6 newsroom strategies that will make your push notifications successful

The importance for a good push notification strategy seems to grow by the day. 
Just this week, Facebook announced Notify, a new push tool that will allow users to sign up to get pushes from providers they are interested in. It’s not all news, as music and other forms will reach you, but clearly news will play a big role in the platform’s success. 

And there have been stories about others that are seeing big gains with push notifications. The New York Times was profiled in this piece on Nieman Lab about how they are managing and approaching pushes. There was this story on Digiday about USA Today’s success with an SMS share button. 

GateHouse, over the last several months, has been rolling out a push notification strategy for newspapers that have apps and I thought I would share some of the more important things we believe newsrooms should consider with pushes: 

1. Break the news:
Push notifications are best for providing information people need to know right now. So, of course, they are set up perfectly for breaking news. But make sure that the breaking news has wide impact and interest. A few good examples: Weather events, street closings or accidents, election results and major police and fire news. Make sure it feels like breaking news. I am often surprised with what some national media outlets consider a breaking news alert. Even locally, it needs to feel significant and needs to impact a wide audience. 

2. Useful information matters:
While breaking news is king, push notifications are about giving people content they need now and that isn’t always news about a building that is on fire. On Friday night, as you have compiled the major high school football scores in your region on your site, sending a push notification that provides your users a rundown on the biggest games in your region, is a good use of a push. This could work for basketball season, as well. This is a good example of something that isn’t necessarily breaking news but is still important for users. Another good example could be a 5 things to do this weekend feature that you might push out on Saturday with a message like “Good morning and happy weekend. Here are 5 things you can do today and tomorrow.” Or tie the events to a traffic reminder: “Traffic reminder: Today’s parade downtown is going to shut down 3rd Street this morning. Find details here.” 

3. Too much is annoying:
While it’s a good idea to push a package of Friday night football games, it’s not a great idea to push updates from each of those games as part of a push strategy. That’s what Twitter is for. Readers will become annoyed if it becomes too much or the content is really narrow, like a mid-season high school football game. Even if it’s a big high school football game, like a state playoff game, it’s important to be really careful with how many times you push. I would suggest a halftime update and a final score. But all this raises a question on how much you should push. This NY Times piece on push notificationsnotes they pushed seven pieces of content on a single day through push. And while some of their audience is annoyed, the Times says they are building lots of audience through push. The Time’s audience is clearly very large and wide and the fact they are interested in national and international news gives The Times a bigger opportunity than a community newspaper when it comes to the sort of content they push. Seven alerts still seems a lot, even if you are The Times. A few times a week (6-12), I think is a good goal, for community and mid-sized newspapers. But if news warranted, maybe it’s more. The data will tell you what to do. Experiment. 

4. Too late:
Traffic trends at GateHouse show us that our audience starts trailing off after10 p.m., even on mobile. Many of them are back on early, but not before 5 a.m. Look at your app and mobile data usage to figure out the best times to push. With that being said, breaking news clearly needs to drive those decisions. Just make sure if you push something after 10 p.m., it’s really worth it. For one, many might not be on — per the data we’re seeing on people checking off of their phones after 10 p.m. — and two, an alert might wake them up. Don’t annoy users. 

5. Champion in the newsroom:
Over time in newsrooms, we have created champions for different parts of our digital and social media strategies. The same is needed with a push notification strategy. As I outlined above, it’s not the same as Twitter and so a newsroom leader has to think about the right content, right time and right frequency to push something. As news breaks, digital editors should not just be asking how fast they can get something up on Twitter, but also how soon it can get pushed. News organizations shouldn’t push something just for that really big news story that happens once or twice a year. Consistency matters. That doesn’t mean doing it 20 times a day, but pushes should become something that users start expecting and seeing on a regular basis. 

6. Link it:
There should be two goals with pushes. One, to get information out to your audience. And two, drive more audience and traffic. In some instances, something may be breaking and you just don’t have a story up yet but you want to get information out to your audience. That’s OK, but as you will see in the NY Times post I shared above, readers are frustrated when there isn’t more information. So if you don’t have more information, I would share with readers that more details will be coming. If you have details, for sure, share that link in your push. 

SMS and push notifications will only continue to grow as the usage of mobile grows. Audiences are hungry for immediate information. Our mobile sites, apps and social media accounts are a way to provide that information. Push notification may be the fastest and most effective way to get information to people. And that’s why we have to ensure we’re delivering that information in smart and sensible ways.

Jim Hart

Marketing Agency for SMB and Consultant for newsmedia companies

8y

Steve Campbell, I'm a NYT digital subscriber. I actually turned off their push notifications a while back. Waaaayyyyy too many. One of the reasons David's article struck a chord with me.

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Steve Campbell

Sr Ops Business Analyst – Analysis, improvements, and solutions to benefit employees & their work

8y

Not surprising that this is working for NYT. It makes sense that news - breaking or headlines - could be pushed. One way that newspapers could actually build new audience.

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Jim Hart

Marketing Agency for SMB and Consultant for newsmedia companies

8y

This is excellent, thanks for writing it. As the clamor for beacons grows, I'm concerned that marketers will quickly fatigue consumers with push notifications. Great to see your take on what warrants a push and your concern of how much is too much. I hope marketers take a similar approach.

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