Episode 145
How Metro increased traffic by publishing less
At Metro, the free London newspaper, the comedown from the traffic era was jarring. At the end of 2022, with Facebook turning off the traffic taps to news and a Google update hitting, overall traffic dropped in half, Metro’s director of audience Sofia Delgado told me in a conversation at WordPress VIP Innovation Showcase in London.
“We had a newsroom that came of age in the era of Facebook,” she said. “We had a lot of bad habits and we were used to doing things quickly. Suddenly that wasn't working anymore.”
The publisher pulled off a feat: By focusing on what was working, it has managed to increase its traffic by 50% by producing 25% fewer pieces of content.
Transcript
Thanks a lot, Nick.
Brian:Appreciate it.
Brian:Sophia, thank you for joining us.
Brian:so let's get right into it.
Brian:first of all, explain, explain your role like at Metro.
Sofia:Most days I don't know what I do.
Sofia:so my role as audience director, I oversee what we call the audience teams.
Sofia:SEO, social media, social video.
Sofia:we have a new growth team and I overall help our senior, executive and editor in chief to put forward the strategy for digital growth.
Brian:So what I, I often have, you know, I do podcasts with, with publishing executives, mostly in the US, but also in the UK we do, we host dinners and things, and I always compare and contrast the challenges that people come to and traffic is.
Brian:Usually top.
Brian:what's been the journey there?
Brian:Because a lot of the traffic channels when it comes to distribution have become less reliable.
Brian:Facebook obviously moved away from sending all of that traffic.
Brian:I'm sure you, I'm sure, unfortunately, you were also affected by that.
Brian:Google has become far less reliable.
Brian:Give me the idea of what the traffic picture has been like at Metro over, say, the last four years.
Sofia:it's been an absolute rollercoaster.
Sofia:I hope that's the only way I can, call it.
Sofia:So I think, so I joined Metro about two and a bit years ago and it was October 2022 that, some core update on Google, Got us and we lost that traffic.
Sofia:And a few months after we lost our Facebook traffic when they decided they no longer liked news publishers as much.
Sofia:so it was really hard for us.
Sofia:It was a lot of traffic that we had suddenly lost.
Brian:Like how much?
Sofia:I would say Facebook traffic got us a good 60 percent down.
Sofia:It was really, really hard.
Sofia:We were
Brian:Wait, your overall traffic fell 60%?
Sofia:60?
Sofia:Yeah, I
Brian:Was that after you joined?
Sofia:After I joined.
Sofia:Which was really hard as well!
Sofia:I wasn't in the role that I am now.
Sofia:But, we saw it drop and we're like, Oh shit, what do we do?
Sofia:and that's when we started looking.
Sofia:I particularly started looking at how much content we were publishing.
Sofia:And in some sections, we noticed that about 50 percent of our content was going nowhere.
Sofia:It just wasn't getting read at all.
Sofia:And every time we would tell the newsroom, Hey, you should try this thing.
Sofia:Cause we think it's going to get us the pages.
Sofia:the editors would say, bugger off, I'm too stretched.
Sofia:I don't want to do this thing that you're telling me to do.
Sofia:So we realized, okay, something's got to give.
Sofia:and we turn into a process of explaining to editors, yes, something's got to give, so let's just really figure out what you need to stop doing and what you need to do more of.
Sofia:and so we started a Deep analysis process to, to figure out who was our audience and, and something that we discovered was, a newsroom that came of age in the era of Facebook.
Sofia:and the journalists that came of age in the era of Facebook.
Sofia:we had a lot of bad habits and we were used to do things.
Sofia:Um, and suddenly that wasn't working anymore.
Sofia:So we started thinking, okay, if, if that's not really what people want, what do they want?
Sofia:And, and we had to take a step back and give everyone in the newsroom permission to stop and think as well, because I think in the past, I've definitely been in newsrooms where as soon as.
Sofia:Traffic went down and performance went down.
Sofia:It's like, how is your output?
Sofia:Your output has gone down.
Sofia:So you need to keep doing more.
Sofia:You need to keep doing more.
Sofia:And we realized that that wasn't doing it for us.
Sofia:So, so that's where we started to do a bit less to get more.
Brian:Yeah, I want to get into that because when you say about like what the audience wants, I think that era a lot of times sort of fooled a lot of newsrooms into thinking that, you know, they were feeding algorithms.
