Twitter has signaled its intention to focus on video as a key platform feature for 2018, and some publishers have already been noticing the effects.

Last year, Twitter’s announcement that it would be partnering with a string of media companies to provide round-the-clock video content for the platform was met with some skepticism.

Was Twitter trying too hard to muscle in on a social video space that was already saturated and showing unpredictable returns? Video on Twitter was largely known for Vine, the since-shuttered service that allowed six-second looped clips, and Periscope, a live-streaming channel that faced plenty of competition of its own.

When we previously outlined four ways that publishers used the medium in mid-2016, there was a feeling that Twitter video could only every really be thought of as a promotional or extremely short clip service.

In 2018, Twitter’s video plans look a little more concrete.

What’s changed for Twitter video?

Since the partnership announcement (which was followed later in 2017 by an announcement of even more partners), there have been a few changes in Twitter’s approach to video, some of which seem to have managed to increase use of, and engagement with, the medium. With these media partnerships and increasing numbers of key live events, Twitter appears to be stepping enthusiastically into live video broadcasting, a space where Facebook has recently ended its payments to publishers..

Twitter is also reportedly working on a new feature design to reduce the number of steps users have to take to share video on the platform, while executives have signaled that video will be an important keystone of the company’s ambitions in 2018.

Back in December, a new public metric called view counts was added to Twitter videos for the first time, leading to an increased standardization among other social video formats on different platforms. Twitter’s ‘total video view’ metric is calculated by the sum of “any views which are at least 50 percent in-view for 2 seconds.” Under this measurement system, at least half of video has to be visible and playing on a user’s screen for at least two seconds to count as a view.

There are some signals that user behavior around video on Twitter is also starting to change. Last month, several publishers, including Bauer Media and CNBC, told Digiday that they had seen significant increases in video views on Twitter recently.

One of the elements that publishers have to deal with on Twitter is that the platform has not traditionally been known as a referral powerhouse like Google or Facebook. Content on Twitter has to be able to work alone natively. Still, some publishers have been noticing the increased attention from followers. According to Digiday:

“Lifestyle publisher Stylist saw a 500 percent increase in its Twitter video views as a result of dedicating more resources to Twitter. Men’s interest site Joe Media saw a 20 percent increase in video views over the last four months to 6.2 million. A source familiar with the matter said that over the last year, Twitter has had a “significant” increase in the number of video views on the platform compared to the previous year.”

What are the biggest videos on Twitter?

So how have publishers been using video on Twitter in recent months? Looking in our analytics tool Spike, the most popular videos on Twitter (ranked by total retweets and likes) in the last 30 days from influential accounts are largely made up of viral clips, fan-focused content and videos posted from celebrity and public figures’ accounts.

For the publishers that do appear among the top videos however, certain themes are evident. News videos are extremely popular, which is not all that surprising given the popularity of news-focussed content on timelines generally.

Some of the new ways that publishers appear to be using video include standard TV-news repackages, as well as more recognizable social video formats. A strong current affairs theme runs through many. One of the most retweeted and liked videos of the last 30 days was a clip of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s lackluster 60 Minutes interview, repackaged and posted by the news site Axios.

Sec. of Education Betsy DeVos struggles to answer fairly basic questions on school performance on 60 Minutes pic.twitter.com/lFVq3USwUW

— Axios (@axios) March 12, 2018

Another popular clip in the last month was a video posted by ABC News of a parent of one of the victims of the Parkland High School shooting criticizing the NRA. Both of these clips demonstrate strong news value, but do not differ significantly from the original made-for-TV broadcasts.

Father of Parkland victim slams NRA videos:

"If this was put out by a terrorist organization, we would be raising the terror threat level in this country. Why are we letting this lobby have anything to do with DC? I don't understand it!" https://t.co/9eh7udBMsx pic.twitter.com/FZeTqvTRmK

— ABC News (@ABC) March 7, 2018

In this way, Twitter videos may differ from Facebook video, which has placed an emphasis on differentiating itself as a unique format. Instead, audiences may see Twitter as a place where they can ‘see for themselves’ a video clip or footage that is the focus of news reports elsewhere. This is certainly a notion that Twitter itself looks to pursue, frequently touting its potential as a breaking news and live events platform.

In terms of volume of video content, there is a remarkable variance is overall posting habits from different publishers. This chart, compiled using NewsWhip Spike, shows the number of videos posted by ten selected TV news publishers in the U.K. and U.S. over seven days, from March 7 to 14, 2018.

This does not include retweets, therefore giving a clear picture of the amount of original video uploads that various networks are distributing through Twitter.

Fox News is the leading poster, with 701 videos over seven days, or an average of around 100 per day, from just one Twitter account. Other networks such as CBS and ABC also post video frequently, while BBC News posted just 28 videos in the same time period.

