Instagram has become a major platform for the Financial Times’ visual content — and it’s now hoping to use Stories to push out more of its charts and graphics.
The publisher boasts 515,000 Instagram followers, up from about 286,000 a year ago, and it’s adding about 5,000 followers a week.
“Instagram was a reach mechanism for us. Then, it kept growing, and now we have an established audience,” said Jake Grovum, U.S. social media editor at the FT.
It’s a play for young people. The social platform attracts a younger demographic, under 34 years old, than the FT’s readership. It’s made a point of using Instagram Stories to push pieces that aren’t behind the paywall.
The idea isn’t necessarily to convert the platform audience into subscribers. “It’s not like we’re opening the paywall. They’re easy to use — we don’t want the audience to copy and paste the link,” said Grovum.
The publisher first thought “lighter” lifestyle content would perform better on Stories, but news content tends to perform better, said Grovum. Information and news on topics like the Federal Reserve have the highest views and engagement, and Grovum’s team tries to build narratives around pieces about hot topics like Brexit or Trump updates. The idea is to tell a story using the Stories format versus static Instagrams. The FT is prioritizing audience responses, and Grovum suggests using questions at the end of Stories to ask for thoughts and comments.
The most attractive thing about Instagram for Grovum is that it isn’t built for shareability — the idea is to use it to connect readers to the brand. “The most you can do is take a screenshot. Branding is not a concern because sharing of content is not possible in the way you can share on Facebook,” said Grovum.
-
Slack is fueling media’s bottom-up revolution
Publishing bosses loved Slack as a productivity tool, but it's now being used as the central forum for the media's bottom-up revolt.
-
‘It’s like telling a reporter he can’t have a Twitter account’: Reporters are starting their own newsletters outside of their employer
Salaried reporters and editors see side hustle newsletters playing the same role that blogs once did more than a decade ago.
-
Inside LGBT+ publisher PinkNews’ pivot to paid
'Covid probably forced our hand,' said PinkNews Media CEO Benjamin Cohen.
-
SponsoredFrom pop-up to permanent: Three trends driving digital transformation in 2020
By Dries Buytaert Brands have displayed rapid innovation over the past few years, building pop-up stores seemingly overnight to test new retail, product and marketing concepts. Now, as a result of COVID-19, something similar is happening digitally, with brands operating on compressed timelines to launch digital-first “pop-up” businesses — except unlike typical pop-ups these are […]
-
Member ExclusiveHow Overtime is building sports media for Gen Z
In order to grow a substantial Gen Z audience, the content has to feel like it's coming from a friend, but beyond that, the media company also has to engage with the audience as if it were their friend too.
-
Member ExclusiveAd tech is in denial about Apple’s new app privacy rule
Some ad tech companies are determined they'll find a solution to Apple's recent IDFA updates -- threading more confusion into an already conflicted landscape.
