'Social media's not just about lulz and pictures of cats' - Independent digital editor Christian Broughton reveals key to recent success
Combining the dominance of social media and the traditional values of the Independent is the strategy that led to the title reaching record traffic in December, according to the Independent’s digital editor, Christian Broughton.
Figures: The Independent reported record traffic in December
Speaking to The Drum after ABC figures revealed the Independent’s global website audience increased by almost eight per cent to 29.9 million unique users in December, Broughton said a combination of elements had come together in the digital newsroom to pull in more readers, and embracing social was a big part of it.
“A lot of it comes from social growth,” he said. “The really nice thing about social growth is that it’s about recommendations from individual people from around the world, it’s a human thing, and I think that we’re proving that you can have all the good values of the Independent - which is investigative, intelligent reporting from around the world - that can work into the social media age really well.
“Social media’s not just about lulz and pictures of cats - although we all love that - campaigning issues, social responsibility and social justice issues do really well too.”
The ABC figures for December showed global page impressions were up at the Independent, increasing by 6.5 per cent to 119m. In the UK alone, monthly unique visitors were up by 2.8 per cent to 12.2 million while page impressions increased by 1.7 per cent to 67.2 million.
In contrast, the UK’s three most popular news websites, Mail Online, the Guardian and the Telegraph, reported a dip in unique browsers in December compared to the month before, although Mirror Group Digital reached two million daily unique browsers for the first time. The success for MGD follows the launch of the seven-day Sunday People website in November, a venture funded entirely by native advertising.
According to Broughton, the key to pulling in more traffic at the Independent has been not only embracing social media and the emergence of digital, but balancing it properly with the title’s brand to create a product familiar to readers, but with an edge.
“We gave our tech section top line navigation in the middle of the year and that’s gone from strength to strength,” he explained. “Our arts and entertainment section is just incredibly vibrant. With the ideas, the writing, the fun and the intelligence it’s a really compelling mix.
“We’ve brought together the fun and energy and positivity of what people think of as social-friendly content with the Independent brand values. I think everything we do is so on brand for the Independent. It really flies within the combination of all these elements.”
The figures also showed strong growth in users accessing the Independent via mobile devices, with 45 per cent of users coming from a mobile or tablet device. This represented a global rise of 25.5 per cent in mobile unique users, increasing to 13.4 million, and domestically a 15 per cent increase, from 5.6 million to 6.4 million month-on-month.
That growth is set to rise further as the Independent prepares for the release of new apps later this year – although it will be “very soon”, Broughton said – and embraces multi-media content across devices.
“It’s not just about written word either. We’ve never had as much video on our site, we’ve got more embedded multimedia pictures and video, both in tweets and in our pieces. Once you do that and make it really easy for people to come to, your numbers are going to go up, people are going to like it.”
The news will come as a boost to the title, which hit the headlines last week when it emerged that owners Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev were seeking buyers for the paper and sister titles i and the Independent on Sunday.