How is 2024 over already? They must have done something with the Hadron Collider, because, we were freezing in our apartments in February just a moment ago.

Anyway.

We had a lot of ideas on how to do a "wrap-up" for the year. Should we do a "here's our favorite discoveries" piece? Or… perhaps, we can highlight some of our achievements? Or… maybe… we can dig a little into our numbers? Or perhaps a sentimental look-back at the year's highlights? OR MAYBE… we do a little of everything! Why not.

Here's what we'll cover in this piece, so… in case your Didi ride is about to finish, you can skip down to the parts you're most interested in (for the rest of you, Read. Every. Single. Word. Ha!).

• Finding Our Voice
  
  
• Refining Our Purpose
  
  
• Content Strategy and Welcoming New Columns
  
  
• 2024 By The Numbers
  
  
• A Few Milestones and Highlights
  
  
• Final Thoughts
  
  

Finding Our Voice

Before we get into this section, a little context. So… why CNS? Here's a little backstory.

During the years of… trial (2020-2022) folks at the Shanghai government realized that there was a need for a platform to deliver timely, accurate news and information about the services of the city, specifically relating to expats. This impetus intensified when demographic shifts prompted the city to allocate resources toward making it more accommodating for expats to settle, anticipating positive population trends as international travel resumed at the end of 2022. And come on, for Shanghai, this is important. Shanghai is known for its international character; this is just part of the city's DNA.

So when we first started CNS, we had a team of seasoned, experienced writers. But our initial foundations were built upon… news and reportage. Check out a a few headlines from 2023:

• Overseas bank cards now able to be added to WeChat Pay
  
• Overseas bank cards accepted as city upgrades payment service
  
• How to select a hospital in Shanghai
  
• Shanghai Let's Meet: city's new promotion film
  
• A mix of local and international vibes in Xuhui District
  
• Major offline Job Fair for Foreigners coming in Shanghai!
  
• Using overseas bank card on POS machines in Shanghai

We published more than 800 articles in 2023 and coming into 2024, we knew we wanted to expand even further, not just in terms of content but in writing style as well. When you've spent a decade writing news pieces, writing in your own voice can seem… well, a little strange at first. But we broke out into this in 2024. Additionally, we added a list of really great contributors from around the world, including:

• Elysia Bagley (US)
• Greg Toland (US)
• Joseph Mann (US)
• Luna Bagel (US)
• Marco Bauer (Netherlands)
• Morgan Short (Canada)
• Sophie Steiner (US)
• Tima Fei (Russia)
• Tjan Ho Lai (Netherlands)
• as well as yours truly, Jacob Aldaco (US)

So this year, we really branched out into having a myriad of writing styles on the platform and really embracing the unique voices that each writer has (including our full-time staff). We hope you appreciate that we;ve evolved away from just standard news and reporting and varied our voice a bit.

Refining Our Purpose

As mentioned, at first, news and reporting was our game. But slowly we started branching out into other beats like F&B like [Chic & Savory] (which started last year mind you!). We touched upon Shanghai's history with the [Pride of Place] series, and started opening the Shanghai community with our [Insider's Guides] (where expats tell us about their neighborhoods).

As we expanded our topics covered, we wanted to distill the purpose of our writing, and we came up with three things:

- How to live in Shanghai.

- What to do in Shanghai.

- Timely news and updates impacting expats.

This is what we built 2024 off of. And in 2025, we'll be expanding this a bit.

Content Strategy and Welcoming New Columns

When I first met with Greg and was convincing him to come on board to write for us, he said something interesting. "Well… yea, I'd be up for it, but honestly, it's been a long time. I don't even know who the Chefs are in the city anymore."

And that struck a chord. English media has changed over the years. I won't get into the details, because that is an entirely different subject, but I understood what he meant. Back in say... 2010, around that time, we all knew the Chefs around town. Eduardo Vargas, Kelly Lee, Sean Jorgensen, Brad Turley, Jason Oakley, Austin Hu, etc. Back then, there was a lot of content that gave Shanghai a real "small-town vibe." But for whatever reason, that's died off. Probably because that was more editorial in nature, and no Chef would drop $$ just to have a profile done on themselves. But it's not just about food. This community aspect extended to other parts of the city, art, music, sports, business and more.

So we introduced a few community-building pieces, starting with [Their Stories], helmed by (Patsy) Yang Di, where we started covering the amazing lady entrepreneurs in the city. We expanded by opening [Movers & Shakers] to cover people with interesting stories that are causing waves (or disruption) in the industry or sector. And of course, [Chef's Table] was born this year, where we don't just interview chefs, we sit down and wine & dine with them.

