Q: How is your content strategy evolving?
A: Like most publishers, we are effectively trying to ride two horses at once.
Page views remain important to us as they drive significant partnership and affiliate revenue, but our focus is on converting readers to subscribers.
We want to retain the former while transitioning to our long-term goal of newsrooms funded entirely by reader revenue, so our content is evolving subtly rather than in one big bang moment.
We know what our subscribers value as we continually monitor it and, unsurprisingly, it’s what we do that nobody else can offer.
So we are returning to those issues that make a difference to their lives — a greater focus on campaigning, exemplary court coverage and in-depth reporting.
Ideally, you want to find the sweet spot where those values align with stories that drive a significant free audience.
What we have jettisoned are articles that only exist to get a cheap click and which don’t play to our USP. Even if a reader isn’t currently paying for our content, we want them at least to be on the journey. Nobody is going to spend money on stories freely available elsewhere or which leave them feeling cheated.
A key focus for us is on repeat visits as our most crucial point will come in October, which is the anniversary of the launch of paywalls across Iliffe.
We need to ensure that when those people on annual deals face a decision about renewing their subscription, we have proved our worth.
Are we providing a service they would miss if it was no longer available, do they view the material we are producing as something that benefits their community and do they have a positive view of what we are doing? If they answer ‘yes’ to those questions, you have a good chance of them sticking with you.
Q: What have you learned when making content strategy changes?
A: Give everyone in your organisation as much insight and data into the decisions that have dictated your strategy as you can.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming journalists can’t think commercially — they definitely can — and don’t think commercial colleagues can’t understand the value of reader revenue, even if the end goal means a reduced reliance on traditional advertising formats.
Running a newsdesk now means monitoring more than ever before — is traffic on course to deliver the budget we have set for partnership and affiliate revenue, have we hit our daily subscription acquisition target, are our newsletter open rates healthy, how much have we generated today from the deals we have in place with tech platforms, how many times have our subscribers visited this week? Once people understand where you are trying to get to, you will find they are a source of great ideas.
When it comes to content creation, the industry has traditionally focused on integrated solutions that can serve digital and print seamlessly.
However, you need to decide which is the most important to you to avoid having overly cumbersome processes.
Our focus now is on ensuring we have a best-in-class digital CMS which can harness the positive aspects of AI functionality.
That is the priority when building our workflows — get digital right above all else and then focus on the most effective way of producing print pages after that.
Finally, ensure you engage with readers — many will respond vociferously and, unfortunately in some cases, abusively when you turn off the tap of free content. An aggrieved reader of the Newark Advertiser even wrote a song bemoaning the introduction of a paywall.
If you take the time to reply, you will find most people understand our reasoning — there is a huge difference between what they believe we generate from digital advertising and the reality.
Three top tips
- Hold your nerve and focus on the long-term goals. Focus on the content you know your most engaged readers really value and try to resist going for cheap and easy wins when you are having a sluggish day. We all know which sort of stories they are — it sometimes seems we are always on the verge of a heatwave or a snow bomb, sometimes both on the same day. Over time, that just destroys trust in your brand.
- Ensure your editorial and audience / marketing teams are fully aligned and working to the same goals. There are so many levers you need to pull and it’s essential everyone knows which the most important metrics are.
- Focus on genuinely digital-first workflows rather than systems that treat digital and print as equals. In our experience, that can lead to processes that are overly complicated and impede digital publishing. Get digital right and print can follow.
Ian and the other contributors took part in a ‘Content Creation Special – Q&A’ webinar on Tuesday, 17th June 2025. You can watch a recording of the webinar by registering here.
This article was included in the Content Creation Special, published by InPublishing in June 2025. Click here to see the other articles in this special feature.
