The closing of BuzzFeed News marks the end of a period where media and social media worked hand in hand to produce in seemingly infinite markets of scale.
The VC-backed media frenzy has been ending for a while now but the shaky business model, with company valuations and revenue projections tied to social reach and impressions, has been officially marked over with the announcement from BuzzFeed in late April. Now it’s time to shift focus on the period that comes next and tactical ways publishers can get ready for it.
Social media is fracturing into a space where users and platforms are becoming more siloed. Yes, there are algorithms surfacing content to these users, but they’re creator-focused and not news-focused. Not to mention, Twitter is imploding, TikTok has its own audience, and is influencing Instagram and Facebook. On Substack Notes, users are engaging with writers they choose to follow, and Bluesky and Mastadon are both attracting media workers. The big four companies are seeing their ownership of the rails disintegrate.
Meta reports that news makes up less than 3% of what people see on Facebook, which goes hand in hand with shutting down the Facebook News tab and their Bulletin newsletter platform. Instagram has shifted its algorithm to push videos from creators into feeds, and people are tired of it. Following the whims of Meta executives is distracting to publishers, but it’s been a huge part of the top-of-funnel strategy in the last 10 years. Now I’m thinking, is it time to talk about being so dependent on social media as a top-of-funnel strategy?
For publishers that are currently in their growth era, we can gain a clearer picture of the next business model. Morning Brew partnered with and heavily invested in a finance influencer, Money With Katie, in January of 2022, and together created an online community focused on personal finance. They produce a podcast that now has over 3 million downloads, a bi-weekly newsletter, a less successful YouTube channel, and a merch store for #RichGirls (and guys). Smaller news organizations that focus on niche content like Puck and The Information charge a premium for their content because they go deep in a way that their users appreciate and will pay for. Non-profit and for-profit local newsrooms are investing in editors that cover the stories that national pubs miss. They are currently hiring and expanding when larger publications are laying off or downsizing.
With regards to the publishing audience, American adults still spend an average of 13 hours per day consuming digital content. Admittedly I’m on the “extremely online” side of digital consumption with screen time between 13 and 15 hours a week. I invite you to take a quick peek at your own digital media consumption, but we can go through mine as an example.
Today I used Google 23 times and Google Maps 5 times. I subscribe to 149 podcasts, 1,237 accounts on Twitter, 2,850 accounts on Instagram, 1,161 TikTok accounts, 7 Patreon creators, 12 publishers, and 6 streaming services, and I’m sure there are others I’m missing. I have over 20k emails in my personal inbox which has been overloaded with emails that I no longer care about. Consequently, I ignore most (cough *all* cough) of it that goes into the Promotions tab of my Gmail account. I check out books from the library on Libby, and I have an Audible membership.
That’s a lot of content vying for my attention. Still, there are some publishers that I engage with on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. What makes the content I consistently engage with come out on top of others? Let’s get into it.
Humanize Your Editors Era
If you’ve been here a while, you’ll know I’ve been beating this drum since early 2021. It’s important for your audience to understand that there are actual real live human beings creating the content that they’re enjoying. So how can editors remain objective if they are also providing context and feedback on their personal opinions? To respond, I’d invite you to read this. If we agree that being a real human in front of your audience can build lasting relationships, how should we go about it?
One way is to personalize your content to build a semi-parasocial relationship with your audience. High-touch connections can be established through newsletters that have the editor’s thoughts and feelings about a particular piece of news, or podcasts that allow your audience to get to know newsroom staff through their actual voice.
In an extreme example of putting staff voices front and center, the Texas Observer announced on March 29 that it would lay off staff and shut down. The editors asked the board if they could scrounge up enough money to stay open and they raised over $300k in less than a few weeks. The Observer still faces structural issues and must make decisions around expenses and moving to digital-only but they live to fight another day. Why did a desperate plea work but their drip campaign subscription efforts did not? Did people realize the value of losing the pub only when faced with its demise? To me, it’s obvious that their audience heard them loud and clear. The editors were honest to their fans and super fans, and all rallied together to “save” something that was important to them.
Within my own chaotic media consumption, there is a single publisher that gets my daily attention, but I never actually go to their website. They send out public newsletters I read 3-4 times a week, a paywalled newsletter I read on weekdays, 12 public podcasts a week, and 3 paywalled podcasts, of which I consume at least 9 podcasts weekly. I’ll say this again because it’s worth repeating - I pay this publisher $10 a month and I never go to their website. I spend over 9 hours a week listening to them and reading their emails. I have bought their merch and would 100% go to a live event if it matched up with my calendar. I am a super fan and they can and should get more money out of me. Why is this? Well, I know the opinions and little life anecdotes of the Publisher, Editor and Editor-At-Large who appear on a few podcasts. I think they are considerate of multiple opinions and I appreciate their candor around current events. They have successfully humanized their staff so they get nine hours of my week, and sometimes tbh, I wish there was more.
