De Correspondent has only been around for two years and has grown into a major journalistic platform in that time. As a member and liker from the very beginning, I was incredibly curious about the secret behind its success, and in particular the role that the Facebook page has played in this. I spoke with co-founder Ernst-Jan Pfauth about the secret behind the 110,000 fans (more than NRC and Geenstijl, and almost as many as de Volkskrant), the lack of a paywall for fans (and friends of) and the recent ‘Likers become a member’ campaign.
From 18,000 to 37,000 members
De Correspondent has grown rapidly since its launch in 2013 (18,000 members) (37,000 members). Did your Facebook page play an important role in this? If so, which one?
“The most important role is of course reserved for the articles themselves. If they had not been very good, uruguay phone number library we would not have grown so quickly. But of course the articles do not find an audience by themselves, and our Facebook page has indeed been important for that. In good weeks we reach more than a million people with our posts on Facebook, and that is mainly due to the sharing function. Because our members – the first group of likers – often re-share our articles, new people discover De Correspondent all the time.”
Read free articles via Facebook
By following the Facebook page, and through friends who share articles on Facebook, you can read articles for free. Is this the secret behind the large number of fans?
“When we were thinking about
De Correspondent after our crowdfunding campaign, we were faced with a question: can our members share articles or not? We chose to share them out of full conviction. Because:
We believe in the social role of journalism. A good piece becomes more valuable if more people can learn from it.
Enthusiastic members are the best salespeople for your journalism. If my neighbor shares a piece with me in a lyrical tone, I think more quickly: what kind of club is that? Shouldn’t I become a member too?
We consider it a compliment when a member proudly forwards something we have made to another. belgium numbers You can put up all kinds of walls to prevent that, but: why would you want to hinder the
Paywalls come from negative reasoning: if we don’t put it behind a wall, people will ‘steal’ our pieces. russian ips on blacklists: why emails don’t reach users We prefer to think the other way around: if someone gets excited by someone else, they might become a member too.