Brian:They were, they were doing what the algorithms wanted, not necessarily what the audience wanted because the audience was Facebook's.
Brian:audience, which was determined by the algorithm, basically.
Brian:I mean, they weren't really, it wasn't really audience focused at all.
Brian:Right.
Brian:And all the incentives, I feel like that Facebook set up and really even Google was always about volume at the end of the day.
Sofia:Yes.
Sofia:To play devil's advocate, I do think algorithms do serve audiences to an extent.
Sofia:I don't think they go completely against it, because ultimately, both Facebook and Google, they want their users to be happy within their space.
Sofia:So I think once upon a time, they probably realized, yes, if we serve them this type of content, they will like it, they will stay.
Sofia:And you can't do too much of something and then put people off.
Sofia:particularly with news, a lot of people are now very put off by news.
Sofia:So algorithms change, but so does the audience.
Sofia:And I think realizing who is your valuable audience was the most important part.
Sofia:Yes, there's, there's a lot of people out there that you can reach, but it's about sticking to the ones that actually want news and not just Came up on it
Brian:Yeah.
Brian:Well that, that's sort of what I meant was that like, you know, Facebook was looking to serve its audience, right.
Brian:But that might not necessarily be Metro's audience.
Brian:So when you started to look like, into the details, first of all, what did you Determine, like, what was Metro's audience, because
Sofia:that's still an ongoing process.
Sofia:So Metro, it's a, it's a generalist newspaper.
Sofia:and these are not my words, but, you know, we're, we're talking nowadays about generally it's having to be a collection of niches and that's what we're trying to find.
Sofia:So, have, for instance, a very strong SOAPS audience, so TV SOAPS, we're really good at that.
Sofia:So we have a very strong engaged audience there, but they're not the same readers that they are reading our gaming content.
Sofia:So it's also realizing that each vertical of Metro.
Sofia:It's serving very different people.
Sofia:And, part of the work that we've done this year that the growth team has done was working with each desk to find what we call bespoke solutions to their own challenges and their own problems.
Sofia:Cause.
Sofia:Each editorial desk within the Metro newsroom is like an entirely different newsroom on their own.
Sofia:They have different processes, different workflows, different audience, different needs.
Sofia:so it was really about finding what worked for each of those and they're not all the same.
Sofia:Not at all.
Brian:Okay, so, talk to me about the more with less, because, I mean, from my understanding, you actually did Alchemy, which is actually cre producing more traffic with less content.
Sofia:Yes.
Sofia:So that's part of, we already had a lot of content that just wasn't hitting.
Sofia:so it was relatively easy to do as in there was a lot of work, but it was doable.
Sofia:Our star case study is the entertainment desk.
Sofia:So entertainment for Q4 last year, they did.
Sofia:40, the article count was down 45%, but their overall traffic was up 35%.
Sofia:So the average page view each story was getting was four times higher than they were a year before.
Sofia:and that was in part because it was a, it was a desk that was used to having to be very fast and producing at high volume, fast.
Sofia:breaking showbiz news and at some point we said well we're not getting these audiences and we're not competing with perhaps other Paris Hilton and and other publications are really good at that shows showbiz lines so that's when we brought it back and we started thinking.
Sofia:Okay, who is your audience?
Sofia:Realistically, are we serving this age bracket, this other age bracket, where, where is our golden, audience and hit more of that and hit more of that and keep doing that.
Sofia:So we're always interested in still in finding new audiences and, and finding those new spaces, but we really need to get right what we already have because new audiences are hard to come by.
Sofia:So we might as well make sure that we're strong where we already have them,
Brian:And so the, the North star is still page views still, right?
Brian:Cause I mean, a lot of times you hear like, Oh, scale is dead.
Brian:You know, it's not about pages, but it's still page views.
Sofia:It is for us.
Sofia:There's very different opinions in the industry, whether those are That is the metric that we should have.
Sofia:for Metro, we're still page views.
Sofia:It is still reach, of our content and we still have plenty to go in that sense, I think.
Sofia:And for us as well, finding more page views per session has also been part of, our KPI.
Sofia:So it doesn't all have to be just came once like fly by audiences.
Sofia:That's also part of becoming really good at the specialisms that we do so that.
Sofia:If you land on their website, you can read more than just one article.
Brian:So how many articles was the, the, the typical person responsible for prior to this change?
