The Sun Snapchat - Loneliness
The problem: Young Snapchat users were experiencing high levels of loneliness, but current news content doesn’t address this in an engaging, relatable way. The Sun’s challenge was to create supportive, user-focused content on Snapchat Discover that resonates emotionally with young readers while staying true to its brand.
My role: Led a data-informed strategy to commission and design content that targeted this issue while also driving engagement for the channel and its news content.
Learnings
My work here proved the value in a user-data informed strategy. This approach was so successful, I was asked - alongside The Sun’s Snapchat Desk Editor - to present our strategy to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel who was keen to learn how we utilised his platform.
It also was instrumental in honing my skills designing content for different platforms, visuals and audiences.
Wins
Increased subscribers by 600,000 and maintained status as number one on the platform
Consistently achieved average 20% conversion rate - double that of rivals
65% of readers 13-24 and over 73% female
Jump to…
While many might associate Snapchat with disappearing messages, that’s not the platform’s only offering. On Snapchat Discover, users can stay up to date with the latest news they care about and even watch shows native to the platform. For the team at The Sun this presented an opportunity to grab a new audience but required different ways of thinking. Instead of headlines, we’d be working with motion graphic designers to create ten second long “top snaps” that still felt true to The Sun’s tongue-in-cheek branding. We weren’t restricted to just copy and could try designing content in new formats. We could capture reliable user data to inform editorial strategy, utilising the poll feature to gain insights from on average 300,000 users. After one poll found 80% of users felt lonely regularly, I sought to design content that addressed this issue.
The Context
The Goal
To design user-focused content for young readers experiencing loneliness.
The Users
13-24-year-old readers of The Sun Snapchat experiencing loneliness.
As Deputy Editor, I commissioned, wrote and edited copy before liaising with motion graphic designers to design visually engaging content that users couldn’t resist swiping into.
What I Did
Our initial poll was prompted by research from BBC Radio 4 on how young people in the UK were actually the loneliest demographic - perhaps contrary to popular belief. I wanted to find out if this was something our users identified with. Over 300,000 users voted and over 80% felt lonely regularly. I decided this was an issue to tackle within our daily edition and began reaching out to experts and organisations I knew our readers would trust and want to hear from.
Thanks to user data, I knew that showbiz news was particularly popular with our users - our viewership and engagement reliably peaked every year during Love Island. With this insight, I reached out to the show’s Dr Alex George who at that time was working with Samaritans. I felt that Dr Alex would be able to speak on the topic from a place of expertise as a medical professional, and be someone who piqued users' interest and commanded their respect having appeared on a show that was so popular with our readers. This meant we could talk about the health implications of loneliness in a way that would resonate with users.
How I Did It
I fostered this relationship and he agreed to answer reader questions on the topic. At that time, there was no way for users to send direct messages to The Sun on the platform. To get reader questions submitted, I worked with graphic designers to create an infographic which included an email address they could reach out on. We received over 750 emails with questions - considering the friction in the user journey (they would have had to screenshot the email address before typing it into the address bar manually without copying and pasting), I felt this was incredibly high and spoke to the resonance the topic had with users.
I worked through these, choosing ten questions that covered the issues that most commonly arose and shared these with Dr Alex to provide his answers and conducted a brief interview with him to help provide context before writing up the copy. I previously created The Sun’s tone of voice for Snapchat to allow us to use more social media native language rather than the traditional style of the paper.
Once written, I worked with graphic designers to create the infographic, top snap and tile - the thumbnail that enticed users to click on the edition.
What I Achieved
In addition to the impactful work with Dr Alex, I curated a suite of content including more celebrity-led advice with Celebs Go Dating life coach Anna Williamson, the benefits of volunteering to dispel loneliness and more. Throughout this project I achieved an average engagement rate of 26% and engagement time of 2:27, proving to be a great success.
By demonstrating the value of a user data led strategy I was able to lead more projects and content strategies by working in a similar vein, partnering with Sam Thompson to help answer reader questions on STIs.