The Art of Audience Engagement:

How journalists and media organizations are finding new audiences, hope on social media

Sydney Brodie

Kelsey Jordan

Zee Krstic

Prepared for:

Dr. Ronald Rodgers

JOU4008, Spring 2017

University of Florida

Introduction

        How often does a journalist ever think about the audience they are writing or producing content for? Many popular journalism models often do not include audiences or the intended recipient of information until after pre-production. Figuratively, traditional journalism is not too different from someone throwing a piece of deli meat at a concrete wall and hoping it sticks. In this information-sharing model that the media industry has built over decades of practice, it’s comfortable to fling content out into the universe and hope that someone picks it up, and changing that standard way of communicating with an audience is hard. But is there a way to address audiences in a particular way to make sure the information sticks?

That’s where the topic of audience engagement comes in. Audience engagement is a joint editorial and marketing process that is an organic way to meet a goal – aiming to influence potential and current customers to take action or engage with the media organization in a two-way conversation. This is revolutionizing the way that news organizations are reporting stories and how their audiences receive news and interact with the press. Goals can vary, but many organizations are utilizing audience engagement tactics to boost conversion rates: this could look like page views, link clicks, video views or giving up contact info like an email. Successful audience engagement tactics will lead those consumers in an organization's prospective reach to return to the organization frequently and build trust overall. The main aspects of the engagement topic when it comes to tactics can fall under three separately distinct categories. The first, outreach engagement, relies on identifying audiences who are susceptible to content and finding ways to support that audience in production of materials. The second, conversation engagement, relies in providing audiences with participation in discourse that doesn’t always begin with in-house efforts. The third is collaboration engagement and encourages solicitation of input and values user contributions. These categories interwoven together can enable media organizations to bring content interaction to new levels. But this movement doesn’t solely exist in the social media space. Media organizations, especially publications with traditional print products, are focusing on bringing audiences away from storied platforms into the digital age. There are media organizations bringing audiences away from their traditional platform, whether it be a newspaper, magazine, or even radio programming, into their digital landscape through methods that provide them exclusive data analytics and information. This kind of technology includes QR codes, unique redirect links, and printable detachables.

Modes of Engagement

Regardless of the state of journalism and declining profits throughout the communications industry, media organizations are diverting major efforts to organize organic interaction between professionals and consumers on many different platforms. Panagiotopoulos (2012) describes audience engagement as a standard exchange that “further denotes a cultural phenomenon evolving around mass collaboration, user participation and social interaction.” This cultural phenomenon that he refers to is taking place on social media platforms first and foremost before any notion of other products or mediums. While many organizations have peripheral technologies that are used to engage audiences outside normative platforms, the majority of media engagement teams are turning to what Panagiotopoulos (2012) calls the big five: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and live services such as Periscope. Across all platforms of social engagement, organizations are aiming for an “active audience” — an opportunity for “spontaneous content generation” says Panagiotopoulos (2012). And the active audience that media organizations are seeking aren’t found offline because “Internet users are much more likely to trust spaces, people and information online than non-users.” It’s important to note that many professionals believe that engagement is an entity of it’s own when it comes to journalistic ethics. “Restrictions on social media content will impose restrictions on using social media tools to their fullest potential…being up-front about their opinions will make journalists more believable, not less” (Messner, Linke & Eford 2011).

        More often than not, many journalists and organizations start the process of engaging their audiences, at both an individual level and an organizational level, on Twitter. For the individual, on a daily basis, Littau and Jahng (2016) says this looks like “sharing links to their own stories, links to their news organizations’ stories, and retweeting elite sources and newsmakers.” More importantly is the ability to “reply to others’ posts, create conversation by replying to questions or comments from followers, or share other users’ updates with their own followers” via retweeting content (Littau & Jahng, 2016). In an international market for global media brands, it also could mean that professionals have “more willingness to amplify non-elite source voices” and can interact with their audience in their retrospective Parts of the field, such as political reporting, have seen cases of reporters blurring the line between reporting and analysis (Coddington, Molyneux, & Lawrence, 2014). Another key element of engagement that stands out clearly on the Twitter platform, against all other comparable platforms, is the idea of monitoring. Tandoc Jr. (2015) says that monitoring content on Twitter has a multitude of benefits, including the opportunity to scoop breaking news and see the content that competition is posting regularly. But most importantly, Twitter serves as a direct link to the consumer who is looking for customer service on the organization’s product. “Web editors also read tweets outside their own Twitter accounts, searching for their organization's name on Twitter…[it’s] become easy channels for readers to complain: passwords not working, paper not delivered, among other things. Thus, at the second newsroom, the social media manager would sometimes also put on the hat of a customer service manager” (Tandoc Jr., 2015).

