Future-Proof Your Competitive Edge with Audience Driven Content

The Evolving Media Landscape

Today’s audiences consume more content than ever before. They wake up to social media, drive with connected dashboards, and wind down with streaming services.

And media companies find themselves struggling to get the attention of their audience. The rise of the creator economy, shrinking staffs and layoffs at traditional broadcast companies, and the demand for more local content are putting pressure on media executives to achieve revenue goals and remain competitive with fewer resources.

We aren’t able to turn back the clock, so we have to find the best path forward. And part of the answer will include controlling and navigating AI.

Social Media: A Threat or Opportunity?

Futuri’s recent AI in Media Study revealed that social media now surpasses local TV as a primary news source for consumers by 50%.

What’s trending on social media changes quickly, and stories evolve in real time. In many cases, big stories can be old news by the time your evening broadcast airs. Social media engagement metrics are the key to unlocking new opportunities and angles that will keep your audience interested.

Rather than viewing social media as a threat, savvy media companies can turn it into a strategic advantage, using its wealth of analytics and insights to drive engagement and, ultimately, revenue growth. Ideally, you can use your social platforms to cover engaging stories with unique angles, but the challenge is that it takes more time than you have. Futuri understands. That’s why we developed TopicPulse, software that scans the major social platforms and over 250,000 news sources to give you real-time insights into what’s trending, the topics your audience cares about most, and presenting what angles have already been covered. Get a read on your content, your competitor’s content, and the content you haven’t covered yet. TopicPulse uses AI to deliver these insights quickly with links to trusted sources.

Content Decisions in the Age of AI

Audiences are aware and expect media companies to use AI to deliver better content. In fact, 45% of TV news consumers believe AI can aid newsrooms in picking better stories (Futuri’s AI in Media Study, 2024).

TopicPulse’s AI unlocks your team’s ability to be more intentional and create more audience driven content. It uses data to help you decide what stories to cover, what topics to tease, what stories will drive more site traffic, and what’s top of mind with your audience right now. AI lets you target the geographics that you care about most. Unlike more basic AI tools, TopicPulse is designed for media companies, so it helps your station make key editorial decisions like what content to run on your linear feed, digital offerings, website, and social media channels to fuel your audience’s engagement across all your platforms. Maximizing audiences who are consuming content all day through different channels ensures you are driving new revenue opportunities by delivering the right content at the right time.

Audience Driven Content = More Traffic and More Engagement

A digital director in a Top 20 Market saw their social engagement increase by 50% after only a month of using TopicPulse to guide what content to share and when to share it on their social media channels.

Another digital team in a Top 70 TV Market used TopicPulse to find new content, edit headlines, and decide when to share on social media. Within a month, they generated the equivalent of 2-3 additional days of pageviews from the content they used TopicPulse to optimize. Over the course of a year, this is like adding a whole extra month of website traffic and impressions.

Financial Implications

In this competitive content market, the fight for advertising dollars is closely tied to impressions. More impressions mean more ad inventory and more opportunities to sell sponsorships. Local stations can increase their impressions and break through the growing piles of information by confidently and consistently delivering content their local audience cares about and wants to engage with.

Compelling content on social media directly boosts interactions and organic views. That means you experience increased website traffic and greater ad revenue potential. This leads to more ad views, opening up more ad inventory to sell. With TopicPulse, no additional work from your team is needed. TopicPulse helps them draft a social post for trending stories based on how that story is trending in your local market to ensure it is the right message at the right time to maximize engagement.

More social media and website traffic grows your brand and leads to more people tuning in to your on-air broadcasts. Audiences are very conscious of the content they consume and the time they have to consume it. They want to ensure that when they are tuning in, it is worth their time and resonates with them. TopicPulse helps your team cover the stories and angles your audience cares about in real time to stay ahead of the conversation happening in your local area.

Efficient Video Creation to Stand Out

Creating video content for social media and websites takes time and resources. Content teams often find it challenging to prioritize this among all the other daily projects they are responsible for. TopicPulse maximizes your team’s efficiency by providing cost-effective, ready-to-share licensed videos, freeing up resources for other high-impact initiatives. These videos are updated daily around trending topics and can be quickly customized to match your station’s style.

This is another way TopicPulse helps keep your station ahead of the conversation. A Digital/Assignment Manager in a Top 30 TV market recently shared this big win using TopicPulse Instant Video: “We are always looking for ways to better engage with our viewers online and on social media. TopicPulse made it easy to create videos that garnered nearly 4,000 shares on Facebook and tens of thousands of views on our website.” Imagine the ad inventory and brand visibility this could bring to your station.

Unlock Your Station’s Competitive Edge

TopicPulse equips your team with a competitive content advantage. It can help you bring more, and new, eyeballs to your content and bring more traffic to your site. This can help with brand awareness and loyalty, and increase revenue. You can grow your brand presence, social following, website, and digital traffic. It can also help bring tune-ins and increase time spent with your broadcast, increasing quarter hours and impressions. Audiences will always need and demand local content. TopicPulse future-proofs your station by helping verify the content you are presenting is truly of interest to the audience you serve as the media landscape evolves.