Main image: (L-R) Ana Ferrand, Head of Web Analytics and Data, Manuel Galvín, SEO Coordinator, and Pedro Moreno, Product Manager.
During its participation in Table Stakes Europe, Grupo Joly’s digital team made a firm commitment to establish and encourage new habits in the newsroom by restructuring teams and improving processes. Thanks to the work done over these months, which has included new approaches to the use of data, holding meetings and the creation of internal playbooks, the company has a firm plan for approaching the future of digital media based on ongoing innovation and adaptation and, above all, without losing sight of the focus on specific audiences.
Grupo Joly, founded in 1867,is a regional media company based in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia, where the group is present in seven of Andalusia’s eight provinces. The company publishes nine daily newspapers, including Diario de Cádiz and Diario de Sevilla, as well as books and magazines.
In the months spent working on the fundamentals of the Table Stakes Europe (TSE) programme, the publisher achieved, for example, a 30 percent increase in the number of users registered to read the contents on the Holy Week in Seville, a 20 percent increase in the volume of page views in this section, and also more time spent reading this type of news on mobile devices (+67 percent).
The Grupo Joly team said the experience of being part of the TSE programme has been beneficial for everyone, not only because of what they learned in the sessions and presentations but also because of the things they realised about themselves as a company during the period of applying the principles of the programme.
The main way of consolidating concepts, training and updating the entire company digitally was through a series of digital meetings in 2023 to match the progress of the company’s digital area with the rest of its departments.
As Group Product Director Pedro Moreno said: “We knew there was an asymmetry that was becoming increasingly difficult to address, as it caused crucial blockages that prevented the company from evolving.”
These meetings were well attended, with around 60-70 participants each time. They were also rated highly by company employees overall, as shown by the satisfaction survey carried out at the end of the process.
Data help to drive audience focus
As regards internal restructuring, Grupo Joly’s team sees the newsroom as “a living, constantly evolving space in which there are hardly any watertight compartments.” This is truer than ever in the digital age, in which constant changes (algorithms, new tools, ongoing business crises) have an impact on journalists’ work. In 2023, a series of reorganisations were carried out based on different news needs: two elections, Easter Week in Seville, the Carnival in Cadiz, tourism, the strengthening of regional information in Andalusia, etc.
Specific teams were set up to cover the Carnival and Easter, working as “mini-publishers.” This is just the beginning, as more departmental changes to strengthen the digital area are set to take place in the next few months.
According to Ana Ferrand, Head of Web Analytics and Data, the commitment to data-driven decision-making has been a key feature: “In recent months we have worked to instil the habit of thinking about the reader in the editorial staff, focusing on the audience for whom the content is written. We have tried to monitor what we can ‘stop doing’ or ‘do less’ to dedicate more time to improving processes and tasks and giving them greater quality. We have used web analytics to demonstrate, based on data, what works and what does not. An example of this can be seen in our social media strategy. Faced with a gradual drop in traffic, we have opted for a higher level of automation to dedicate more time to creating locally-based video/image content.”
A decision was also taken to incorporate new job profiles, such as a loyalty and registration specialist who, according to SEO Coordinator Manuel Galvín, “provides a new vision on growth strategies, ranging from changes in the design of registration promotions to suggestions on new author newsletters, promoting sweepstakes, improving internal re-circulation and attracting young people, among other things.”
Dissemination of learning through meetings
To coordinate and reduce the workload this summer the team developed an “audience calendar” to group seasonally relevant content together that had previously proven to be of interest to readers. This gives the editorial staff ideas about when to reinforce a particular topic, based on the data indicating the direction to take.
From the point of view of time organisation, meetings were held with those directly responsible and the person directing one of the mini-publishing teams (the one on Holy Week in Seville), to explain and specify the main points of the TSE programme. In October, a new online publication – Jaén Hoy – was launched, and after discussions with its director, it was decided to also create a mini-publishing team focused on the town of Linares.
The data team also holds regular meetings with the editorial team, where the ideas learned in TSE are passed on. There have been occasional meetings with the sales team as well to report on the editorial actions being carried out, and to show data and options for collaborative projects.
Playbooks help share best practices
In addition to the above, in order to facilitate the journalists’ work and convey clear and transparent information to the audience, as well as to ensure coherence in the style, tone and format of the news content, four playbooks were produced on the following topics:
- Audiences: to detect and work with specific
- Newsletters: tips and best practices for newsletter writing.
- SEO: brief guidelines for copywriters on content optimisation.
- Editorial issues: questions to find out whether the content meets the needs of the audience and to determine whether a particular item can be closed for registration.
Through these playbooks, Pedro Moreno pointed out, “we can standardise and automate tasks while mitigating the most common mistakes that occur in increasingly complex journalistic work. Like the meetings, they also help us to introduce concepts and consolidate ideas with which we can adapt to the constant changes in the sector.”
So far, the only achievements that have been shown are those reflected in El Palquillo, a website specialising in information about the Holy Week in Seville.
In meetings with managers of the website, Moreno noted “key conclusions were drawn as to what path to take, especially for the next Holy Week. Once the programme is finished, the idea is to make an internal presentation to analyse the efforts made and see which points have worked, and also to assess what can be strengthened and what blocks need to be addressed to focus our efforts with the resources we have.”