        What audience engagement on this primary platform doesn’t consist of, however, is automation. Time restraints and dwindling manpower in newsrooms as well as media brands can translate to something that looks like an RSS feed without any sort of communication between the audience and the account holder. Messner, Linke and Eford (2011) stresses that Twitter could be used as a “community organizing tool for the newsroom itself,” with social bookmarking tools enabling audiences to share and engage with content that is then directly launched on other platforms for further dissemination. “That’s where the conversation begins, and we’re describing this new journalistic environment as ‘ambient journalism.’ However, journalists must move beyond automated feeds to engage in or monitor this conversation” (Messner, Linke & Eford, 2011).

        When it comes to the behemoth of Facebook, many academics and professionals believe media organizations have found the most growth in organic engagement over the last couple of years. Primarily, Facebook has been used to drive traffic from off-platform conversations to on-platform content (on websites) via the well-produced Facebook page, encouraging users to join their fan community. Facebook reactions, defined as the standard “like” or interactive sharing of content, as well as the ever-important comment section is at the heart of engagement tactics on the Facebook platform. A prime example of comment moderating is how journalists can use this engagement tactic to build brand loyalty as well as create new content off-platform to be shared on-platform (like a website or even a printed product) afterwards. Tandoc Jr. (2015) shared a perfect instance of this tactic: “For example, when a popular bridge was closed for renovation, [an editor] tweeted: ‘How was your morning commute? Were you affected by the [bridge] closure? Share your stories, photos with #[hashtag].’ She later put together a post that included tweets and photos shared by social media users who used the hashtag she had started.”

        And it doesn’t end on the Facebook fan page — Messner, Linke and Eford (2011) discuss how CNN has taken additional steps with Facebook Connect. “Users register on the CNN website, giving CNN access to their Facebook profiles, posted materials and circle of online friends. Users can import their profile, privacy settings and friends into the CNN forum and in return are able export their favorite stories, videos and blogs from the CNN website onto their Facebook profile. This exposure resulted in an large increase of web traffic from CNN’s Facebook community” (Messner, Linke & Eford, 2011). In addition, every large media organization with any presence on social media is committed to video producing, especially when it comes to live content. Engagement tactics in promoting live video content is slowly becoming a priority for every professional and it’s currently the focus of engagement teams everywhere, beyond a singular brand page or Twitter account.

Sweeping Analytics

        Given the myriad of engagement tactics that professionals employ on a daily basis, including those discussed above, media organizations are actively evaluating their efforts to build online audiences with certain tools. Messner, Linke and Eford (2011) says The New York Times prioritizes its social media marketing as one of the most important strategies for sharing news online and as a “brand enhancer,” but even they have to turn to certain tools to understand if they’re achieving that goal. Social media marketing expert Jennifer Brandel (2016) says there are a set of questions professionals should be asking themselves and strive to know to answer about in regards to their audience. It starts with what an audience is searching for, including external searches (via third-party applications such as Google) as well as internally (the content they are searching for on-platform).  How long does an audience spend on the organization’s site or viewing their content — do they watch an entire news video or leave at a certain point? What are the demographics of the consumers of your media? Is there a palatable divide between those consumers who arrive at an organization’s doorstep from mobile or the more traditional desktop?

        Tools used to tackle these issues range on an individual basis, but more often than not enter the discussion of analytics. Berkhead (2016) names the most powerful and prominent tool in a professional’s engagement measurement toolbox: Google Analytics. While social media sites do have native, built-in analytics software, Google Analytics can track more about on-platform assets (like news stories or non-social videos) and goes hand-in-hand with many other analytical tools as well.

        Cherubini and Nielsen (2016) polled more than 50 international media organizations for their Reuters Institute Digital News Project and identified top analytical tools used to measure engagement. Media CEOs, leading digital editors and top news officials indicated that the most used tools are Chartbeat, NewsWhip, and Parse.ly, all designed to track analytical information regarding online metrics for both social shares as well as on-platform traffic (Cherubini & Nielsen, 2016). But it’s important to note that more than 45 percent of editors and media leaders  “indicated they use a home-grown system, mostly in addition to other tools” (Cherubini & Nielsen, 2016).

