Journalists can learn from Facebook's design and content to better capture their mobile audience

By Dan Russo

Journalists and news organizations need to rethink how they engage their audiences with mobile content, a mobile revenue researcher said. 

Frederic Filloux of the Monday Note – a blog that discusses the latest in mobile revenue models and research – said journalists should use the technology in their phones to make their content more unique and to reach out to audiences more effectively.

In a presentation Filloux said the biggest obstacles news organizations face in generating more mobile revenue are competition with news distributors that control social traffic such as Facebook.

He added that crowd sourced news such as YouTube and Snapchat and aggregators that compile popular stories from multiple media outlets into one app are also huge competitors for news organizations.

“The dominating [players] are morphing into distributors [and] news providers themselves,” Filloux said in a recording of his presentation.  “There is a flurry of aggregators and the question is, ‘How do we respond to that?’ ”

Known for connecting users with colleagues and employers in the professional world, LinkedIn  broke into the news sector and bought the up-and-coming aggregator Pulse to gain readership.

With that addition LinkedIn Today now provides news content relating to the business sector, so users can see the top stories according to their connections and interests.

LinkedIn software engineering intern and senior computer science major at the University of Maryland Nick Aversano agreed with Filloux to an extent.  

“Yes, Facebook controls what posts [news organizations] show and don’t show,” Aversano said.  “They use algorithms to figure out what posts to show to what users.   I don’t think it hinders articles from spreading … if anything Facebook helps the viral growth of posts.”

Filloux said journalists need to keep their content unique to increase their mobile users.  In his presentation Filloux stressed making the length of content proportional to how much time the reader has to consume it, especially for audiences on the go.

Additionally he said to use videos and pictures to take advantage of increasing screen sizes.

Creating unique content is only half the battle according to the researcher.  He said to generate more revenue media outlets need to take a new approach to mobile advertisements.

He suggested using native ads, which are advertisements that look like the content produced on the page, to draw in and better engage viewers. 

“I like [native advertising] because of the experience,” Aversano said.  “Because they’re not obtrusive and they’re not in your face.  I guess you can’t have free content so it’s your best alternative.”

However, some mobile users find the native advertising on popular sites like Buzz Feed to be deceptive.

“In terms of effectiveness [native] ads are very good at least for the average person,” Charles Tam, senior economics major at the University of Maryland said.  “However I do find them quite unethical in the way that they are very misleading.”

As a former journalist Filloux sympathizes with these ethical concerns but he said newsrooms need to find a way to separate the news from ad content while still embedding advertisements in the mobile site to be aesthetically pleasing to readers.

“I’m a strong advocate of a Chinese wall between the two,” Fillox said in the recording of his presentation.  “The site would blur the line too much not doing well revenue wise.”