Alexandra Folwarski, an innovator and leader in the media industry, Team Leader at the Media Innovation Lab and Founder of Wiener Flaneur, shares invaluable insights tailored specifically for hyper-local journalists and aspiring media entrepreneurs. If you’re looking to build an engaged audience before you launch your startup newspaper, this episode is for you! Alexandra dives deep into the strategies that drive audience loyalty, from the critical role of newsletters to how ongoing community feedback can shape your content and drive engagement.
If you are too busy or not a big fan of watching recordings, here is a slightly edited transcript that you can browse through at your convenience:
Francesca
Hi, Alex.
Thank you so much for joining me today. Would you mind starting off with giving us a little bit of an intro?
Alex
Thanks for having me Francesca. I’m Alexandra Folwarski. I’m based in Vienna and I’m working for the Media Innovation Lab of Mediengruppe Wiener Zeitung. I also have a media startup. I have my own paper, a local newspaper. It’s the second project I do, the Wiener Flâneur.
And yes, I do work a lot with media startups. All the time.
Francesca
You have so much experience and the fact that you are in the role going into creating your own startup is very exciting. I wish you all the best of luck with that. It means that you have a lot of experience or have experienced even second hand, a lot around engagement. And so I guess my first question for you is what does audience engagement mean to you?
Alex
It’s a broad question. For me, it depends on what the aim of the media project is, actually. And I see right now that more and more media startups, we don’t talk about MediaTech right now because we have MediaTech startups as well, using artificial intelligence. But talking about all the content -based startups – they have a different kind of focus when it comes to user engagement, and most of them need to create a community because our monetization systems are changing and they are being disrupted quite heavily right now. So reach only doesn’t pay our rent anymore. We need the community to sell memberships and subscriptions and other products that we develop around our media projects therefore engagement is key, because you have to catch your community, make it possible for them to communicate not only with you as a media startup, as a journalist behind the content, but also among each other.
And so, for me, real engagement is actually something that tells me that the community is alive and that they not only consume the content but they also engage among each other and have that content context as a platform or as a reason for communication. It’s not clicks or anything like that. It’s about communication.
Francesca
I love that definition, it’s a way of measuring if the community is alive. That sentence kind of recaps so much of what you’re saying. How would you say that your definition has changed? Do you think it has changed in the last five years?
Alex
Sure, of course. We used to measure engagement by clicks, views, time spent on the website, number of articles that have been read, or the time spent on site, actually. That was one way to measure engagement, if you can call it engagement still. I mean, it was just seeing users on the website.
And that was one thing and also commenting on articles or videos or whatever kind of content we were publishing. And right now it’s a little bit different because, I mean, right now I feel that newsletters are very important because this is like the email address and the direct contact. This is something that media startups or media houses own. They are allowed to send them direct emails and things like opening rates and clicks in the email itself, which is getting more and more important.
Francesca
And in your experience, you’re talking about community and you spoke about aims. What aims does audience engagement strategy deliver on? Why should brands be doing more engagement?
Alex
To sell subscriptions, to be super brief, because we need to survive. Journalism is expensive. High quality journalism is even more expensive and it needs time to deliver high quality content. And the community needs to know why it is worth it, you know, like why they should actually subscribe or become a member of a media project.
So communicating and engaging with the community and or with the audience, it doesn’t matter what you call it – I prefer community because it’s something that is more inclusive and is key.
I think by listening to the community and delivering what they want (not only what they want because then you become a slave of your community which is not what everybody wants), but still, listening to what they want, how they want to consume the content and what kind of formats or on which channel (because every media startup or media project has to distribute the content on different channels). That is something that everybody needs to consider. And the main goal is to be able to pay for good journalism. It all comes down to that. We can’t deliver gold if we have nothing. I mean, we can, but just for a certain amount of time.
We’re getting hungry and we need to survive.
Francesca
There’s a perception problem. Our community needs to understand the value that we’re providing and there’s the money problem. We need to earn money and that’s the point of the community at the same time.
So for us to be able to do that properly, let’s talk a bit about measurements. How would you measure this community? Apart from subscriptions, how else do we measure good engagement?
