A not-insignificant part of audience work is ensuring newsrooms relate to and understand their audiences, Fernanda Braune Brackenrich, U.S. editor for audience engagement at the Financial Times, told Nieman Lab in a recent piece.

Another important thing for journalists to keep in mind, she said: “Journalists have assumptions about their readers. One of them that is very common is that they think their readers are as obsessed with the news cycle as they are. They cannot fathom why that explainer — with ‘such basic questions’ — did so well.”

With that in mind, here’s what she advised:

Q: Where do you think audience editors should put their focus in 2025?

A: The question I’ve been asking myself every day is: How can my team be the most useful to the newsroom and advocate for our readers’ needs? The answer to this is that we need to be very aware of live data insights and communicating them to the newsroom. 

This year, my team will focus more on communicating specific data insights to individual news desks instead of giving general insights to the whole newsroom. The more targeted we are, the more impactful we can be.  

Audience teams should make sure that:

• They have access to the data they need.

• They are trained to find this data.

• They are communicating it effectively to whoever needs to hear it.

Q: With search and social declining, should audience teams still spend a lot of time on those efforts? What social platforms do you think have the most potential right now?

A: At the FT, we haven’t seen a decline in search traffic, so we still spend a considerable amount of time focusing on SEO. With social media, we have seen a decline in traffic, but engagement on the channels remains high, and we think of them as a window into the best of the FT. 

In terms of social channels with great potential, I would highlight Bluesky. It’s still early stages, but we’ve seen substantial follower growth on the FT channel since the U.S. election, and some of our posts there have performed even better for engagement (reactions) than on X. So this is a space we are watching with some excitement.

And there is also LinkedIn, which has been somewhat underutilised by publishers, but at the FT it has become one of the biggest drivers of traffic from the channels.

Q: How important do you think direct traffic is? What is your best advice for cultivating more direct relationships with readers?

A: There are several ways to cultivate a direct relationship with readers:

• Read the comments section. The FT has a very dynamic comment section, and the audience engagement team constantly observes these discussions to understand what readers care about.

• Data. Looking at the numbers — weekly, monthly, annually — can give you a really good snapshot of what readers are thinking and what’s attracting them and why.

• Q&As. At the FT, we host Q&As on ft.com and on social media. The idea here is to gather questions about topics we already know our readers care about and get our journalists to answer them.

Q: What do you see as the role of an audience team member this year?

A: Our role is to make sure that our readers are finding the content that will empower them to live their lives. Here at the FT, I believe that we have this content, so the team is constantly working to make sure that readers find our stories and at the same time we can produce stories that readers will think are useful and important. 

Q: What are the key metrics you’re monitoring this year and why?

A: I’m looking at a combination of metrics: pageviews, quality reads, and time on page, percentage of traffic from search engines and push notifications, ranking of stories on the homepage. It depends on the story and the expectations for it. 

Q: Any other thoughts or advice?

A: I think it’s an exciting time to be in audience engagement. We are experiencing this moment in which readers want more quality content, and they are rewarding the newsrooms that are more in tune with their needs.

It’s a time for experimentation and creativity, especially given the advance of AI technologies, and an opportunity to take a step back and evaluate how to better serve our readers. 

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