Let me back up that claim and bridge how we’re doing it.  

We work with Bridge Michigan – a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that provides passionate and rooted Michigan readers with honest, fact-driven journalism on the state’s diverse people, politics, and economy. They’re highly reliant on building their newsletter list – and they ask for donations from their loyal following. 

And, they’re getting results.

In the past few months, Social News Desk has helped Bridge Michigan get 26,115 leads at an average cost of $1.29 per lead.

We’re using their most popular content to make it happen.

Day to day, we don’t ask ask what stories they’d like to promote, we use data driven feeds to see which stories are over-performing already and push that content to get new readers. Conversely, if they have content they DO want to promote, they just let us know. We add it. 

They’re thrilled with that $1.29 per lead – it’s a solid number and lower than we are seeing industry wide. 
Our efforts to help them grow their audience do not involve more time or resources on their part – and Bridge Michigan’s Growth Strategist is pretty excited about that:

So, using Dynamic News Ads – we’ve sliced the cost in half, reduced their workload and increased results. 

I’ll list the downsides here: 

• …
• … …
• … … …

In other words, the win-win factor is hard to ignore. Grow audience, cut down cost per lead, save time, money & resources.

Ready to try out Dynamic News Ads for yourself? Social News Desk is ready to manage it for you. In fact, we encourage you to try it out for a month without longterm commitment. Hit us up – info@socialnewsdesk.com. 

The post Lead Gen Strategy: Bridging Your Best Content to Find New Audience first appeared on Social News Desk.

Local Media Foundation’s Apryl Pilolli delves into how news orgs can prepare for this upcoming change and offers solutions to what feels like a problem.

Have more questions about how to get ready? We’re always here to help – email us at info@socialnewsdesk.com.

The post Critical Changes In Content Marketing first appeared on Social News Desk.

Philadelphia Inquirer is laser-focused on growing their top-performing newsletters. They consistently and successfully run newsletter campaigns – collect email addresses – and then immediately start sending out content-rich newsletters – all with an eye on potentially converting these readers into a paid subscription down the road.

Social News Desk is handling their lead gen campaigns using our proprietary Dynamic News Ads technology. Our goal is to make sure we’re acquiring new audiences at the lowest possible cost-per-lead.

Let’s throw out some impressive stats:

• Year-to-date, SND has driven 15,617 leads for the Philadelphia Inquirer. 
• Focus remains on their top performing e-mail newsletters which include: 
  • News Alerts Newsletter  
    • 6,552 leads at an average CPL of $0.70
    • This is their breaking news alert newsletter. 
  • Let’s Eat, Philly! Newsletter
    •  3,206 leads at an average CPL of $1.06
    • This is a local food and dining newsletter for the Philadelphia area. 
  • Sports Daily Newsletter
    •  4,278 leads at an average CPL of $0.60
    • A daily sports e-mail covering Philadelphia sports teams. 

We use corresponding, relevant content to drive sign-ups for specific newsletters.

Using top-performing content to build your newsletter WORKS. Philadelphia Inquirer is currently focused on growing its top-performing newsletters versus all of their newsletters.

“Social News Desk has been a tremendous addition to our digital transformation strategy. We’ve seen rapid growth with our audience. Not only in list size, but also attracting an array of diverse readers while continuing to maintain a significantly low cost per lead.” Terrance Young, Audience Development Marketing Manager of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Aside from SND’s Dynamic News Ads audience growth strategy, the Philadelphia Inquirer has a hub for all its newsletters on the website.

Some key takeaways:

-Focus on your top-performing newsletters – as opposed to all your newsletters.

-Consistency is key. Spend marketing dollars evenly over time.

-You can grow your audience quickly. It is possible.

Want to apply the same strategy to grow your audience? Social News Desk can help – reach out to us at info@socialnewsdesk.com.  

The post Philadelphia Inquirer’s Newsletters: Strategy Worth Picking Up first appeared on Social News Desk.

Our Meta-certified Promotions team quickly launched a large-scale campaign that promoted local tune-in down to the ZIP code in each market, customized for the individual times that each region airs the show. In addition, we built a strategy to drive traffic through Social News Desk’s unique Dynamic News Ads technology, showcasing the best content at the best time for each person who views an ad in the campaign.

