When Ish Hits the Fan, Texting Rules
Every beat has crazy news cycles, and you best believe that’s the time to be texting with your audience. Subscription growth proves it.
Rutger’s football fans were taken aback when they found out their program was losing out on its leading candidate for head coach. The Subtext campaign Rutgers Insider, led by NJ.com sports reporters, is a great example of when a big story breaks, why it pays — literally in this case — to already be texting with your audience.
The Text Heard ’Round New Jersey
NJ.com has shown its audience that if they want the inside scoop, texting is the place to be. They proved this when Rutgers fired their head coach earlier in the year. Engagement and subscriptions took off on Rutgers Insider, with the number of subscribers growing by 64% in November alone.
Subscriptions continued to rise as the Schiano story progressed over the course of weeks then months. The NJ.com team is now above their original 2019 expectations for audience growth with this campaign.
NJ.com has owned this story at its every twist and turn, and they’ve used Subtext to build a loyal fanbase for their reporting and a community that is engaging with the hosts at some of the highest levels we’re seeing across the platform.
We’ve taken a small sample of the coverage Rutgers Insider provided over just one weekend of the “Schiano affair” to show you how this top-notch reporting team is using Subtext to cover this breaking news story.
At one point, one of the NJ.com reporters sent a screenshot of our dashboard to show just how many inbound messages they had. Lots of reporters ask us if it’s overwhelming to respond to everyone.
Even on days of BIG news when the engagement rate peaks, you don’t have to respond to everyone. But you can let everyone know you’ve heard them and that you’re taking it all in. You are the curator of the community.
This is also a chance to show just what goes into reporting. Take your audience behind the scenes.
It’s also an opportunity to get a sense of how the audience feels.
And many of the responses from this broadcasts were used in a story! A good reminder that this is a two-way conversation. Subtext can be used to make your reporting better and more informed.
Even adding a bit of background to a story that is free to the public adds value for the subscribers.
Let the insider baseball … errr football, fly.
This story continues to develop and we fully expect the NJ.com sports team to continue their kick-butt coverage. If you want to follow along: joinsubtext.com/rutgersinsider
If you want to become a host yourself, sign up here: joinsubtext.com
