Driving Engagement For Digital Newsrooms Via Messenger Push Notifications

Last updated on Sep 27, 2022

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Driving Engagement For Digital Newsrooms Via Messenger Push Notifications

The news and media industry is really competitive. If you are not out there with the breaking news on time, your chance to shine just disappears in thin air. Social has always been part of the distribution scheme for getting information out there. Facebook however has been a difficult nut to crack. 

Facebook seems to have a complicated relationship with publishers. Facebook has now de-priortized News publishers from its Newsfeed. Bypassing the Facebook algorithm is a paramount challenge. Your articles are shared on Facebook and despite having thousands of followers, the reach is just bad and engagement is low. Which makes it even worse for the already plummeting traffic from Facebook.

Facebook after all has a huge audience base and it might seem only foolish to let that go. There are 7B conversations happening on Messenger every day! More than 2.5 Trillion conversations a year. It is evident that a different strategy is a necessity if your numbers are refusing to scale. 

Let’s look at your options for distributing content - 

  • Google - Search, News, Discover 
  • Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Instant Articles 
  • Apple News 

Share your avg. engagement rate at marketing@izooto.com and I’ll remove this section if it’s over 5%.

The 70-30 deal with the duopolies is everything but there’s no this or that here. Building a marketing stack is an additional exercise and one that takes time to have an effect so why delay?    

Read More - How to build your own publisher marketing stack?

Why Make Messenger Push Notifications a Part of your Distribution Channels?

'Twenty years ago, businesses scrambled to start building a web presence. Now is the time for businesses to build a presence on Messenger.'

- Stefanos Loukakos, Head of Messenger, Facebook

It’s been just 2 years and more than 2 billion messages are being exchanged every month between users and businesses. Why be the last to get there? 

Messenger push notifications are messages received by a user inside their Messenger inbox. It is a foolproof way to increase content discoverability and increase engagement and get more return visits to your website. Here is what makes Messenger push notifications stand out-

  • Carousels (series of horizontally scrollable messages) in the Generic template - One out of the 6 exciting notification templates that Messenger offers, has carousels that help readers choose the news to read. 
  • Not Another News App - Unlike a News app that consumes phone resources, Messenger push notifications offer the same functionality as the existing Messenger app for your audience + it’s interactive (2-way communication, remember).
  • Multimedia experience -Messenger allows news publishers to use multiple media formats (like text, videos, .gif, etc) on Messenger push notifications to engage their audience effectively without having to build a fresh app/medium themselves.
  • Reach Everyone. Everywhere (even on iOS) - A game-changer for news sites! Despite being the first OS to introduce push notifications, Apple doesn’t support web push notifications on iOS. Publishers, as a result, lose out on their iOS engagement via push notifications. Messenger push notifications offer a workaround to publishers willing to grab exciting CTRs for those 900 million active iPhone users.
  • Longer shelf-life for the event updates - You can deliver your event updates right inside the messenger inbox of your Messenger audience. This gives a longer shelf to the push alerts that users can engage with whenever they want.
  • Enables two-way communication - Send and receive! You get to interact with your audience via a private in-chat experience of the messenger. Unlike other engagement channels, where it was just the brand doing all the talking, messenger push enables user participation which reinforces meaningful two-way communication.

Read more: Use cases that newsrooms are using to engage better 

Fixing Facebook reach and Engagement 

Every time a person comments on your Facebook post, they are nudged to subscribe to notifications. Once subscribed, all the notifications will be sent inside the Messenger inbox, ensuring 100% reach of your content.

Messenger engagement

Publishers have also been leveraging automation by plugging their RSS feed and pushing put notifications every time new articles are posted on the website. 

Read more: How to make the most out of Messenger Push notification and the Impact

Messenger adds 100 million new users every five to six months. Get your business and domain verified on Facebook and go to your Facebook Page’s Business Settings to register your page under the NPI (News Page Index). Facebook takes time to send the approval. The sooner you apply, the more quickly you’ll get to build your Messenger push notification audience.   

Here’s a Help doc that can make this verification process a piece of cake for your team.  

Read More:Everything you need to know about Facebook Messenger Push Notifications.

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Neha Tanwer
Neha Tanwer
Neha is a Product Marketer @iZooto who works with a single focus of helping publishers grow faster and better. Coming from the lap of Himalayas, she is a theatre artist, who loves dropping gears to travel the mountains. When not in office, she can be found roaming in the streets of Delhi finding next good cafeteria to eat at.

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