Forest.fi, the international forest sector news site, has seen a considerable rise in readership — one that could even be called record-breaking. Compared with last year, the number of readers of forest.fi in Finland rose by 82% in early 2024, while the English-language version saw an increase of 64%. (The periods compared run from the beginning of January to mid-May in 2023 and 2024.)
Forest.fi is an international online publication covering the forest sector. It is produced by the Finnish Forest Association (Finnish Forest Association), an organisation founded in 1877 that provides information on forest-related matters.
Tero Karjalainen (Tero Karjalainen), editor-in-chief of forest.fi, regards these figures as significant for an online publication that has been reporting on current issues in the forest sector for more than 15 years.
“The growth in forest.fi's popularity can be explained by the consistent, high-quality work of the Finnish Forest Association. Thanks to that, the site is attracting an ever-wider readership both in Finland and abroad,” says a pleased Karjalainen, adding that, while the growth in readership is welcome, it is worth remembering that the most important values of forest.fi are facts and research-based information. Of course, those too can and should be presented in a way that readers find interesting.
Responsibility for forest.fi rests with the association's head of communications, Anna Kauppi (Anna Kauppi), while the visual design and social media presence are handled by Finnish Forest Association communications specialist Vilma Issakainen (Vilma Issakainen). “Success is always the result of teamwork,” Karjalainen stresses.
It all comes down to content
The rise in the popularity of forest.fi was driven by half a dozen measures carried out in parallel, including targeted social media marketing, search engine optimisation, improvements to distribution channels, and marketing of forest.fi at events organised by the Finnish Forest Association.
Anna Kauppi considers the creation of content that matters to readers to be the most important factor of all. If people find a story or topic uninteresting, they will not be won over by the headline, by social media marketing, or by anything else.
“Our readers are interested in new technology and in forest news tied to current affairs, such as Russia's attack on Ukraine. Readers are also drawn to useful advice or guidance, for example on how to recognise forest damage. That is exactly what we write about,” says Kauppi.
Tero Karjalainen explains that the choice of topics is based not only on analytics, but also on intuition born of experience. “If, while turning a topic over, we become convinced that ‘there's a good story in this', we get to work and write it. That helps forest.fi retain the freshness and individuality you will not get if you base your choices on analytics alone; artificial intelligence will not help you there either.” Karjalainen joined the Finnish Forest Association a little over two years ago, having previously worked as a news editor at the evening newspaper Ilta-Sanomat.
https://forest.fi/article/popularity-of-forest-fi-grew-by-64-percent/