How The Information is growing and expanding

Laura Hazard Owen of Nieman Lab interviewed The Information editor and founder Jessica Lessin about how the tech news site is growing.

Here is an excerpt:

Owen: How do you grow your subscriber count?

Lessin: The most important way we draw new subscribers is just by writing must-read stories that people can’t read elsewhere. That happens naturally through word of mouth, and our stories being followed by other big news organizations remains a really important engine of growth.On top of that, we’ve got some smart minds thinking about growth and marketing. Some of those efforts are focused on product. Our share links allow subscribers to share, with anyone they want, a link that will let any person read that story [in exchange for an email address]. Those are valuable and I think we can continue to improve them.

Email marketing remains a very exciting area. We get a lot of emails from people who want to learn more about The Information, so we’re focusing on how we can educate those people to get them to give us a try. So I would say the primary growth focus is constant improvements in editorial and the product, and we want to continue to do experiments like the share links.

Read more here.