The BBC is using this under-the-radar messaging app to reach millennials

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Chat apps are increasingly being used by publishers to distribute stories and connect with audiences.

While platforms like Line, WhatsApp, Viber, and Kik regularly feature in discussions about cross-platform strategies, Yik Yak – the anonymous, location-based social platform – has largely evaded the conversation. However, one organization that has taken note of Yik Yak is the BBC, which has effectively wielded the social platform to reach millennial audiences, generate conversations, and source new content, Journalism.co.uk reports.

Two occasions when the BBC tapped into Yik Yak were the 2015 Canadian election and the recent Brexit referendum. For each event, the BBC posed a simple, open-ended question to users on the platform:

• “How will the Canadian election affect you?”
• “What are your hopes and fears around Brexit?”

The BBC received tens of thousands of engagements in response. By asking broad questions, the organization found out about the issues and ideas that most concerned Yik Yak user. In turn, these insights revealed clear content opportunities for the BBC. For example, during Brexit, the BBC learned that people felt like they were missing out on the facts. The organization responded by emphasizing more fact-heavy material on its site, since people were likely to read (and share) this content. 

Yik Yak has several distinct characteristics that the BBC has been able to leverage:

1. An overwhelmingly millennial audience. Ninety-eight percent of Yik Yak’s user base are millennials, an attractive yet elusive demographic. Tapping into Yik Yak provides a straight path for to reach this coveted audience, in a place where millennials already feel at home.
2. An anonymous social forum. Yik Yak users can create, view and vote on posts anonymously. Although this creates a risk for trolling, it also encourages honest and intimate posts, resulting in more fruitful dialogue. For instance, the BBC found that a surprisingly large number of users did not know what Brexit was. Anonymity allows users to submit posts and questions that would be scoffed at on other, non-anonymous social platforms. 
3. Crowdsourcing aspect. Yik Yak's open platform gave the BBC a direct ear to a profusion of perspectives. Meanwhile, posts on the platform can be sorted by recency or by most upvotes. Upvoting feature provides a democratic mechanism to surface posts that resonate with the greatest number of people. On the other hand posts with five downvotes are deleted from the platform, which helps minimize the impact of trolls. 
4. Geo-location. While Yik Yak users can only see posts within a five-mile radius, the BBC was given free range over entire countries when using the platform. For the Canadian election, the BBC engaged with all app users in the country. And during Brexit, the BBC sent a push notification to Yik Yak users in the UK notifying them of the ongoing dialogue in the app. 

The top four messaging apps — Facebook's Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Viber — now claim nearly 3 billion monthly active users combined, narrowly outnumbering the combined active users on the world's four largest social networks, including Facebook.

These numbers have caught the attention of a wide range of businesses, publishers among them. News industry leaders including the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BBC are establishing a presence on a number of chat apps in an effort to be out front and build an audience on the latest platforms where people are consuming content. These early adopters are experimenting to learn which chat apps work for their audience and how they can leverage chat for the distribution of digital content, including articles, images, surveys, and video. 

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on messaging apps for publishers that looks at the appeal of these apps and how they're becoming a dominant platform for media consumption. It compares the leading chat platforms, including WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook's Messenger, and Viber, and what features publishers should know about when thinking about how they might leverage these properties. It also looks at strategies for content distribution across chat apps and finally spotlights some of the challenges that publishers may encounter as they begin to dip their toes into content distribution via messaging apps.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• There are dozens of messaging platforms, each with distinct user demographics and features, and these differences will determine which apps a publisher should try and what type of content is most fitting. 
• Publishers like The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and the BBC are experimenting to learn which chat apps work for their audience and how they can leverage chat for the distribution of digital content, including articles, images, surveys, and video.
• Chat apps are especially appealing to publishers because they allow these brands to tap into users' "dark social" activity. Dark social traffic stems from people sharing content privately through IM programs, messaging apps, and email, among other means.
• Because chat apps were once primarily used for peer-to-peer communications, publishers have an opportunity to reach audiences on these platforms through a more conversational exchange. 

In full, the report:

• Breaks down the pros and cons of each major messaging app.
• Explains the different ways publishers can distribute content on messaging apps.
• Highlights the differences between native and linked content.
• Looks at the potential barriers that could limit chat apps' utility for publishers.

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