Sofia:It really varied desk by desk, but entertainment, I remember asking the editor and I said, Oh my God, that's such a high article count.
Sofia:Is it, I was like, is there something wrong with analytics?
Sofia:And she was like, no, that is how many were right.
Sofia:So I think they were writing about nine or 10 per person sometimes.
Brian:Oh my God.
Sofia:It's mad.
Brian:A day?
Sofia:Yeah.
Brian:Very productive.
Brian:And so what, what did that end up being cut down to?
Brian:I mean, basically you're saying like half, I guess.
Sofia:Yeah.
Sofia:About half.
Sofia:It depends.
Sofia:Obviously some people would write a bit more, some people would write a bit more, but I think now there'd be about five, four, five, depending on, we have some specialists that are doing film.
Sofia:For instance, and they just don't write as much.
Sofia:it's also as well, we've introduced user needs.
Sofia:So that has really changed as well, the way that the desk thinks about the content.
Sofia:So sometimes some stories may be fairly quick and some stories may need a bit more work and a bit more in depth.
Sofia:And it's about balancing that out.
Sofia:Whereas before, I guess, if you're 10 stories, a shift, they're all very quick and heavy, like.
Brian:So, I mean, I don't want to be too simplistic about it, but is it just creating better?
Brian:I mean, because like, what, what exactly was the lever then to be creating less, I mean, it would just, it's better content, but did the, how has the overall, traffic patterns changed?
Brian:I mean, because Facebook obviously went to near zero, if not zero, right?
Brian:how has your, your, traffic composite, composition changed?
Sofia:so as it's the same time that Facebook went down, Discovered made an appearance and I know every newsroom out there is hitting Discover, so we have been benefiting from Discover, but we're also very heavily focused on growing our direct traffic.
Sofia:yes, it's essentially, it's just better content.
Sofia:It's just also hitting that, consistency of the same.
Sofia:Areas that grows our authority and makes people come back and we're still feeding algorithms to an extent, right?
Sofia:If we always do something really well on this particular topic, we will get served more and more.
Sofia:we're also leveraging platforms like Reddit and trying to enter new communities.
Sofia:but ultimately it was about let's make better content that people engage with for longer and that they would want to come back and they want to hear what you have to say next.
Brian:Yeah.
Brian:is homepage traffic a KPI?
Brian:Is it important or is it like not really realistic for, a brand like Metro?
Sofia:It is important.
Sofia:It's very important for us.
Sofia:and I think even more so will become more important in the coming years.
Sofia:I think for Metro, because we also have a print product.
Sofia:I'm looking forward to see what that would look like in the future.
Sofia:I think leveraging print products will suddenly become more important than they were for the last few years.
Sofia:And I think in particular, I do feel very sorry for new independent media that is trying to come up because discovery is really hard, whereas we do have a legacy name.
Sofia:you know, we do, we've been around for 25 years, so that helps.
Brian:Yeah, so, we just have like, a minute, a little less than two minutes, but talk to me a little bit about the culture change and how that was difficult.
Brian:I mean, because a lot of these, a lot of these changes are, I think, feel like the biggest challenges are internal than even than external.
Sofia:yes, I think the key learning for us in terms of change is communication.
Sofia:Communication is so important.
Sofia:you need to.
Sofia:Keep repeating the same, north.
Sofia:So you need to align all your teams.
Sofia:you need to identify your change makers and align them first to make sure that they're not, not everyone is trying to change everyone in different directions.
Sofia:So that's, has been very important.
Sofia:and I think once you get buy in and once you get the trust of.
Sofia:The people that know what they do and they do it best and you need to bring them forward and say, I don't want to change and I don't want to tell you how to do things, but I can make what you do better and I can help you find more success.
Sofia:I think that's, that's the key point.
Sofia:I would say communication is at the, is at the core of any change.
Brian:Yeah.
Brian:And I think just like reminding people that better that we're after better, I think is a good rallying cry.
Sofia:And that they already know what they're doing and that they're good at it.
Sofia:something that I told one of the editors was, Look, just because you've done things a certain way and now that doesn't work anymore, that doesn't mean that you're bad at the job or that you've never known how to do it.
Sofia:You are very good at it.
Sofia:The rules change.
Sofia:You can do it again.
Brian:Okay, cool.
Brian:So here, thank you.
Brian:I flew by.
Brian:Appreciate it.
