As you publish more and more articles to Apple News, it can become difficult for readers to find your most successful content – the content that drives commercial goals for your media business. But it doesn’t have to be.

Have you heard about the Promote feature in Apple News?

All publishers have the ability to promote up to six articles per section using the blue ⭑ icon next to each article. This will bump the article to the top of that section’s feed thus giving it more visibility and attention.

This can be especially useful if you need to boost the reach of articles during commercial events such as Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day. Another way this feature can be used is to promote old articles about a topic or personality who has recently been highlighted in a newly published feature article.

Articles are only pinned to the top for 48 hours so they don’t get stuck there. And once the reader has seen the article, new content will move above the promoted article. Additionally, promoting articles will increase its chances of appearing in recirculation feeds, which are major drivers of traffic across the app.

Here’s how you can promote articles in 4 steps:

1. Sign into icloud.com
2. Click ‘News Publisher’
3. Navigate to any of your article sections on the left-hand side of the page
4. In there, you should see the ⭑ icon next to each of your published articles – click it to boost that article to the top of the feed

You'll know it's been clicked as the blue ⭑ icon will turn gold. You can do this for up to six articles per section. 

We recommend you focus on content that is particularly successful at meeting your goals. Maybe it’s an article that does well at converting readers into subscribers, or an article that’s good at driving traffic to your website. 

But it’s also worth experimenting. After you promote an article, check the analytics to see how it affected its performance and whether it helped serve wider, macro goals.

Furthermore, by promoting a range of articles, it also gives you an opportunity to drive traffic to that section of your Apple News feed like you would with a landing page. For example, if you promote a range of articles that have historically garnered more follows, then you can link to that feed from other channels, such as social media or email, as a strategy to boost Apple News followers.

For more growth-centric resources on Apple News, follow FlatPlan on LinkedIn.