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Newsroom Planning
10 minutes read

Feeling overwhelmed by planning news content for diverse audiences across multiple platforms? You're not alone. As media platforms diversify, audiences increasingly gravitate towards content that feels native to each channel, rewarding publishers who optimize their content strategy for platform-specific consumption habits. 

According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024, “News use across online platforms is fragmenting...YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time.”  

As you can imagine, crafting tailored content for various audience segments across numerous channels is a formidable task. So how do you tackle complex content planning for diverse media outlets and reader preferences? The key is strategic planning. This involves two crucial steps: 

  • Moving beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to distributing stories across platforms 

  • Grasping consumer interests to create content that resonates with the platforms they engage with 

By focusing on these aspects, you're not just delivering news – you're creating a more engaging, relevant, and impactful experience for your readers across all platforms. Let's first dive into why planning for audience needs is crucial to your strategy.  

Why Planning for Audience Needs Matters 

It's one thing to identify where your readers consume news, but it has become essential to uncover their motivations for reading your content in the first place. The User Needs Model 2.0, as developed by Dmitry Shishkin, helps newsrooms to understand this why, by grouping audience motivations into categories like “update me,” “divert me,” and “give me perspective”, among others. 

"The majority of newsrooms still think that 'update me' is the most important need, but through data we have seen if you start addressing the other needs on a regular basis, you grow," said Dmitry Shishkin.   

Metro.co.uk’s Transition to "Give Me Perspective" Content 

Metro.co.uk decided to kick-off their user needs strategy with an audit of their existing stories and quickly discovered they were producing an abundance of “update me” content. "We had to tell everyone to slow down a bit, try and get rid of that muscle memory of update me, update me, update me," explains Sofia Delgadeo, audience growth director, Metro.co.uk.  

Through experimenting with the User Needs Model, they found that content geared toward the 'give me perspective' category resonated most, delivering significant gains in engagement and page views. 

The Conversation’s Audience-Centric Approach   

Similarly, The Conversation has embraced a reader-centric approach to engage younger audiences. In March 2022, they launched the Quarter Life series, targeting people in their 20s and 30s with content on topics like health, relationships, careers, and social media trends.  

The Conversation adapted the user needs model, identifying four key audience needs: 'educate me', 'keep me on trend', 'give me perspective', and 'motivate me'.  

This strategy has proven successful, with higher engagement and page views across the board. They saw a 55% to 65% increase in user engagement on social with their Quarter Life articles compared to their base line, which was other articles on their site. 

“User engagement went up, and it went up because the content we were producing was really focused on being valuable to that audience. Just by bringing the newsroom closer to the audience, we practically overnight were able to produce content that was more valuable to the audience,” said Khalil Cassimally, Head of Audience Insights for The Conversation

These examples underscore a crucial point: recognizing and addressing diverse reader preferences can significantly impact your content strategy and audience engagement. 

Key Strategies for Effective Multi-Platform Planning 

Now that we've covered the 'why,' let's dive into the 'how.' Here are some tried-and-true strategies recommended by news outlets and advisors that can help your newsroom navigate the complexities of multi-platform content planning: 

1. How to Uncover and Analyze Reader Preferences 

Let's first explore practical methods for uncovering and analyzing your reader’s needs: 

Analyze Web Analytics 

Utilize tools like Google Analytics or Upscore to understand what your audience demographics are. As JournalLift advises, "Google Analytics could be used to read the data on website traffic and this way you can have a better understanding of your audience. It is a very powerful tool."  

While these tools primarily provide demographic data for website visitors, they can still offer valuable insights into who your audiences are. By analyzing information such as age, gender, language, location, and interests, newsroom coordinators can gain a clearer picture of their audience.  

Conduct Audience Research 

Newsrooms can adopt a structured, data-informed approach similar to The Conversation's strategy for their Quarter Life series. They used various research methods, including one-on-one interviews, surveys, and analytics to identify primary audience needs.   

David Brewer, found and editor of Media Helping Media, suggests organizing focus groups that represent your diverse audience segments, "Consider setting up focus groups representing the different audience profiles you hope to serve. Invite members of these groups in for snacks and a chat. Talk to them about your output and editorial plans." 

Create Audience Personas 

Develop detailed profiles of your target audience segments. Founder and Editor of Media Helping Media, David Brewer, suggests, "Try to imagine one character that best represents each group. Download pictures from the internet of people who fit the character profiles you have identified. Give these people a name, imagine them as real people; these characters will help you define your content strategy."  

He also recommends asking key questions about interests, concerns, lifestyle choices, news consumption habits, and social media engagement. 

2. Customize Content for Each Platform 

Once you've identified your audience segments, their preferred channels, and their primary interests, the next step is to develop content tailored specifically for each platform. Rather than simply repurposing the same material across platforms, newsrooms should embrace creative freedom while staying within brand guidelines.  

The Washington Post has successfully engaged younger audiences on TikTok, amassing over 1.5 million followers and 66.9 million likes by creating humorous, news-related content that resonates with Millennial and Gen Z users. They use memes and funny videos about current affairs to make news more accessible and entertaining.  

Similarly, NPR has tailored its content for the podcast format, producing shows like "Planet Money," which breaks down complex economic topics in an engaging and accessible manner, and "Up First," which provides daily news briefings.  

These examples demonstrate how news outlets are creatively adapting their content to suit the unique characteristics and audience preferences of different platforms.  

3. Centralize Your Editorial Planning Process 

Now that you have gathered all of your audience data, how can you plan and organize to ensure that all the needs are met, across all audiences, and all platforms? The answer is a centralized editorial planning tool.  

Using specialized planning tools enables teams to stay coordinated, keeping production schedules aligned and ensuring content is delivered on time and tailored to specific audience segments.  

Building on the centralized editorial planning process, editorial calendars created specifically for newsrooms, offers powerful features to help newsrooms tailor content to specific audience segments and user needs. Here's how it works: 

Audience Segmentation: Many editorial calendar tools allow teams to categorize content based on target audience segments. This feature helps ensure a balanced content mix that caters to different reader profiles across various platforms. 

User Needs Tagging: Content can be tagged with specific user needs (e.g., "inform," "inspire," "entertain") or your newsroom’s own terms within the editorial calendar. This allows newsrooms to track and maintain a diverse range of content that addresses different audience motivations. 

Platform-Specific Planning: Editorial calendars often include features for planning content across different platforms (e.g., web, social media, print). This helps teams tailor content format and style to suit each platform's unique audience expectations and consumption habits. 

Topic and Theme Planning: Editorial calendars often include features for organizing content by topics or themes, helping ensure comprehensive coverage of subjects that interest different audience segments. 

Performance Analysis Integration: Some advanced editorial calendars integrate with analytics tools, allowing teams to track content performance by audience segment and platform. This data can inform future content planning to better meet audience needs. 

Are you interested in seeing how this looks in practice? Check out our blog post “Tips for Newsroom Workflows: Integrating User Needs & Metadata” 

By centralizing these aspects of audience-centric planning, editorial calendars enable newsrooms to create a more strategic, data-informed approach to content creation and distribution across multiple platforms.  

By moving beyond simple content distribution and truly grasping consumer interests, your newsroom can deliver content that is engaging, relevant, and impactful. The experiences of Metro.co.uk and The Conversation underline the significance of a user needs approach, showing how it can drive higher engagement and more meaningful interactions with your audience. 

Ultimately, a data-informed and audience-centric approach, coupled with the right tools and strategies, can help you navigate the complexities of multi-platform content planning. This ensures that you not only meet your audiences where they are but also provide them with the content they crave, fostering a loyal and engaged readership across all platforms.