• Why is this happening now? A response to disconnected audiences 
• What are ‘user needs’? Giving readers the information they really want
• How this all started: Buzzfeed and Vox as pioneers
• What took so long? The cultural blockers to adopting the framework
• Who’s getting this right? 4 examples from purpose-driven organisations
• Practicalities: How to introduce ‘user needs’ to your content decision-making

When audiences tune out

If you work in a purpose-driven organisation, you’ve probably felt it: you publish reports, videos, and campaigns that matter – yet engagement keeps falling. 

Newsrooms have been there too. In the last few years, the collapse in social media referrals, falling traffic from Google, and, most recently, the rise of AI-created content, have prompted some of the world’s biggest newsrooms to quietly rewrite their playbooks.

So they started asking a different question – not “What do we want to tell people?” but “What do people actually need from us?”

That shift has quietly transformed journalism. The influential Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism finds that those who have embraced it are seeing higher engagement, deeper loyalty, and even a return of trust. 

It’s the biggest rethink in editorial strategy since search optimisation. And it holds lessons for any organisation trying to communicate purpose in a crowded digital space.

What ‘user needs’ actually means

The ‘user-needs’ model began in newsrooms but is rooted in classic audience psychology. It recognises that people seek content for a variety of cognitive, emotional and social reasons. 

The popularity of the approach dates back to 2016, when Dmitry Shishkin of the BBC World Service started analysing the performance of Russian news content. He came up with a simple taxonomy:

• Update me: Tell me what’s happening right now.
• Give me perspective: Help me see how this fits into the bigger picture.
• Educate me: Help me understand what it means or how it works.
• Keep me on trend: Show me what people are talking about.
• Inspire me: Make me feel hopeful or motivated.
• Help me: Tell me what I can do.

Shishkin discovered something striking: most output was Update me content, yet the highest engagement came from Educate me and Give me perspective stories. Five years on from the initial study, he went back and found that output had been cut by 60% and engagement had tripled.

The key elements of the user needs approach are as follows: 

• A manageable number – typically 4-6
• Include cognitive, social and emotional needs 
• Tagging and analysis of performance per need 
• Balance of programming constantly reviewed

There is no one-size-fits-all in ‘user needs’. The media consultancy The Audiencers has put together a useful guide to the variety of tags used by news organisations:

For purpose-driven organisations, the parallel is clear. Most comms teams still over-index on ‘Update me’ – project launches, press releases, annual results. The content that actually builds understanding and trust sits elsewhere: the explainers, the success stories, the ‘Here’s how you can help’ moments.

What the Pioneers Got Right (and Wrong)

The BBC gave ‘user needs’ a name and a process. But it was BuzzFeed and Vox that first proved, at scale, that digital audiences reward relevance over volume.

BuzzFeed: mastering emotion, missing attachment

From around 2011, BuzzFeed editors asked a radical question: What will the reader get from this?

They reverse-engineered content around emotional needs – joy, identity, belonging, curiosity – and tested relentlessly to find what worked. The result: billions of shares and a near-total reinvention of social publishing.

BuzzFeed mapped its content around motivations:

• Makes me laugh: Simply put, this is the content that will make you smile, you can be laughing at a cute animal video, a prank or a joke.
• This is Me: Filling in with the increasing need for identity. This type of content is who you are. It is your culture, favourite hobbies or self-deprecating humour.
• Helps me Connect: Relatable memes we share with our friends, colleagues and family – this content depicts the bond you have with someone.
• Helps you learn something: It helps you learn something about yourself, your environment or reveals something you did not know before.
• Makes me feel: This content makes you feel something. It can make you sad, curious or even restore your faith in humanity.

It worked brilliantly – until it didn’t. When Facebook changed its algorithm, BuzzFeed’s traffic collapsed. Emotion had powered attention, but not attachment. 

The lesson for NGOs: Emotion is essential but not enough. The most effective campaigns meet both emotional and cognitive needs, helping people feel something and understand something.

Vox: designing for understanding

In 2014, Vox launched with a simple belief: people don’t need more news; they need more understanding.

