Social for much of the past decade has been the sexy audience development strategy, with an emphasis on engaging audiences, particularly young audiences who were seen as less likely to come directly to news sites. However, for many audience development leaders, they noticed that SEO actually delivered on conversion far more than social media efforts. We’ve got two examples from INMA including one from the New York Times that prove this point.

INMA also looks at how Die Zeit has paired a book club with a newsletter to increase engagement. SEO for discovery and then high engagement strategies including book clubs, puzzles and niche content are increasingly becoming part of not only the funnel but a new bundle of content that encourages audiences to develop a paying relationship with news brands.

PLUS Facebook continues its turn away from news content as it winds down its Instant Article format.

SEO strategies at The New York Times and La Vanguardia have paid off in revenue, readers — www.inma.org

SEO initiatives helped The New York Times increase subscriptions 33% in six years and pushed La Vanguardia to the top three among the most widely consumed media outlets in Spain.

In 2016, 35% of subscribers came from social media, but now, 35% come from SEO and only 12% come from social.

However, it is also important in this piece to realise that there isn’t a one-size fits all strategy. At The Athletic, which the New York Times acquired, 75% of subscriptions come from Twitter, which is logical because sports is one of those areas where Twitter actually is the go to place. It’s the where the athletes of many major sports and their fans are.

TikTok's media literacy crisis: What can be done to stop the spread of misinformation on the app? | Mashable — mashable.com

TikTok's algorithm and app design foster an environment where misinformation spreads. It's also spotlighting a larger problem: the lack of news and media literacy among its users.

Young people’s immersion on the platform and the lack of links so that people can cite the source of their information are making TikTok a place ripe for misinformation on a range of topics including politics and the pandemic. A thoughtful piece.

PressReader's Hugo Merino Montero on digital editions, consumer trends, and post-pandemic priorities - FIPP — www.fipp.com

Ahead of the upcoming FIPP Insider Berlin event next week, we caught up with Hugo Merino Montero, Director of Branded Editions for PressReader, to get the inside track on what he’ll be taking to the stage to talk about. Supported by recent data, as well as comparative sets from the pandemic period, his presentation will set the scene on where the global industry has been over the past two years, and where we are today…

At Pugpig, we see something that is highlighted here: Digital editions can provide data for publishers to make editorial decisions across print and digital.

INMA: Die Zeit increases engagement with book club, related newsletter — www.inma.org

Die Zeit created an online book club and has found higher-than-average rates of engagement while also attracting new subscribers.

As I said earlier, marrying a high-engagement service like a book club it’s a high-engagement format like a newsletter makes sense as part of your subscription bundle strategy.

Facebook continues its pivot away from news with the end of Instant Articles

Scoop: Meta ending support for Instant Articles — www.axios.com

It's part of a broader effort by Meta to move away from investments in news content on its apps.

Facebook found that only 3% of users were engaging with news articles using the format. In a silver lining, Facebook will now direct the traffic to publishers’ websites. That can’t be all bad.

Facebook Announces the Retirement of ‘Instant Articles’ - The Latest Step in the Reformation of the App | Social Media Today — www.socialmediatoday.com

Social Media Today

With a little bit more detail, Zuck says that more users are engaging with video, especially Reels. Or Facebook is simply pushing more Reels into your news feed.

Is Spotify's podcast exclusivity strategy working? — simonowens.substack.com

The open podcast ecosystem isn't dead yet.

With a focus on the cancellation of several Gimlet shows, producers say that after Spotify made the shows exclusive and behind a paywall that their audiences dropped by 75%. Ouch.

Rupert Murdoch considering merging Fox and News Corp once again | Rupert Murdoch | The Guardian

Merger would combine Fox News and TMZ with newspaper and online news operations, almost a decade after they split

Will Rupe undo the almost decade-old split? Recombining the assets would give them greater scale to compete. Hmmm…focus rather than scale seems to be delivering success for news brands in particular.