Its videos were also viewed almost 70 million times, the most of any local news title in the UK by more than 30 million. And over the year, its carefully curated mix of Mancunian news, photo and memes swelled its Facebook ranks by over 80,000 to just shy of half a million. There’s another quarter of a million on Twitter and Instagram, and people are clicking through too: this month the site is on course to chalk up around four and a half million page views.
With that kind of reach, Ridgway has ambitious plans to grow the brand in 2020 – and gain respect as a proper publisher.
“We want to really become known as a publisher,” says Ridgway from The Manc’s offices, a co-working space on King Street.
“We have a lot of original video and longer reads planned for this year – we want to inform as well as entertain people. A lot of the local news around us is pretty depressing at times.”
So how does The Manc beat the MEN for engagement even while publishing a quarter of the latter’s stories (The Manc typically publishes seven or eight stories a day).
“At Unilad we had a strategy that, every hour, we had to focus on the best piece of content, and and I targeted the team on getting engagement results and video views. We’ve brought that attitude into The Manc. We’re very stat-driven. It’s not always pretty – sometimes it can just be a photo or a meme that gets 10,000 comments – but it’s content that’s being enjoyed by the audience. With the engagement there, now we want to learn how to mature that content and turn into a publisher that you can respect.”
The viral publisher marketplace is fairly crowded in Manchester already, with the likes of LadBible, Unilad and It’s Gone Viral.
So how do The Manc plan to stand out?
“We want video to be our main driver, mainly because of the potential for brand partnerships,” he says. “It’s an opportunity to change what local news is. Others have tried it, but I think we really have an opportunity to pioneer it. If we’re going to differentiate ourselves then that has to be the way forward.”
The Manc ranked as the UK’s most engaged local news publisher last year (Source: Crowd Tangle)
The company had a six-figure turnover last year, its first accounts, chiefly through banner advertising and lower-level brand partnerships. Ridgway freely admits he is learning as he goes along: “I don’t profess to be an amazing businessman but I know how to grow a platform and build a brand, and that’s what it’s all about this year.”
Longer term, there are plans to move into other cities and potentially diversify into merchandise.
“But first we want to really establish The Manc, we want to be the go-to platform for people in Manchester,” he adds.
He’s aware that the platform that has helped to build the business could only be one algorithm update away from turning against them.
“I always say that Facebook is our landlord,” he adds. “But they do seem to be enjoying what we are doing – there is a big surge in local happening at the moment.
“I believe that what we’re doing is what Facebook wants, but we also want to push on Instagram and Twitter as well. We’re riding a wave at the moment and I’m going to try and take advantage of it as much as I can.”