Alex
By having the attention of the audience. And there are different technical tools that allow us to see if we do have the attention of the audience or not. Attention on whatever channel we are communicating, that’s important.
Francesca
And what would you say in your experience are the biggest hurdles? What do you think is stopping news brands from engaging better?
Alex
It depends on the size of the media house or the company. Startups are more agile.
It has an up and a down side to it, of course, because you have to do everything on your own, in small teams, so everybody does everything for a certain amount of time.
So it’s easier to actually adapt your communication and everything that is happening on your channels, on the website and newsletters or whatever you use. It’s easier to react to what the community wants or you can see things like opening rates. You can work with A -B tests and see which headline works better. That is something that is very interesting right now to actually use AI to see which headlines are more engaging.
So that is being used and the implementation of those tools and all kinds of tools is the bigger the company, the more difficult it becomes. Or the longer the way to actually implement everything. I think once it’s implemented, it’s really great.
I mean, everybody needs it. I think AI will be a big, big factor.
Francesca
You have so much experience working on the startup side and on the much bigger side. What are the biggest differences in that area that you see? You have talked about the hurdles on one side, what are the biggest hurdles for the biggest groups, do you think?
Alex
Well, experience is there. But I think the bigger a company is, the more difficult it becomes to make bigger changes. They have systems in place. They also have people who are used to working in a certain way.
So change management in bigger media companies is a huge topic. I’m not an expert on that. There is another colleague called Anita Zielina, for example. That is her thing. I can recommend her.
But I think that the technology could be there, or the implementation and the change of mentality of staff and journalists, who are, I don’t know, it doesn’t have to do so much with age, it’s just a question of whether they want to try out something new or not.
And what is considered good journalism and not using AI to support journalism and so on. This is a big hurdle actually. The technical issues or the technical support system. Because the big companies are really big – they are huge. It’s a massive amount of data that they are working with. So implementing new software is always a big endeavour.
Francesca
And let’s talk a little bit about strategies and best practices. What strategies have proven most effective in engaging audiences in your experience?
Alex
What I know of, which are the medium -sized media companies, they actually listen to the audience, but it’s not about, you know, listening to the comments on Facebook or whatever. It’s really being strategic about it and sending out polls and questionnaires, making interviews to actually know what the community wants.
And sometimes I work with that a lot. So I have regular questionnaires that I send out to my newsletter audience and they answer it. And then I know what the vibe is, like where the emotions go when it comes to a certain topic or like real hands on questions, things that people want to know.
So I collect that and based on that, I do my research and start to create my content around that. And this is something that many, online media companies do. And it works very well because people feel heard. They receive the articles directly via email or a link saying that, okay, we have done this research before, we have asked you that question, now we have our article, we have done our research, this is our results.
And people feel like, okay, now they answered my question finally. Now, you know, it’s like not, it’s breaking the glass ceiling. So I think that is very important to achieve that.
Francesca
I absolutely love that example because my next question was gonna be around at what point in the process do you consider your audience and how does that take shape? But it sounds like you’re really taking them into account from the beginning and you’re creating this kind of feedback loop in a way. Can you give me a specific example of a time that you’ve done that?
Alex
Well, I’m doing it right now actually. I have my newsletter. I will be launching my second project in September (2024). And so what I do is that I document what I do. And I am right now even asking for support and selling my first subscriptions.
People know that it will take some time until the first print issue will come out. But they still feel like, okay, I see what she’s doing. I receive a weekly newsletter where Alex is telling us what is happening and things that go well, things that go wrong. So I’m very open about that. I’m introducing my team, all the topics.
And I’ve had this… I asked my audience about three things that they love about Vienna and three things that they hate about Vienna. And so just to know what the three main topics are, where the problem is. And also to create some fun content around the things that they love. And one of the no’s about Vienna was the situation of riding by bike through the city.
The emotion was really heated up. They were like, I hate it. And the cars and the tracks are not working and so on. You have to excuse my English. I’m talking German.
So OK, so I took that topic.
