How BBC, Newsday, and The Hill are winning on search and social as platforms deprioritize news
At the Online News Association’s annual conference, Chartbeat’s Brad Streicher hosted a conversation with BBC’s Anne Look Thiam, Newsday’s Gabby Vukelić, and The Hill’s Will Federman to find out how they’re adapting their audience strategies as platforms like Facebook and Google deprioritize news in social feeds and search results.
They talked about finding success with Google Discover, adapting Facebook strategies, and why publishers of all sizes should invest in social video. The following excerpts from this conversation have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What are your biggest takeaways from our data around search and social trends?

Anne: We’re seeing that Google Discover is increasingly a very viable space for news coverage, including breaking news coverage. And we’ve even begun integrating this into our planning for Discover–for example, thinking about timing and time frames of when you want to publish to maximize Discover visibility around the spike.
Will: Discover is actually the biggest source of referral traffic for The Hill. It’s even bigger than search and it’s one of those things we’re still trying to grapple with in terms of the best guidance to replicate success. And then, as of this month, Reddit is now our number one platform in terms of social traffic referrals. So it’s been steadily growing for us as a really strong partner. It’s the only platform having genuine, good faith conversations with publishers right now.
Gabby: The YouTube and TikTok metrics are something that I’m directly seeing with our audience right now. Ever since Shorts launched on YouTube about a year ago, our growth on those platforms has skyrocketed. It’s mainly because of how we’re using SEO in headlines, titles, and descriptions, and we’re using this same strategy on TikTok as well.
What are some of the strategies you’ve had success with in regards to Google Discover?
Will: There are a couple of things we’ve seen that are kind of replicable. One is localizing a story idea. Even with a national story, finding that local piece to it can lead to Google Discover traffic. Another is that Discover does not tend to veer towards inflammatory or hyperbolic headlines. They tend to be more conversational. I feel like when I get Discover recommendations, it’s not stuff that’s trying to enrage me, instead it’s like, oh, it piqued my interest, I’m going to click this, etc. That tends to be the path for success.
Anne: We know that our content, our news, and our brand really represent trust and impartiality. So when we take on editorial SEO, when we take on content SEO, we’re really thinking about editorial quality and distinctiveness. Those have been really key for us both across direct search and Discover. So editorial quality, really prioritizing E-E-A-T in your newsroom, really talking about it, really helping journalists understand how they make their content shine from that point of view.
And then also distinctiveness. I think we often forget that Google generally is kind of a two-part game. You want to get the visibility, but you also then need to get somebody to click on it, to want to read it. And I think distinctiveness and really clear, direct, and specific headlines–that are quite original, while also kind of building off our USP where we know we add the most unique value on a trending,timely, or newsy topic–have been really essential to those kinds of Discover wins.
We know Facebook has been deprioritizing news and there has been a dramatic impact on social referral traffic. What are some of the changes you’ve had to make in response to that?

Gabby: I think it’s still a very important platform to be on because it’s still an audience and you have to curate your content to meet what the audience wants. And I think that’s very important for any kind of social media platform, not just Facebook.
One of the tactics we’ve experimented with is getting into Facebook groups. Local Facebook groups are still very, very important because that’s where you’re going to hear from your direct readers. We have a lot of reporters and editors who are just skimming through the conversations there and this can lead to a full circle moment. Once you know people are interested in your coverage, you can then drop links into those Facebook groups to show we did report on it and now we’re bringing you the coverage. This has driven traffic to our website over time.
Will: Facebook is becoming more of a light touch platform in general. It’s funny that Gabby mentioned Facebook groups because that’s very similar to the strategy we’ve adopted with Reddit, especially as they rolled out the Reddit Pro accounts for brands and publishers. This is where we can see individual communities talking specifically about Hill content and go in there and be additive to the conversation. And then also, selfishly, their relationship with Google makes their search results surface higher. It benefits us by putting links into conversations that might just come up in SERP anyway.
In terms of changes to the team, we’ve had to reallocate where we spend our time. Right now it’s predominantly search, Reddit, and video. We’ve made a lot of investments in video, including on the home page. We’re way more involved in the curation and coordination of that with the video team and editorial teams. There are things driving engagement, and increasing recirculation and pageviews per visit on the site. Building that direct relationship I think is going to be the most important thing. I think everyone is focused on that right now.
And that’s where you see this tension around you still have to manage these large platforms. But at the same time, we are transitioning to something I think is ultimately going to be positive: a stronger relationship with your direct audience.
For smaller publishers out there who may be deciding where to allocate resources, can you talk about why it’s worthwhile to invest in video?
