Moving forward: (From left) Ng, Ostrem and driscoll during the innovation in Newsrooms plenary session at digital Media asia 2024 in Kuala lumpur. — yap ChEE hONG/The star
KUALA LUMPUR: Boosting reader loyalty and focusing on niche markets are some ways for news organisations to move forward in increasing readership, instead of heavily relying on social media platforms, say news industry players.
South China Morning Post digital editor Shea Driscoll said while all readers are equally important, the concept of loyalty becomes a very important aspect to attract readership.
“So we have developed our own scales for reader loyalty and if somebody’s coming back to you five to 10 times a month, over multiple sessions, then they are a loyal or regular reader.
“We then have to shift our focus towards analysing just top-line traffic, which obviously remains important, but also to find what our loyal and regular readers are specifically reading,” he said during the “Innovation in Newsrooms” plenary session at Digital Media Asia (DMA) 2024 here yesterday.
The session was moderated by Star Media Group (SMG) chief content officer Datin Paduka Esther Ng, who had asked about the importance of niche and general audiences in setting the direction of business models.
This 2024 edition of DMA, the premier event for the news media industry in the Asia-Pacific region, marks its 16th year with a two-day gathering in the Malaysian capital starting yesterday.
Organised by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the event has been a pivotal platform for transformation in the news media industry since its inception in 2009.
Meanwhile, Driscoll also noted that it is important to know what members of the niche audience want as they have a different list of stories that they are interested in.
“So it depends on your specific business model. If your business model is to have as much reading as possible and making money from ads, for example, then in which case go for it, but we find that we really need to cultivate our loyal and regular readers,” he explained.
Veslemoy Ostrem, editor-in-chief of Altinget Norway, a Nordic Media house that covers national and European politics, said that based on her personal experience, it is important to utilise user data to develop new areas of journalism.
“We have a very successful project on the topic of leadership and careers, and how to have a good job.
“We have one journalist, and got over 1,000 new subscriptions just from her stories, and that was very good.
“She was inspired to see if she wrote the story in a slightly different way, would it attract more readers, would it just focus on her current ones, who were (her) loyal readers?” she said.
Asked about her views on how many media companies continued to rely on social media platforms to drive traffic to their sites and how to pivot from it, Ostrem said that perhaps news organisations can find new and innovative ways to attract readership and traffic to their sites.
“Of course, every reader is important, and the social media reader is a good reader,” she said, adding that media organisations should find strategic ways to change readers’ habits and not focus purely on social media.
She also believes that loyal readers are much more valuable than regular visitors and they can become “huge supporters of your organisation”.