        Other important players in analytic measuring in newsrooms also include tools that are used beyond the communications industry, like Adobe’s Omniture or ComScore DAX. Alongside social media native applications like Facebook Insight and Twitter Analytics, newsrooms can get to know their audiences very well and see numerical patterns based on initiatives taken. Cherubini and Nielsen (2016) emphasize that patterns and successful tactics are transparent in an application like ChartBeat, where numbers can influence editors to “modify the structure of the page in realtime, leveraging the learning from the real-time reactions of readers by optimising the user experience.”

        While analytical tools like ChartBeat are becoming a mainstay in any digital newsroom or media brand’s office, Berkhead (2016) says that many successful engagement tactics can be measured naturally by acting as a consumer does. “A reverse Twitter or Facebook search can be an effective way to find people engaging with your news content,” Berkhead (2016) advises, including searching the weblink for content natively in Twitter and seeing conversation about the work firsthand. Searching organically can lead to further engagement with the audience interested in that specific story or media property and can lead to other relevant pieces.

Effective Platforms

        With new technology becoming frequently more available to those professionals in the communication industry, engagement editors find themselves trying to prioritize which platform they should be directing their efforts to. Initially, when social media became a consumption mainstay for audiences in 2010, it seemed that Twitter was the sole area of development for news organizations to meet their audiences online. Across the news industry, all different types of teams easily adopted Twitter before any other method of disseminating content and resources socially (Messner, Linke & Eford, 2011). By the year 2009, 90.9 percent of national and established regional newspapers had adopted Twitter while 90 percent of national syndicated and highly viewed regional television stations also set up a Twitter profile (Messner, Linke & Eford, 2011). But by 2010, the entire newspaper industry had risen to 100 percent Twitter participation and telecommunication properties had also followed suit with a 99 percent participation rate (Messner, Linke & Eford, 2011).  

        That doesn’t mean that all properties are equally as active on the platform, however. At first, newspapers had expended more effort with more than 65 percent of all Twitter posts, while television stations only made up 34 percent of all Twitter posts between the two mediums (Messner, Linke & Eford, 2011). Messner, Linke and Eford (2011) said this trend reversed in 2010, when newspapers “accounted for 29.7% and television stations for 70.3%” of all posts. Furthermore, while newspapers had posted an average 11.5 times each day, they only did 3.3 times in 2010 (Messner, Linke & Eford, 2011). Television stations increased their average postings from 5.9 times to 7.9 times in 2010, alternatively. This early trend shows that traditional news properties found that engagement is more than sharing hyperlinks or flinging out content on the web and hoping that it sticks with audiences. It also could indicate that media organizations knew, early on, that Twitter wasn’t the only space they should be having a two-way discussion with their audience.

        Engagement tactics that build trust will in turn boost content naturally without paying for campaigns on a platform like Twitter, and tweets are seen even by non-followers for the individual property. Littau and Jahng (2016) point out that Twitter is unique in it’s ability for all journalists underneath a single organizational umbrella “is able to reply to individual messages…[suggesting] that those credibility judgments matter even more, because people seeing news from an unknown journalist source have to make quick judgments about the message and source credibility. Interactivity and social presence are both part of this process.”

        That being said, experts are pointing to Twitter as the perfect platform for news dissemination — not as the only source for engaging consumers. More than one-fourth of news organizations don’t Tweet on a daily basis according to Messner, Linke and Eford (2011), meaning “traditional news media are not using Twitter as a community-building tool, nor are they engaging with their audiences on a frequent basis on their main twitter accounts.” This trend is still relevant at the regional and non-conglomerate media properties today, where Twitter isn’t used regularly by all news organizations that have an account.

        And the same can be said for many other forms of social media. Research points to the fact that every media organization knows their publication and brand best, and have proven their unique methods to be working for them — or they risk the chance of disconnecting from their audience. There isn’t an answer for engagement professionals looking for the perfect platform to get started on. The only information they can use is trial-and-error, as well as general demographics for the users on each platform: Brandel (2016) says platforms like Pinterest are female-drive, while 74% of Snapchat users are under 34 years old.  

Methods of Measurement

Engagement rate is designed to measure what share of a social medias’ audience is engaged with their content. Social media sites use many techniques to measure how engaged their audiences on their sites are. Engaging people with brand content is the number one priority for social media marketers on Facebook. Facebook is a network built for engagement, and their recent feature additions show that, that is still their focus. The ability to reply to other people’s posts, click on hashtags and search the web were specifically designed to keep users on their site to discover new content, and engage with it. The engagement with Facebook’s posts reflects their ability to capture users’ attention and create a connection, but it also determines how many people see their posts. There are three components that contribute to positive engagement with Facebook posts: Likes, comments and shares. Likes are an indicator of how well their content resonates with people. Comments provide insights into how people feel about their content, products or brand overall. Shares measure how much their content is amplified by those who see it. The more people who are commenting or sharing a post, the more Facebook knows how interested people are in it. They can then use that knowledge to create more similar content. Knowing what share of their audience actually engages with content can indicate the quality of their audience as they grow fans over time.

