If 2022 was the year of the start of the end of the social web, 2023 will be when we all supercharge our off-platform audience strategies.
Meta reps told us in June 2022 that “link posts are trending out of style for user behavior,” the week that Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton summarized: “Facebook was born on a web browser, 18 years ago, which meant that it was at some level built around linking. That made Facebook an incredibly powerful driver of traffic. TikTok, meanwhile, was born on a phone, five years ago, which means old web concepts like ‘sending traffic’ are meaningless.”
Interestingly, there has been no reduction in Facebook traffic to Condé Nast’s brands as a whole. While we’ve experienced some differences between our news brands and lifestyle brands, we’ve seen year-on-year Facebook growth across our brands and markets.
While Meta wants Facebook to be more TikTok, reducing link posts and upping “authentic voices, native to the platform” within its walled garden, the reality is that a typical user’s feed would be pretty quiet without link posts. This has benefited our brands, as has Facebook’s move to show content to “unconnected users,” with such posts making up 15.2% of feed content in Q3. This became an opportunity, enabling us all to reach Facebook users who don’t follow our pages.
And while Meta is divorcing itself from the news and publishers, Twitter is of course in turmoil.
Twitter audiences have grown for many of our markets, but dropped as a traffic source for our U.S. brands this year. There have been notable drops in “heavy tweeters” (myself included) since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, TikTok and Instagram are the only social networks growing as news sources, according to Pew.
Condé Nast brands had an average of 12.3 million views a day on TikTok in 2022. American Vogue had 111 million video views on TikTok the week of the Met Gala, and 382 million views for Met Gala videos on Instagram.
This growth in off-platform requires all of us to recognize that our websites are not the sole audience and revenue drivers.
We must think of each platform and its role in the audience journey, acknowledging that there are multiple touchpoints including social, newsletter, podcasts, video, and site. And we must have a holistic audience strategy and understand how to promote our brands and stories across those touchpoints.
TikTok is, of course, top-of-funnel — but it offers more than brand awareness. It allows us to build community and relationships, with potential for commerce as well as consumer revenue.
Instagram is also toward the top of the marketing funnel, less of a traffic driver than Facebook even for Condé Nast’s highly visual brands. And there are also new opportunities on the horizon, with experiments in subscriptions.
A year or so ago, when I was leading audience development, social, and analytics for Vogue globally, I drew a diagram to show how different stories speak to different audiences.
Going into 2023, we would all benefit from developing a core content model for multiple channels.
For example, what is the story mix that enables a brand such as Condé Nast Traveler or Allure or Vanity Fair to reach a wide audience? And what are the community conversations that will develop that core superfan audience?
With buyouts, pivots, layoffs, and uncertainty at the platforms, news sites and publishers must all have a holistic on- and off-platform audience strategy. A website channel strategy is no longer enough.
Sarah Marshall is global executive director of distribution and channel strategy at Condé Nast.
If 2022 was the year of the start of the end of the social web, 2023 will be when we all supercharge our off-platform audience strategies.
Meta reps told us in June 2022 that “link posts are trending out of style for user behavior,” the week that Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton summarized: “Facebook was born on a web browser, 18 years ago, which meant that it was at some level built around linking. That made Facebook an incredibly powerful driver of traffic. TikTok, meanwhile, was born on a phone, five years ago, which means old web concepts like ‘sending traffic’ are meaningless.”
Interestingly, there has been no reduction in Facebook traffic to Condé Nast’s brands as a whole. While we’ve experienced some differences between our news brands and lifestyle brands, we’ve seen year-on-year Facebook growth across our brands and markets.
While Meta wants Facebook to be more TikTok, reducing link posts and upping “authentic voices, native to the platform” within its walled garden, the reality is that a typical user’s feed would be pretty quiet without link posts. This has benefited our brands, as has Facebook’s move to show content to “unconnected users,” with such posts making up 15.2% of feed content in Q3. This became an opportunity, enabling us all to reach Facebook users who don’t follow our pages.
And while Meta is divorcing itself from the news and publishers, Twitter is of course in turmoil.
Twitter audiences have grown for many of our markets, but dropped as a traffic source for our U.S. brands this year. There have been notable drops in “heavy tweeters” (myself included) since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, TikTok and Instagram are the only social networks growing as news sources, according to Pew.
Condé Nast brands had an average of 12.3 million views a day on TikTok in 2022. American Vogue had 111 million video views on TikTok the week of the Met Gala, and 382 million views for Met Gala videos on Instagram.
This growth in off-platform requires all of us to recognize that our websites are not the sole audience and revenue drivers.
We must think of each platform and its role in the audience journey, acknowledging that there are multiple touchpoints including social, newsletter, podcasts, video, and site. And we must have a holistic audience strategy and understand how to promote our brands and stories across those touchpoints.
TikTok is, of course, top-of-funnel — but it offers more than brand awareness. It allows us to build community and relationships, with potential for commerce as well as consumer revenue.
Instagram is also toward the top of the marketing funnel, less of a traffic driver than Facebook even for Condé Nast’s highly visual brands. And there are also new opportunities on the horizon, with experiments in subscriptions.
A year or so ago, when I was leading audience development, social, and analytics for Vogue globally, I drew a diagram to show how different stories speak to different audiences.
Going into 2023, we would all benefit from developing a core content model for multiple channels.
For example, what is the story mix that enables a brand such as Condé Nast Traveler or Allure or Vanity Fair to reach a wide audience? And what are the community conversations that will develop that core superfan audience?
With buyouts, pivots, layoffs, and uncertainty at the platforms, news sites and publishers must all have a holistic on- and off-platform audience strategy. A website channel strategy is no longer enough.
Sarah Marshall is global executive director of distribution and channel strategy at Condé Nast.
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Laxmi Parthasarathy Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism
An Xiao Mina Journalism in a time of permacrisis
Nicholas Diakopoulos Journalists productively harness generative AI tools
Jennifer Brandel AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more.
Amy Schmitz Weiss Journalism education faces a crossroads
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Esther Kezia Thorpe Subscription pressures force product innovation
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Jonas Kaiser Rejecting the “free speech” frame
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Mario García More newsrooms go mobile-first
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Cassandra Etienne Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities
Mael Vallejo More threats to press freedom across the Americas
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Emma Carew Grovum The year to resist forgetting about diversity
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Moreno Cruz Osório Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Ayala Panievsky It’s time for PR for journalism
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Walter Frick Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
Mauricio Cabrera It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Laura E. Davis The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
Jesse Holcomb Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled
Raney Aronson-Rath Journalists will band together to fight intimidation
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Priyanjana Bengani Partisan local news networks will collaborate
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
Janelle Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Dana Lacey Tech will screw publishers over
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
Jacob L. Nelson Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists
Alan Henry A reckoning with why trust in news is so low
Nikki Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Jaden Amos TikTok personality journalists continue to rise
Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
John Davidow A year of intergenerational learning
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Kavya Sukumar Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Bill Grueskin Local news will come to rely on AI
Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Johannes Klingebiel The innovation team, R.I.P.
Nicholas Jackson There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Kirstin McCudden We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.