The Weekly Bulletin | February 11, 2025

Hi SODP community,

Let’s recap on what’s been happening, the new content, industry updates, tips, and more.

TIP OF THE WEEK

Audience development in 2025 is all about being platform agnostic—because your audience isn’t confined to your website anymore.

The 2025 publishers are not only defined by their websites or newsletters but also by where their audiences spend time. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024, 58% of Gen Z and millennials now discover news on social platforms like TikTok and Instagram rather than through Google searches or direct visits. This shift is compelling publishers to rethink their content strategies and embrace a platform-agnostic approach.

Publishers are increasingly diversifying their content distribution channels to meet audiences wherever they are. Take Morning Brew, for example: by repurposing business insights into engaging 15-second videos, they built a TikTok audience of over 3 million in just six months. Reuters data further reveals that publishers using Instagram Reels have experienced 2.5 times higher engagement than traditional static posts. In Australia, 52% of those under 35 now prefer video-first content when it comes to news, underscoring the need to adapt to these evolving consumer habits.

Adopting a platform-agnostic strategy means more than simply posting content on multiple platforms—it requires a deep understanding of where your audience is and how they consume content. Start by auditing your audience with tools like SparkToro or Google Analytics 4 to pinpoint the channels they frequent. Then, repurpose your existing content to suit each platform’s unique format—whether that means turning long-form reports into Instagram carousels, podcasts into TikTok clips, or data insights into compelling infographics. The goal is to maintain your core brand voice while tailoring your message to fit the strengths of each channel.

Before I summarise the key points, it’s important to note that these strategies have proven effective for publishers looking to stay ahead in a rapidly shifting digital environment. Each step represents a strategic move towards capturing audience attention in a space where content is increasingly consumed on diverse platforms.

Here are the takeaways:

1. Prioritise Meeting Audiences Where They Are: Focus on platforms that your audience actively uses—even if they’re non-traditional. This approach ensures that your content reaches potential readers exactly where they spend their time, maximising engagement.

2. Balance Platform-Specific Content with Your Core Brand Identity: Tailor your messaging to fit each channel while keeping your brand voice consistent. This balance maintains trust and recognisability across multiple platforms, reinforcing your authority in the digital space.

3. Invest in Testing New Platforms: Consider allocating around 20% of your content budget quarterly to experiment with emerging platforms. This investment is a proactive way to adapt to future trends and sustain long-term audience growth.

Embracing a platform-agnostic strategy is not just a trend but a necessary evolution in digital publishing that enables publishers to reach new demographics and enhance audience engagement.

SODP POSTS

Sponsored
Glide CMS Review for 2025

There’s a near-universal consensus among digital publishers today that specialized websites need specialized Content Management Systems. What is needed for a small B2B company will differ from that of a giant retail operation or a major media enterprise.

News and sports, for example, are two domains with unique and highly demanding needs. Things move extremely fast in these domains, stories often have short shelf lives, and content may need to be updated frequently.

💡 What you will learn:

• What Glide publishing platform is

• Its pricing and features

• How to get started

• What we love about Glide and where there’s room for improvement

READ MORE

Putting DeepSeek To The Test

China’s new DeepSeek Large Language Model (LLM) has disrupted the US-dominated market, offering a relatively high-performance chatbot model at significantly lower cost.

The reduced cost of development and lower subscription prices compared with US AI tools contributed to American chip maker Nvidia losing US$600 billion (£480 billion) in market value over one day. Nvidia makes the computer chips used to train the majority of LLMs, the underlying technology used in ChatGPT and other AI chatbots. DeepSeek uses cheaper Nvidia H800 chips over the more expensive state-of-the-art versions.

ChatGPT developer OpenAI reportedly spent somewhere between US$100 million and US$1 billion on the development of a very recent version of its product called o1. In contrast, DeepSeek accomplished its training in just two months at a cost of US$5.6 million using a series of clever innovations.

But just how well does DeepSeek’s AI chatbot, R1, compare with other, similar AI tools on performance?

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️ The Telegraph is looking for an SEO Manager with proven professional experience in SEO - primarily proficient in on-page & content strategy but having a good understanding of technical best practice. (London, UK, Hybrid). SEE MORE

➡️Rapidly growing digital marketing agency is seeking a technical SEO leader to join and lead a team of SEO experts! (Sydney, NSW, Australia, Hybrid). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ John Mueller from Google wrote on Bluesky, "and let's be honest, people can tell when author bios are used purely as an SEO tactic. It's kinda awkward, not reassuring." This was in response to a post from Nikki Pilkington who said "Stop treating author bios as an SEO tactic and start treating them as what they are – a tool for building trust with your actual human readers." John amplified that post and said, "I don't know who needs to hear it ->" and quoted the thread. READ MORE

➡️ An SEO posted details about a site audit in which he critiqued the use of a rel=canonical for controlling what pages are indexed on a site. The SEO proposed using noindex to get the pages dropped from Google’s index and then adding the individual URLs to robots.txt. Google’s John Mueller suggested a solution that goes in a different direction. READ MORE 

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Orit Mutznik on LinkedIn:

How do people interact with ChatGPT vs Google? Semrush conducted an in-depth study covering searches utilising data from 80 million clickstream records to answer exactly that:

Key insights:

SearchGPT is turned off by default, either activated by the user or a specific query The differences in query/prompt length vary dramatically by whether it's on or off, being ~9x longer when it's off

Whilst traditional search has roughly 4 main search intents (informational, navigational, transactional and commercial), ChatGPT breaks this mold, and 70% of all searches consist of unique queries rarely seen in standard search engines—suggesting users are finding new ways to solve problems and gather information.

CONTINUE READING

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP