Tips for where to post news articles in SharePoint Online

The primary goal of a news article is to get read by the intended audience. One way to make sure your article is read is to write great content with a catchy title or headline – but it’s also about making sure that you post the article to the right location (SharePoint site) and aim it at the right people.

How do readers see news articles?

There are multiple ways your target reader can see the articles you post:

• On your site. A reader can go to your site and see the latest articles in the News part on your home page. You want the News web part at the top of the page so articles get the best chance of being seen!
• On the SharePoint Start page. Everyone has a personal view of the sites they visit frequently and are following by going to the SharePoint Start page. You can get there by clicking SharePoint in the upper left of any SharePoint page – or by navigating to SharePoint from Office.com. News on the Start page is a combination of articles from sites that you are following and articles suggested for you. Learn more about finding and following sites and news.
• In the mobile application. The SharePoint mobile app has a News tab that rolls up the same news you see on the SharePoint Start page on your mobile device.
• On a hub associated with your site. If your site is part of a hub and the hub site owner has elected to source news posts from all of the hub members, your news post can also be seen in the news web part on the hub home page. However, following the hub does NOT mean you are following all of the sites that are part of the hub. Readers will see your post on the hub home page, but unless they follow your site, they will not see the article on their SharePoint Start page or in their mobile app.
• Via a link to your article. The editors on another site can create a link to your news article from their site by using a News Link. Learn how to Add a news post by using a link.
• Via email. You can send an article to a person or a group in the organization via email by navigating to the article and selecting Send by email from the command bar. You can also create a digest of emails (like a virtual newsletter) and send a summary of multiple articles at one time. Learn how to Create and send a news digest.

Where should I post my article to get the most visibility?

• On the main home site of the intranet. To get the most visibility for your article, you want to publish it on a location the most people will be following. For most intranets, that means the home site. If you have permissions to publish your article to the home site, your article will have the broadest reach there.
• On a major hub. If your site is part of a hub, posting your article to the main hub site directly will likely give your article a boost in terms of visibility – because it’s likely that more people are following the hub itself than each individual site that’s part of the hub.
• On your site. If you don’t have permissions to publish anywhere but your own site, publish there – and then send the URL to the editors of other sites (or hubs) so that they can boost your article visibility by adding a news link on their site. News Links are surfaced on the SharePoint Start page and mobile app for readers who follow the site – but the link will re-direct readers to your post and it doesn’t require a lot of work on the part of the editors of the other site to post the link.

Target your article to a specific audience to make sure it goes to only the right people (coming soon)

• Audience targeting for news. A new feature coming to Office 365 is the ability to target news posts to a specific audience. The feature is rolling out and may not be available yet in our tenant. Individual news articles have an attribute called Audience that allows you to enter an Office 365 or Azure AD group as the target. If you enable Audience Targeting in the news web part on your site, readers only see articles that are targeted to audiences in which they are a member. Learn more about Audience targeting for SharePoint news and pages.
• Targeting is not security. If someone is not in the audience group you select for the article, they won’t see the post in the news web part, mobile app, or SharePoint Start page – but they can search for the content. Audience targeting is not the same as security for the post – it just helps to minimize information overload by allowing you to avoid cluttering the feeds of people for whom the article is not relevant.