SND’s Dynamic News Ads uses a proprietary algorithm to determine which content to use, how long it should be available, and when content is no longer eligible to appear in an ad. When breaking news happens, content can appear in an ad right away – no editing and uploading necessary. In addition, our team’s Superhuman Optimization uses up-to-the-minute data and in-house custom technology to ensure campaigns are performing as expected (or better).

Overall, SND Promotions drove millions of impressions to build awareness of The National Desk’s expanded broadcast, and Sinclair Broadcasting Group was thrilled with the results.

“We were really impressed with how SND was able to push social media traffic. Our website user count more than doubled during the campaign.”

Ed Sautter, Sr. Director of Promotion & Marketing – Digital, Sinclair Broadcast Group

The National Desk website also saw more than double the amount of social referrals, sessions, and new users month over month.

If you’re interested in learning how SND Promotions can help your newsroom reach your goals, get in touch with us at info@socialnewsdesk.com.

The post SND Promotions drives huge results for Sinclair’s The National Desk first appeared on Social News Desk.

Why Newsletters?

Newsletters are one of the best ways to build a long-lasting relationship with your audience – and it comes straight to their inbox. The format also gives your writers an opportunity to show their personality in a way they can’t on your website or on TV. Niche newsletters also offer a platform to showcase your expertise and depth of coverage.

Although the online channel is still an important means to publish and deliver the news, a website is an endless stream of information, while newsletters have a beginning and an end and summarize the day.

Jason Hegna, vice president of sales at Shaw Media

Content Matters

Both general and niche newsletters have a place in your strategy. Morning and afternoon headline newsletters tend to have a larger audience, and there is enough content to support delivery every day. However, niche newsletters tend to have a much more engaged audience. When choosing topics, be sure that there is already a proven level of interest, the ability to expand your coverage, and the ability to add your voice to the conversation around the topic.

Hearst Newspapers’ Marketing Specialist, Sierra Smith says the company has seen success with niche topics like food and recipes, crime and courts, cannabis coverage, travel, local history and sports. While WDIV-TV’s Digital Special Projects Manager, Ken Haddad says his station offers several sports-focused newsletters to subscribers in the Detroit market, each with its own dedicated fanbase built in.

Growing Your Audience

Haddad and Smith go on to suggest that newsrooms take a multi-pronged approach to promoting newsletters, including paid acquisition campaigns, targeted on-site units, specific sign-up pages on your website, and for TV stations – using the megaphone of on-air promotion. Cross-promote your newsletters between one another, and in other media such as podcasts and livestreams. Don’t forget about referrals! The better your audience knows you, the more likely they will be to share your newsletter with their families and friends.

Make Sign-ups Simple

Using SND’s Dynamic News Ads technology in partnership with the SND Promotions team, newsrooms can leverage their highest-performing social content into targeted ads that reach the right person, with the right content, at the right time. While Dynamic News Ads can be used for almost any newsroom objective (including SMS signups and Tune In), we’ve seen huge success and low costs in gathering newsletter leads for publishers.

The sign-up flow for Dynamic News Ads is so simple that users only have to click a button. Facebook pre-fills information in the form, so your users will be signed up and on your site in no time. SND can even help automate leads to your CRM, so you don’t have to manually add users to your subscriber lists.

Decide What Success Looks Like

How will you know when your strategy is working? Be sure to measure your progress as you go. Decide what KPIs are most important to your organization – is it the lifetime value of a subscriber, or increasing unique email addresses acquired?

Once you’ve defined your goals, check in with your campaign’s performance. If you’re running ads in support of growing subscriptions, take note of which newsletters are gaining the most sign-ups at the most competitive cost, or driving the most paid subscriptions. Don’t be afraid to shift budget as you learn more about your users’ habits.

Pro tip: TV stations are seeing lower costs per lead right now because broadcasters are somewhat new to the newsletter game when compared to print publishers. So if you’re not running newsletter promotions, now is the time!

Want to talk? Email us to set up a call anytime.

The post Top 5 Newsletter Audience Acquisition Strategies That REALLY Work first appeared on Social News Desk.

