SWI swissinfo.ch receives the YouTube silver play button

The multimedia team from left to right: Jo Fahy, Céline Stegmüller, Michele Andina, Julie Hunt and Carlo Pisani. Not in the photo: Vera Leysinger, Kai Reusser, Helen James and Thomas Kern. swissinfo.ch

The multimedia team at SWI literally holds a milestone in its hands: the silver play button from YouTube. The Google subsidiary honours content creators with 100,000 or more followers by granting them the silver play button. SWI reached that figure by the end of 2022, a goal that it had set in May 2007. 

When asked about the success, Jo Fahy, Head of Multimedia, and Michele Andina, video journalist, immediately credit the many colleagues who have made this possible.

Digital-savvy media such as Netzwoche picked up on the launch of SWI’s YouTube channel in 2007, known at the time as a co-brand with Schweizer Radio International (SRI). swissinfo.ch

“The play button is the result of almost 16 years of preparation and hard work; a collaborative effort of many. It also means that our followers like what they see. The launch of the channel in 2007 was even picked up by the media. The team has published several thousand videos since then. Today there are 7 channelsExternal link with a total of over 230,000 followers and 51 million views since the launch,” says Michele Andina.

Much more than a search and archive engine

In Jo Fahy’s view, SWI was right to be one of the early adopters, because today the channel is much more than a search engine. It keeps attracting users and timeless topics, such as the flying Jetman RossyExternal link, are still popular 13 years later. The video has now been viewed 3.8 million times. “YouTube is particularly suitable for background information because long videos don’t work on other social media and researchers can also find in-depth and contextualised information here,” says Jo Fahy. “The initial focus on entertainment has long since given way to research, information, education or autodidactic learning. For SWI, YouTube is one of the channels with the highest audience retention.”

Timeless topics such as female circumcision in Switzerland continue to attract users years after their publication (e.g. a SWI video on female circumcision received 22 million views). swissinfo.ch

A committed community

In the future,  it’s also worth publishing videos in 16:9 (width) format, as the SWI community is more active on YouTube than on any other social media channel where SWI is present.

Michele Andina knows that “with the right keywords, good teaser images and the right topics, we keep users coming back and bring them from there to our website.” This also makes the channel precious for Jo Fahy: “On TikTok or Instagram, users’ attention span is much shorter, random and they bounce quickly, whereas on YouTube we engage actively with them, answer their questions, conduct short surveys and discover new needs, which generates real added value for both sides.”

Today, SWI is present on 9 social media channels, some of them in 10 languages. By the end of 2022, it had reached around 2.5 million followers, fans and subscribers. swissinfo.ch