Few digital news outlets can rival the success of The Hill. The Nexstar Media Group-owned outlet routinely has millions of web traffic each month and has fostered a strong social media following under Director of Audience Development and Social Media Sarakshi Rai.
On Facebook, the organization has 1.6 million followers, which pales in comparison to the 4.3 million followers it has on X. The Hill has an additional 110,000 followers on TikTok, 42,000 followers on LinkedIn, and 247,000 followers on Instagram.
In this fifth and final installment of the Social Studies series, Sarakshi Rai, the head of social media for The Hill, shares the overall social strategy for the outlet, whether or not they’re concerned that TikTok could potentially go away, and how it has used Reddit differently than other news organizations.
*Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Garrett Searight: From the social media aspect for The Hill, what, overall, do you hope to accomplish? What’s the necessity for social media for The Hill?
Sarakshi Rai: Honestly, we’ve seen the social media landscape changed for organizations. It’s no longer this system or this ecosystem where you post something on social media and you get this traffic boot. So we’ve had to really diversify what we do on social media and figure out ‘Is this really something we should be investing in? How much time should we be investing in it?’ Because we want to make sure that we continue to innovate and continue to reach new audiences. So, for us social media is very important.
We have a huge following on X and we have a huge following on Facebook. We have also adopted this trial and error method where we will sign onto new platforms and see if there is interest from our audiences to have us there. So we’ve launched a TikTok, we’ve launch an Instagram. It’s grown by leaps and bounds and we only had TikTok for a year now and Instagram for about two. And we have a huge following there.
We really believe in the trial-and-error approach because we want to be accessible to our readers and our audiences on whichever platform they’re at. That, I think, is the most important because you want to make sure that our journalism gets out on all fronts. We really do experiment a lot on social media.
GS: With having that TikTok account and seeing it grow to know more than 100,000 followers, is there any apprehension about the future of TikTok or do you just keep investing in that space thinking that it’s not likely to change?
Participant
I mean there is some apprehension because it’s like I would see 100,000 to a small rate and it’s not like the investing too much of our time on it we will try and get the most important news of the day out there but we’re not really it’s not the only thing we focus on you know we also have a Reddit strategy as well so so really for us. You know it’s we’re just gonna keep doing what we’re doing and and if the ban is in place a new pivot to something else you know, but that’s the beauty of the trial and error method where you don’t really have to be too worried about about something and you know we also of the videos we post on TikTok. Also go on Instagram to go on a Twitter, so that’s really this uniformity across-the-board so it’s not like they’re just creating content for TikTok.
SR: There is some apprehension. I would say 100,000 is still a small following, right? And it’s not like we’re investing too much of our time on it. We will try and get the most important news of the day out there, but it’s not the only thing we focus on. We also have a Reddit strategy as well. So, really, for us, we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. If the ban is in place, we’ll pivot to something else.
But that’s the beauty of the trial-and-error method, where you don’t really have to be too worried about something. Also, the videos we post on TikTok also go on our Instagram. They go on our Twitter. So it’s not like we’re just creating content for TikTok. Having the videos go up everywhere, rather than just one platform, that takes the reliance out of the picture.
GS: You mentioned that Facebook and X have large followings. Those two platforms notoriously now don’t especially love publishers. What is the secret sauce for The Hill to break through on those two platforms today?
SR: I think Facebook is an interesting one. We stopped getting traffic from it and then suddenly last week, one post took off and we got a huge amount of traffic. We’re talking millions of clicks from this one Facebook post, so it really depends. You have to figure out what the demographics are for each social platform and then tailor your content to those specific platforms.
That doesn’t mean we only post one particular piece of content on one platform and another piece of content on another platform, but it means that we were thinking a bit more strategically about what time we post, when we post, what kind of content is. Do we highlight a quote? Do we highlight an image? For X, really, they’re still our audience on X is still very interested in from us. It could be clips, it could be House floor proceedings, it could be news of the day. Could be talking heads.
So we wanna make sure they continue to get that.
GS: Have you found that there is a definitive kind of prime time for Facebook and X users?
SR: Not really. It really depends on the news of the day. It’s just so unpredictable with the news cycle right now. The news cycle is supercharged. There is a lot of news happening, so there’s really no peak time per se anymore. It just really depends on seizing the moment and making sure we put out accurately reported, unbiased stories up on our social media feeds.
GS: This is the fifth discussion that I’ve had with social media managers, etc…in the news media aspect. You’re the first person to bring up Reddit. What is the Reddit strategy from The Hill and how has that played out for you?
SR: We’ve actually been on Reddit for a year and it has worked for us beautifully. Reddit is a very daunting platform. Because as a user, there are these subreddits that run and almost by these individuals who are called moderators who do it on their own free time. And it’s really run as this kind of fiefdom. So, sometimes you have this threat of being banned oir about getting a slap on the wrist if you post something that that they might not like. It takes a lot of research and due diligence when you start off on that platform. You have to really explore what subject you want to post in and what your strategy is gonna be. You have to reach out to these moderators and introduce yourself and make sure that they are aware of your brand so they don’t think that you’re a bot or spam.
But also you know figure out the rules of each of the subcommunities. We found a lot of success in doing that. It takes a while to get going. You have to be very specific in your approach, but the rewards are great. We see a lot of engagement with content on Reddit.
Our content was getting posted on Reddit anyway by all of these users on all of these different subreddits. And we thought ‘Why not start posting ourselves? What we will found was that there was only one kind of stories were the ones that were getting pushed out, which was short, news-of-the-day stories. But we wanted some of our deeper reporting to also go out to some of these communities to show the breadth of everything we offer. So we decided to take that very conscious approach to Reddit and start making sure that we were the ones in charge of posting what went out from our website to that platform.
GS: It makes sense though because, instead of relying on others to do it, you can control what you put up and what you put out.
SR: Exactly. I think that there are also a lot of times we would be seen with this kind of negative light because we weren’t the ones in control of posting our own stories on this platform. We found now after we’ve taken control and have a presence and have done a few Ask Me Anythings with reporters who cover different beats like the Supreme Court, like the campaign, there’s a deeper understanding of how The Hill journalists report and how we approach a story. And we found that people have started to appreciate the fact that we are straight down the middle. We are an unbiased new organization and that’s really starting to shape some of the conversations on the platform as well which is, for us, great.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
