April 22, 2024
When it comes to the Apple News app, publishers tend to have several questions:
Here, we're going to explain how to attract an Apple News audience, monitor your performance, and encourage iOS readers to visit your website.
The first step is to ensure that the Apple News integration into your CMS means every story created on your site gets sent to iOS.
With one billion article views a month, and 145 million monthly active readers, Apple News is a great destination for publications to attract new audiences.
A challenge (and frustration!) for editors can be ensuring that stories are visible across all Apple News topic feeds - and assessing whether headlines are having an impact.
Prominent sections such as Top Stories are curated by Apple News editors, and tend to be dominated by major UK publications. Meanwhile, items that feature in Trending Stories are dictated by what Apple News readers are clicking on.
Nonetheless, there are powerful ways of driving traffic to Apple News stories. FlatPlan's no-code solution offers a Smart Content Categorisation tool to determine the subjects covered in a piece - with tags enabling articles to surface on each specific topic page. For example, if a newsroom writes features about Taylor Swift, interested readers can find them on the Celebrities or Entertainment topic groups.
The next step is to keep a reader engaged for longer. Read More links within content create a frictionless way for audiences to discover another story they'll love. This, when coupled with signature FlatPlan tools such as the "Follow" mechanic, will make it easier for an Apple News user to access your journalism. Boosting the time readers spend with you, and creating a connection, additionally prompts Apple News algorithms to present readers with more of your pieces in the future.
Done right, this can serve as a huge boost to your publication's Apple News analytics - and unlock valuable data about your audience and their interests.
The next challenge is enticing your iOS audience to enjoy content on external platforms, as this can fuel new subscriptions while driving revenues. FlatPlan enables you to make Apple News readers aware of your other offerings through beautifully designed calls to action that are embedded within each article. This can be invaluable in generating traffic for your website, cultivating listens after a podcast launch, driving app downloads, or promoting another publication within your network.
For instance, you can invite someone who's interested in your content to download your app, with an intuitive button that immediately directs them to the iOS download page. Footers at the bottom of an article can direct the audience to follow you on Facebook, TikTok and other social networking apps. Plus, if you're looking to build engagement for a new newsletter, it's easy to link to a landing page to drive signups.
Apple News is more than a service for iPhone and iPad owners - it's a shop window for publishers who want to show off their site or app. This can deliver valuable audience data and targeted advertising through tracking.
Oftentimes, editors receive intelligence about how website articles are performing - as well as engagement time and bounce rates - through Google Analytics. But when it comes to Apple News analytics, it's important to remember that data about audiences is stored in a different place.
Apple has created a devoted tool called News Publisher that offers a rich collection of insights into your iOS audience. From tracking unique viewers to where they visit from, this dashboard offers invaluable support when checking your progress to date. It's also where you can send notifications to drive traffic to breaking news or premium features.
Media brands that pay close attention to the intelligence available through News Publisher can learn how readers on iOS differ from their own site. Understanding which content is performing well, and attracts the longest active time, can help inform audience strategy - giving the public more of what they want.
For example, if news articles on the latest developments in the Royal Family have gained momentum, publishers may decide to produce evergreen explainers or send notifications to related stories. Similarly, specialising on a particular topic and becoming an authoritative voice in that area could help you get noticed by Apple News editors.
News Publisher is easy to access if you want an appraisal of how Apple News content - and recent notifications - have been performing. There are other tools that can also bring you even closer to audiences.
A Chartbeat integration that combines Apple News data with your own platform's traffic gives a holistic view of what's working - and what isn't. Parse.ly also has an integration that includes Apple News traffic alongside website traffic.
For audience editors tasked with crunching the numbers in News Publisher, keeping these figures up in a separate tab to Google Analytics can be worthwhile.
FlatPlan supercharges the data delivered by Apple News through Spike Alerts, which deliver instant notifications when a particular article has enjoyed a surge in traffic. From here, you may choose to promote this content so it has greater visibility among iOS readers for longer.
Other data points that might prove useful include how many times a piece is shared, audience breakdowns based on gender and age, or even the Apple device your articles are being accessed on. Adopting a data-driven approach to editorial strategy has become increasingly important in recent years - and helps you offer an even better service.
Achieving a successful Apple News integration can seem like a daunting prospect. But with FlatPlan, it doesn't need to be.
Our Apple News experts are here to help you uncover new ways of attracting traffic - without adding to your team's workload. From quality assurance to coding, engineering to design, all we need are a few assets to build an Apple News channel that complements your current branding.
Given how the algorithms that govern search engines and social networks are changing all the time, Apple News is a powerful way of gaining a new audience - and converting them into habitual app users, podcast listeners and newsletter subscribers. Better still, your publication will be rubbing shoulders with some of the world's biggest brands.
FlatPlan already helps hundreds of content-driven companies achieve their full potential on Apple News - including ITV, Grazia, UEFA and the Premier League. Get in touch to book a free demo with Apple experts today, and sign up to our newsletter for regular updates on the latest trends.
No matter what stage you're at in your discovery of Apple News, we'll help you get the information you need to make the right decision for your media business.
Photo by Carlos Muza
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