The Irish Times

The Irish Times

Uniting Irelands Emigrants

What was the starting point?

The Irish Times (IT) describes Ireland as an ‘emigration nation’. Via their ‘Irish Times abroad’ pages, they have found an untapped community of displaced Irish citizens, looking for a platform to represent their changing interests and ready to share their experiences and stories.

How can they use data?

Thanks to their readers contributions, the IT can gather data and find out previously unknown information about their audience. Using the Contribly tools, the IT now know where their audience are sharing their content from, the device they use, what topics they want to be involved in, how to contact them directly and much more. With all this at their fingertips they can now personalise their approach like never before, publish much more content and target their ever-growing communities. 

What is the Main objective?

The IT’s main focus is supporting the growth and expansion of the community of Irish abroad via their channels. Their aim is to become a platform for the communities they serve which includes news, emigrant stories and discussions for Irish people around the world.

HOW CAN THEY USE DATA TO BUILD A COMMUNITY?​

By using data to personalise their readers experience and become a voice for these communities, the IT is turning into a new place for people to go and share content, away from social media. They know what these people have in common, as well as what they want to talk about. They now feel more represented, making them loyal to the IT brand. 

how did contribly help?

The IT understood that dealing with the amount of audience images, videos, stories and data was too time-consuming and difficult for their journalists without the right technology. Contribly proved to be the tools needed to complete the job. They enabled The IT to collect, edit, verify and publish their communities stories. In addition to gathering valuable data that would help grow their community.  

What are the benefits?

– The IT know their community better than ever before
– They have a list of ‘community journalists’ that they can contact to get involved at any time
– Journalists save bucket loads of time and can create more articles faster.
– The audience content is trusted, interesting, and of high quality
– You can build new revenue with sponsors by targeting this community that you now know and understand

Call outs

The IT create call outs that are of interest to their readers and allow their audience to tell their stories and raise their common concerns globally.

live galleries

A live gallery created for every call out, allowing readers to always feel associated, represented and inspire quality contributions.

loads of content

First pilot received over 180 long form contributions in first 3 days and created 6 additional long form articles on their main page.

Save loads of time

Halved the turn around time for the team. Journalists provided with hundreds of individuals stories to help create daily long form articles about life outside Ireland.

Contribly has halved the time it takes for us to deal with user generated content. Using Contribly, we can quickly produce long form articles around breaking news stories. The level of engagement we have with the Irish Abroad community has made our wider teams more open to the ways that we can use UGC. Contribly enables us to act as a platform for our users to become part of the story.
Ciara Kenny
Editor, The Irish Times Abroad
The Irish Times