Votebeat is a digital-first nonprofit newsroom that specializes in election administration — how voting works, not the campaigns. It’s the only newsroom in the country focused on voting access and election security. Votebeat is in its fourth year after launching in April 2022 and is continuing to grow its audience. During the 2024 election cycle, Votebeat reached more than 800,000 readers across its website, newsletters, social media accounts, news aggregation platforms, etc. Votebeat is a Civic News Company newsroom and exists alongside two other verticals: Chalkbeat, specialized in education, and Healthbeat, specialized in public health.

At Votebeat, I am specialized in audience strategy and development. I’m a one-person team that crafts, tests, and iterates on strategies to reach new readers and build trust with our existing audiences.

I also speak for that strategy publicly when called for. I was quoted in Nieman Lab because Votebeat had a huge surge in traffic (a 236% increase) in January 2026 due to our well-placed local stories about voting and elections.

Crafting audience profiles for sharper editorial strategy

I give regular trainings to the Votebeat newsroom covering how to best implement audience-first strategies in their story framing, headlines, newsletters, and social media accounts. I also write and share internal guides that offer tips and updates as algorithms change and news discovery habits shift among readers.

In 2024, I created Votebeat’s first set of audience profiles to get the newsroom on the same page about who we’re talking to and why. These profiles help refine story framing and audience engagement strategy. In 2026, audience personas became a company-wide requirement for all three verticals and Votebeat was the model for its success.

Reaching readers on new-to-us platforms

I’ve worked to develop and grow Votebeat’s audience through experimentation on many platforms. In our first year, Twitter was a large source of traffic. When Twitter was bought out and became X, that traffic diminished as news and links were deprioritized. To diversify our traffic sources and reach new readers who may not have heard of us, I began experimenting with posting on Reddit.

Votebeat’s Reddit account posts regularly in r/politics and local state-wide subreddits. These posts are well received by these commmunities with an average upvote rate of 89.6% and consistent engagement in comments. Our first ever AMA was also well-received and we even received a Reddit award on the post.

Since I began posting to Reddit, our referral traffic from the platform increased site-wide. As a nonprofit newsroom, Votebeat allows all news outlets to republish our work for free. After I began posting our stories with Votebeat’s Reddit account, a couple consistent subreddits contributors switched from sharing a republished version of Votebeat’s story to sharing our URL.

Around this time, I also began experimenting with posting to TikTok. With videos I created starring me, I grew Votebeat’s account to more than 1,000 followers and in the middle of the 2024 election cycle, our account was verified. I expect our videos talking through our reporting to get between 3,000 and 5,000 views consistently.

Once I proved that TikTok would be a good use of our time, I supported reporters to create their own social videos by writing outlines and editing their videos together. Now, two reporters have started their own TikTok accounts (Sasha Hupka and Carter Walker) that the main Votebeat account collaborates with. In 2026, the Votebeat account got access to TikTok’s Article Links which allow for a direct link to any story on our site. As of May, I’m experimenting with these links and tracking click through rates and newsletter conversions.

Experimenting with new story forms to inform and engage readers

Our editorial events are approached as a live form of reporting. Votebeat has access to election officials and other voting experts that no one else can connect with in the same way. Events have been successful in engaging our current readers as well as functioning as a magnet to draw in new ones. I’m responsible for coordinating with guests, promoting, and running our virtual editorial events. Everyone who RSVPs becomes an our national newsletter subscriber automatically. Our latest events had hundreds of RSVPs with more than 50% of those showing up to the event live.

I’ve also written and built two quizzes for Votebeat so far, one on the Electoral College and another on redistricting. At the end of the quiz, we allow for newsletter sign up. Both quizzes have a conversion rate of 10% and continual on-going engagement with them shows that these quizzes are a great interactive way to deliver information.

In 2025, I spearheaded a project to explain ranked-choice voting with a mock election using the staff’s pets. I led project management from ideation, to collecting the votes, and to contributing to the final story as a writer. Only newsletter subscribers were allowed to vote in the pet election and over 200 new subscribers signed up in order to weigh in during the voting period. This project was a feat of coordination that involved the entire newsroom of five reporters, three editors, one data editor, and one audience strategist (me).