How The Economist used TikTok to reach new audiences

Liv Moloney, head of social media at The Economist, writes about how the publication is using TikTok to reach new audiences.

Moloney writes, “The editorial strategy was devised and implemented by the social-media specialists within The Economist’s newsroom. (Jamie MacWhirter, our social-video producer, deserves particular credit for his work on the account.)

“Our marketing team then created campaigns and paid-for activity to significantly increase the account’s reach and generate subscriptions for (and referrals back to) our owned products.

“During our first six months on TikTok, we posted 50 videos, which generated a total of 26 million views. This propelled us into the top 10 for average views among news publishers on the platform, according to a Reuters Institute study from December 2022.

“This was despite a lower frequency of posting and fewer followers than many of our competitors. An approach of ‘quality over quantity’ was working for us. Collectively these videos gained 1 million likes, while the account as a whole has 220,000 followers.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.