CASE STUDY
How Bauer Media uses NewsWhip to unify content strategy across all of their brands
Ali Wilkinson,
Digital Content Manager
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Industry
Publisher
Company Size
1,000+ employees
“Spike is perfect for us – Things like shared panels and access to real-time velocity analytics has just been an absolute joy to work with every day.”
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CHALLENGE: How can media conglomerates unify content strategy across all of their brands to better engage audiences?
NewsWhip client Bauer Media, one of the UK’s influential media brand networks, had a strategic problem to solve at the start of 2015 in its Radio division.
Despite having 107 individual media brands, reaching 22 million people across radio, digital, TV and magazines, Bauer realised that some of its brands were operating in silos. Great content was being delivered by brands like Absolute Radio and KISS, but Bauer was keen to deliver more comprehensive content and brand experiences, across many complementary channels.
“
We knew that we had an opportunity to engage a much bigger digital audience than we currently did, and we knew that we wanted to start getting serious about content publishing. We said: ‘Can we build a bridge between our brand’s website, and their thriving social community?’ We found that we absolutely could.”
After re-thinking their social strategies and assembling a central team, Ali Wilkinson and the team took a trial of our Spike dashboard.
Bauer ran a five day test to see what would happen if their regional radio stations put new forms of content at the heart of what they did on social media.
The test involved using Spike to discover and track stories and other content that their audience would be interested in, before curating them and posting them to the various web properties and social accounts, with a new, more appropriate tone.
“
Beyond our wildest expectations. When we talked more about what the local and national audiences were talking about, we got a really strong response.”
After delivering consistently appropriate content through their Facebook pages, Ali and his team saw the following increases:
249%
social referrals
138%
new mobile users
104%
unique users
Based on the success of the short test, Bauer rolled the new strategy out across their organization.
Bauer’s content team based around the UK now act as the real time co-ordinators of the group’s various media brands, using Spike to reach audiences from all corners of the UK and beyond with relevant, timely information.
“
Compelling, original and well-targeted content is encouraging more and more engagement and creating triple-digit growth across almost every measure. Having Spike in our newsroom has been a major contributor, allowing us to select and deliver the right story for the right audience and in a timely fashion.”
Using customised Spike panels, the team starts every morning seeing exactly what their audience has been talking about over the last few hours. The panels are focussed at the content areas that their listeners and readers are keen to hear about – entertainment and lifestyle, alongside topical UK and regional news stories from cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.
Now, it’s like the content team was never without Spike. The guesswork is gone, content discovery time is way down, and every post delivers a Bauer brand experience directly to their readers’ phones and news feeds.
“
Spike is perfect for us, because it’s really allowed us to create a newsroom. Things like shared panels and access to real time velocity analytics has just been an absolute joy to work with every day. It’s really helped us shape our audience-building.”
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