WDIV’s Digital Special Projects Editor, Ken Haddad says creating an email newsletter is all about that one on one experience… “The better you build that relationship with those users…you continue to build that credibility and that trust and they continue to come back to you. And eventually you’ll be able to drive revenue through this platform because those users are continually using your products.”

For many TV Newsrooms, creating an email newsletter is uncharted territory. But there are resources available including this TVNewsCheck How To video series featuring Haddad. Once you have the basics set up, the big question is … how do you get people to subscribe to your newsletter?

Self-Promote

Leverage your existing resources by promoting your newsletter in the newscast, on your website and via station promos. The best part about this approach is that it’s low/no cost to the station. But it’s also not always the most effective.

Acquisition Ads

By far, the most effective way to increase subscribers for an email newsletter is through acquisition ads on Facebook. This approach minimizes friction by offering the Facebook user an instant opportunity to sign up for your newsletter without even leaving their Facebook News Feed.

While effective, acquisition ads are anything but simple – and can be expensive if you’re not running them correctly. So when WDIV wanted to increase its email subscribers, the station turned to Social News Desk to manage its Acquisition Ads investment on Facebook.

Case Study

Dynamic News Ads is Social News Desk’s proprietary ad tech – you could call it the secret sauce. It’s why more than 1000 newsrooms around the world rely on SND to manage acquisition ads for their email newsletter campaigns – including WDIV.

Over the course of a single month campaign, SND was able to generate nearly 7500 new email subscribers at an average cost of just $0.34 per lead (or per email acquired). For comparison, the industry standard is to keep this cost under $1.00 per lead and when WDIV ran it’s own campaigns, it was averaging about $0.90 per lead.

“Newsletters are a huge part of our digital revenue strategy going forward. Sponsorships, branded content and partnerships are all possible when you build up a large, engaged audience – and Social News Desk’s technology has proven to be the absolute best way to quickly and cost-effectively grow our list of subscribers.”

Bob Ellis, VP/GM WDIV-TV (Detroit, MI)

So why are SND’s email newsletter sign-up campaigns so much more effective? It’s that secret sauce – our Dynamic News Ads (DNA). This complex algorithm automatically identifies your newsroom’s best content and uses it to build the best ad in real time.

WDIV ran three campaigns for three separate newsletters. Each campaign was tailored by SND to include only applicable content. So for example, ads promoting signups for the station’s “Help Me Hank” newsletter exclusively featured related consumer-advice content. This approach is critical to the success of the campaign, as it shows the user exactly what they can expect to receive when they sign up for the newsletter.

Notably, SND’s DNA technology can also eliminate content you don’t want to see in an ad such as politics or promotional content. And we do it all in real time and automatically rotate in the best stories while rotating out the ones that aren’t performing. The result is a quickly growing list of subscribers at a cost well below the value those subscribers will represent for your brand in the future.

Want to find out how to increase your email newsletter subscribers? Reach out to our team anytime!

The post WDIV-TV rolls out forward-thinking newsletter strategy to acquire new digital audience. first appeared on Social News Desk.

There are a few reasons for it:

• It’s the holiday season, which means advertisers are introducing an influx of spend on social which we saw begin happening at the end of October and continue to increase throughout November.
• More advertising dollars means that there’s now more competition for social media users’ attention. It comes down to that classic tenet of economics: supply and demand.

If misery loves company … you’ve got plenty of it (and not just the in-laws). For example, when looking at the cost per lead for media organizations during the first half of the year, we saw that the average CPL was 86 cents. In the second half of the year, that cost has jumped to 93 cents. That increase has been mostly driven by the increased competition of dollars in the paid social space.

If we look at it a little closer, in Q3, the average cost per lead for publishers was 88 cents; in Q4, the average cost is $1.01.

Facebook representatives recently told us that they’ve seen costs rise sharply and that for leads, this is the highest they’ve seen them.

Leads, of course, aren’t the only campaign being affected by the onslaught of dollars vying for attention. We’ve seen similar increases in conversion campaigns and have seen an increase in CPM costs as well.

While you can expect costs to go up every Q4 , SND’s ad tech does help advertisers weather this wintry storm with better optimized spends and a more strategic approach to ROI. Ask us how!

The post My Ad Cost-Per-Result got run over by Q4, a cautionary tale first appeared on Social News Desk.