Gabby: I would say if you aren’t investing in video yet, you definitely need to, like yesterday. It’s very important. And it also impacts your follower growth. You may not be growing your Facebook page anymore, but when it comes to those other platforms like TikTok or YouTube, people are finding your videos through the keywords you’re putting in the headlines, in the captions, and in the hashtags.
Anne: I think, too, if you’re trying to make a wider case for social video as part of your wider strategy, there’s also perhaps a future-proofing element to it. Potentially, you might set your KPIs to engage particularly younger audiences whomaybe aren’t coming to your app or to your website.
That’s how you’re making the business case for it. I understand this is not going to drive referrals and traffic immediately. I’m trying to future-proof our audience. I’m trying to think about our next audience. I’m trying to get our brand and our offering and our journalists in front of the next generation of news consumers.
Will: The production overhead for social video is just greatly decreased. In fact, a lot of the social videos we produce using native tools and just shooting on a phone end up outperforming overproduced videos. I don’t think younger audiences really like that.
There’s a reason why we saw such an emphasis on content creators at the DNC. They’re building an outreach plan on Harris’s campaign because it’s easy to do,they’re building audiences, and they’re engaging younger audiences who are just not going to your site in the same ways we’ve seen older demographics do.
As we’ve seen some of the changes to both search and social over the past year, have KPIs at your organizations changed around specific platforms?
Gabby: KPIs for myself have been more impacted on TikTok,YouTube, and Instagram, and less on platforms like X and Facebook. The way I think about it is there are a couple of different things you need to focus on with social media. It’s follower growth, engagement, and video views. Those three tiers should have their own KPIs. What is your goal for video views by the end of this year? And how does that tap into the amount of follower growth you will have within the next couple of months?
Anne: Uniques are still important. Traffic is still important. I think maybe what’s evolved for us is just how we talk about it and the context we give to it. For example, we might break down our uniques over a month,look at some big spikes we had, and also ask ourselves, “For visitorswe saw come in as part of a surge around a big moment or a big news event, what percentage of them came back the next week? What percentage of them viewed a second content page here?” The KPI hasn’t changed, but the way we’re talking about it and the way we’re trying to kind of leverage it into other KPIs has evolved or been enhanced.
Will: I think we’re having the same conversations. How are we driving folks to another piece of content once they come from those platforms? I do think we’ve put an increased emphasis on search in particular.
We now also have a weekly audit where we take our top 10 stories and we have a matrix where we check did you do this, this, and this. It’s basically a quick check to see if we arereally doing the things we need to do. Did we leave any audience eyeballs on the table? And so it’s a really good indicator to see if we’re executing against those best practices and prioritizing what we need to be.
What are some of the biggest learnings you’ve taken away from dealing with the shifting priorities of these platforms?
Gabby: Consistency is key. Having a certain schedule of how many posts you’re publishing t on a daily basis, how many platforms you’re going to be active on–and really choosing which platforms you’re going to be active on because it can be impossible to be active everywhere, and it’s still important to meet your audience where they already are.
I would definitely pay attention to how much growth YouTube is having, especially in the last year with Shorts because vertical video is so important. Because of that, we’ve started recreating videos just for TikTok and just for YouTube. And some of those videos can be repurposed on other platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Sometimes we even experiment with X and putting vertical video out there as well. We’re noticing that people really want to have a full-screen experience.
Anne: Something that’s been really transformational for us is that we are now grounding our editorial SEO strategy in intent. If you work in SEO, you know there’s big picture intent. Is it transactional? Is it navigational? Is it informational?
We want to know why someone is googling something at this time. It’s incredibly helpful to us in breaking news situations. It takes us into an audience-first way of thinking about our SEO guidance.
There are some very low-fi ways you can do it in Google trends. We also look quite closely at top stories boxes, understanding that Google is using things like click-through rate and what the algorithm knows about intent at this moment in time to decide what they’re featuring.
This has really transformed how we talk to the newsroom about it. We’re really explicit about intent and telling them why people are googling things or why we believe they’re googling things. It really flipped a switch with journalists. It kind of activated their instincts and their curiosity. And it also minimized a bit of that idea of you can hack search or, “Oh, just tell me the keyword to throw in the front of my article and we’re all good.”
Will: Platforms you should prioritize vary dramatically depending on your newsroom and your audience. There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer. And so I think it’s really important to ask,
“Where is the opportunity area for me to grow based on what I know about my audience and our performance to date?” I’ve been in some newsrooms where it’s search. I’ve been in some newsrooms where it’s Facebook groups. It varies. It’s important to set up ways to measure success, test that out, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, move on very quickly so you’re not spending an enormous amount of time on platforms that aren’t yielding outcomes you want.