When a local politician in Espírito Santo wanted to push back on a news story, he didn’t call after it appeared on the newspaper’s Web site. He picked up the phone only after seeing it on Instagram.

That moment told Eduardo Lindenberg de Azevedo everything he needed to know.

“There is a business to be built within the platforms,” Azevedo told INMA members at the recent Latin American Conference.

The head of innovation and new business at Brazil’s Rede Gazeta explained how his team made Instagram central to both their newsroom and business model.

A Gazeta, founded in 1928, is the flagship newspaper of Rede Gazeta, a regional media group in Espírito Santo, a small Brazilian state with about 4 million residents. The news company went online in 1996, embracing digital long before many of its peers, and fully ceased print publication in 2019 to become a digital-first newsroom.

Rather than chasing viral attention on a global scale, A Gazeta’s mission remains rooted in its home state.

“We don’t aim to be a digital player in terms of scale,” Azevedo explained, “but in terms of engagement with our core audience — the people living in our state or interested in news from our state.”

Instagram as a core editorial product

This community-first approach has fueled A Gazeta’s remarkable Instagram growth. The brand added 90,000 new followers in 2023, 135,000 in 2024, and another 123,000 in just the first half of 2025.

With that growth, A Gazeta now reaches over one-third of Espírito Santo’s Internet-active population, making it one of the top-performing regional news brands in Brazil by relative reach.

Like many publishers, A Gazeta once viewed Instagram primarily as a referral tool. But as link clicks dwindled and audience behaviour changed, the team made a critical pivot.

“Once we decided that we’re not just on Instagram to try and bring more people to our Web site, we started to understand what we needed to do to make people feel well served on the platform,” Azevedo said.

That meant tailoring content to how users consume information on Instagram. The team developed a platform-specific editorial mix:

• Carousels to simplify complex topics.

• Reels to attract new audiences beyond their followers.

• Headline cards for impactful breaking news.

• Photo galleries for visual storytelling.

• Stories for embedding links and light redirection.

This shift wasn’t just technical. It was philosophical. The team began treating Instagram with more editorial weight.

“The team treats our Instagram just the same as we would treat the front page of what used to be print,” Azevedo said. “That’s where more people will see it — that’s where they’ll pay attention.”

And rather than broadcasting in one direction, the team leaned into audience participation. They frequently republish verified user-submitted content, especially during moments of local pride or cultural interest, like international sports tournaments.

“We interact with people who send us direct messages and we try to republish as much content that we believe might be interesting to our overall audience,” he said. “This is really valuable. We don’t have to send our own teams, but we’re showing real fans and people from our state.”

Despite the impact, A Gazeta’s social media operation runs lean. The Instagram team consists of just 10 people — six full-time staff and four interns — using simple tools like Canva and Meta’s Business Suite.

Performance is tracked daily, weekly, and monthly using three core metrics: reach, views, and interactions. 

“We analyse which Instagram posts are having higher reach and that goes into a feedback loop with the whole newsroom,” Azevedo said. “It helps them produce more content or cover more of that subject.”

Templates have been a big enabler of scale. By standardising formats for Reels, carousels, and headline cards, the team can quickly repurpose stories built for the Web site into native Instagram content without compromising quality.

A Gazeta’s Instagram efforts also help reach a younger, more mobile-first audience than its core Web site readers.

“In May this year, about 66% of the people that visited our Web site were 45 or older,” Azevedo said. “On social, we have over 40% under 35.”

Rather than trying to convert social followers into site traffic, the team embraces platform-native consumption habits.

“We’re not necessarily going to be able to bridge them from social because that’s where they want to be … . So we should really serve them how they want, where they want, the way they want it.”

This editorial success is also good for business. In 2024, 38% of A Gazeta’s digital ad revenue came from Instagram — up from 25% the year before. That revenue mostly comes from branded content and collab posts, carefully integrated into the feed.

Still, Azevedo emphasised journalistic integrity.

“It has to be useful,” he said. “You don’t want to post something just because your client wants to. You have to make sure that it’s going to resonate with the audience. If not, it’s not going to perform — everyone looks bad.”

To sustain that trust, the team clearly labels paid content and maintains niche Instagram profiles for specific verticals, including entertainment, health, personal finance, sports, and regional news zones.

Looking ahead, A Gazeta plans to:

• Expand content diversity into new formats and local niches.

• Strengthen community engagement with more participatory storytelling.

• Optimise monetisation, especially for branded partnerships.

• Leverage data analytics for more precise decision-making.

• Restructure internal workflows, possibly moving the social team under product management.

• Scale up on TikTok and YouTube, where they see significant growth potential.

“There’s really no ready recipe you can follow,” Azevedo said. “Things change, algorithms change, and so there are new things that we can do every day.”

But the most important ingredient? Loyalty.

“Cultivate brand loyalty,” he advised. “People have to see your brand there, as in any other point of contact. You want to keep focused on your quality journalism. That’s what builds the audience you need to keep the loop going.”

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