Promote your best content, automatically

It’s pretty impossible to predict exactly what will resonate with your audience on Facebook – and even harder during breaking news when things are changing rapidly. So why put all your eggs in one basket with a Boosted Post? Wouldn’t it be better if you could always promote the best stories you have – even as that list changes in real time? Now you can!

SND’s proprietary Dynamic News Ads (DNA) technology identifies your best content in real time, and automatically turns it into an ad. Think of the ad as an empty – always on – container. SND’s DNA technology is working 24/7 to create a list of your very best content and updating that list in real time as you produce more content. We’re then filling that empty ad container with stories from the list – matching them up to the users most likely to care about each story. Each ad is unique, and populated with the best content you have to offer at any given moment. We call it an “Auto-Boost.”

Because the Auto-Boost ad is always on (and always filled with fresh content) … you are reaching a much wider group of people than you would with a Boost. As Facebook users engage with your content in the ad, they see more of your content and become more aware of your brand page. This leads to increases in Clicks, Reach, Engagement and often a 6-8% increase in Page Followers to boot!

Get two (or more) KPIs for the price of one

Auto-Boost ads are optimized by the team at SND to fit your exact ROI goals. So in addition to extra Reach, you’ll also get additional website traffic (clicks), email newsletter sign ups (lead gen), subscription purchases (conversions) or app downloads. Depending on the objective, SND will set up the ad to get the best possible ROI for you in that category. This helps you get the most out of your budget and work toward success in multiple performance metrics at the same time.

Reach beyond your fanbase

The SND Promotions team of Blue Print Certified ad specialists can help you set up ad targeting that will reach the best possible audience for your brand. For example, you can specifically target ads to people who don’t yet follow you on Facebook, ensuring your advertising dollars are helping you reach the right people at the right time. Or you can reach out to both existing fans and new followers. You can even target people who like your competitors. We’ll show you all the tricks.

Ready to give it a try? Check your newsroom credit card to see how much you spent on Boosted Posts last month, and let us show you how to reroute that money this month to produce a real return on your investment instead. Email us.

The post The better way to boost posts on Facebook. first appeared on Social News Desk.

Our method is unique because we use our proprietary Dynamic News Ads technology to automatically identify your best content and use it to build the best ad in real time. We line it up with your goal and help you find new audiences at a cost that works for your business – choose from newsletter signups, text-alert signups, subscription acquisition, TV tune-in, OTT promotion, app downloads or even website traffic.

Using AI to Build a Better Ad

The best content for your ad already exists – it’s just a matter of finding it. And that’s exactly what the SND Promotions team can do using our proprietary technology which we call Dynamic News Ads (DNA). It’s a complex algorithm which scans ALL of your content to identify trends, overperformers, hot topics and more. It can also eliminate content you don’t want to see in an ad such as politics or promotional content. We do it all in real time and automatically rotate in the best stories while rotating out the ones that aren’t performing.

Superhuman Optimization

The Blue Print Certified SND Promotions team does all the heavy lifting for you – and has a proven track record with more than 1,000 publishers. As a Premium Agency Partner for Facebook Business Partners (FBP), Social News Desk is on the leading edge of everything that can make your Paid Acquisition Campaigns successful.

In other words, your content goes twice as far. It’s content that’s already resonating with one audience being used intelligently to capture more audience. 

New to SND? Click here to line up a demo or to learn more about Social News Desk!

The post Artificial Intelligence + Real-World Journalism = Better Acquisition Ads first appeared on Social News Desk.

Our paid reports allows you to easily visualize what you’re spending, how your campaign is pacing and if you’re hitting the key KPIs.

We give you total insight into how your ad is performing and pacing – so your ads are on track to deliver.

Keeping track of way more than one ad? This feature is key to making it easy for you to track multiple ads.

Worried about spending too much? You can monitor your budget easily so not to exceed your desired amount.

Using this feature means no more surprises if Facebook turns off your ad or isn’t spending at pace you hoped. You can diagnose problems and fix them right away.

New to SND? Click here to line up a demo or to learn more about Social News Desk!

The post SND Perks: Monitor and Edit Budgets, Target & Copy first appeared on Social News Desk.