Snapchat is another social media site that actively engages in measuring their audience. Snapchat is a lot less intrusive than other social media networks. Snapchat users choose to view what snaps they want to look at. Snapchat doesn’t have as great of analytics as Facebook does when it comes to measuring audience engagement. Snapchat measures their audience engagement by views, screenshots and unique codes. For every Snapchat story someone posts they receive a view count from every person who opens their story. This gives people a sense of how many people are checking their posts out. When someone screenshots someone else’s posts it means they saved their photo or whatever was posted onto their Snapchat story. Though they may not know why someone took a screenshot, it is just another method of measurement. For example, brands and individuals post four different products and encourage users to screenshot their favorites and it send to their friends. Snapchat also has a Discover page that includes articles from the Daily Mail, Refinery 29, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, Food Network, CNN and more. These companies are able to see when their stories are viewed, how long they are being viewed for, if people send it to their friends or screenshot it. This helps the companies see not only how popular they are but what kinds of stories are being fully read and shared the most by their users. Snapchat has been utilizing unique codes as more and more celebrities have been joining the social media app. Celebrities post unique codes for eyelash companies and teeth whiteners. By creating specific code for Snapchat companies are able to see how many people purchased something as a result of viewing their post.

“Social media engagement is an effective and popular method of strengthening interaction and affinity between a brand and its consumer,” Sociallybold.com said. Prolonged social media engagement will help build brand loyalty and may ultimately result in customers championing the product or service.”

Organic Conversions

Today there are so many ways for news organizations and their staff to reach out to their customers. There’s email, social media, mobile, meetings and focus groups. A great way for news organizations to reach out to their customers is by survey. Surveys allow organizations to identify user needs directly, according to Rueben Yonatan, CEO analysts and editor-in-chief- of GetVoIP.

“Surveys are also a good tool to bring in prospective customers who are on the fence about a product/service—i.e. surveys can be used as a platform for prospective customers to voice their wants and need.” Yonatan said.

According to Ian Aronovich, the cofounder and president of GovernmentAuctions.org, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are the best ways to connect with customers.

“With social media, you can reach out to your customers at any moment rather than wait for customer to send you emails or phone calls with feedback,” Aronovich said.

Facebook and Twitter pages should be used to engage followers and keep a conversation going. Social media can also be used as a form of customer service, where company representatives can answer questions and concerns customers have directly.

Instagram is another social media site that helps people stay connected and engaged with their customers. Instagram allows people to post pictures, post contests and giveaways regularly. Contests and giveaways usually entail an Instagram user to repost a photo from a specific user or use the same hashtag to enter. When the user tags the other person in their photo they are then able to interact with their fans and see how many people are interested in what they are posting.

Today, social media is at an all-time advantage when it comes to millennials and the advancement of technology that allows people to have everything at their fingertips.

Incorporating Audiences Pre- Production

Traditionally, the process of publication required a journalist to research the appropriate sources, and then piece together an article that is idealistically representative of a set of point of views. But today, journalists are preparing their stories in a much different manner. The capabilities of social media have expanded the resourcefulness for news gathering resources. Journalists are able to incorporate audiences into the research and writing process, and then once the story is published, follow up with readers to engage with how the content is received (Mayer, 2011).         

        This expanded process leaves the journalist with new opportunities to find more stories through the engagement of readers, who possess a variety of diverse opinions. Social media engagement expert Joy Mayer presented in her article “Three kinds of engagement: outreach, conversation, collaboration,” which indicates that a journalist’s job doesn’t end when the article gets published. Mayer has indicated that the lifetime of a story has evolved, leaving room for potential and competitive edge among news organizations looking to sharpen their content and listen to what the audience can tell you (Mayer, 2011). One of Mayer’s biggest tools she has shared with companies and educators in the field is the map below, which illustrates this process.

Prior to publication, journalists should move on from the reporting phase and look to include “users” into the process of pre-publication, according to this chart (Reuters, 2016). The journalist should also look for ways to reach out to audiences, stimulate conversations and spark collaborations with the community in unique ways via social media. Mayer explained that the writer can invite readers into the pre-publication process by “identifying information needs,” or “hosting discussions” through social media to create a dialogue with readers. This leads to collaboration efforts, which utilize reader contributions from those conversations (Mayer, 2011).

Engaging with Audiences Post-Publication Online

        After the product is disseminated, a journalist can follow up with readers through his or her personal social media or the news organization’s. The American Press Institute presented post-publication strategies in the article “How to engage your audiences in 5 key steps.” By showing respect and concern for readers’ comments, writers can accurately grasp what the community has to say, instead of assuming a story is received well just by pure metrics. By listening to readers, journalists can respond and encourage more engagement in their content (Guzman, 2016). Social media presents plenty of chances for journalists to find out what readers are saying about the content, or opportunities to start discussions that generate new story ideas, rewarding feedback and an overall healthy relationship with the consumer.

Offline Engagement for Print Publications

        While engagement tactics are vastly employed online by journalists looking to connect at more than face value with their audiences, the possibility of moving engagement efforts to the more traditional channels of communication is currently being explored by many of those in the industry. Many professionals and industry experts might say that trying to engage an audience in the traditional offline space, particularly in print products, is a waste of time given the ever-growing trend of investing resources and capital in digital media. Yet, there’s research and expertise suggesting that all is not lost on the front of printed news and content, and some media brands might be rewarded with enriching brand loyalty from audiences who primarily seek out their print products.

        In the United Kingdom, a media market bearing strikingly similar trends and growth to the United States’ media outlets, Neil Thurman (2017) has discovered that many consumers still worship and turn to news brands’ published print products more than digital or nontraditional properties. Surveying more than 11 of the UK’s top newspapers and news organizations, Thurman (2017) found that 89 percent of the brands content is still consumed first on print mediums, even in the face of the rising popularity in the method of mobile publishing, where only seven percent of consumers are spending time consuming content there first — desktop browsing is even worse, with a mere four percent of consumers turning to this method. The news team at The Daily Mail were surprised to find that Thurman (2017) reported that they dominated the news landscape in the UK with 30 percent of all time spent by consumers reading news materials on their own products, nearly three times that of the Guardian. And while the Guardian is performing the best online with the most amount of time being spent on their content, the Daily Mail is also easily outstripping other competitors in the group of 11, such as the Daily Express or the Daily Star (Thurman, 2017). It’s abundantly clear in the British market that consumers aren’t abandoning their preferences for the printed product and for those interested in building as many connections to their audiences as possible, it seems that engagement tactics could serve media organizations well in this space.

        Not to mention that in the long run, printed products always have a longer shelf life that online content, which is normally cycled out as fast as it was brought in for consumption. A survey, “Quality of Reading,” conducted by the Professional Photographers of America association found that a single copy of a magazine is picked up by a reader an average of five to six times, ranging from a single glance at an inside page to those who read the issue cover to cover (Blakeslee, 2012). Advertisers can’t say no to those kind of numbers, especially when journals, trade publications and print newspapers are outstripping television engagement — advertisements only last as long as they are broadcasted, whereas print advertisements can be accessed anytime at the consumer’s convenience (Blakeslee, 2012). Not only will news teams and media organizations always have a fraction of revenue from advertisers in this market, regardless of dwindling value from it was once worth, but branded content can be a source of audience engagement in print products. An example of a well-performing solution has been publishers directly including “QR codes in their content, which can be scanned with a smartphone and direct readers to a custom webpage or mobile application” (Blakeslee, 2012). This strategy can apply to many different aspects of printed products today, and is one of the most obvious of applications to be employed by publishers in the print space to encourage engagement with their audiences.

        Even those in non-news print production can’t deny that the printed product still has a lot of capacity to encourage a deeper, engaged relationship between the media and consumer. Botelho (2011) reports that digital-only consumers just make up only 166 million of the total 1.6 billion magazine impressions in the United States, with the print-only audience still having the largest amount of exposures at more than 1.2 billion. One could think that connecting with audiences in the print space would be near to impossible, especially given the great digital tools that publishers have at their fingertips, but identifying demographics and signifiers in the print space isn’t impossible. As it stands, the audience for printed magazines, as an example, is around 63 percent male, with 42 percent of digital readers holding at least a bachelor’s degree (Botelho, 2011). Another clear identifier for those audiences who spend more time with print products is age, with 80 percent of baby boomers (ages 47-64) consuming printed news and materials over digital properties (Botelho, 2011). Millennials aged 17-34 years, on the other hand, represent 54 percent of the digital readership, which is crucial information for print publishers to work with (Botelho, 2011).

