“Last June, The Times used eight freelancers and tagging tech over three months to segment 1,000 articles from the previous 17 months. Each article was tagged with 16 different pieces of metadata, included criteria like the content tone, the headline type, the article format and geography. These tags were plotted against 10 metrics that show engagement, such as pageviews, time on page, whether someone has commented, saving, sharing, whether the reader is registered or a subscriber. That information has then been used to dictate content strategy.”
“For example, over the last few months, The Times has published 15% fewer stories on the online Home News section after learning that news with no additional or exclusive content underperforms.”
“The social team has since gotten more strategic with promoting stories on Facebook based on the tone or headlines that would do well at driving referral traffic. Evans wrongly assumed that headlines typically drawing people in would drive more referral traffic.”
