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Translating Social Traffic into Owned Engagement

From 2023 to present, we more than doubled our video play click-through rate (CTR) on owned digital properties — a direct result of refining how we leveraged Facebook links to drive users deeper into our ecosystem.


Key Wins:

Strategic Link Placement: Implemented smarter placement of video links across Facebook posts, tailored to audience behavior.

Platform-Aware Previews: Used Facebook’s preview optimization to boost video visibility and entice clicks.

Strong Calls to Action: Created CTAs with a clear “watch more” intent, increasing follow-through to our sites.

Consistent Growth: CTR grew from under 1% in early 2023 to over 2% by early 2025 — peaking at nearly 2.4% in Q1 2025.


This trend reflects a matured content strategy that prioritizes owned engagement over rented reach, laying the groundwork for long-term audience retention and revenue opportunities.

The Strategy That Skyrocketed WSMV’s Livestreams by 478%

When viewers go digital, the newsroom must follow.
In 2024, WSMV-TV in Nashville didn’t just follow—we led.

Thanks to a bold, multi-platform strategy I developed and implemented, our livestream plays skyrocketed by 478% year-over-year, setting a new standard for how local stations can maximize digital reach across every distribution channel.

🔹 The Strategy Behind the Surge
We knew that viewers weren’t just watching TV—they were streaming on web, apps, and connected TVs (CTV). So we optimized for all of them.

Here’s how:

Priority placement on homepage and mobile app during high-interest windows

Push alert strategy tied to real-time events and viewer behavior

Optimized content cadence across time-of-day and day-of-week trends

Internal newsroom buy-in, with digital producers trained to prioritize live moments and leverage high traffic content

Data-driven adjustments powered by GA4 insights and performance dashboards

🔹 The Results
🟢 9.3 million livestream plays across all platforms in 2024
🟢 +478% growth compared to the previous year
🟢 760% increase on web, 260% on CTV, and 145% on the news app

Our most aggressive gains came from expanding visibility and tuning content delivery to the viewer’s behavior—not just broadcasting, but meeting audiences where they are.

🔹 Setting the Bar for 100+ Stations
As part of the Gray Television family, WSMV’s livestream success now serves as a scalable model across more than 100 stations nationwide. The approach is replicable. The results are measurable. And the audience demand is undeniable.

In a landscape where attention is fragmented and habits are mobile-first, our station proved that local news can still win—when it adapts.

Want to know more about how I help media brands grow digital reach through strategy, storytelling, and smart distribution?
Let’s connect.

The Content Engine Behind Our 400% Instagram Follower Surge

When we started 2023, WSMV’s Instagram account had 30,000 followers: loyal, but limited in reach. Two years later, we hit 150,000.

That’s 5× growth in 24 months, and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened because we built and executed a daily content framework, one that turned reactive posting into a purposeful, strategic engine for audience growth.

🔹 The Problem: Scattered Posting, Inconsistent Results

Like many legacy media brands, our Instagram strategy was stuck in a cycle of quick-turn posts and last-minute ideas. There was no unified rhythm, just content pushed out as time allowed. Engagement was flat, growth was slow, and visibility was limited to our existing audience.

We knew we needed to evolve from posting content to programming an experience.

🔹 The Fix: A Daily Framework Built to Scale

We developed a repeatable, flexible structure for content creation, selection, and execution, one that gave our team clarity, freedom, and consistency.

Here’s what it looked like:

Content Pillars: Defined 4–5 themes (breaking news, hyperlocal stories, weather-first content, explainers, and people-driven posts) to align with audience interests.

Daily Slots: Created predictable content slots so we weren’t guessing what to post each day.

Visual Identity: Standardized story templates, colors, and fonts to strengthen brand recognition.

Engagement Loops: Designed CTAs to spark interaction and guide users to our monetized site, turning engagement into traffic that converts.

Weekly Lookbacks: Used insights to track performance and adjust the mix based on what worked.

🔹 The Results: 5x Follower Growth & Real Audience Loyalty

Grew from 30,000 to 150,000 followers in two years

Expanded reach by 116% YoY in 2024

Built a more loyal, engaged audience across all dayparts

Created a sustainable content engine the entire digital team could execute confidently

This framework didn’t just grow our numbers—it helped establish WSMV as a go-to digital destination for timely, relevant, and visually compelling local content.

🔹 Why It Matters

In today’s crowded digital space, attention is everything.

By turning content into a strategy, we proved that structure drives scale—and that even traditional newsrooms can grow fast when they focus on audience-first execution.

Want to learn more about how I build scalable content systems that deliver results? Let’s connect.