Q&A with Ben Dreyfuss, Editorial Director, Growth & Strategy at Mother Jones
Between 2014 to 2019, Mother Jones grew its audience by 17%, amassing a total of 8 million unique visitors a month. Part of this growth, according to the Shorenstein Center, can be attributed to MoJo’s habit of experimenting with new social media and engagement approaches. This week, The Idea caught up with Ben to learn more about how these experiments inform editorial decisions at MoJo. Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis.
Can you give me a brief overview of your team and role?
For the past two years, I have served as the editorial director for growth and strategy at Mother Jones. My day-to-day consists of looking at our current stories and making sure that their framing works, talking through story ideas, coming up with headlines, and sometimes assigning stories.
When I first joined in 2013 as an engagement editor, my expertise was in getting people to engage on social media. At the time, Mother Jones didn’t have anyone dedicated to social media. I successfully increased our social media engagement pretty quickly, which helped my bosses recognize the value of social media. They started to let me conduct small experiments and, eventually, invested more resources into the team.
Over the past two years, I’ve helped build what is now our social media team. We’re tasked with overseeing audience development, growth, and strategy on digital platforms. Working at a nonprofit can feel like wringing water out of sand. My team is always doing different things — they’re not just thinking about how to raise traffic, but are also writing and reporting.
Besides myself, the team consists of a deputy in London, an editor/reporter in San Francisco, and two fellows — one works in the New York office directly on my team and the other is part of the video team and handles our Instagram. I have to say my proudest accomplishment here at Mother Jones is assembling this team.
Tell me a little bit about some of the projects you’ve overseen since being editorial director?
We work on launching and reconceiving digital products. Since Mother Jones is small in size and lacks a dedicated data team, my team’s main objective is to bridge siloes in the organization and gather all the data and information from various platforms.
As part of an organization that’s striving to deliver impact with its journalism, my team is interested in figuring out how our content can have the most impact on our platforms. One of the things we realized early on was that behavior we observed on social media can be used to inform writing and reportage. Basically, certain story frames won’t work, while others will. For example, if there’s a headline that I think will do well, but the story is missing certain elements for that headline to work, I go back to the editors and ask them to expand on certain parts.
Additionally, since 2016, we’ve been trying to focus on having our audience development strategy not just be about growth or traffic, but also be about making sure that the content we produce and share on our platforms adds as much value to our readers as possible. Recently, we’ve spent a lot of time on things like Instagram and video. We recognize that these initiatives won’t dramatically increase our traffic or contribute to revenue, but we find them key to fulfilling the organization’s goal of making an impact.
Could you tell me a little bit more about how your team supports the video team?
I work in the NYC office and the main group here is the video and podcast team. So, I work with them to help increase views and listens. With video, I help them think about where to put them, what works, length, and when to post them.
For a long time, our video strategy was built around Facebook. Recently, we’ve started experimenting with our videos on Twitter and we’re realizing that Twitter is a much better platform for our videos than Facebook. It’s also been interesting and helpful to observe the reception of our Instagram Stories — it’s helped us think more about how we want to present our stories off Instagram.
Do you write as well?
Yes. I also edit stories and work with other senior editors to help with framing stories.
When I started using Twitter, I became more aware of how people talked to one another and this in turn made me write more conversationally. Before that, I used to write like I was Edith Wharton. Twitter is awful in a million ways (and sometimes I think that maybe all of social media should just be turned off), but it does help you get comfortable with writing as you talk which people find more real and natural.
When it comes to measuring the success of social media engagement, what metric do you think is the most important?
We’re really interested in engagement metrics like “Shares” or a “Retweets.” We believe that having people want to spread the word is another way of creating impact, so we want to know what content motivates readers to share it with someone else.
What is the most interesting thing (product, tool, article, social channel, special project, redesign, etc.) that you’ve seen from a media outlet other than your own?
I am obligated by family to mention my sister, Emily Dreyfuss, who’s currently at Politico helping launch Protocol, a new, Politico-owned media company on the “people, power, and politics of the technology industry.”
I’m also interested in the way creators have been able to build mini brands from podcasts that then reach back to other mediums like video. Vox and Slate, in particular, are both great at building a particular voice or personality. One thing we’ve all learned from social media is that people follow human voices.
I think moving forward we can also expect to see more emphasis on short form video.
Rapid Fire Questions
What is your first read in the morning?
Apple News.
What was the last book you read?
“The Zimmerman Telegram” by Barbara W. Tuchman.
What would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role?
I’m only in my current role because I failed to be a movie star. Or, I’d work somewhere very sad but would take my skill set, like an advertising agency.
