The User Needs Model 2.0 will help you choose the right content strategy and the best angle for every story. It's an essential part of editorial data analytics. On this page, we try to explain what the user needs for news mean.
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User needs are at the heart of building a true bond with your audience - one that is based on trust and value. Any newsroom can be successful as long as it finds its product-market fit and its output satisfies audience user needs strategically, consistently and creatively. Ultimately, we would like to give you tools, techniques and examples, showing you how the model can work for you and how it leads to various alternative and attractive stories.
User needs analysis in the newsroom is the first step to create more impactful content, that generates higher engagement and a stronger connection to your readers. We have the data to back this up.
Related content about the user needs project:
User needs-focused articles perform better
Explaining the user needs one by one
User Needs playbook: supercharge your content strategy
Your guide to start working with user needs
The added value of smart notifications
The user needs model is the ultimate guide for storytelling
Modern audiences are becoming more demanding when it comes to news. They're not simply looking for updates, they also want to be educated on certain topics, read inspiring stories and learn more about possible solutions to problems. Many readers are looking for stories that provide them the knowledge they need to participate in conversations, make decisions about things that affect them and keep a more positive outlook on current events.
The BBC World Service developed the user needs model after thorough research into the demands of their own audiences. When questioned, people offered different reasons why they consume news, which can be summed up in six 'user needs':
Helpfully, some publishers, like the BBC in its initial groundbreaking research, shared their insights publicly, and by doing so strengthened the trend. Amongst the early adopters were Buzzfeed, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, TRT and Culture Trip. Recently, Atlantic, Vox and LAist have become the latest publishers to write up their strategies.
Fundamentally, the new model distils the wisdom, experience and learnings from both our own research and development and those approaches used by other publishers and presents it into a rock-solid schema. The new model is both more comprehensive and more actionable than those before it, and its visualisation is strikingly clear. One of the original user needs has been reframed; two new user needs have been added.
Fundamentally, the user needs concept is there to ensure the audience is put at the heart of the newsroom’s output. And, whether you’re aware of it or not, when you’re commissioning articles, you have two choices: to pull focus around a single user need - or to not.
In our latest research (February 2025) we show proof that you'd better have a clear focus writing a story. Download the results of a data study we did with Ringier Media International.
we believe in impactful content and stories
Rutger Verhoeven, CMO @ smartocto
"There’s no doubt that adopting a user-needs-first content strategy can help newsrooms boost engagement. We also know that smart notifications can have a transformative effect on the culture and workflow of editorial teams. The combination of the two should create a powerful solution to enable newsrooms to connect with their audiences better - and for longer."
Ton Mallo, Manager news @ Omroep Brabant
"The user needs model can help us to change the way we think, be more creative. The 'hard' news takes up 80% of our time, but generates just 20% of our reach. By thinking and commissioning differently we could reach a much bigger audience with that same news, which will strengthen our public duty: to make news available to as many people as possible."
Katja Fleischmann, product manager DRIVE @ dpa
If regional publishers want to grow their digital subscriber base, they have to get closer to the readers and need to understand their individual preferences. In the end newsrooms have to tailor stories to different user needs. Our DRIVE data shows impressively that readers not only want to consume classical news articles but they appreciate stories that inspire and help them to understand the context and build their own opinion about certain topics.
Dmitry Shishkin, digital innovation expert and user needs evangelist (formerly @ BBC)
"I'm hoping that we can give smartocto clients an interesting toolkit, combining data science, product and editorial, to make their output stronger to the benefit of the audience. This is an incredibly exciting project for me to be part of. I want to find out how data science, machine learning algorithms, and historical data can help journalists look towards the future."
Roy Wassink, Insights manager @ DPG Media, De Morgen
"For me the User Needs Model is a common language for our news organisation, it’s data in words. It provides editorial analysts with an additional dimension to learn more about our stories. It helps marketers to improve user profiles. But the User Needs Model can exist without all that fancy data. For journalists, it is above all a practical tool that they can use in their daily work. It helps them to focus, for example when writing a follow-up to a news story, while thinking about a good headline or a new intro. And that’s the most important thing in the end. Writing better stories by understanding our readers’ needs."
Yogie Fadila, Quality Control Editor @ IDN Times
"This project has been really promising for IDN Times. Already the user need approach has brought much to the newsroom; the insights from the first deep dive showed us how much more we can offer our audience. And the user needs notifications will definitely be helpful in directing us towards making our online efforts more relevant."
Rutger Verhoeven, CMO @ smartocto
"There’s no doubt that adopting a user-needs-first content strategy can help newsrooms boost engagement. We also know that smart notifications can have a transformative effect on the culture and workflow of editorial teams. The combination of the two should create a powerful solution to enable newsrooms to connect with their audiences better - and for longer."
Ton Mallo, Manager news @ Omroep Brabant
"The user needs model can help us to change the way we think, be more creative. The 'hard' news takes up 80% of our time, but generates just 20% of our reach. By thinking and commissioning differently we could reach a much bigger audience with that same news, which will strengthen our public duty: to make news available to as many people as possible."
Katja Fleischmann, product manager DRIVE @ dpa
If regional publishers want to grow their digital subscriber base, they have to get closer to the readers and need to understand their individual preferences. In the end newsrooms have to tailor stories to different user needs. Our DRIVE data shows impressively that readers not only want to consume classical news articles but they appreciate stories that inspire and help them to understand the context and build their own opinion about certain topics.
Dmitry Shishkin, digital innovation expert and user needs evangelist (formerly @ BBC)
"I'm hoping that we can give smartocto clients an interesting toolkit, combining data science, product and editorial, to make their output stronger to the benefit of the audience. This is an incredibly exciting project for me to be part of. I want to find out how data science, machine learning algorithms, and historical data can help journalists look towards the future."
Roy Wassink, Insights manager @ DPG Media, De Morgen
"For me the User Needs Model is a common language for our news organisation, it’s data in words. It provides editorial analysts with an additional dimension to learn more about our stories. It helps marketers to improve user profiles. But the User Needs Model can exist without all that fancy data. For journalists, it is above all a practical tool that they can use in their daily work. It helps them to focus, for example when writing a follow-up to a news story, while thinking about a good headline or a new intro. And that’s the most important thing in the end. Writing better stories by understanding our readers’ needs."
Yogie Fadila, Quality Control Editor @ IDN Times
"This project has been really promising for IDN Times. Already the user need approach has brought much to the newsroom; the insights from the first deep dive showed us how much more we can offer our audience. And the user needs notifications will definitely be helpful in directing us towards making our online efforts more relevant."
Rutger Verhoeven, CMO @ smartocto
"There’s no doubt that adopting a user-needs-first content strategy can help newsrooms boost engagement. We also know that smart notifications can have a transformative effect on the culture and workflow of editorial teams. The combination of the two should create a powerful solution to enable newsrooms to connect with their audiences better - and for longer."
Ton Mallo, Manager news @ Omroep Brabant
"The user needs model can help us to change the way we think, be more creative. The 'hard' news takes up 80% of our time, but generates just 20% of our reach. By thinking and commissioning differently we could reach a much bigger audience with that same news, which will strengthen our public duty: to make news available to as many people as possible."
Katja Fleischmann, product manager DRIVE @ dpa
If regional publishers want to grow their digital subscriber base, they have to get closer to the readers and need to understand their individual preferences. In the end newsrooms have to tailor stories to different user needs. Our DRIVE data shows impressively that readers not only want to consume classical news articles but they appreciate stories that inspire and help them to understand the context and build their own opinion about certain topics.
Dmitry Shishkin, digital innovation expert and user needs evangelist (formerly @ BBC)
"I'm hoping that we can give smartocto clients an interesting toolkit, combining data science, product and editorial, to make their output stronger to the benefit of the audience. This is an incredibly exciting project for me to be part of. I want to find out how data science, machine learning algorithms, and historical data can help journalists look towards the future."
Roy Wassink, Insights manager @ DPG Media, De Morgen
"For me the User Needs Model is a common language for our news organisation, it’s data in words. It provides editorial analysts with an additional dimension to learn more about our stories. It helps marketers to improve user profiles. But the User Needs Model can exist without all that fancy data. For journalists, it is above all a practical tool that they can use in their daily work. It helps them to focus, for example when writing a follow-up to a news story, while thinking about a good headline or a new intro. And that’s the most important thing in the end. Writing better stories by understanding our readers’ needs."
Yogie Fadila, Quality Control Editor @ IDN Times
"This project has been really promising for IDN Times. Already the user need approach has brought much to the newsroom; the insights from the first deep dive showed us how much more we can offer our audience. And the user needs notifications will definitely be helpful in directing us towards making our online efforts more relevant."
This is what's going to make all the difference in the newsroom: smart notifications that advise when to apply the user needs approach for a follow-up, and which perspective to choose, based on story performance and audience behaviour.
We have many more ways to help your organisation with the implementation of user needs. Please ask us if you need any help.
We started this project to integrate the news user needs approach in our tool, the notifications and our consultancy. That's how convinced we are that adopting this approach will benefit editorial rooms everywhere. Editors tend to overproduce the content that is performing the least. If you make the switch to other formats and needs, you can expect a major change. So we say, let's put all that effort towards creating content that performs demonstrably better. At the beginning we had the following hypotheses, and they have all been proven right.
Do you want to implement the user needs approach but need help? We work together with consultants of FT Strategies to make sure you'll be able to change the workflow of your newsroom.
If you see in the power of implementing the User Needs model into your newsroom, then we have lots of helpful content and packages to get you started. It's up to you if you want to start small, with printing a poster, or go big, with one of our User Needs Packages.
Go straight to the downloadable materials →
Read more about the project
Dmitry Shishkin: 5 years into the user needs story
In this guest blog, Dmitry takes us on a trip down memory lane and describes the impact the user needs model has had ever since it came into existence 5 years ago.
The user needs, explained by Dmitry Shishkin
What are the user needs for news, why are they so important and how do you apply them in the newsroom? We let Dmitry Shishkin explain, with tips and examples!
download whitepaper
Our whitepaper is the culmination of our research on the user needs, the measurements we did with our clients, and the results of experiments and growth hacks. We can't wait to share everything we've learned with you, use it to your advantage!
User Needs model 2.0 © 2023 by Smartocto is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
We worked on user needs before in our 'Triple N Project'. Here you can download the old whitepaper:
