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‘Habit Is More Important Than Intensity; Study Offers Keys to Reader Retention

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“Habit is more important than intensity,” said Arvid Tchivzhel, managing director of digital services at Mather Economics. “I’d rather have someone read one article a day and come back than someone who reads six articles at a time and doesn’t come back for months.” A recent study offers ways to help your readers say, “I’ll be back.”

Last year, Tara Lajumoke, managing director of FT Strategies, said that “if 2020 was ‘the year of subscriptions,’ 2021 [was] ‘the year of the light readers.’ It’s therefore worth investing in big drivers of engagement for loyal and casual readers—on the homepage, via newsletters and recommendation engines—and developing non-news propositions, so that those who come for the headlines will stay for the podcasts, or the crosswords.”

An article earlier this year on Medill’s site reported that “regularity is more important than intensity” when it comes to subscriber/reader retention. Analysis of millions of page views by digital subscribers of a business weekly for 6 months in 2021 showed that “having readers who read more often is 10 times more important than having them read more articles.”

“This research is significant because it shows the key to success in keeping readers is building habit, whether you’re a general interest metro daily or a weekly business publication with a more upscale audience,” said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and John M. Mutz chair in local news at Medill. “The formula is the same. Do things that regularly lead readers back to you.”

This may not be breaking news, but it’s still vital to note. Here are more strategies, based on the findings:

Focus on your loyal readers. Medill advises downplaying breaking news for “a balance of content that attracts your most loyal readers, the ones who will subscribe… Put the big photo and headline on the content that serves most of your readers.” Add a newsletter to address the specific, high-traffic niches, they urge. They also recommend using “teaser” links to related content at the bottom of stories and, even for this political publication, links should also go to “real estate or healthcare news because of the synergies between those readership areas.”

Initiate a comprehensive “onboarding” process for new subscribers. It should include a set of messages highlighting exclusive content and website navigation, said Michael Silberman, senior vice president of strategy at media consultancy Piano. He also recommends emailing daily round-up newsletters to subscribers and making sure that the content that drives frequency is highlighted. “Putting all those pieces together is really important,” he said.

Experiment with additional content areas. “The analysis found that articles about restaurants and dining ranked in the top four areas of page views by prospective readers, those who visit the website but aren’t yet subscribing.” Tchivzhel said that makes sense because it’s an affluent audience. Experiment with additional content areas—there’s nothing to lose. “We’re really trying to use the data to see how far we can expand our audience outside of traditional business,” the publisher said. “We see some potential opportunities if we put more resources behind those areas.”

Learn what topics drive your most regular readers. Stories about commercial and residential real estate resonated most for this business weekly. Second place went to a long-time political columnist. They were surprised that healthcare stories came in third, said the publication’s publisher, calling it a “something of a revelation. We know this is a big healthcare market, but we didn’t have a lot of data around how many subscribers are there because of that.”

Build up and market your popular writers/columnists. That columnist is “worth his or her weight in gold,” said Medill Spiegel Research Center research director Edward Malthouse, and brought in many subscribers they termed “political junkies.” Not surprisingly, they hired a second politics writer. The finding “affirmed some of our hunches and gave us more confidence about doubling down in those areas,” the publisher said. “This will help us refine some of our audience strategies around [converting] more casual readers.”

Find a habit your readers can latch onto. In what they called Project Habit, The Wall Street Journal also found habits to be crucial to reader retention, especially during the first 100 days after a reader had signed up. They found that “playing a puzzle had a more dramatic impact on reader retention than other actions the team had been promoting.” You start to understand why Wordle was worth so much to the New York Times. (Though I haven’t heard much about it lately.)

 

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‘Attacking the Creator Content From a B2B Standpoint’; Workweek Has the Write Stuff

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When Workweek began almost a year ago, co-founder Becca Sherman, a BIMS 2023 keynote speaker, said that “influential business content is no longer limited to Wall Street Journal articles or Gartner white papers, but also comes in the form of tweets, product reviews, YouTube clips, newsletters, and more… Workweek is designed to grant more opportunities…” Since then, they’ve been practicing what she preached.

Almost 4 years ago exactly, Hamish McKenzie, one of the three co-founders of Substack, told me this: “We strongly believe that in 5 years there will be a very obvious critical mass of people who will pay for content from writers who they trust. And it will be a mainstream, accepted part of the ecosystem. In the meantime, we have this induction period where people are figuring it out. This can work. People are learning how good an experience it is to be subscribed to an independent writer you love. We’re really focused on building that relationship—to get people interested in that model. We’ll keep looking for allies.”

Fast forward to today, and newsletters have become a huge part of the media ecosystem, thanks in part to Substack. And now other startups are taking that model and running some new steps with it. One of those is Workweek, a media company built around a roster of 21 newsletter writers. Workweek wants to grow name recognition for its talent, not itself.

“My goal over time is not for Workweek, the brand, to be front and center for the audiences of these creators,” Sherman, Workweek founder and CEO, said in an article on Insider last week. Instead, she hopes the company can grow individual media brands that succeed on their own, like Architectural Digest does under Condé Nast.

Sherman will be a keynote speaker at our BIMS event in Orlando, Feb. 23-24, speaking at a session titled, Here’s a Content-Centric Digital Native Who Wants to Remake B2B. Reading the Insider article and a couple other sources, some ideas stood out that I’m sure she will expound upon in February:

Establish a range of niches. Like Substack, which has 27 niches listed on their site, Workweek’s roster of writers, podcasters and social-media creators cover everything from fintech and healthcare to work talk, cannabis and climate tech.

Offer services to support the content creators. Workweek creates and run ads to help the newsletters grow subscribers. “In-house ghostwriters and meme-makers” take to social media to build engagement. An ad sales team works to bring in revenue for their newsletters and podcasts. The Insider article began with a story about a website the Workweek team created called Sunday Side Chicks to help one of their newsletters that was promoting a Sunday alternative food truck to Chick-fil-A.

Push the writers, “low-key” the company. This may be the new newsletter strategy. Workweek creators may not even mention their relationship to the company even though they’re considered full-time employees. Similarly, according to Insider, Semafor, the new news brand started by former Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and NYT vet Ben Smith, designs its reporters’ bylines to look like headlines to bring them more attention. Here’s an example.

Being B2B may be their secret sauce. Workweek says it has 350,000 subscribers across its newsletters. A year ago, Substack said they had more than half a million. (When I interviewed McKenzie, they had about 11,000.) “No one’s really attacked the creator economy from a business-to-business standpoint,” said Rich Greenfield, general partner of LightShed Ventures, which has led their $7.5 million funding. “How do you best monetize thought leadership if you’re a creator focused on the business marketplace for whatever industry you’re in? And how do you scale that business? It’s really hard to do well on your own.”

Diversify revenue. Workweek is also getting into events, merchandise, and pay-to-download publications. According to Insider, they project that less than half of their October revenue will come from advertising. They also announced at the beginning of the year they’re launching a $10 million venture fund to invest in businesses brought in by the newsletter writers. Smartly, they’re also operating a job search and recruiting business that goes to those writers’ email lists.

Give back to the talent. Writers also get some cut of earnings generated from their work—from sponsorship revenue, events or merchandise sales. (The chicken website tee-shirts sold well apparently.) “Every dollar that we drive from a creator’s brand is shared back with a creator,” Sherman said. “Too often, executives and operators take home a lot off of the back of the people who are creating a ton of value. We try to really flip that model here.”

By February at BIMS, Sherman will be able to tell us much, much more about their progress, strategies and outcomes.

 

 

‘It Can Really Make Information Come Alive’; Neal Award Winners Talk Power of Data Journalism

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Data has become a focus of many B2B media organizations and will be one of the many focuses for BIMS 2023, Feb. 23-24, in Orlando. “The stuff that is going to really set your journalism apart is learning how to [use data] on a day-to-day basis in your stories and getting story ideas,” Winsight’s Jonathan Maze told us in a recent Editorial Training Session.

“It’s important to remember that data only supplements a report, it does not replace it,” said Maze, Winsight’s Restaurant Business editor in chief. “You have to still talk to people, you have to get the lay of the land, you have to make sure you’re sourcing right and that people can help you provide proper information.” (Winsight and Maze won the 2022 Neal Award for Best Editorial Use of Data for Restaurant Business’s Top 500.)

Maze cited instances where “running data past internal sources found that the data was completely off or there was something wrong and it saved me. So it’s still important to cover your beat very extensively when doing these pieces.”

Data Journalism 101 co-presenter Todd Dills, editor of Randall-Reilly’s Overdrive Magazine and a multi-Neal Award-winner himself, backed this up. “Data is no substitute for reporting, but it can really make information come alive.” He pointed to a download they put together that showed a key inspection trend for the trucking industry. “One of the things that I want to point out is that when you’re reporting, you get great examples that illustrate a trend you’re seeing in data, but you also get the opposite. And it’s the exception to the rule sometimes that’s even better.”

Here are more insights from that session:

Find story leads. “You can find story leads and ideas simply by looking at numbers,” Maze said. “It also really helps provide context, which is super important. You can’t have a good story without really good context.” He also said that if you do not know Excel really well, you should take training on it. And he emphasized the positives of persistence and that just gathering data over time can eventually yield some big stories.

Prioritize mobile when it comes to visualization. “Generally speaking you’ll have to prioritize mobile at this particular point,” Maze said. “Because that’s where we’re getting most of our page views. So it’s super important that whatever you do has to work for mobile. If it doesn’t, you have to figure out a way to make it work.” Added Dills: “I totally agree [but] it’s not easy. We’re all sitting in offices working on this talk, and they look really great and then you go, ‘oh wait a second.’ This is not going to look [like this] for our guys that are behind the wheels of trucks out on the road. Datawrapper does a pretty decent job of accounting for mobile.” Maze said Instagram also works well.

Drive feature stories. Maze showed us a story he did on Crumbl Cookies. “It’s one of the hottest restaurant chains in the country. We have access to data from Technomics, our data arm. I crunched some data and found out Crumbl grew by 463% over the past two years, and we hadn’t written anything on it. I also got some franchise disclosure document data which is really important if your industry has any franchises. I found out that the average local Crumbl unit makes $2 million, which just selling cookies is actually really good. And I used that [and a podcast interview with the CEO] as a foundation for a story on why it was successful.”

Call companies out. Executives may sometimes overemphasize their success, Maze said. He pointed to a story he did on Subway, which liked to take a victory lap for sales jumps at its restaurants. But by going over the data, he found that 25% of its restaurants averaged a 26% decline. “Sometimes data journalism is just simple mathematics,” he said. “We did another story more recently on a pizza buffet chain and found some data that said it actually is not doing nearly as well as its competitors. Again, [data] helps you call out when companies are not necessarily giving you the full story. It helps provide proper context, [and that] is super important.”

Make the extra effort. “You should prioritize making that extra effort [with data] and making it a part of your routine,” Dills said. “Persistence is key. We do small stories with data; we do bigger ones in different ways that evolve over time. And, to this day, they’re still evolving so it’s pretty nice.” He also pointed to examples of crowdsourcing and polls that they’re doing.

Put stories in context. For a story on jobs, Maze saw that private companies hit pre-pandemic levels, but restaurants didn’t. So he went and got access to bls.gov (the Bureau of Labor and Statistics) to look at the historical data. “You could go to the tables to find your industry and very, very quickly find out total job growth in that sector,” Maze said. “I was able to find that the restaurant spaces were actually [thousands of] jobs short of where it was before the pandemic. That’s a pretty important story—that could be done in a day and just a few clicks—and helps put job growth in the restaurant space in proper context.”

 

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‘Don’t Guess What Members Want’; Association Panel Addresses Content Management Strategies

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This article was written by special assignment writer Ruth E. Thaler-Carter

We’ve all heard the saying that “content is king (or queen),” but it isn’t enough to create content. Association publishers have to make the best use of their content, and that means knowing “What Not to Do: Setting Content Priorities,” as recently discussed in an Associations Council Lunch & Learn session in October.

Figuring out what not to do in creating and generating association content requires “setting priorities,” said moderator Elena Loveland (pictured), editor-in-chief, Directorship magazine, National Association of Corporate Directors. The panelists—Kelsey Casselbury, content director, School Nutrition Association; Margaret Mitchell, editor-in-chief, Civil Engineering magazine, American Society of Civil Engineers; and Hilary Marsh, chief strategist, Content Company, Inc.—agreed.