Every article, video, or podcast set out to answer clear audience questions – “Why is this happening?” and “How does it affect me?” – using modular explainers and consistent visual framing.

That focus on understanding became its brand. Audiences rewarded Vox not for speed, but for clarity and empathy. 

Constant review of metrics is part of the approach, and Vox regularly poll readers on how they are doing on their chosen ‘user needs’ and deliver consistently high satisfaction ratings.

The lesson for NGOs: Explanatory content is rarely glamorous, but it’s what audiences trust most.

Every time you produce a briefing, a report summary, or a campaign explainer, you’re meeting the “Educate me” and “Give me perspective” needs that build credibility over time. The pioneers proved a simple truth: content succeeds when it recognises what the audience is trying to get done.

Why Good Teams Resist Good Ideas

If ‘user needs’ makes so much sense, why don’t more comms teams adopt it?

Because the obstacles aren’t technical – they’re cultural. I’ve seen the same pattern in both newsrooms and purpose-driven organisations. Here’s how those blockers tend to show up, and what sits underneath them:

Who’s Getting This Right

My experience with ‘user needs’ dates from 2015, when I became Head of Digital Content for the World Economic Forum. 

Influenced by web-native news organisations like Buzzfeed and Vox, and under pressure to boost awareness of the Forum’s work, the digital team adopted a content marketing strategy and identified three key user needs: 

• Explain the world to me
• Give me some hope
• Tell me how I can make things better

That taxonomy helped the Forum build an audience rivalling national newspapers.

Few NGOs use ‘user-needs’ language, but many practise its principles intuitively.

• Oxfam America’s Take Action hub leads with Involve me and Help me act. You don’t wade through organisational messaging, you land on ways to make a difference.

• WWF’s Earth Hour sits squarely in Inspire me and Involve me territory. It doesn’t just describe the problem; it invites participation.

• UNICEF’s Communication for Development (C4D) and Social & Behaviour Change (SBC) frameworks represent highly advanced user needs strategies. Every communication plan starts by identifying audience insight and intended outcomes – what people should know, feel, and do – and by testing those messages before publishing a word. 

How to Make ‘User Needs’ Part of Your Content System

The goal is to make every piece of content serve a clear audience purpose and a measurable organisational goal. Here’s how to start without rebuilding your entire comms operation:

1. Define your taxonomy

I’ve given examples of others’ taxonomies here, but you need to anchor your work in your organisation’s mission.

• What change are we trying to make in the world?
• What do people need to understand, feel, or do for that change to happen?
• Come up with 4-8 tags.
• Workshop the language with colleagues who will be using the system, so that everyone recognises themselves in the language.
  

2. Tag and test

This is the headachey bit that most groups don’t have the appetite for. 

• Find someone smart to go through past posts, videos, newsletters etc. and tag them with your taxonomy. Or agree with the team to tag everything for a quarter.
• Collate the engagement data – I would keep this simple initially – just views. 
• Do a basic alignment test: which user needs are getting the greatest engagement?
• Rebalance the mix and monitor what happens.

3. Start to measure what matters

The next step is to align metrics with outcomes, not just outputs.

4. Embed ‘user needs’ in workflows 

Going down the user needs route is not a one-off decision, it needs to embed itself in the minds and workflows of all staff. To do this requires a bit of structure:

• Commissioning: Make a discussion of ‘user needs’ part of the process. Some teams I’ve worked with ask those submitting story ideas to nominate a user need that their story would meet.
• Metrics: Get your Content Management System working well with Google Analytics to make monitoring performance as straightforward as possible.
• Highlights: Celebrate posts that meet clear user needs (“This story hit Help me act and tripled sign-ups”).
• Regular reviews: Get the team to devote some quality time to assessing what’s working and what’s not.
  

Runcible Content helps purpose-driven teams put audience insight at the centre of their storytelling. If your organisation is rethinking how to reach and move people, we can help you turn the ‘user needs’ approach into a practical framework that guides what you publish, where, and why. Book a commitment-free consultation here.