These are pretty self-explanatory. Functional pieces meant to help you do what needs to be done. [Hai Lights] for listicles, and [Guides] for our "How-To" content, as well as [Explainer], which… explains stuff, all of which have performed pretty darn well.

And this year, we experimented (lightly) with more topic-specific columns, like Shanghai Fashion Files, which looks at a more… beautiful side of Shanghai. We started our business content with Investments & Inclusion, though we'll probably re-work that series name and dive even deeper into business with the Inside CIIE series. These performed far better than we anticipated, so we have an inkling to dive more into the "business side of things."

A Year in Numbers

Betting most of you skipped down to this section. This year, we published 786 articles. This is down from 845 last year because, in May of this year, we opted to shift from 7 days a week to the very lazy... 6 days a week. This allowed for a "higher impact" publishing spot so that the last piece we publish would stay in the top publishing order spot for an extra day.

This section, especially for English media, might be particularly unusual. Some of us who have worked at other outlets have wanted to so badly share facts and figures about our content, trends, etc., but for this reason or that, it never happened. For us, we're striking out with an air of transparency because, hey... some of this stuff you might find interesting!

Yes, we have a website, but Google Analytics 4 is garbage (according to everyone else).

We're in the process of setting up some really robust tracking and analytics for Web (as well as other things), so once we have that up and running, we'll dig into those numbers as well.

Below are some metrics from our WeChat publishing.

So here's a breakdown of how many articles we published each month, as well as the total number of times you, our dear readers, shared our articles (either to friends, in groups, or on your WeChat Moments).

We started the year off with decent share rates. The average monthly share for 2023 was 1,325. The slight declines in June and July are to be expected, what with the lot of you venturing off to Thailand, Bali or back to your home countries during summer vacay.

What went down in September? You probably remember – we had some seriously wild weather. Here's where being an official city media platform gives us an edge: on WeChat, we can publish as often as needed, unlike other subscription accounts that are capped at just one post per day. Why does this matter? Simple: In emergencies or crises, we need to get critical news to you without being held back by quotas. Judging by your feedback, those Typhoon updates really came through when you needed them.

Here's a look at our tracked beats this year. According to volume, [Quick News] takes the cake with 40 pieces. This particular series was meant to share pieces of news that... well... they aren't really feature-article length. Quick, bite-sized pieces to keep you up to date on things. Next up we have these rounding out the top 6:

• (19) Health Byte: Helping expats navigate, and understand the nuances of health in SH.
• (16) Big News: Big pieces of news that normally contain substantial/important info.
• (16) Hai Guide: Our how-to series.
• (10) Chic & Savory: Our general F&B column.
• (10) Hai Lights: When we wanna do a listicle, it becomes a Hai Light!

*Note: Some are not included like [Their Stories], [Pride of Place] and [Insider's Guide], but this has to do with a tracking issue that we'll resolve in 2025.

Yes yes, [SH Buzz] is new, but right out the gate, it grabbed your attention. We published another one, just today, but it's too young a piece to include in this set. [Hai Lights] is an interesting series, because some of them performed very well while others... not so much. Hit and miss here, but we're going to keep doing them. Any suggestions on what listicles we should do for next year?

Here's a drill down into [Hai Lights]:

Some Milestones!

So, we grew... way more than we expected.

Articles Over 1,000 Reads:

• For 2023 we had 132 articles pass the 1,000 reads mark.
  
• For 2024, we had 395 articles pass the 1,000 reads mark.
  

That's a 199% growth rate over last year.

Articles over 2,000 Reads:

• For 2023, we had 14 articles that passed the 2,000-read barrier.
  
  
• For 2024, we had 99 articles pass the 2,000 reads barrier.
  
  

That's a 607% growth rate over last year.

Total Shares Year over Year:

• 2023: 19,265
• 2024: 33,240

That's a 73% growth rate over last year.

Breaking Records:

Our top article in 2023 netted 3,118 reads.

Our top article in 2024 stole the show with 11,071 reads.

A few article highlights:

The Big News of The Year

This was our first full dive into delivering public service announcements on CNS, and we've got to hand it to the team – they really stepped up. From waking up at the crack of dawn to staying on call late into the night, everyone worked tirelessly to stay ahead of a situation that was changing by the minute.

And about that title… yeah, we know – it whispers clickbait. But here's the thing: WeChat limits titles to just 64 characters, which makes getting your point across a real challenge. By that time, we were running on fumes, trying to squeeze the message into the limit. In the end, we figured, "people will get the point." So, we rolled with it.

• Total Reads: 11,071
  
  
• Total Shares: 1,646
  
  
• Likes: 63
  
  
• WoWs: 16
  
  
• Comments: 1
  
  

The Best Performing 'Non-News' Article

You all lovved this. This one hit it out of the ballpark for a few reasons.

