Audience Engagement Strategies for Journalists

The old ways of attracting audiences are failing. Traffic from social is falling for many publications, and search is changing fast — and AI is only likely to accelerate that. This constantly updated five-week course from the leading trainer and lecturer in journalistic engagement strategies will guide you through creating an integrated audience engagement strategy that works for your target audience, which works across platforms, but, critically, also helps you build and deepen direct relationships with your readers.

We’ll cover the major reader and listener acquisition sources — including the latest changes in search and social media — as well as ways of engaging more directly with your potential audience through tools like newsletters, podcasts and more. We’ll also explore the risks of depending entirely on social and search, and the new opportunities opening up in more direct approaches.

Not only that, but we’ll also consider how to account for business models in your planning, as well as how to shift your strategy over time based on results and feedback. We’ll explore examples from various publications, and spend some time in workshops applying those lessons to your own site’s strategies and objectives.

This intensive course in creating, planning and executing an audience engagement strategy is led by Adam Tinworth, a lecturer in audience engagement and social media at City, University of London. His students have gone on to senior audience engagement roles at The Telegraph, Mail Online, Metro, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Manchester Evening News, The Sun, and the World Economic Forum.

Course scope

The course will:

• provide the latest thinking in audience development;
• provide guidance on both the psychological and technological underpinning for different strategies;
• deepen your understanding of when and how to use social and search;
• explore new avenues for audience development, as well as neglected older ones;
• look at how different segments of your audience can be addressed individually;
• explore the more direct — and owned — relationships you can have with your readers;
• provide space and time to start planning your own strategy, and
• give you access to ongoing updated resources online, extending the life of your learning beyond the course itself.

Course Delivery

This course can be delivered a number of ways:

• Five 90-minute online sessions
• A one-day, in-person version
• A two-day, more in-depth and practical two day version

Open courses

The course will be run online at least twice a year. More details will be provided soon about 2026 dates. Drop me an email if you're keen to know more.

In-house courses

To enquire about costs and availability for in-house training, just drop me a line.