Business news hasn’t caught up with business consumers who want to keep up with it. While the Pew Research Center notes that 54% of Americans get at least some of their news from social media, many business publications haven’t figured out how to build engaged social audiences. According to Morning Consult, that’s even more of a priority for Gen Z, 76% of whom use social media as a news source at least once a week. As Gen Z begins their careers, this future generation of business leaders needs information and education that meets them where they are. We’ve been publishing our flagship daily newsletter since 2015 – and we bring our signature tone of voice and digestible breakdowns of key business stories to a wealth of social platforms. We aim to bring a creator-first, human approach to our content, and adapt our coverage so that it’s a custom fit for our audience on each platform. This is what audiences are looking for – 37% of Americans under 30 regularly get news from influencers on social media (source: Pew Research Center), and it’s critical to use our resources to adapt coverage to formats consumers want to engage with.
Instead of sticking to a legacy media playbook and trying to drive web traffic or email signups, we create digital destinations that can exist independently of each other and complement our coverage on other platforms. We keep audiences coming back for more with informative, witty social video, trustworthy business news, and shareable threads and memes. Some business stories need more space to be properly told – that’s where our YouTube channel comes in, delivering engaging longform video that dives in deep beyond the headlines. We aim to be the go-to business news brand for Gen Z and millennial audiences, wherever they get their news.
It’s easy to grow on social video platforms by leaning into mainstream trends or using popular audio – but we know that won’t get audiences to stick around, let alone make sense for us as a business news brand. Instead, our shortform video team creates completely original daily sketches, thoughtfully produced explainers, and on-location videos breaking down the biggest business headlines of the day.
Our sketches don’t just find humor in business news – they make complex coverage digestible for wide audiences. They’re social-first, shareable, and resonate with Gen Z and millennial audiences.
2024 saw us significantly expand our field coverage in both longform and shortform, from Macy Gilliam sleeping in a U-Haul overnight in order to work at a NYC hot dog cart to touring the AriZona Iced Tea factory to learn exactly how the beverage remains $1 per can. In a moment when many competitors are leaning into AI-generated content, we’re investing in field-based approaches that bring a human lens to business news.
We increased our investment in longform video this year, revamping our greenlighting process to ensure every single story published on our channel isn’t just a great business story, but a visually engaging, creator-led video that entertains as much as it informs. We’ve covered a diverse array of topics, from how data centers work to Nike’s recent business woes. Our team carefully collaborates on scripts and production, aiming to increase viewer retention through excellent storytelling and creative editing, rather than relying on overused growth hacks that may cause short-term performance spikes but harm long-term audience development. From the moment we greenlight a pitch, we begin strategizing about the title and thumbnail for each video, inviting strategists, producers and designers to collaborate on thumbnail options used in A/B/C tests on YouTube.
Some media organizations keep reporters and social teams totally separate – not us. We collaborate with writers from Morning Brew’s daily newsletter on shortform video, such as reporter Molly Liebergall’s profile on The Stonewall Inn’s business operations, and our newsletter team works with our social-first editors to write stories shared on more text and image-heavy platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and Threads. This collaboration ensures we keep our tone of voice consistent across platforms, and frees up bandwidth for our social editors to work on platform-specific formats like deep-dive threads and memes that drive engagement and follower growth. These text-based approaches have helped us cover breaking news and stock market moves in real time, and reach audiences who may not be seeking out social video.
Our content strategy has driven significant growth and engagement, but we don’t rest on our laurels – we’re constantly thinking about how we can innovate and keep our social strategy as fresh and relevant as possible. We continue to test out new storytelling formats, evaluate potential new social platforms, and ensure that increasing growth never comes at the expense of our editorial strategy.
Our follower count increased 52% year-over-year to 4.5M cross-platform followers. Instagram and TikTok remained our largest platforms, but we saw massive growth from LinkedIn, and YouTube thanks to strong shortform video consumption on both platforms, and a steady increase in follower count on Threads as more users flocked to the platform.
Our non-video content drove 768M impressions in 2024, a 134% increase YoY, and our shortform video reach increased to 760M views, an 89% increase. While Instagram and X accounted for a bulk of non-video impressions, several text and image-based posts went viral on Facebook, proving it’s still possible to reach large audiences on legacy social platforms. We were able to take advantage of YouTube and LinkedIn’s improved shortform video features to reach new audiences, while continuing to grow steadily on our larger TikTok and Instagram accounts.
Our longform video growth was exponential, growing 5.2X YoY to 17M longform views. Watch time increased 7X to over 1.3M hours, equivalent to over 150 years of people watching our content. Our longform retention increased by more than a minute, to 4 minutes and 42 seconds. Not only did we reach more viewers, but we effectively got them to stick around for a significant length of time.
78% of our social audience is 18-44 – we’re connecting with consumers that traditional media businesses have struggled to reach on the same social platforms.
Our peers in the industry are taking note, too – Link in Bio author Rachel Karten wrote, “Morning Brew breaks down hard-to-understand finance reporting into clear, entertaining threads and videos [that] should be studied by all media.”
