What it Takes to Craft a Successful Article in Today's Digital Newsroom

Data analytics have slowly maneuvered their way into almost every digital newsroom in the world. Numbers help journalists determine an article’s general success online and the potential success of future articles.

We collected the key metrics every journalist should know and monitor. We also spoke with Dave Smith, senior editor for Tech Insider – the newest addition to the Business Insider family – about how data impacts his work.

What Data Brings to Journalism

Data-driven journalism is on the rise. There is more information available, more technology available, and more of a push for data-centric news as big data becomes more prevalent. But, data has always been a useful tool for journalists to discover new stories and bring legitimacy to existing pieces.

Dave Smith explained, “Data is extremely important. We include numbers any time we need to support important information or provide context. It isn’t necessarily what the number is, but what it means. If you tell me ‘iPad sales have been slipping’ vs ‘iPad sales are down 62%’ – when a number is used right, it can really be the star of the story.”

While it’s no secret facts and figures can be used to enhance a story, there are more numbers at play it the digital newsroom. It’s time to delve into the nitty-gritty of SEO keyword research, the looming editorial analytics dashboard, and the power of social media engagement.

SEO Research

“At Tech Insider, I ask myself, ‘how will a reader find my story?’ If someone is searching for a topic, what words will they use? Is it a question? A phrase? A few keywords?” Smith said. And that’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play.

Using the right keywords can make or break the success of a news article. Great tools like Google Trends or Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner help simplify the keyword selection process.

The keyword planner suggests words for you to use, estimates monthly search volume, and determines how competitive a keyword is. You want to pick words that are searched often with low competition, that way you are more likely to rank.

In order to maximize your SEO research, these keywords or phrases should be present in your headline, sprinkled within the body of your text, added as tags, and placed as the ‘alt-text’ behind your article’s images.

Editorial Dashboard

Editorial dashboards allow newsrooms to track the engagement of their readers, in real-time. Tools like Chartbeat help newsrooms across the globe know instantly if they’re getting and keeping their readers attention—and what they need to do to keep those readers coming back for more.

Unique Visitors – Unique visitors refer to the number of distinct individuals requesting pages from a website during a given period, regardless of how often they visit. This is the most important number to track in order to determine how much traction, or traffic, your article is getting. 

Pageviews – How many times a page is viewed, or loaded by a browser. This is also called an impression. This is good for viewing overall trends, but doesn’t give you specific information about your audience.

Top Pages – You can easily spot your top pages, and the ones with relatively lower engagement time, so you can promote or improve content.

Smith knows a story isn’t done once it’s published. “You are always watching it, tweaking it, reworking the headline, adding media. Sometimes those little changes do make a difference,” he said.

Source – Every visit to a web site has an origin, or source. Possible sources include search engines, social media, email, direct visits, and links. It is important to know where your traffic is coming from, so you can continue to optimize that source in the future.

Social Sharing

Most digital journalists understand the importance of sharing their work across social media platforms. There are hundreds of social media metrics you can track to determine your social success. Here are a few common metrics you should watch to make sure your readers are enjoying and sharing your articles.

Reach or Impressions – Reach shows the number of unique people who have seen your posts or tweets. The more shares and retweets your articles get, the more potential reach you have, which increases your chances for engagement.

Engagement – People engaged is the number of unique people who’ve clicked, liked, favorited, commented on or shared your posts or tweets. Click here to see how data visualization can help drive engagement. 

Demographic – Most major social platforms have their own analytics for your to explore, like Twitter Analytics and Facebook Insights. These tools give you a ton of data on your audience’s demographic. You have access to people’s age, location, gender, interests, language, and more. This information may help you craft future content.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to monitoring journalism metrics. One side believes data-driven decision-making in the newsroom puts the emphasis on the reader, and what the reader wants to see, which creates a more democratic system. Others believe the news shouldn’t cater to high-traffic stories, and should instead stay in the hands of editors.

Regardless of where you fall in this debate, the reality is that data isn’t going anywhere, and journalists will continue to use it as a valuable tool.

Smith believes data analytics are helpful, but storytelling is still the most important aspect of great journalism. “Put your best foot forward and write quality stories,” he said. “At the end of the day, yes the numbers absolutely do matter, but don’t obsess over them. Use them as a guide.”

Let us show you how infogram can help you increase reader engagement and hit those key metrics in the newsroom. Request a demo to speak with an Infogram specialist and learn about all Infogram has to offer.

Dave Smith is senior technology editor of Tech Insider. His work has been published in Business Insider, Newsweek, USA TODAY, ABC News, NPR, ReadWrite, Inc. Magazine, The International Business Times, Forbes, and others.