Engagement Unedited – Patty Michalski of Hearst

Thank you so much for your time time today. Would you mind just introducing yourself please?

Thank you. It’s great to be here. My name is Patti Michalski. I currently work with Hearst Newspapers in the United States. I’m an SVP of content, but my background is really coming up through newsrooms and working with newsrooms and online newsrooms and developing, you know, digital strategies and digital content and audience growth and all of that kind of thing. So I’m super passionate about connecting news and information with people, in doing all of those kinds of things.

Tell me a little bit about Hearst. What kind of brands do you work with? What are your audiences?

I work with the newspaper division, but Hearst has a magazine division, they have a television division, they’ve got some other media verticals, but I just work with newspapers and Hearst has  about 25 dailies. I’m working with those newsrooms on what they need for digital growth, digital audience growth, digital storytelling needs, things like that. So we’re really formally in the news and newspaper space.

In your world, what does audience engagement mean to you?

How I would have answered that 10 years ago versus how I would have answered that five years ago versus how you answer it two years ago and versus now it’s really evolved.  Going way back, engagement was more of a proxy for distribution and reach and how you’re finding people and finding audiences and where you go on platforms.

Now, more and more engagement is how you interact with news and brands and people and information and is it a two -way conversation and how do I get value out of information or a brand or a publication that I’m following. Audience engagement has evolved over the years. What’s becoming more and more important is building direct relationships with your readers, connecting with them directly, whether that’s via newsletter or doing events or just some sort of two -way communication channels where everybody has the chance to participate. Those become really valuable spaces. I find myself as a consumer gravitating towards those kinds of spaces. So it’s interesting to see it evolve in that way.

In your experience, when you think of engagement, what aims does audience engagement strategy deliver on?  Why should news brands be doing engagement?

Ultimately you want to build awareness and audience.  How people engage,  a like or a reshare is a really good measure of ‘is somebody connected to this piece of content?’. Not only are they reading it, but…‘Does Francesca like it so much, she’s going to share it with her audience, and the friends and followers that she has, that is a valuable measure. So anybody who takes an action. I think that’s why commenting was so powerful back in the day.  Because we gave people the opportunity to comment, leave a comment, and talk back to fellow commenters. Whether that was on a website or on a social platform or engaging with somebody. Any of those types of participation can mean a lot of things. A share, a reshare, a comment, a watch, a view, a sign up. 

I am going to interact somehow and find myself in data, where I can personalise my place. That is, getting value is giving value to your audience.

I think it is extremely important because it means it’s less ‘fly by night’. And you’ve got people interested and invested.

Engagement with content can mean and manifests itself in so many different ways. A like can be a vote and a positive vote. And I have  endorsed that by liking it or resharing it or leaving a comment. I think getting people to stop and take a minute and pause because content moves so quickly on various platforms. That’s important. People feeling and seeing themselves reflected in content or a conversation or being a part of something. 

I come back to the word like participation –  however you can participate, whether it’s personalising information, watching a video, participating in an event, all of those things are valuable for both a brand and the audience.

What is stopping news brands from engaging better?

It’s focus, it’s resources, and it’s also trying to understand what it is you want to get out of it.  Sometimes we – we meaning the industry   – don’t know the goal. You know it’s important, but  what’s the goal? What are we driving toward? And that can sometimes lead to testing and murky results or murky understanding of what it takes to develop a program when you don’t know what you’re driving toward. Be really clear about what your outcome is. This is super important because it  helps align better with setting up engagement.

What strategies have proven most effective in engaging your audiences?

It’s evolved over the years and over time.  As long as you’ve got people who are invested in the storytelling and watching results in interaction. Some people are more comfortable doing certain aspects of engagement, whether it’s writing a newsletter and focussing on ‘I’m just going to talk to my audience over here’. Some people are much more open to live video or video or being a part of an event. I think it’s got to match the skills and the interests of the person doing it and then them finding value in however they can get out of it. So it’s going to be different for different people in different situations. There are so many avenues for engagement, whether it’s,  newsletter, responding on social, responding to comments, whatever somebody is interested in doing, just making sure they’re wedded to the final outcome and watching and measuring how it goes.

