How The Debrief delivers timely content to readers

Bauer Media today launches a digital-first lifestyle brand for young women with a social, mobile focus based on reader habits.

The Debrief, Bauer's first digital-first brand, will focus on social media to deliver relevant content "based on what we think our girl wants at what time on what platform".

"There's no point in building a website and expecting her to come to it," Hattie Brett, editor of The Debrief, told Journalism.co.uk. "We need to go to where she is and talk to her in that space and being digital-first gives us the ability to do that."

The Debrief has "worked long and hard" to analyse the audience's content consumption habits, said Brett, so the production and distribution schedule will mirror reader behaviour.

"We know that one of the first things they do in the morning is go on Facebook and see what happened overnight," Brett said. "So our US editor will put together a 'while you were sleeping' update with snippets of news and content to read before work."

Longer reads from the life section will be pushed at lunch, she said, and in the evening 'sex o'clock' will precede articles about television shows that may interest the audience.

"We know our girls are second screening in the evening," said Brett, of how the target audience are believed to watch television while checking social media on their smartphones. "So we want to be anticipating that, fuelling that and feeding that."


Image provided by Bauer Media

Scheduled video content will also play an important role for The Debrief, which will use its YouTube channel as a stand alone platform rather than "just a repository for embedding videos on the site".

"It's about knowing our girl so well that we know on a Monday night she always stays in as she's had a heavy weekend," Brett said. "So on Monday she stays in and cooks with her housemates and there will be a staying in, cooking franchise that she knows goes live at seven every Monday."

On Saturdays, she said, video content will focus on beauty, hair and make-up tips as readers prepare to go out.

Brett will be commissioning content "based on shareability" and leading an in-house team of content creators in their twenties, but said a digital news agenda, based on social media trends and Google forecasting tools, will be important in anticipating important topics.

"It's both about aggregating the internet for our audience, as its a huge place and she doesn't necessarily have time to go to every place that she wants to go to, and about fuelling that conversation and debate," said Brett.

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