Fluff Content Is Over Era
We’ve all fallen prey to click-bait style headlines that lead to a listicle with little to no actual information with quotes and pictures from Getty. This strategy worked for a while on social media, but this business model is dependent on traffic and website ads. It doesn’t bring rise to super fans, or even returning visitors that go directly to the site. The strategy relies on one-and-done type articles that serve a quick need for a bored user.
The unfortunate part of the end of social as a top-of-funnel strategy is that users have lost their news habits. By relying on social algorithms to keep them informed, they don’t have the direct-to-the-website habit of the pre-social media era and are instead relying on Google to answer specific questions. When writing this blog, I surveyed 15 members of my family of all ages, education and online status, asking them where they engage with publishers. 14 out of 15 said they know what they’re looking for and go straight to Google to stay in touch with the subjects they care about. This cohort of users is not currently looking to build a relationship with a publisher but is potentially gettable for longer-term connection and engagement via email if we approach them properly.
First, we need to ensure that the answer to the user’s question is available on the page. Put yourself in their shoes. If you Google “best restaurants in St Louis” and your article was last updated in early 2022, are you going to trust that all of the information in it is accurate? Would you sign up for a newsletter if the pop-up appeared before you even read the article, or if the page took ages to load? No, you’ll likely bounce, switch to Google Maps and type “dinner”, filter to “open now”, and start scrolling.
Of course, we need to mention AI/ChatGPT here, especially as news content farms are popping up fueled by bots. Currently, there are over 8.5 billion searches a day on Google, over 99k searches per minute, compared to chatGPT which has 100 million users and just barely hit its 1 billionth usage. That’s not to say it isn’t growing fast, but the AI market is quite small by comparison. But once the SERP gets filled with a bunch of articles on things to do in St. Louis, how are you going to stand apart? No. More. Fluff. Make your content stand out and give the user a reason why they should go to that restaurant. Offer a personal anecdote about a time your editor had dinner there. Add in a little-known fact about the chef. The possibilities are endless.
Publishers need to provide a service to the user and that starts with accurate information and a good user experience. Capture the user with your prose and personalization, while providing them a way to stay connected when the time is right. Eventually, you’ll become a publisher of choice, enabling them to come back and build a habit.
Reader Revenue Era
We’ve all heard the discussion about subscription fatigue. Publishers have tried for years to prompt revenue out of readers through metered paywalls, hard paywalls, and the registration wall. Do users really want to pay to read one article they found on Google or could they live without the answer to a random whim? Does a user even notice the publisher’s name when they hop into their site to find an answer? What can you do to your site that makes your content stand out, that makes a user realize the work that went into a piece of content, and also realize that they want more of it?
This piece by The Audiencers got me thinking about how we treat paywalled content. TLDR: maybe the icon is turning users away, rather than encouraging them to subscribe to read. Perhaps positioning content behind the paywall as exclusive for current users up front is not the way to go. Perhaps the hook of getting the user to the page and providing them a chance to read a few paragraphs is enough to encourage them to pay to read more. Or perhaps, it takes a few interactions for them to realize they have encountered this paywall multiple times, so it must align with their interests.
If acquiring a new subscriber can often cost 5x as much as keeping a current subscriber, is it also true that getting revenue out of super fans is easier than getting revenue from a slightly interested fan? Publishers should lean into their current subscriber base and figure out ways they can serve their most engaged users’ needs. If your audience is interested in Things to Do, perhaps you create a local passport and partner with businesses to fill it up. Or create workshops and packages they can buy to experience new activities and highlights in your state. That’s when it makes more sense to charge a fee.
All of that to say, people are busy, both on and offline, and they have a lot of things vying for their attention. Gone are the days of scale and YOY traffic growth with endless eyeballs relying on social media algorithms. Engagement is changing and publishers will have to change too. I believe the next publishing era in this fractured social media market will be the get-to-know-your-audience and serve them era. It’ll be where we speak to our audience in smaller arenas and build services that breed loyalty and connection. Users will connect with us on social for a value add, but it won’t be the place they find us as much anymore. We need to focus on building loyalty with users that are already interested and meet their needs. It may just be the super fans that save us all.