While many major WhatsApp channels are seeing their growth slow, BBC News has seen a sharp increase in its number of subscribers over the past several months.
This is a particularly interesting trend in a market where some of the world's largest players are beginning to reach significant levels of maturity.
At Messaging Me, we analyzed BBC News’s strategy on its WhatsApp channel to identify the best practices that may explain this growth.
1. A Certified WhatsApp Channel to Improve Your Visibility
First point: BBC News has a verified WhatsApp channel.
This may seem basic for a brand of this size. Yet we still see companies, media outlets, and even political leaders with a large audience that lack certification.
However, being clearly identified and authenticated is particularly important on WhatsApp, especially for building trust and improving the channel’s discoverability in the WhatsApp channel search engine.
2. A particularly high publication frequency
BBC News publishes a lot.
For example, 8 posts were shared on his channel on Sunday alone.
This frequency is particularly useful on WhatsApp channels. Unlike traditional social media platforms, visibility does not depend on a feed algorithm similar to those used by Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn.
Posting regularly therefore helps increase the number of touchpoints with subscribers and opportunities for visibility.
Consistency is becoming a central part of the editorial strategy.
3. Short, easy-to-understand texts
Another very noticeable feature: BBC News favors short, punchy articles.
Most of the time, three lines are enough to present the information and make readers want to learn more.
It's perfectly suited for WhatsApp: a mobile, conversational, and immediate platform where users need to be able to grasp the topic in just a few seconds.
4. An image for each post
Posts are also almost always accompanied by an image.
In some cases, the title or main information is directly incorporated into the image.
The goal is simple: to immediately catch the reader’s eye and help them understand the subject before they even read the entire message.
On WhatsApp channels, as on other social media platforms, visuals have thus become an essential component of editorial performance.
5. WhatsApp as a Source of Traffic to the BBC Website
Finally, BBC News does not view its WhatsApp channel as a standalone platform.
The posts regularly link to the BBC News website so that subscribers can access the full article.
WhatsApp thus becomes a true channel for customer acquisition and traffic generation, integrated into a broader digital strategy.
The goal, therefore, is not just to build an audience on WhatsApp: it is also to convert that audience into traffic to the media outlet’s own content, thereby helping to increase its reach and visibility.
WhatsApp is becoming a full-fledged media outlet
The BBC News case confirms a trend we've been observing for several months at Messaging Me: the number of subscribers is no longer sufficient to gauge the maturity of a WhatsApp channel strategy.
Publication frequency, formats, image quality, text length, traffic generation, and performance analysis are becoming key factors.
It is precisely these best practices that we help our clients implement, particularly through Channels Me, our technology designed to manage and optimize editorial strategies on WhatsApp Channels.
Brands, media outlets, retailers, and companies in the transportation, tourism, finance, and public sectors: While editorial approaches must naturally be tailored to each sector, the fundamentals remain the same.
Would you like to develop or accelerate your WhatsApp channel strategy?