Content is everything in a publication and also encompasses every product, project, and offering, Marsh noted.

First and foremost, “don’t try to do it on your own,” Casselbury said of creating and sharing content. “It has to be association-wide. It has to start with leadership.”

SNA is undertaking a survey of where everyone is spending time, she noted, to see the return on investment of various projects and what isn’t working. “Revenue seems to be the most important thing to us, but it isn’t always important to our members.” That leads to her next tip: “Don’t always base content on revenue-generating.”

Casselbury recommended trying to prioritize interdepartmental activities and working with various centers from the beginning of a content campaign or effort to make dissemination more effective and efficient. “There can be resistance to change, especially if you’re trying to limit the number of e-blasts to members,” she warned. “Aim to have meaningful conversations. Explain the ‘why.’”

There’s another popular saying about when you assume. Casselbury’s take is, “Don’t assume you know what members want.” She suggested looking at analytics to figure that out: “Colleagues couldn’t argue with data.”

A related tip was, “Don’t guess what members want.” Find out by looking at what members are discussing and reacting to in social media, Casselbury suggested.

“Don’t waste old materials or keep them if there’s no way to use them,” she added, even if that means reusing non-electronic items in this electronic age. Her staff recently found a stash of promotional cards that could be brought back to life in members’ hands.

Casselbury wrapped up with a reminder of that association publishers are well-challenged: “Don’t give sponsors or advertisers control,” she said. “Never forget the division between church and state — for us, between editorial versus advertising.”

Maintaining control over content volume can be a challenge, especially in a large association. “You don’t have to talk to everyone,” Mitchell said. If a content strategy is to discontinue a publication or combine existing ones into a new one, though, “you do have to check on current commitments, such as library subscriptions.”

If cutting down on the number of publications is key to a content strategy, “don’t get rid of your print magazine,” Mitchell said. “If you do go all-digital, you might reduce the number of pages.

In making any changes—whether launching new digital publications, reducing or discarding print publications, or other approaches to content management—“don’t overlook the difference between writing for print vs. online,” Mitchell advised. “It’s a different mindset.”

Marsh outlined a number of tips, starting with not forgetting to think about what your audiences are looking for. “Make it easy for them to find what they need, and connect your publication content with every other department. Think about planning processes,” she said. “Don’t keep doing what members are least interested in.”

Here are more tips from the excellent panel:

Don’t plan in silos—keep everyone in the association informed about what is coming up that might be worth developing content about.

Don’t try to work without goals—“Look at why you’re providing information and how members will use that content.”

Don’t focus on page views as a goal.

Don’t push for new content without knowing what members want—look at what the association already has and remind people of that resource. “Curate past information as reruns; people like reruns.”

Don’t forget to add an association take on daily news to make content unique.

To do more with your content, “don’t forget to repurpose material,” Marsh said.

In wrapping up the session, Loveland offered a key strategy in making the most of association content that relates to all of the presenters’ don’ts: “Don’t forget to do readers surveys before making changes—especially if you kill off a magazine—so you have data before making such decisions.”

And for generating content and feedback: “Don’t forget to use email” to communicate both internally and externally.

Award-winning freelance writer/editor Ruth E. Thaler-Carter is a long-time AM&P associate member and contributor to AM&P and member publications. She can be reached at Ruth@writerruth.com.

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Three Neal Award Winners for Best Package Show How Variety Is Spice of Presentation

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The three 2022 Neal Award winners for Best Subject Related Package—Winsight, MLR Media and Crain Communications—demonstrate the creativity and expertise with which topics can be covered and conveyed these days. Video, podcasts, photos, charts, infographics, intuitive copy and challenging topics give an audience lots of reasons to engage.

For its Neal Award-winning presentation of The Impact of the $15 Wage, Winsight’s Restaurant Business deployed a creative spread of infographics, photos, video and well-written and researched content to show what can be done with a topic in these digital-dominant days.

