is to actively nurture their anonymous audiences and encourage them to log in. After all, each of your registered and subscribed audience members first started off as unknown visitors.
Keep in mind that almost every anonymous user can become effectively monetized once they are registered. As Greg Piechota, Researcher-in-Residence at the International News Media Association (INMA), explains, “[we] see reader and ad revenue strategies converging as publishers refocus on registering and logging users.”
Ultimately, converting your anonymous visitors to known users online is an essential step on the road to building audience loyalty and growing your company’s revenue streams.
Registration as a means of improving content performance
Logged in users are not just more readily monetizable, they provide a raft of information that allows you to improve their experience and increase engagement.
You can begin piecing together your users’ profiles as soon as they create profiles on your website or app. The more they interact with your content and fellow users, the more you’ll understand who they are, their needs, and the types of content topics and writers they favor.
This valuable data can be harnessed to segment your users into different groups with similar interests. Then, they can then be targeted with relevant content — including advertisements.
Of course, content that aligns more with your users’ interests is more likely to draw their attention and keep them engaged on your website or app for longer. “Once you understand your target audience’s needs, you can develop personalized content that addresses their biggest concerns and pain points,” Gartner reports. “But timing is everything.”
To make the biggest impact on your audience and win over their loyalty, your media company must serve its users the content they want when they crave it, even as their needs and interests change. While you can’t get this information from unknown visitors, you can extract it through the data and comments of your known users.
Turning anonymous users into engaged subscribers
Giving anonymous users the chance to log in to your website is not only key to getting their data, but it can also make your anonymous users become dedicated to your brand. The reality is that once you get anonymous visitors to register, you’re halfway to getting them to subscribe.
In fact, Viafoura data reveals that registered users are significantly more engaged than their unregistered counterparts. They spend an average of 15 times more time on-site after registering. And all that extra time your registered users spend on your company’s website means they have more opportunities to connect with your company’s content and other users.
“News brands that see more known users see more subscribers, and brands that see longer session duration see lower rates of churn,” according to Piechota. He says that research proves that you earn one subscriber for every 10 registrations.
The Telegraph recently shared that its audience growth goal is framed around this research. The company is aiming for 10 million registered users and one million subscribers as of 2023.
This reinforces the fact that you can unlock significant value — including engagement and (eventually) subscription revenue — from a large portion of your anonymous audience simply by getting them to register.
So, if the majority of your company’s audience is anonymous, what’s stopping you from encouraging that massive group of people to become registered, known and returning users? From there, you can use their available data and growing loyalty to your advantage, further enhancing your organization’s engagement, content, subscription and ad revenue strategies.