        With audiences still devoted to the print product, and the longevity of the print product greater than that of the digital product, there’s still modern day examples of publications and media brands being able to connect with audiences in print. Using the United Kingdom examples discussed earlier, Porter magazine, put forth by the Net-A-Porter group, made their  their traditional print circulation details available with a wider range of metrics to present a more rounded picture of real audience engagement (Schutz, 2016). Porter's subscribers are able to shop directly off the pages using the Net-A-Porter shopping app in real-time, which combines a print product with a classic engagement digital tool in real life — Porter can collect and report on real audience interaction with its print ads and content using scanning technology, an innovation likely to enjoy broader use by everyone in publishing (Schutz, 2016). As the media markets continue to diversify and provide more than one outlet to engage audiences, print publishers continue to think outside of the box in audience engagement metrics. That can look something like many media brands currently, where utilizing digital technology to graphically represent audience metrics is a trend. SohoCreate, a London-based magazine and street fair, used a variety of visual graphics to tell the story of its audience reach in a way that looks more like a media kit for the public (Schutz, 2016). The publisher used a number of graphic elements, including bar graphs, photographs, pie charts, and even word clouds to present the quality of its audience to buyers for advertisers, which is a reflection of its publication overall as well (Schutz, 2016).

        While there is a lot of promise for those publishers looking to succeed in engaging audiences in the print domain, it’s important to note that there’s no select few methods that work for publications across the board. Research points to some methods of engaging audiences, such as digital companions or QR codes for audiences to employ while consuming print products, but there isn’t a magical solution that is “one size fits all” for each and every media organization with a print product. Academia, research and professional opinion all point to amazing promise for those who wish to connect with audiences, which is reviewed below.

Bridging the Gap Between Print and Digital Audiences

Regardless of the industry’s tendency to label print products as a dying product with no future, there are ways in which publishers can produce their printed products in order to entice audiences to become engaged with the media brand and possibly continue their consumption of further content online. There isn’t a clear cut and defined method to creating a print product that will stand out as enticing and connecting with audiences in a modern market, research shows, but there are many strategies in which those media organizations who haven’t abandoned their print product can employ to reaffirm their commitment to connecting with readers. Old models of production in the print space aren’t key to offering a signature product given that consumers are able to access endless content online via a myriad of offerings, often including the media brand’s own online properties, so publishers need to adapt their product in order to succeed in the new market.

        Those who believe that printed products have no place in the modern market are seriously mistaken – Sonderman (2014) emphasizes that print products make up a big part of the communications that consumers see on a day to day basis, beyond a product that markets itself as a newspaper, magazine or any form of curated content on paper. Printed products still play critical roles at routine events like conferences, in presentations everyday, and for business meetings. There’s the endless marketing opportunities when it comes to printed materials, including mailers, flyers, and signs, as well as advertising in print publications, which still garner significant exposure to many target markets (Sonderman, 2014). Media organizations have a huge opportunity to brand the singular printed product in many different occasions, regardless of the function of the product itself, to draw readers into the media organization’s fold and onto online properties. As an example, top fashion industry news and business publication Women’s Wear Daily often covers New York Fashion Week for its print and online products — this year, the organization printed out physical schedules for all of the fashion shows for distribution to those in attendance at these events, and branded the material with ample invitation for consumers to circle back to either their magazine product or their online properties. Branding a printed product, besides their own magazine, could easily draw audiences into consumers and customers without too much extra effort.

        One method to ensuring print products are as engaging as possible and encouraging consumers to investigate other media properties is a no-brainer, but one that many seem to forget — to curate painstakingly relevant content that is evergreen for print. Editor Juliet Stott (2016) of Content Magazine  says that content in print has to be top caliber for the product to survive, and that means that if you can Google to answer or relevance of an article or piece in print, than the printed product is in trouble. Evergreen content, which is media that can survive the test of timeliness and always provide value to consumers upon first impression, should be every editor’s top priority in a space where consumers are looking for more than just answers and recaps of yesterday’s events (Stott, 2016). “We have to be the bridge that ties last week to next week. We have to provide a simple answer to ‘what’s in it for me?’ Any publication that cannot answer that question does not belong in print” (Stott, 2016, p. 12). Different from online properties, where audiences are constantly looking for instant gratification and endless updates, printed products are the place to house content that is timely, yes, but timeless and curated for the long-run. There’s endless information in communications that can make for compelling content in print, but editors must be curators to pick out the best of the best information available and to seamlessly edit it into the product in a consumer’s hands (Stott, 2016). Printed products are not the place to simply relay information says Stott (2016) — there needs to be a spin on it not available anywhere else.