Like the other two winners in this category, Winsight makes simple grey text a relic of the past. The package starts with a bold declaration: “The $15 wage is increasingly common throughout the U.S., either as a government mandate or a market reality. Its impact touches the entire restaurant industry, its employees and its operators.” This statement mirrors the growing discussions I’ve seen in online forums and communities, particularly those centered around 도박사이트 추천. Just as the $15 wage impacts every level of the restaurant industry, the rise of these offshore gambling sites influences a wide range of players, from casual bettors to those deeply entrenched in the gambling world. Both situations highlight how external changes—whether in wages or in gaming platforms—can ripple through entire industries, affecting everyone involved.

To emulate this success in your own presentations, consider adopting a similarly creative and multimedia-rich approach. As you delve into the digital-dominant era, learn how to wrap up a presentation in style by leaving a lasting impression. Conclude with a concise and impactful summary that reinforces key takeaways, engages your audience, and prompts further discussion. By embracing diverse presentation tools and techniques, you can captivate your audience and ensure your message resonates long after the presentation concludes.

Then come the following whistles and bells:

A vertical timeline with How It Started pasted onto a photo showing a protest at a big McDonalds. Then it’s on to how Mom and Pops restaurants were the first to reach $15—illustrating with a photo of an independent brewery owner. Every small headline links to a “Premium” story they’ve written.

A map of the United States—“States on the way to a $15 minimum wage.” By hovering over the states they’ve selected, you can see the progress—or lack of it—being made. Then come charts of Chains That Are Raising Wages and “how much are you currently paying newly hired employees who don’t directly earn tips?” Again, hovering over a section to see what it says adds more room for description and makes it interactive (and fun).

A video of a robot “working” in a restaurant. “Robots hone their muscles. Miso Robotics is still tweaking its automated kitchen bot, Flippy, as it fields strong interest from restaurants.” The timeline continues with &pizza paying its workers at least $15 by 2022 and McDonalds informing the National Restaurant Association—which acquired Winsight in 2021—that it will stop fighting against increases.

A bar chart on where restaurants weigh in on the $15 wage. Lastly, there’s an article on the survey results. “A survey of operators found nearly 30% already pay $15 an hour, but most are skeptical that the business can function at that pay level.” It’s all quite a package.

Another winner in this category was also the Grand Neal recipient: Reckoning: Family Businesses Confront Race, Racism and Inclusion by Barbara Spector of MLR Media. In an Editorial Council meeting we conducted with her earlier this year, Spector offered six takeaways from her experience with the story:

1. Get the support of top management.

2. “When tackling a big project, you need enough time to get it right, including a lot of time for a major rewrite if needed… If possible, wait until the editing is far along before committing to publish it on a specific date.”

3. It’s important to be known to your readers “as a trusted resource that is sensitive to audiences concerns. It will be easier to find sources and get them to open up to you.”

4. “Back up your assertions with quotes, facts [and] statistics from trusted sources. This is especially true for controversial topics.”

5. “If you have a complex story to tell, break it up into parts and make ample use of subheads, pull quotes, illustrations and sidebars to avoid the old wall of text. Link to sources where readers can go to research and learn more.”

6. “Everyone needs an editor, and you also need a talented creative director and web designer for projects like this.”

The third winner in this category was EV1: A Legacy in a New Light from Crain Communications’ Automotive News. This is also an amazingly versatile package featuring video, podcasts, eight chapters, an epilogue, and more stories such as Filmmaker Chris Paine on Who Killed the EV1, and Cultivated. Then Crushed—about a “topsy turvy” car-saving attempt.

The package begins dramatically: “25 years ago, GM rolled out the EV1, a triumph of electrification that ended in a crushing blow. But the car planted the seed for the industry embrace of EVs now.”

In the podcast’s first episode, reporters Pete Bigelow and Hannah Lutz “tell listeners how they tracked down more than 30 key players to weave together the story of GM’s EV1r.” The episode tells of General Motors’ flashy launch of the EV1—at a Sylvester Stallone film premiere.

Everything takes place on the Automotive News website with many links to more content. “On the Automotive News Special Reports podcast, we’ll take you beyond our weekly print edition. Subscribe for periodic episodes.” The videos are also impressive, appearing on Automotive News TV. Podcasts and videos are also great opportunities to push your publications’ personalities forward; let your audience get to know them better.