Editorial calendars are always part strategy, part expertise, and part educated guess.

For IFT, that meant planning monthly content themes around important food science topics such as sustainability, food safety, and other issues shaping the field. Those themes reflected what the organization believed its audience needed to know.

But the calendar only sets the direction. Reader behavior shows what actually lands.

Sometimes a planned theme performs exactly as expected. Sometimes another topic quietly draws more attention. And sometimes the most useful signal is not what readers click first, but what they explore next.

IFT wanted a clearer way to spot those patterns and bring them back into the planning process.

The Opportunity: See What the Editorial Calendar Couldn’t

Pageviews could tell IFT which individual articles performed well, but they don’t always reveal the bigger picture.

Was a themed month actually resonating with readers? Which topics within that theme were attracting the most attention? Were readers moving into related subjects after they arrived? And were there emerging areas of interest that had never made it onto the editorial calendar in the first place?

Some themes were non-negotiable because of strategic priorities or their importance to the field. But elsewhere, the calendar had room to evolve. IFT wanted a better read on where audience interest was building and where that interest might point next.

The Strategy: Let the Data Join the Editorial Meeting 

Using Alchemist Engage’s Content Discovery dashboards, the IFT team could look beyond the performance of a single article and explore how readers were engaging with topics across the site.

After a themed month, the team could dig into questions like:

  • Which stories performed best?
  • Which topics struggled to gain traction?
  • Which keywords generated the strongest engagement?
  • Did the planned theme actually dominate reader attention?
  • Which adjacent or unrelated subjects were readers exploring at the same time?

If sustainability was the focus for a particular month, for example, IFT could see whether sustainability content was actually driving engagement, which stories within the theme connected most strongly, and what else was competing for readers’ attention.

The team could also look beyond the planned calendar entirely, spotting subjects that were already generating strong organic interest without a dedicated editorial push.

Instead of only asking, “How did this month perform?” IFT could also ask, “What are our readers telling us to cover next?”

The Outcome: A Sharper Content Planning Process

The result was a better feedback loop between what IFT planned and how readers actually responded.

Audience and content intelligence in Alchemist Engage gave the IFT team a broader view of reader interest than pageviews alone, helping them:

  • Evaluate whether planned themes were landing
  • Understand relationships between topics
  • Spot unexpected areas of audience interest
  • Identify subjects that might deserve deeper coverage
  • Bring reader behavior into future editorial planning

Most importantly, editors had real audience data to put behind their instincts.

IFT could continue setting priorities based on its expertise and the needs of the food science community, while using reader behavior to see where those priorities were connecting, where interest was shifting, and where the calendar might have room for something new.

Why It Matters

Editorial teams already bring expertise, context, and a strong sense of what matters to their field. And though their instincts are often well-honed, audience intelligence also unlocks a valuable perspective: what readers are actually responding to.

For IFT, that meant planning with a clearer view of both sides of the equation: what the organization believed was important to cover, and what its audience was showing genuine interest in. 

Hum is helping forward-thinking, fast growing organizations use data + AI to act. Explore other Hum success stories.

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