        A newer method to bolstering engagement for media organizations in print to draw consumers further into their brand has to do with creating special packages or products away from long withstanding mainstays. Creating a separate product can be the solution that can make a difference in bringing your potential print audience into digital properties or renewed brand interest and loyalty. As an example, The Chicago Tribune chose to solve the problem of making their traditional news product more appealing to a wider array of audiences by actually forming a separate staff for a product called RedEye (Yang & Young, 2016). In 2007, RedEye was launched as a free weekday publication targeting local 18- to 35-year-old readers and had a vast difference in coverage from the Tribune’s usual gambit. The new product included some news coverage from the Tribune or wire services where applicable and useful, but the product is mostly curated by four general assignment reporters covering youth-oriented enterprise stories that the main Tribune product doesn’t cover (Yang & Young, 2016). “They take on beats like the local gay community, entry-level job markets, workplace cultural issues, local nightlife and dating” (Yang & Young, 2016, p.26). Because the Tribune took initiative to create a brand new product to serve a wider yet niche market in their Chicago market, with a conversational tone and pop-culture infused approach, then the main newspaper doesn’t have to try and be something that it is not by covering things that RedEye already covers. Creating a new product against a traditional product is a great way to create a new product to be more compelling in a brand and to draw readers into the brand, but there’s also those media brands who know which of their platforms is more signature and performs better than another, so they invest into the other one. Stott (2016) says that you can create a new product when you compliment a strong digital brand with great online properties, like when fashion retailer and content producer Net-a-Porter launched an expensive print magazine to counter balance its digital experience. They are not the only media brand to do this given that many organizations went online when the economy crashed and almost killed their catalogues (Stott, 2016). Curation in a printed product is a powerful way to redirect readers to an online presence, and Net-a-Porter is a modern example of media investing in a curated project like a magazine for consumers to further connect with as a brand booster. The same can be said vice-versa, meaning when traditional print media legitimize their product in the modern age by bolstering online properties and other products. Loving (2016) emphasizes that print publications need to re-brand themselves as not just publishers of the singular product, but commercial entities that offer various types of products. An example is Hearst’s Elle, where the “publication has combined its traditional print initiatives with new, digitally-oriented offerings” (Loving, 2016). This includes mobile platforms and an expansion to organically reach consumers with further printed content like travel guides, beauty products and distributing style awards (Loving, 2016). While the magazine's primary area of profitability will continue to be its print publication, it has clearly recognized the value of a comprehensive product line that combines multiple verticals.

Are there any organizations who are engaging with their audience for the sake of conversation or discourse beyond just earning clicks or boosting a monetary conversion rate?

        As Reuters Institute of Digital News Project indicated in the “Journalism, Media and Technology Predictions 2016,” report, news agencies are positioning more focus on  audience engagement than ever before. According to the report, this priority has been outlined by three results organizations wish to capture: “action, loyalty, monetization. (Carr, 2016). An additional survey released by Parse.ly showed that digital producers are interpreting audience engagement’s value through basic measurements such as views, shares and comments, which drive the basic monetary and brand growth needs. Some organizations, Parse.ly indicated, were more keen to value “personal replies that make [them] smile or think,” “a two-way relationship with people in our community,” “to interact in ay way with the content or the author,” or “when [the] audience responds with a question, especially” (Carr, 2016).

        These responses indicate that there is more to this extension of news production than collecting analytical responses. Authors have the privilege of creating a bond with their readers, building a trust and a new current of feedback and generating new ideas. As the concept of audience engagement continues to evolve, many people don’t have a solid position on what to define it as. Moreso, the impact of this practice widely varies as it is valued differently by companies who want more than just measuring readership and likes.

Changing Job Descriptions

        According to a survey by Reuters Institute, leaders of news organizations are searching to develop audience engagement by hiring journalists with a strategic knowledge of this rising trend (Reuters, 2016). News organizations have adapted to the industry’s lean toward more participatory journalism by pushing writers to go beyond their news beats and bring readers into the process of their jobs. By combining the job of a journalist to be a reporter and also a listener, the media continues to pursue the goal of unique content, generating more profitability and positive branding than ever before.

        Reuters reported that publishers wanted to increase levels of audience engagement according to the 2016 data. “We saw record of numbers of readers coming to us in 2015,” said Julia Beizer, Director of Product Washington Post, in response to the survey. “In 2016, our biggest opportunity is to turn that interest into a more deeply engaged audience” (Reuters, 2016). News editors are looking to expand the journalist’s traditional role on social media, pushing them to be more active with readers outside of the usual interviewing and research-gathering tasks. Writers are now being encouraged to communicate with readers, finding them in online communities and looking to fill information needs, or discover new stories and voices through social media’s ease of access to groups. This process makes a story’s life longer, making the process more in-depth and quality, which yields better engagement results.

