Using Chartbeat for actionable editorial insights

We use Chartbeat to select the stories we'll repromote, to inform pitches for SEO articles, to review the performance of authors, to conduct headline tests on the homepage, and to check the real-time performance of our newly published articles. We also utilize Chartbeat's quarterly insights (published on its blog) as benchmarks.

Yes, especially now that we're in the middle of migrating to Google Analytics 4, which is still our official source of data for reporting. We use Chartbeat for day-to-day newsroom operations and taking action on the fly. For one, our social media managers consult Chartbeat to select stories they should prioritize for promotion on Facebook, X, etc.

We have used the Headline Testing feature to encourage people on our homepage to read the top stories at the moment. Also, our SEO team uses Chartbeat when it formulates search-optimized article pitches for our editors every day. Lastly, we use Spike Alerts to identify our "drop everything and focus on this" stories; we further promote and/or optimize the article to maximize the page views it has already garnered.

Chartbeat’s reader engagement metrics have helped us confirm our theories about our audiences' behavior. We use them in content planning during weekly editorial pitch meetings. We also look to these metrics to inform our inchoate first-party data strategy, particularly when we try to check for propensity (we look at loyal and returning visitors).