BHIVE 2020 Look Ahead: 5 News Experience Goals
From in-depth discovery interviews to live prototype feedback, over the course of 15 studies, 5 audience surveys and 4 experiments launched into the product wild, we’ve learned a ton. Here’s a look at the biggest lessons from 2019, and the goals we’ll carry with us into the New Year.
Nearly three years ago, we launched BHIVE, Bloomberg Media’s research and innovation group, with a call to explore how we might leverage novel technologies and user experiences to better engage new and emerging audiences.
In 2019 we broadened our focus to include Bloomberg Media’s existing audience across platforms. The goal: to complement our robust understanding of what our audience does by focusing on the why and how of particular data-backed trends. This work took us into people’s everyday lives and helped us to create experiences that are more relevant to their news habits, needs and expectations. We sought to understand how they make career decisions to inform how we can better serve professionalsin their personal lives. We explored topics important to our audience and our own strategic vision: inclusivity of news experiences, the future of work and delivering more relevance to our growing global audiences.
The following themes offer valuable learnings into the state of today’s news seekers and will continue to inform our work in the coming year (and hopefully some of yours).
1. Meet people where they look for news — off-platform.
What we learned: Social reading is a highway for skimming and scanning. Articles are the detour. Our research consistently shows that social-first news seekers are inclined to stay in their feeds. Reasons abound, but here’s one we saw frequently: People aren’t willing to risk the friction or disappointment that might be on the other side of a clickthrough. Time is precious and people have become wary of clickbait that leads to disappointing content experiences. Our studies have shown that people engage more positively with content that delivers clear value within the social post itself. For example, even with a few incremental changes to our mobile article template designed specifically for people coming to Bloomberg.com via social, we were able to triple article engagement (via articles shares), significantly increase article completion rates and decrease exit rates.
And these lessons extend beyond social media. In 2019 we designed a newsletter that aimed to give users enough information that they’d leave feeling satisfied if they stopped at their inboxes. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but this approach led people to click through to our articles at a rate 14 times that of the homepage’s average. Whether it’s an insight or a standalone story, people want storytelling and product experiences that truly stand on their own.
Looking ahead: In an increasingly fragmented world, people are likelier to get their news from social feeds than homepages. So it should come as no surprise that they develop expectations for what content should look like on their platform of choice. Observational studies gave us a window into the shortcuts people use to evaluate the “authenticity” of what they’re looking at on various platforms.The signals we heard and observed will continue to shape Bloomberg social experiences in 2020: Does a Twitter video look like it was formatted for quick, on-the-go consumption? Does an Insta post strike a relatable tone or is it simply rehashing content meant for the web? Does a WhatsApp message provide a topline or compelling insight? Is that docu-series entertaining enough to watch on the biggest screen in your house? The most compelling content experiences should stand on their own and meet news consumers where they are. They should offer a clear takeaway.They should help build habits and routine around a format or information type. They should be created with context in mind.
Creating closer connections with audiences requires designing experiences that bring value and make it easy to engage off platform — sometimes, it’s the little tweaks that make a really big difference in the way your audience will interact with you.
2. Know your blind spots.
What we learned: News organizations need to do the work in order to understand their blindspots. This starts with us taking a hard look at the data, talking candidly to diverse communities, and identifying pain points within their experiences. Through dozens of interviews with women professionals, for example, we learned that many are looking for news solutions that respect their time and consistently deliver value in the moments when they are likely to be engaged. We also audited historic data to better understand the relationship between story performance and gender. The results helped us to identify areas where we might be able to better meet the news needs of women. Our research shows there’s demand from women for stories that cross over from news to different areas of interests that matter to them: healthcare, the environment, education and beyond.
Looking ahead: It goes without saying that there are many engagement gaps in the world of news products. Buried in most news org analytics is a treasure trove of forensic information that can allow us to better understand where audiences are being underserved. Based on our 2019 insights, BHIVE is currently exploring ways to make news experiences more inclusive. What that means for us, and for most, is that we must go beyond what we’re already doing and look for new ways to serve communities and people we haven’t reached as effectively in the past.