And then I made another poll and I sent it out. I put an ad behind it on Facebook saying, OK, everybody who’s struggling with commuting by bike in Vienna, I want to know why and where, you know, I want to do some research on that.
If you have five minutes, please answer some questions. And at the end of the questionnaire, I asked them if they were willing to give me their email address so I can send them the results of my research.
And there were many hundreds of people who answered.
And so the newsletter is growing. I know I have a lot of information. I think I have enough information for 10 articles or something. They have an ongoing conversation about that. And that was, you know, nobody knows me. I don’t even exist yet ( I hadn’t even launched yet!).
Everything is growing through engagement. I don’t do anything other than trying to get the heart of the people.
Francesca
That’s so amazing. What do you think has made that so successful? Like no one knows you, but people are giving you this content. What do you think has made that work?
Alex
Because I’m trying to catch their emotion. As I said before, I asked them about the three things that are most annoying in the city. And they told me. I took… You know, people tell you everything, you know. It’s not about the secrets, but how they feel. And they give you a wording for how they feel.
And I find that very exciting, actually, because I’m using some of the words that are expressing a certain emotion around this topic. And so once I have it, then even the ad, because I was putting money behind it to get more reach to promote my questionnaire or my poll. And yeah, it resonated.
People were like, yeah, that’s what I think. Yeah, this is what I said. This is what I always say. It’s like, thank you. Somebody finally is listening to me. And yes, I want to give you all the answers. And yes, at this intersection, I’m always in trouble because I had all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, And then they start telling you everything. And it’s amazing. So you can actually do the research around that and say, OK, let’s call up local politicians and ask them.
Why is it like that?
Francesca
It’s absolutely crazy how we think in the media industry, we forget about the emotional side to it. Like we do it for the hooks but there is a whole emotional side when it comes to the user that we almost miss because we’re so used to broadcasting outwards that we don’t have the almost emotional intelligence to understand what that process of collecting looks like as well.
Like I know in Contribly we have the issue all the time where, you know, publishers say, hey, send us your content. And they don’t necessarily say what they’re going to do with the content. And if they do, they only publish one or two. And then obviously for the user, it’s almost depressing. They don’t get an instant value exchange.
What, if I sent you my photo and nothing happened, why would I ever send that photo again? There’s that whole emotional side to it. Whereas if I do on social media, I get some likes, I get some comments, I feel good about myself. I feel like I’ve been part of something. And we miss that sometimes.
And those for me have been some of the experiences that we found have been around that emotional side and sometimes have surprised us. What about you on your side? Have you had any audience engagement situations that have surprised you that you weren’t expecting?
Alex
Well, I hadn’t expected I could reach such a big audience with the questions that I was talking about before. That was surprising and how honest the answers were. And adding to what you said before, I think it needs to be an ongoing conversation.
People want to be informed in a continuous way, not just having one article. And then, you know, it’s like, okay, whatever, we got clicks and now it’s now we’re gone and we don’t care anymore. I was talking to a colleague who actually also works in local journalism. And he said, people, once people are interested in a certain topic, they even want to know when nothing is happening.
And that was surprising. That is something that surprised me. That was an aha moment actually, because he said, okay, people subscribe because of a certain reason, because they want to know something. And it doesn’t matter if it’s local journalism or if it’s parenting or if it’s how to invest in housing or whatever topic we have.
Once you’re continuously talking about developments and news around that topic, people also want to know when nothing is happening. So let’s take a construction site in a certain area and people are like, okay, so when is it going to end? Like, what is the corruption scandal around it? And even if they receive an email saying: Actually, just to keep you updated, nothing is happening right now. This is stuck here and this is in court and this is da -da -da. We will get back to you once something new is happening. That is also news which is also valuable for them because it tells them that the editors and the team are still on the topic and continuously on the topic.
And that is something that I feel is like, yeah, cool. Thanks for telling me. I trust you that actually the money that I’m paying you or that the attention that I’m giving you is worth it.
Francesca
That’s such a fantastic example. I wouldn’t have thought of that.