Some people are much more comfortable in comments, commenting, hosting a chat where you’re taking written questions and you’re writing written questions. So it’s not difficult to say  ‘everybody pick a place and try to do it’. I think it’s more that everybody’s got to feel comfortable, but here is the outcome that we’re driving toward, which is more time and value with audiences measured by whatever your measure is and in holding attention and getting that person to open up to you or your brand.

At what point do we need to be considering that audience engagement? How can we make sure that that’s taking shape in the right way?

How do we make sure that it’s working, is maybe another way of what you’re trying to say. If you’re a newsroom leader, ultimately, you’re probably going to measure a high level KPI that’s different than somebody on a team or a reporter.  KPIs that are bigger North Stars – return visits, subscribers,  time spent.

Say it’s –  I growing my newsletter list’. Somebody who’s sitting up high saying, ‘here’s what’s important to us’ and giving people paths and avenues to layer up to that so we constantly have the North Star ambition. Here’s our thing that we’re about. If we can layer it up to that, that’s great.

Could you share  a successful initiative that has significantly boosted engagement? And what do you think made it a success?

Right now, events and virtual events are going well. It is a different way of sharing information.  It’s not a written article, or it’s not a video, even though I think videos from reporters and people who have access to information are super important. But I think events and conversations that feel really intimate in a way that you feel a part of something where, yes, I’m a fan of a brand because I might read that publication every day or every week. There’s just something a little bit different about a live atmosphere or a live conversation that makes it super compelling and inviting. And I find myself joining those. Or either joining those or watching those again because  there’s a different type of access shared or insights shared that feels different in a really good way that feels more meaningful. Because I feel like I understand the topic better or I understand the thread or the event in a slightly more nuanced way that I wasn’t getting before.

In what ways do you personalise your content to increase engagement among different audience segments?

We are doing this when you can see yourself in the content. When you can sort by city, by town, by high school, by location. You might read it and you might find out a little bit more about it, but if I can put in my address and see how something personally relates to me, to where I live, that feels really good, really useful. It’s more impactful when I can then look at the rest of the story and understand how I compare to the next town over or the next school over. I think that ultimately being able to share information and display information in that way is really impactful for an audience.

What role do you think technology like AI or even data analytics play in audience engagement efforts?

I think audience analytics and trying to understand different audience segments and how different segments of readers are using and reading content differently is super important. What is your loyal audience coming back to?  Sometimes it’s more nuanced than looking at just big high level. Here’s what people read yesterday or here’s how much time people spent yesterday. Well, let’s dig in and try to guide that conversation more. I think taking a more nuanced look is super important. With AI, I just think there’s so much yet to be learned, but it’s exciting to see some of the things that people are doing and using AI for those internal workflow efficiencies. I think we’re only at the beginning of it. 

How it’s going to evolve is super fascinating, if we can get more granular.  I think ultimately the audience is not a monolith, it is many pockets of different types of readers. So if we can use tools like AI or data programs that really help show, here’s how your readership breaks down and helps you understand those better. I think that’s only really gonna inform the work and the strategies all the more.

How are you integrating feedback or interaction data into your audience and back into that content process?

I like balancing quantitative and qualitative.  I think that it gives you a more holistic look at feedback. We take a survey of a certain big subset of people and we get information off of it. That can really be informative. And can we have a couple of interviews with folks and can we learn a little bit more from a one-on-one conversation. Can we marry those two sets of data points with what our audience analytics data tell us and what then stepping back on a bigger level – what that means.  I think qualitative can be so impactful and help you understand the quantitative.

Surveys, people, feedback, all of these things paint a picture of user behavior and what people want and what they’re interested in. And I think just more of that is good.

What are the most common pitfalls and challenges around engagement?

I think definitely further back, running a test and saying, all right, we did this, it’s over. Going too quickly to  ‘ it succeeded ‘ or ‘it failed’ and not stopping to ask, ‘what did we learn? ’ And then should that inform the next step.  It’s really the difference in approach between testing versus rapid iteration. Sometimes rapid, consistent iteration, which does take focus and it takes time and dedication can help you get somewhere faster because you’re stopping and you’re taking that time to say  not just –  it worked, it didn’t, binary or not. Rather, let’s do this and adopt it everywhere. It’s really trying to force a conversation around what did we learn? What are we learning? What else didn’t we learn from this that we might need to learn more of and just keep it going? Creating a learning cycle versus just a boom, check the box, done, stop, succeed, fail, go on. I think those are just different approaches.

