In 2011, Público became the first newspaper in Portugal to create an Instagram account. The account was created through our subsite, P3. At the time, Instagram was still mainly a showcase to expose photographic aesthetics and not what it is today.

We took this opportunity to disseminate photographic work by artists (and others) who found in this network a fundamental tool to display their aesthetic vision. We also took the opportunity to create a community spirit by making appeals for readers to use a specific tag that would allow us to provide national photographic coverage of a particular event. Every week, we would publish the best photos from readers that used the tag #p3top.

This social network was important for us in increasing the number of followers, especially on Público’s main account. It helped diversify the distribution channels for our content and reach a younger audience.

A newspaper has to be where its readers are and has to adapt to the language of each of the channels. That’s what we did with Instagram: We created our own language with the most relevant things we publish on our Web site, but also created specific content for this specific network, trying to interact with readers.

Instagram and the pandemic

As the world faced a pandemic last year, Público wanted to help readers stay safe and help them face this new reality. At the same time, we continue to provide complete news coverage of all other relevant events in Portugal and around the world.

In face of this, Público’s team invested in innovative and creative approaches to meet our readers in a platform they spend a great deal of their time and provide them with useful, visual information.

We also aimed to increase engagement among a younger audience and to fight the fake news phenomenon.

Reaching a new audience

In 2020, Público’s Instagram account achieved a significant increase in the number of followers (+109.700 followers, +51% YoY). This increased the traffic and the engagement of IG users on our Web site, with 400,000 users (up 119% YoY), 1 million sessions (up 172%), and an average session duration of more than two minutes, up 18% YoY.

Furthermore, we gained more followers than our competitors, as well as more monthly interactions.

At the moment, Instagram is an important form of engagement for us. It puts us in conversation with our readers and gives them a visual and elegant way of following the news day by day.

For example, the post “Pope Francis indicates support for same-sex civil unions” reached more than 188,000 users and earned over 20,000 likes, while the post, “Portugal will have 22M Covid-19 vaccines,” reached more than 184,000 users and earned more than 19,000 likes.

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