        ProPublica has gone so far as creating an engagement team, which outlines the principles that journalists tapping into engagement strategies should be mindful of. According to its article “Doing Journalism Different: What’s Next for ProPublica’s Engagement Team?” the website has created standards for its writers include interaction with readers to help create distinctive content. The report showed how the description of a journalist is evolving to bring a writer closer to comfort with social media channels that are gateways to story development. Journalists are asked to discover new information, target crowdsourcing projects via social media channels and ultimately become more in touch with what readers are looking for. The organization said its goal is “to do revelatory, powerful journalism that exposes injustices and can spur change.” This requires the team to ask communities to share with them, while sharing experiences of reporting while they go along and even share the overall lessons they’ve learned from stories they report (ProPublica, 2017). The future role of a journalist will continue to evolve with social media, as it opens up new channels to perform more in-depth, stimulating storytelling.

What are the values behind audience engagement for different organizations?

As engagement continues to shift with the rise of an online medium, researchers are collecting clues to find out what way to apply these metrics. The University of Texas at Austin has a team researching the benefits of connecting with readers online. “The Engaging News Project” shows that readers are becoming more “civil” in their comments as their voices are being responded to by journalists who perform engagement strategies in the comments bar (Murtha, 2015). When a reader posts a comment on a journalist’s article, the reaction of that writer in the comments bar is an example of engagement. That response can help answer questions or open up to discussions with readers instead of disagreeing or ignoring what the negative responses may be. In the Columbia Journalism Review article “How audience engagement editors are guiding online discussion,” by Jack Murtha, the writer explained that positive discussions with readers “can lead to good journalism (Murtha, 2015).

This positivity can create a persona for a brand that goes beyond what the content of their articles represent. Regardless of the nature of their writing, news organizations can delve into communities that will receive their brand’s more intently with the ability to have a conversation with writers that extends the lifetime of news, which can twirl into new dimensions of journalism. According to The Wall Street Journal editor Carla Zanoni, “Commenting is true democracy of thought and a huge change in the way that we do journalism” (Murtha, 2015). For the Journal, the new role of a journalist goes beyond reporting and publishing stories, speaking with communities after the project is finished is a key role in navigating the new online media’s abilities to capture audiences and draw in more substance for their content (Murtha, 2015).

Murtha explained that the comments can guide journalists to new important details about stories, or add more viewpoints to the discussion than from just the people the reporter spoke to. Social media is becoming a key component to the way that journalists are targeting their engagement goals. According to The Daily Dot director of audience engagement, “We’re living in the Facebook world, where the engagement on a Facebook post is probably going to be more meaningful for our reach and our traffic and our communities” (Murtha, 2015). Taking a tally of likes and views is great for monetary advance, but newsrooms that are diving further into audience engagement realize the potential to capture the attention of readers and spark conversations to create additional reach. A hot comments section full of conversations or insights can increase the traffic to an article, raising its value in the marketplace of measured analytics, which affects the advertising revenue. This can bring in more readers and  demonstrate the free publicity efforts of sharing on social media (Murtha, 2015).

The future of audience engagement is willing to go beyond the needs of advertising dollars that most newsrooms strive for. We are beginning to see a trend of newsrooms that want to engage in social media or comment bar feedback as a way to add strength to an article’s value. This is a tool that can distinguish organizations that are wisely tapping into the benefits of the open platform of audience engagement. Rather than turning away or muting feedback, it has become clear that the way a journalist responds can add to the value of a story and make the content richer (Murtha, 2015).

 Conclusion

Social media has become one of modern journalism's most valued tools, encouraging writers to go beyond the format of their traditional job description and tap into a market of limitless potential. Channels such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram host a variety of opportunities for readers to participate in the reporting and for reporters to multiply their resources and feedback into more distinctive stories. Industry leaders continue to market audience engagement as a way for publications to go beyond the newsroom to produce sharper, more innovative content while building a stronger brand. When it comes to engagement tactics, there’s no simple answer for the journalism industry to easily adopt. It’s proven to be a mixture of many different modes of connecting with one’s audience, but it all starts with the inherent mainstay of newsrooms and brands everywhere — social media and powerful analytics. The best way for people to reach consumers is where they spend most of their time. Social media engagement is one of the most effective ways of developing interaction and closeness between a brand and its customer. As the digital age continues to diversify the industry, media organizations will need to successfully latch onto audience engagement tools to multiply the potential of their content.  

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