Francesca
And let’s talk about tech because you’ve brought up tech a few times now. What role do you see tech like AI, for example, or even data analytics playing in this audience engagement effort that we’re making?
Alex
I think a huge one, but we have to know that AI cannot solve all problems and it doesn’t do things that it’s not told to do, you know, because people are very afraid that AI will take over and things like that.
You can use AI to create content that looks like real content, but it’s fake, of course. This is something that we will have to deal with and learn how to read that kind of content. Have some legal safety net around it. The politicians need to do it. I hope they will.
But I think when it comes to, as I said, before user engagement, doing fast A -B tests and using artificial intelligence to correct a few. Sometimes it’s enough to change the order of the sentence. You know, I think that, it’s really great for many things, creating or helping us to understand data in a better way.
Yeah, I think AI is great for many reasons. We just have to handle it with care.
Francesca
What would you say some of the common pitfalls and challenges in audience engagement are?
Alex
I think the biggest mistake is not to engage at all. Ignore your community and the audience. That is the worst thing you can do. That was actually my biggest mistake with my first project. It was very successful and I was focused on financing my project advertising money. And that was like, OK, I got it. That was the main focus point.
And I didn’t engage with my community enough. And that was a mistake. I wouldn’t repeat that anymore. So with the second project, I put all my energy into the community and whether the people and the advertisers will follow or not. I’m happy if they’re there, but I don’t want them to be the main thing that is carrying me along my journey.
We saw during COVID how fast things like advertising money can break away. I think everybody struggled during that time. And everybody who was community based actually was a winner from that.
Francesca
In a time where people wanted so much more information as well, it was very interesting.
Alex
Exactly. So we have to learn from times like these. Yeah, listening to the audience and not flooding them with content just to gain clicks is important.
I know that many media companies depend on clicks because their monetization system is built around that. But with other disruptive new technologies like ChatGPT and also Google using their search, you have all the answers already there explained beautifully without any links that would lead to any website.
So people are already, you know, they get the answer and then they start to Google something else or ask ChatGPT or other large language model systems and tools, so they don’t really have too much reason to click on the link to read the entire article.
We have to find another way to get the attention of the audience and I think that engagement is the only thing that we can do.
Francesca
I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. 100%. 100%. It is about your audience feeling heard, them being part of something, them getting that value exchange from that relationship, and it’s a relationship. It is.
Alex
We are on the same mission.
Absolutely. It’s sometimes overwhelming. Another mistake that especially bigger companies do is treating the community manager as something that they have to do. They have to hire somebody to do community management. The really big ones, they have understood the importance of community engagement and management.
But there are still enough mid -size companies that don’t. I think that’s one of the mistakes.
Francesca
Who do you think that sits with then?
You said in medium -sized, big -sized companies, they push it towards this community manager. Where do you think that it sits?
Alex
The person who decides on whether it’s important or not, you mean?
Francesca
How it’s led… Is there in your world a leader in terms of engagement within a bigger organisation, or is it very much everybody should be doing this, it is a cultural piece?
Alex
Well, in bigger companies, of course, they have a department for everything. So that’s why it works. And they take this topic seriously. In mid -sized companies, I mean, if you have 10 people working as an editorial team, you just don’t have the resources to do that. I see that the younger media companies, they actually know how important it is to have good social media communication and good community management. What they often struggle with is how to get the social media community to become a subscription member or to buy a subscription.
That transition is still a challenge. They know that their brand is present to the audience, to the younger audience or the agile audience, however you want to call it, on social media and the internet. That is important, but getting them to subscribe.
Francesca
Yeah. I always argue that we have a perception problem because we understand the difference between the news and social media, but our audience doesn’t necessarily understand the difference between the news and social media. And we need to make it clearer, not jump straight to subscriptions, but make it clearer what the value is and what we’re giving them on these other sites. Why should you leave social media to come to us. And what is it that we’re giving them or this experience that you’re having that is different. I don’t think we’re clear on what the difference is.
