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2024 is the year of...

Getting users the content they need.

HELLO! Future Community is a newsletter exploring connections between the content organizations create and the communities they build. We look at membership, newsletters, fundraising, data, video, tech platforms, and the people, leadership and strategic thinking of all this (waves hands) enormous investment that nonprofits, campaigns, and media organizations put into engaging content and storytelling.

This edition looks ahead to the value of user-driven content and how to grapple with the growing role creators and influencers have in organizational content programs. That last one could have big implications for how groups think about production, staffing and even their email and fundraising programs.

A small crystal ball sits on the ground and reflects an upside down image of the sky, sun and landscape.
photo by Paul Basel via Pexels

The future will be here one of these days

December is a time for predictions. Soothsaying seems fraught given how this year has gone and that 2024 is an election year. But some predicting, like that at Nieman Lab, we focus prediction work we get something useful. I do love their annual Predictions for Journalism and find it useful for broader content and engagement strategy.

Sure, the few dozen pieces are largely written by and for journalists and people working in the news business. But anyone thinking about community, content or organizing can learn about engagement to support fundraising, applying data and metrics to communications or content strategy in a world of rapidly disaggregating platforms.

A.J. Bauer’s Hyperlocal information warfare rises up looks at how the extreme right is using local and state-level news sites to seed and spread disinformation. This isn’t news to anyone doing on the ground community organizing but most state, regional and national advocacy organizations are less aware of how to engage with and counter these projects.

In Collaboration with ethnic and identity publishers becomes a must, Ashley Woods Branch, Executive Director of the Fund for Equity in Local News, explains the rising presence of ethnic and identity-driven news publishers. Small news outlets like these and local alt-weeklies rely on trust, are tightly connected to their community and aren’t reliant on Meta or other single social media platforms. They’re an outreach partner, even a communications model, for nonprofits.

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Call it audience, community or users. Whatever. Just consider people before platform.

I’m concerned about how organizations use their scarce content and communications resources in a landscape flooded with audience and platform choices. The typical group will be looking to 2024 thinking along the lines of “We have websites, email lists and post on Facebook, Instagram and doing more with TikTok though that’s a whole other kind of video we have to create. And I don’t know what we should do with Twitter.” Platforms are many. And a mess.

Sarah Marshall runs global audience development strategy at Condé Nast. In We get past “post-platform”, Marshall offers a framework for thinking of audience needs instead of platforms. It resonates because, well, we talk a LOT here about what members and supporters need, and (see above) platforms are coming and going.

“With a seemingly limitless number of platforms on which to meet and engage audiences — but still a finite number of hours in the day — teams will need to develop frameworks to understand where to start, stop, and pivot.”

The credibility of influencers is debatable (see Taylor Lorenz’s The creator economy will be astroturfed in last year’s Nieman Lab predictions). But nobody wants to hear from an institution. People also want to hear from other people, not organizations. Don’t have a TikTok strategy. Have a people, community, member, audience strategy.

Marshall sums up the audience needs approach at Condé Nast in 100 or so words:

In 2023, we updated our “user needs” at Condé Nast, determining that our audiences have six needs:Update meInspire meDivert meEducate meGuide meConnect me

We added “guide me” to an earlier iteration of needs — and started thinking about newsletter audiences with that need. For example:Audiences need to be “guided” when shopping, and the “new arrivals” curated shopping experience has become a destination in itself for Vogue.The Goings On newsletter from The New Yorker (with Substack-inspired subscriber exclusives) is my personal favorite guide.“Connect me” isn’t a new user need, but you should know that younger audiences want to participate. While community is nothing new (ask the Ars Technica community member who has commented 100,000 times over the past 24 years), audiences want to find new ways to express their own values.

Sure, user needs are in the forefront. But, just as a nonprofit’s list, community and content are driven by fundraising budgets, user needs are driven by revenue.

“Guide me” doesn’t get nearly enough attention in the nonprofit and news space. And it has so much potential. We work so hard getting a new person’s attention and first engagement or donation. Those are things we can put a dollar value to. But we aren’t as good guiding (and measuring or valuing) their ongoing journey with us (at least not until the next donation or sale).

We can think more about email welcome series, of course. But what about onboarding videos? Or new member FAQs and live or recorded “welcome” videos? I’d love to see an organization try a “new to our site” collection of tooltips similar to when you download or update an app. Guide Me content could also include surveys (even single question “how are we doing?” or “what are you looking for?” questions). Guide Me content also sets up a framework for user registration in which people can become a part of a community and you can better track if and how you’re meeting needs.

It is words, pictures and videos that, mushed together, tell a story or solve a problem or create wonder in someone’s day. A donor, subscriber or member is basing their allocation of money, time and emotion in your work based on if and how that mushed together story reaches them and meets their needs. Think first about those needs.

Reading

  • Direct funding alone does not make a news business more sustainable. Lion provides a report back on their multi-year project to directly support local news organizations hiring member revenue teams. As I wrote on LinkedIn, this is really about the power of valuing people who thrive in complex, cross-cutting roles. Don’t under-resource your membership staff. [Lisa Heyamoto / Lion Publishers]
  • Can organizations who rely on credibility and trust reach people, grow relationships and raise revenue in a content creator world. That’s a question I had while reading Where is the line between athlete and influencer? by Hannah Belles in Trail Runner. Belles looks at how sports content creators are earning more from sports brands than athletes. I read this shortly after catching up on Substack’s announcement of new video features. Integrated video on Substack, an influencer marketing platform if there ever was one, is the company’s acknowledgment of the power of video in attracting and spreading attention. Belles’s article comes via Melanie Broder on LinkedIn who does a better job dissecting the relationship between organizations, influencers and readers/viewers.
  • How Bloomberg Media got to 500,000 subscribers – and how it plans to reach a million by Dominic Ponsford in Press Gazette. Key quote from Bloomberg’s chief digital officer Julia Beizer:
“We spend a lot of time nurturing and engaging these members. So if they use the product then subscription growth comes naturally: because it's something that you use every day, you see value in, it's something you're going to retain. So I think the strategy for growth is really a strategy of thinking about your audience first, and then make your decision there.”
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Jobs

The full Future Community jobs list is here. These are some of the newest roles on the list (the hottest? Sure: 🔥).

Journalism, media and content strategy

Nonprofit organizations

See below for communications-specific roles.

Communications

Foundations

Politics, products, projects and more

Resources

Job boards and other support.

Progressive Job Resources is a compilation of job lists, boards and groups curated and shared by Allison Ehrich Bernstein.

Ethical Tech Job Resources is a list of job lists mostly centered around progressive technology in the US and UK. It’s built by the community and maintained by me and Edward Saperia, Dean of Newspeak House in London.

Finally, a few seconds of zen from last summer…

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