Thumb-Stopping Online Content and Other Thoughts About the Digital Revolution from the Head of CBC Digital News

One of the guest presenters at the April 27-29 Canadian Church Press convention was Brodie Fenlon, Senior Director for Digital News at the CBC. 

In a wide-ranging presentation, he covered a number of topics about the digital revolution overtaking legacy media—print and broadcast.

A summary of his remarks is below.

Is the content on your Facebook page “thumb-stopping”?

That’s the question Brodie Fenlon, Senior Director of CBC Digital News, asked at the April 27-29 Canadian Church Press convention in Toronto.

“You have to stop the thumb,” he said of the way most people get information today—on their phones.

“It has to be thumb-stopping.”

Good content, he went on to say, “is no good if doesn’t work on a phone.”

The New Legacy Media—Digital

Fenlon also noted that while we tend to view newspapers as a “legacy” media that the Internet disrupted, the Internet, or digital, itself has a legacy that has been disrupted.

In the case of the Internet, it has moved from the Web and desktop to mobile—that’s how most people access information today.

He noted that no communications technology has been adopted as quickly as the phone, with over 90% of people 18-34 now owning one.

“The war is on to win the audience on this thing,” he stated. “Over the next few years, the battle is to be one or lost on the smartphone.”

He said that already 63% of CBC’s audience comes to its website via a mobile device.

The CBC “still has a huge desktop audience, but future growth is phone,” he said, adding that websites and home pages are becoming legacy media themselves.

At the CBC, he said, “we treat our Facebook page like our website.”

And what’s on that CBC Facebook page?  Stories. “The thing the audience lands on is the story page,” he said.

Facebook: Eating the World

As for where users go on their phones, the answer, he said, is Facebook.

And it’s not only older people on Facebook, he said, dismissing a commonly-held notion.

90% of millennials use Facebook, he said, with YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram following in second, third and fourth place.

And, as he noted, that’s also where many people get their news—not from traditional news sources.

It’s the same for the next demographic, 35-54 year-olds—Facebook is first for them, too, followed by YouTube.

Snapchat is way back for that demographic, not surprisingly.

“Facebook is eating the world,” he said, quoting the title of the much-talked-about article by Emily Bell. 

“If you are going to win mobile, then you have to think social, and you have to start with Facebook,” he stated.

“If you would be stuck on an island can could only choose one social media platform, Facebook would be it,” he said—quickly adding that’s for right now.

“Who knows what I might say in a month,” he said.

Share and Share Alike

And when it comes to Facebook, the goal is to get people not just to like, but to share.

With that in mind, groups need to make it easy for people to share.

“Share buttons matter,” he said, and so do headlines and images.

The problem is that designers design Facebook posts on desktop computers, he said. They need to check the posts later to make sure they display the way they intended.

When it comes to headlines, they need to grab and hold attention.

On websites, it’s important to include key words like names of people, places, organizations or groups. But on Facebook, emotion is vital if you are going to get thumbs to stop.

“Headlines on websites are for robots,” he said. “You need different headlines for social media. You need to speak to the heart on social media, not to the robots.”

This means the sometimes there needs to be two different headlines and images—one for the website, and the other for Facebook.

Need for Speed

Speed is also important on mobile, he said.

According to Fenlon, studies show that 47% of people expect a site to load in two seconds or less. If it takes longer, 40% say they will leave.

What this means is that the websites—especially for mobile—need to be streamlined.

This is the reasoning behind Facebook’s Instant Articles, and Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages).

With Instant Articles, material loads faster, but organizations have to give it to Facebook—something very controversial for news organizations..

“This means we are building an audience for Facebook,” Fenlon said, “but the user experience is better.”

Facebook Leaning to Video

As for Facebook itself, he noted that it has once again changed it algorithms and now it is favouring video.

But, he noted, the kind of video that works on TV “won’t work on Facebook.”

On TV, video segments “are too long, they build-up to the moment.”

Facebook video, he said, has to be short and get right to the point.

Something new for them now is putting text over the video, so people can read what is being said.

“People usually use their mobile devices with the sound off,” so adding text helps to catch attention.

As for length, shorter is always better, he said.

The ideal length of a Facebook video is no longer than 90 seconds. YouTube hosts longer videos, “but the longer you go the better it has to be. If you are going to ask for two, three or four minutes of my time, it has better be worth it.”

What about Twitter?

Twitter is also important, he said, but it doesn’t reach the mass audience of Facebook.

Twitter users, he said, tend to be highly engaged audience, with a lot of journalists and a lot of influencers on that platform.

Facebook Worries and Paywalls

Fenlon admitted there are worrying things about the dominance of Facebook.

Its algorithm isn’t Canadian, he said, and it doesn’t prioritize Canadian news.

Instead, it “favours what your friends like, what you like.”

But that is also its genius, and why people spend so much time on it, he added.

“Facebook is a great experience—that’s why people spend time there,” he said. “You can rage against that, or try to build your own brand and presence in that space.”

As for the future, “we are In this weird grey zone, not sure where it is going,” he said of the Web and social media.

One place he is sure it is not going is towards paywalls and people paying for content online.

“I’m not an expert on monetizing content, but a paywall is a tough sell,” he said. “It only works for biggest players.”

As for the younger generation, they “will not pay,” he stated, referencing a study that showed that 70% said they will never pay for news.

Subscribing to things, he noted, is something people over 50 are used to doing—not the younger generation.

The Future of TV News

As for traditional CBC TV news, “we will see real withdrawl from local news,” he said.

The idea of the supper hour or evening news—what is called appointment viewing—is something only older people do. Younger people don’t consume news that way.

They have no interest in a traditional hour-long format, where they wait until something they are interested in comes up, he shared.

The supper and evening news is “a relic,” he stated. “We have to re-think the newscast. Instead of telling people what happened today, we need to tell them why it matters, and what will happen tomorrow as a result.”

This will involve a psychological change for broadcasters, he added.

Today it is video first—the needs of TV. In the near future, it will be digital first, and TV second.

“We are still trying to republish TV stuff to digital,” he said. “We need to do digital first, then go to TV.”