Alex
It’s interesting that you mentioned that because I have been just talking to our media literacy team. We do have something like that. We have a centre for media literacy and the question is how, because it is a very big part of the value proposition of a media product. So to explain why this content is well researched, what makes quality content just to make the reader or the user understand that there is value behind it, not just fancy pictures and cool visuals or whatever, because everybody’s able to do that nowadays, especially with artificial intelligence, everything looks quite decent.
So, yeah, media literacy, is something that we should always carry with us when communicating. I’m not sure yet how to do that. We were just discussing how we can say that there is a standard for… I mean, we know the rules, we know how to do this, but how can we deliver the message that it is done in a certain way and that it has a bigger value or that there is a lot of work behind it without saying, I have been working so much, please give me your money now. You know, nobody cares.
Nobody cares about your problems. They just want to have their information and good content, whatever it is, whether they want to laugh, cry or be informed or whatever.
But they have to know why to subscribe to your newsletter and not just dood scroll and continue watching TikToks, which I love.
Francesca
I have a question for you because you sound like you’ve been doing some great engagement work already with your new startup. How do you handle negative engagement and feedback from your audience?
Alex
I did have some negative feedback. That was quite harsh actually, I handle it directly via social media or email or in the comments. I think that yeah, there are so many, I don’t have that problem that much personally, but I know that especially on social media, like influencer journalists slash however you, I don’t know if there’s a new word, ‘journal answer’. They do have to cope with that a lot and I think just answering directly is good.
I mean, if nothing helps. I’m not an expert on that. There are other experts who know when to block people or when to call the police.
I’m very inclusive and people who don’t like that approach have been commenting on my articles and I received letters from readers and comments on social media. So I just tell them, listen, thanks for your time. I mean, it has to be a big concern for you that you took your time to write this ugly message. But I think that so I just do it directly.
Francesca
That’s a really brave way to deal with it as well. It must be quite overwhelming when it does happen.
Alex
Yeah, well, but I’m not, you know, I’m too small to really be an expert to talk about that. I mean, there are the really big media companies who have a lot of comments on their articles and they have this very engaged community.
Well, they live from that also, all the discussions that are taking place there. It’s increasing view time, time spent on the page. I have many friends who love reading the comments. It’s also a type of content. It’s a kind of content creation.
Francesca
It is, it is. People want to see their peers and what they’re saying.
And looking at the future of audience engagement, where do you think it’s heading in, I was going to say in the next five to 10 years, but I don’t even think we can do five to 10. What do you imagine it being in the next three months?
Alex
I don’t know, things are changing so fast. I think, well, you always say authentic content, direct content, people want to have faces, real emotions.
I think that community will be more and more important. I think that direct communication with the community on whatever platform it will be, doesn’t actually matter.
We have TikTok now that is taking over. We will have the next thing in a few months or years or whatever. We don’t know which channel we will be using. I think that’s direct conversation.
The feeling of a direct conversation is very important.
I think that people don’t want to have bots everywhere. The ones who are fine with that, will read accordingly or they will consume media accordingly. We will see. I don’t know, we can talk about Web3 and stuff like that. I think that is, I find that very exciting.
What will be happening there? It depends also on our end devices which we will be using, if that’s still the mobile phone or if it will be glasses!
Or only listening and then giving orders. We will be using all our senses to consume content and that’s how we will engage. I’m looking forward to what will be happening.
Francesca
Me too. Me too. It’s very exciting. And last question.
If you had to give a new brand or someone going into their engagement journey one piece of advice, one hack, what would that be?
Alex
Know your audience. That’s it. Get to know your audience. We have just started another batch in our incubator program. So we have just welcomed 11 startups here at the Wiener Zeitung. And they have started with the research.
And the first workshop is all about the audience, what they think they are, who they think they are, how they think they are, how they want to consume their content and use their products. And now we have sent them out to actually have conversations with them, just take their people and call them up, who they think. If it’s a person who’s working in a bank, they have to go there and say, hey, I have a few questions. Can you answer them? Just to see if it’s true what they are thinking. And this is how we actually get to know our audience better.
Francesca
I always love that question because I actually have found so many answers have been: Getting to know your audience. So, yeah, I can’t agree more, 100%. Alex, thank you so much for your time.