The Featured Editor Series is a collection of interviews we’ve put together to find out how our publisher base has integrated the Visual Revenue Platform into their newsroom and how it’s helped them be more data driven!
Our Featured Editor Series continues with NBC News’ The Grio! I had the pleasure of sitting down with Joy-Ann Reid, Managing Editor of TheGrio.com and chat to her about how she uses the Visual Revenue Platform day to day.
VR: How does Visual Revenue fit into your existing editorial process and was it easy to incorporate it?
JR: I keep the VR screen open on my desktop all day. I must admit I’m a bit obsessed with it. Our deputy editor and I use it to gauge the performance of individual content on the homepage, and we incorporate the data into our decisions about what to place above the fold, what to elevate, and what content just isn’t working. I’m also a fan of the headline test feature, which allows us to give content we care about the maximum chance to succeed, and to get feedback on how to improve the performance of that content if possible.
VR: What action do you take when The Platform recommends a story gets more exposure but you don’t agree?
JR: We don’t always act on the recommendations precisely as given, but if there’s a very strong recommendation to give a piece more exposure, we may move it to a higher spot on the page, if not precisely to the spot where VR says we should.
VR: How does the data allow you to better understand your audience?
JR: I’m a data nerd. What I love about VR is that it takes our subjective feelings about a story out of the equation for a moment, and allows us to see what our audience wants to read at that given moment. And it helps to give us some perspective on how readers use our site – it’s not 9 to 5 the way we read it, it’s 24 hours, in different intervals, and with different interests. That’s great information for any editorial team to have.
VR: When you have to act quickly, what feature do you find the most helpful?
JR: When time is tight – and it’s always tight on a small team – the front page performance window is definitely the most useful. We need to know when something is working, and more importantly, when it’s underperforming.
VR: What is the most important task that Visual Revenue supports you on during your day?
JR: What’s been great about having VR is that it gives me as an editorial manager real time, objective information about our content, which is not married to our subjective judgments. That helps the team decision-making process, and I feel that it has already boosted our click-throughs. I can’t wait to have the VR tool for the individual sections of the site!
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The previous interviews with:
NewsOK’s Alan Herzberger can be found here
iVillage’s Angela Matusik can be found here
Charlie Holbech