Do you have an example of how that’s worked for you?  

It takes everybody being on board when you’re working with teams of people, it’s just forcing the rigour of, and it does feel like a lot like project management cycling.

But it’s important to put structure around something. I think structure is super important. What did we learn? We launched a newsletter and a month in, what did we learn? We launched this new thing. What did we learn? What surprised us? What didn’t? Rather than judging things too quickly, it’s the learning cycle. Where you sit in an organization might also inform what you’ve learned, which I think is really interesting. A newsroom might have learned something, but a product team might have learned something totally different. That can be eye-opening for how something gets shaped.

The thing I will add is that it’s cultural, being able to do that is good, but we shouldn’t do things the same way, time after time, year over, when the landscape is evolving.  So it shouldn’t just be, it worked, move on. It’s gonna evolve every six, 12 months. What we’re doing now, we should probably revisit in six months.  And check in on it. Are we still getting the results that we need? What in the landscape has come in that maybe disrupted it? And should we disrupt ourselves then again and try to do something differently?

How do you handle negative engagement or feedback from your audience?

We’ve got to listen to it. If somebody is not engaging or reading something, that’s a signal and what do we think it means? Did it not get launched the right way? It should make us ask questions of ourselves. What else could we have done? What else should we try? Maybe it’s not over, maybe it’s not done. Maybe we should give it another go or another couple of tries before we really say,  we’ve tried this now a couple of times and it’s not working. So negative feedback, I think I’m here for all feedback!  Negative, positive, neutral, whatever, just because I think it helps internally ask better questions to get to ultimately what the goal is. Sometimes it changes the decision, but sometimes it doesn’t. But  talking about it again from all the points of view is good  for just making sure  we are doing what we should be doing here.

should email people back? Or there’s enough conversation happening here where we’ve got to address it. Because some things are just feedback and it’s internal and like good information to know, but some things rise to a level where it’s like – Okay, we’ve made a significant change in the product and we should probably address that. Or we should get ahead of it, or we should talk to readers about why the change happened or why the event happened. It’s relative to what the issue is. It’s never bad to talk with people. 

Where do you see engagement and the future of engagement heading in the next five years or more?  

Just given the changes that are happening with big platforms, tech levers, you know, all the things that news organisations have had to work with and navigate over the past 10 years, I think shifting to that direct owned audience is going to require more engagement.  And it’s going to require more energy and maintaining your readership is going to require more of that engagement and engagement cycle. Especially as we see AI and chat GPTs that are summarising information at large. There’s something about participating in an event or hearing from a reporter or something that just can’t be replaced by those elements. And I think those are important and valuable, we connect with people. That’s what we do. In the people behind brands and yes, I’m going to read this publication, but it’s also a factor of probably following the columnist, following the reporter, understanding what’s driving a topic and that is going to continue to be even more important given what’s happening in the landscape.

It cuts through the noise, right? There’s so much content and as a reader of quite a bit, I’m here for it, but again, the things that are memorable are those connections. Feeling connected to the topic or the author is going to  be super important.

If you had to measure the importance of your engagement strategy from 1 –  being not that important,  to what we do, 10 being the highest level, where would you say it sits overall?

It’s up there, right? We have subscription publications, so that’s important, it’s important to reach people, to have that value, to have that relationship, to understand what keeps people coming back every day.  It’s high.

What’s your engagement hack? What would you suggest that everyone should be doing in the industry?

More connection and conversation. However you want to make that happen. Connection and conversation, authenticity, because it comes back to feeling connected to the information or the author. And that just feels a cut through the noise. We get information from all sides all day long. I’ve got my TV on, I’ve got my phone. I’m reading news in the morning, noon and night, in newsletters.  Making yourself distinct and cutting through the noise and knowing what you’re about.

What impact has increased audience engagement had on your organisation’s bottom line and brand loyalty?

Well, you want those return visitors, and readers like that are important to the business. If we can have people coming back routinely and building that habit, more people coming back more often will ultimately benefit the business of what we need to do. Not only does it breed a lot of loyalty, you know  you’ve got somebody hooked when they come back because they find value in whatever you’ve got going that day or like they’re sticking with you through thick and thin, not just high points. That’s good for the business. That will continue to drive the business, which will continue then to feed the work, which is ultimately a good cycle.

Thank you so much, Patty.