1) It was the beginning of the Shanghai Secrets column, which... hey... that's a pretty good name. Previous pieces outperformed our regular content, so this series established itself early on. Who doesn't love to find out about hidden, off-the beaten path things in SH?

2) Joseph Mann, he's not a writer. He is a wordsmith. His casual, conversational, irreverent style makes for fun reading, and you can tell he's having a jolly good time with this one. Those who know him know that he has degrees in literature and is a fan of heavy death metal and Kate Bush, in equal measure.

3) A secret bookstore with Star Trek novels and sequel to "Fifty Shades of Grey"? You all were there for it.

• Total Reads: 4,057
  
  
• Total Shares: 543
  
  
• Likes: 152
  
  
• WoW: 46
  
  
• Comments: 8
  
  

The Best Non-F&B Community Piece

Hey Thomas! For someone who has a billion WeChat groups, and throws legendary parties around town, that is, when he's not being a senior executive at a tech security company, this does not come as a surprise at all. The proprietor of Stardust (recently closed) and the Friends of Shanghai group... brand... party cult... obviously had a fun time, again, with Mr Joseph Mann.

• Total Reads: 2,349
  
• Shares: 75
  
• Comments: 35!!! (This gentleman inspires a response.)
  
• Likes: 45
  
• WoWs: 21
  

The Chef with the Most Fans: Michael Wendling

Chef Michael Wendling, the owner of Cuivre, has been in town for awhile. Seemingly every restaurant around Cuivre has come and gone, but his establishment has proven to be a bastion in that part of town. Cuivre has been one of our favorite spots. Always good. And Chef Michael's palette has such staying power, that it'll be one of our favorite places no doubt for a long time to come.

• Total Read: 2,263
  
• Shares: 41
  
• Comments: 1
  
• Likes: 71
  
• WoWs: 44
  

The Surprising Chic & Savory

This piece probably should have been a [Shanghai Secrets], because it's kind of hard to find, but... that was before that column's time. This wasn't a place that was reinventing any wheels, but it has its own unique flair, from finding the place, to entering through the double doors and seeing that view. The prices for the backdrop, made this a piece that people shared apparently (and to our surprise!).

• Total Reads: 1,952
  
• Total Shares: 129
  
• Comments: 11
• Likes: 83
• WoWs: 32

This piece resonated exceptionally well with our long-running [Their Stories] column, launched by Patsy Yang to highlight female entrepreneurs in the city. Curious about its success, I asked Patsy for her thoughts, and she shared the following:

"Cristiana is a highly respected figure within Shanghai's Italian community. Her deep passion for China – and Shanghai in particular – dates back to the 1980s. She has made significant contributions to fostering development and strengthening ties between Italy and China. Her story serves as a powerful example, inspiring women entrepreneurs to embrace dedication and passion in their own journeys."

• Total Read: 1,365
  
• Shares: 76
  
• Comments: 2
  
• Likes: 29
  
• WoWs: 12

A Few Things We Could Do Better:

While we've had a number of things to be proud of this year, there are a few things we haven't quite got the knack of yet. One is engagement. We LOVE hearing from our community. And in fact, we do... but... it just so happens that most people reach out to us directly (which is totally fine) rather than commenting or engaging on our articles. We'll experiment with ways to make our content more engaging next year, but for the record... by all means, drop us notes. We read them, and love getting them!

Another thing that we're working on is being faster with some content. This year, we did a good job of being thorough, but at times, this made way for smaller, more nimble outlets to publish ahead of us. But not always. There were plenty of times we were first, and plenty of times we covered things no one else did among English media.

We're also acutely aware of the amazing things technology can do these days. In 2025, we'll be putting resources into developing our website with better search, organization, and a few other features, as well as exploring other tech options to support the community (like this cool community building tool we've just started).

A Few Parting Words

We had our share of hiccups – and a few moments of glory that might even make Klingons proud (well, almost). But most of all, we learned, and managed to keep some leftover excitement for next year.

For those of you who just arrived, you'll soon learn that Shanghai is a very special city. It's the London, Paris, and New York of China – at the heart of the world's largest economy by some measures. This Alpha-tier metropolis boasts a population greater than all of Australia, so when something cool or interesting happens here, it's never a small deal.

To the expats calling this city home, you're not just part of its next chapter, but you are foundation builders, part of shaping what it will become in its next era – and we're here with you every step of the way.

We have some exciting plans for next year, and we're very much open to ideas.

Thank you for reading, and we wish you and yours a very, very, very Happy New Year!

P.S. Don't be shy – leave us a comment below! 😉