Where is the audience development effort going from publishers in 2025?

Thoughts from the Reuters Institute's Journalism, Media and technology trends and predictions 2025 report

Good afternoon,

And a happy Wednesday. This week's What I've Been Reading Digest is one big link as opposed to multiple, and that's because of the length of it.

The year ahead predictions from the Reuters Institute is always a good read - in part because it's based on what newsroom leaders within a variety of news organisations are considering both internally and externally.

I'm pulling out this graph below which is always insightful as to which third-party platforms newsrooms are going to focus on. You could probably translate newsrooms with comms teams, marketing agencies and many others although it's different for publishers given how much further their content can travel on certain platforms e.g. Google Discover.

I think it's worth remembering that for a lot of newsrooms the complexity of content distribution, and building audiences on platforms to distribute to, has multiplied significantly.

Going back five years or so and most content desks were fine-tuning for Google search (organic) and then thinking about how a story would look on (predominantly) a branded Facebook page.

Now, the checklist of where stories are going onto is exploding and each of these are increasingly demanding their own formatting, style and grammar if you want your story to cut-through on those platforms.

The fact this graph shows significant double-digital effort into eight platforms and more than half of them are overwhelmingly rewarding of native image and video-based content is interesting in itself.

For newsroom leaders, there's the challenge of how do you position your brand on these multiple platforms and for journalists, which of these platforms do you lean into yourself to distribute your stories? There's no easy answer, and increasingly there will be a very different audience development strategy for different content sections or journalists working within one over-arching brand.

It was also interesting to see the omission of Reddit within the chart, given its increasing prominence as a third-party platform and I've featured before some excellent learnings about how the Telegraph has leaned in and seen strong audience, referrals and engagement from the platform.

These are the questions I'd be asking before charging headlong into a new platform (which is tempting, "right, 2025 is the year we nail [insert platform]"

- What do the audiences you already have on those platforms engage with? At most basic level, analysing the data you already have about over and under-performing posts. Both natively on that platform but also referral wise back to your owned and operated platforms as this is an indication of what general audiences on the platform are discovering of your already produced content.

- Who should lead it? Are there individual journalists or editors within your team, organisation or set up who are aligned with the topics which over-perform for your brand on there - or perhaps there's a gap you've identified and you can fill it

- What's already working and what are competitors doing? If similar publications are already on there, that doesn't mean you should be or shouldn't be. Sometimes doing the same thing is fine, but it's well worth looking at output to see what is and isn't working.

- Cutting your cloth accordingly. Depending on your resources, it'll be hard to be brilliant on every one of those platforms. Having a basic strategy on multiple and then focusing in one the one which makes sense for your brand or newsroom is absolutely fine.

- Beware Breadcrumbing. One thing that can increasingly happen is great content is created natively for one platform, but then completely undiscoverable to the rest of your audience. Particularly those who may be your most loyal and coming directly to your site. Think about how you put increasingly native and video output in front of often your most loyal (and in many cases paying) audiences.

And a few interesting links to round off with which caught my eye:

How is AI being used in journalism education? - Damian Radcliffe

PR in the Real World podcast, episode six: Shirah Bamber - Viva PR (my fellow Alma director Shirah talks all things comms)

Ex-Northern Echo and Daily Express Editor launches North Squared media to amplify Northern stories - Karl Holbrook (good luck to Karl who recently left Reach and is forging his own path in comms and PR with a tilt at the North of England)

Hope you’re having a good week, good luck with the rest of it and hope those insights have been useful.

Keep going.

Ed