3. When it comes to collecting data, provide value and prioritize trust.
What we learned: BHIVE explored the concept of tangible value exchange in 2019 with the launch of our Work Wise MVP. The benefit for users was simple: in exchange for information we delivered, fun, personalized career insights and content. The experience performed better than anyone ever imagined. People saw value in the experience — more than three quarters of subscribers said the Work Wise personalized insights feature was useful or interesting — and 4 out of 5 said they’d sign up for the experience again. In dozens of conversations with news seekers we’ve heard that people simply assume personalization is powering — or at least complementing — editorially curated news experiences. But still, people desire to understand how stories are being selected for them and want to know they aren’t losing editorial perspective in the process of being served content that is “likely” to interest them. Perhaps most importantly, they want to know that they have the option to control and shape what’s being personalized for them.
Looking ahead: It’s a paradox: People want rich, relevant news and media experiences but they’re wary (rightfully) of giving up their personal data in order to achieve this. This tension has many in the industry wondering whether personalization and privacy can coexist. In a world where publishers are relying less and less on third-party data to drive personalization and targeting, publishers must look to new models of collecting information.This is arguably an opportunity to shift how we build relationships with news consumers. BHIVE is exploring how transparency, trust, control and consent can shape news experiences that deliver more value to people.
4. Make it easier to participate in democracy.
What we learned: In interviews with younger news consumers, many identified presidential election years as milestone moments in developing their long-term news habits. For voters who are dipping back into the political newscycle around an election — or for a first-time voter — context goes a long way in driving interest and engagement long after voting day.
Looking ahead: Election years offer an ongoing storyline that represents — for many — the first time they’ll engage with the news on a daily and ongoing basis. Younger voters have unique needs: they’re looking for additional context, they’re more likely to find stories via social media and to share via social messaging. But their needs overlap with the rest of us in many ways: they need trusted insights and analysis that will help them engage with the people they trust. In 2020, we challenge ourselves and other news orgs to think about how our experiences can make it easier to stay informed, to engage with others and to be part of the political process.
5. Provide a service beyond news and information.
What we learned: We kicked off 2019 by asking our audience a fundamental question: what’s the unique job that we, as a news organization, do for you? The resulting conversations helped us to understand exactly how and why someone turns to Bloomberg over another news brand. These “jobs” went beyond the obvious and helped us better understand the value we bring to people in specific circumstances.
Looking ahead: The role of a news organization goes much further than the basics of keeping people up to date. Scratch a little deeper and you’ll tease out unexpected scenarios and moments that bring people value (spoiler alert: you’ve probably been hired to do something that isn’t exactly the mission or value proposition your team sets out for itself). This simple exercise will help teams to differentiate between what people turn to your organization for (e.g. staying informed) and why they turn to you for it (e.g. to have smarter conversations with clients, to unlock a perspective on current events that “connects the dots,” for a global business perspective on what’s trending on social, etc.) Continuing to sharpen our perspective on Bloomberg Media’s “jobs to be done” allows us to stay in tune with the real needs of our audience, and in turn, inspire features that will deliver more nuanced utility to people who turn to us for news.
BHIVE is a cross-functional R&D group that works across Bloomberg’s product, editorial, engineering, design and business teams. Last year’s small but mighty team included: David Harding (engineering lead), Dylan Greif (design lead), Brian Ward (engineering), Sara Malamut (engineering), Michael Wu (engineering), Ankit Agrawal (engineering), Simon Ayzman (engineering), Amanda Lansman (product) and myself (research lead).
And thank you to our many advisors, advocates and partners in 2019, especially:
- Julia Beizer, product sponsor and advisor
- Pooja Malpani, engineering sponsor and advisor
- Katie Boyce, editorial
- Meg Ely, editorial
- Alcibiades Montas, marketing
- Will Dantzler, analytics
- Marissa Zanetti-Crume, product
- Walker Fullerton, product
Please reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn with any questions or ideas for collaboration.
