For the past year, I’ve led VidSpark, a Google News Initiative partnership with The Poynter Institute helping local news publishers bolster their social media video strategy. Our work aims to help newsrooms better connect with Gen Z viewers in order to maintain their relevance well into the future.

We’ve worked with three local newsrooms: GBH News, The Star Tribune and 10 Tampa Bay. These publishers have broken out of their traditional formats to spin up new social-first video series that include Gen Z voices and speak to important issues in ways that resonate with younger audiences. The three newsrooms produced a total of 98 videos through the program, publishing across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

I know the importance of adapting your message to social platforms in order to reach an audience. I’ve launched social-first shows with PolitiFact and PBS Digital Studios, and am also a YouTuber myself. In coaching these newsrooms, I found three lessons to be the most salient. These are key shifts in thinking for newsrooms to make in order to reach a younger, social-first audience on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

Create a destination, not a repository.

Think of your social account as a destination for viewers, rather than a video repository or vehicle for promotion. To build a community of younger viewers on social, create an experience within the platform that provides value and gives viewers a reason to follow and support you. To this end, GBH News created a separate YouTube channel and Instagram page specifically for the audience of their series “Internet Expert.”

Cater the content to the platform.

Incorporate features specific to each platform into your content brainstorming process in order to help people find your work. Even the most compelling videos won’t be found if they don’t have relevant thumbnail images, hashtags and other elements the platforms use to surface content. The Star Tribune began discussing thumbnail images for YouTube videos earlier in the process, which allowed producers to frame episodes around compelling questions that drove viewers to their series “Tomorrow Together.”

You need the ability to pivot.

Make your production process flexible and responsive. It’s easy to get locked into a formula, but newsrooms found the most success when they were able to adjust their style and workflow as they discovered what was most sustainable to produce and what resonated the most with their audiences. 10 Tampa Bay was nimble and made changes throughout the process. Reporter Jenna Bourne evolved out of her broadcast persona to a more casual delivery style in how she presented and filmed her series “What’s Brewing?” for a YouTube audience.

We go into these topics and others in the VidSpark Playbook, a guide to help newsrooms create and refine their video strategy for social media.

The playbook includes guidance for thinking about content development, best practices for various social platforms and case studies for the three local newsrooms we worked with this past year. We explain the newsrooms’ development processes, workflows and how they’re building social-first video into their content going forward.

We know that building content in a format that resonates with younger audiences is critical for local news publishers, but it isn't easy. That being said, the newsrooms we worked with proved that it is possible with a dedicated team and a willingness to experiment. 

Editor's note: Ahsante Bean is the head of Vidspark, a new Google News Initiative partnership with Poynter to help local publishers use video to reach a new younger audience for their journalism.  

When I want to know what’s going on in the world, I often turn to social media. Like many people my age, I don’t own a television or subscribe to a newspaper, but I do watch a ton of online videos and do basically all of my reading from a screen. I’m eager to stay informed, but when I look for credible, accessible news content that’s relevant to my interests and viewing habits, my options are limited. If I’m looking for local news from my community, those options shrink further.

People in their teens and twenties are looking for content that’s important, but also engaging, fun, and relatable. We don’t need to seek out information; thanks to a variety of social feeds and specialized algorithms, it comes to us. But it doesn’t always come from trustworthy sources. Meanwhile, mainstream local news is struggling to meet young audiences where they are. If they rely only on their traditional methods of distribution, they risk becoming irrelevant to the next generation.

With the support of the Google News Initiative, Poynter is announcing VidSpark—a program helping local newsrooms reach younger viewers online with engaging, shareable social video.

Over the course of this year, Poynter will collaborate on a video series with three local newsrooms: WTSP, a TV station in Tampa Bay, Florida, the radio station atWGBH News in Boston, Massachusetts, and The Star Tribune, a newspaper in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Poynter will provide funding, coaching, and hands-on support in the areas of  content development, audience engagement, and platform optimization.

As a YouTube creator myself, I know the importance of showing an authentic personality behind the content. With these series, we want to be transparent with the viewer, letting them into the process of journalism. We will showcase each newsroom’s unique talents, areas of expertise, and local character. We’ll have the freedom to play across platforms; we could create an IGTV series on climate change with a quirky host, or a YouTube show that talks about current events in a fun way. We’ll be responding to comments, listening to feedback, and learning along the way.

VidSpark is about helping newsrooms create fresh content that grows a sustainable audience well into the future. It’s a process of getting in front of younger viewers, acquainting them with local news organizations as trustworthy sources of information, and showing the investigative process. By doing this, we can show the next generation the importance of local news in maintaining informed citizens and safeguarding democracy. 

VidSpark similarly seeks to shape the larger local news landscape. At the end of the year, Poynter will create a playbook of best practices to share our insights in hopes that our work helps the local newsroom in your community cover what you care about. If you want to see what we create and follow along as VidSpark develops this year, you can do that here.

The power of local news is in knowing what’s happening on the ground, in your community. It can preserve regional history and culture, and hold local authorities accountable. It can go deep on issues that affect your day-to-day life. Through online video, we hope to bring the strength of local news to the forefront for the next generation and make them feel a part of the story.