The founder and director of Storythings presented in Readmagine the insights from a report his company implemented about the new patterns of behaviour of young audiences when using social media. This qualitative research provides very interesting and useful takeaways for all those publishing or retailing content for young people.
The taxonomy presented by Locke differentiates between: Secret Spaces, Group Spaces, Publishing Spaces, Performing Spaces, Participation Spaces and Watching Spaces.
Those areas are linked to some behavioural trends which are six different ways hybrid working is changing the attention of the audience. In this video you can follow Matt’s presentation with his remarks about recommendations for the publishing industry.
Some of the takeaways were:
- Good curation adds context and lets people know why the thing you want them to see or hear is important.The range of content you include, and how you talk about it, defines your voice and personality over time. Becoming a smart filter is a brilliant way for building loyalty.
- Think about how you can help them choose where your content sits in their routine. Include reading times. Use clear language about what they’ll get from it or how they can use it. Suggest when they might engage with it.
- Your content is battling for the attention of audiences who are constantly switching between different sources of media. Think about how your content works for partial or ambient attention.
- People are tired of the polished versions of everything they see around them. The pandemic brought this into focus, as we spent so much time with our media by ourselves or with our bubbles.
- We can’t hide from the fact that the avalanche of choice has made it harder for the makers of good content to find audiences. But it is not impossible: Think about offering unscrollable media as an option: can you make a book out of your online magazine, or a Spotify playlist?
- Think of how your content can be left open-ended a bit, to encourage people to use them as they see fit.
Matt leads on operations and processes for the company, as well as exec producing projects for clients including BBC, PBS, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Wellcome Trust. Before founding Storythings in 2011 he worked for over a decade in senior digital roles at Channel 4 and the BBC, including roles as Head of Innovation at BBC and Head of Multiplatform at Channel 4. He also started the Public Media Stack project, and will eventually one day finish his book about the history of attention metrics, which is actually way more interesting than it sounds. Matt also sits on the Board of Directors at Storythings.
