Newsbroke
My Role: Content Strategist, Writer, and Producer
Skills Utilized: Content strategy, audience development, social media, marketing, writing, producing, data analysis, collaborating, innovating, editing, Adobe Photoshop, content management systems, communications, project management
Problem: The AJ+ political satire show, Newsbroke, had recently launched on Facebook Watch. Prior to my addition to the team, the show was struggling to find and grow an audience.
Action: I knew that there was an underserved market for our genre of thoroughly researched comedy, so my hypothesis was that if we integrated social media, marketing, and publishing into our world-class content processes, people would gather and subscribe. In service of this goal, I studied analytics, strategized, and executed best practices for thumbnails, titles, and descriptions. I planned and executed creative social media campaigns, honed publishing best practices, and drafted other marketing materials that were replete with deep audience understanding.
Results: In just 11 months, with my help, the channel grew from around 1,000 followers to 331,348 followers. (The total is now a bit lower because it’s been a few years since the host ended the show in order to accept positions at TYT and MSNBC.) Newsbroke was also shortlisted for a national Primetime Emmy Award in the “Outstanding Short Form Variety Series” category and won a Society of Professional Journalists Award for “Outstanding Commentary Analysis.” The first video that I worked on with Newsbroke was the 8th video ever released on Newsbroke’s Facebook Watch channel. (The videos I worked on are outlined below within a red box.) You’ll notice that after I started, there was a drastic improvement in thumbnail, title, and description quality as well as click-ability, viewership, and amount of reactions. This is also when subscribers started increasing rapidly. A significant part of our success was due to the breadth and depth of skills that I brought to all parts of the creative process, including visuals, sound, scripting, comedy, directing, social media, marketing, titling, thumbnail creation, descriptions, and overall strategy.