The vast variance is more apparent than on Facebook, and perhaps points to different experiences and strategies being pursued by the social media teams.

Twitter has some characteristics that have the power to make it a unique proposition in social video publishing. How exactly publishers decide to use the feature may change throughout this year, as the platform attempts to grow its share of the online video attention space.

In addition to audience engagement and uptake however, one question that will certainly be on publishers’ minds will certainly be: where do we make money from this?

Liam Corcoran writes about digital journalism and media trends, metrics, and more for the NewsWhip blog.

The post How Publishers Are Learning to Embrace Twitter Video appeared first on MediaShift.

In January, Facebook announced an update to the news feed which would “prioritize local news so that you can see topics that have a direct impact on you and your community and discover what’s happening in your local area.”

The general idea is that users may be more interested in stories relevant to their community, helping foster the type of “meaningful interactions” that Facebook has stated it is looking to encourage in the news feed. Meanwhile, boosting the signal from local news sites helps fill any potential content gaps from other less reputable or relevant sources, which the platform has been trying to demote in visibility.

So far, the move is restricted to U.S.-based publishers, many of which already perform strongly on social platforms. The last time we ranked Facebook engagements among regional publishers was in January 2017. Back then, many of the most popular stories related to local news stories, and human interest pieces. As the blog post put it:

“Many regional sites have been innovating on Facebook in particular, where the potential to reach large geographic-specific audiences is great… this data shows that regional sites have gone a long way towards establishing themselves as leading social publishers in their own right.”

One year on, things have changed slightly, with many smaller news sites having reported drops in reach and traffic from Facebook. Despite this, a Pew Research report in January indicated a continued widespread interest in local news from audiences around the world.

We took another look at the prominence of local news publishers on Facebook at the start of 2018, in light of the new Facebook announcement. The data is from NewsWhip’s Analytics platform, which shows the performance of publishers, stories, and trends across social media. Looking strictly at engagements on web-based content, these were the top ten U.S. regional news sites on Facebook in January 2018, ranked by total engagements with the stories they published that month:

Top regional U.S. news publishers on Facebook in January 2018

The first thing to note is that, like many general news and entertainment sites, engagement on content from a lot of these regional news outlets on Facebook has fallen in the last 12 months.

In January 2017, the New York Daily News was the number one regional site on the platform, with over 4.4 million monthly engagements. One year later, that figure has declined to 2.47 million interactions. While the Los Angeles Times remains high in second place overall, its engagements declined by roughly 1.1 million in the same time period. Although January 2017 was the month of Trump’s inauguration, a news event which resulted in mass engagement lifts for many sites, it’s a shift worth keeping in mind.

In January 2018, the New York Post comes out on top, with over 3.6 million engagements on content published during January. In the Post’s case, the most popular stories of the month consisted largely of national and even international news stories, but also plenty of local interest reporting, such as extreme weather coverage.

In second and third place are the LA Times and southern California broadcast outlet ABC7.com. The Times had a lot of popular national stories, but stories about poverty in California, regional rail infrastructure, and coverage of the aftermath of a mudslide also performed strongly. Meanwhile, ABC7.com had one of the lowest outputs of the top 15 regional sites, with just over 1,000 posts for the month, indicating an impressive average engagement rate per story.

In the last analysis of these regional publishers, the top three sites had a marked lead over others. In 2018 however, things are more evenly distributed. This mirrors what we’ve seen among larger publishers generally on Facebook in the last 12 months.

There are also some new names in the top 10 ranking, such as the Alabama news site AL.com, and Patch.com, a site with multiple local news versions for different cities.

Another site that has managed to grow its engagements since last year is freep.com, the digital version of the Detroit Free Press. While part of the site’s strong performance on Facebook in January was due to its coverage of the Larry Nassar trial, a local news story which also featured heavily in national and international media, its real success lay with another local news story, centered around immigration.

The piece, titled “After 30 years in U.S., Michigan dad deported to Mexico,” saw almost 430,000 interactions, and was easily the site’s most popular story of the month.

Tip for developing a local news audience

In a previous post, we offered some advice for regional publishers looking to develop a community on social media. The points remain good practice:

• Develop a real community by doubling-down on the type of stories that differentiate your site from bigger publishers that already have a massive audience.
• Recognize your audience’s reading habits, and serve them.
• Regularly review data, and re-engage: It’s probable that not every story is going to work well in the news feed, even with the latest Facebook boost.

There are other aspects of Facebook strategy to consider. Many local news sites also carry national news coverage, some of it syndicated. A worthwhile review of Facebook to carry out is to consider how what percentage of that content performs strongly in the news feed.

According to NewsWhip data, outside some very well-known regional media brands in the U.S markets, local news sites are more likely to see their unusual or exclusive local stories achieve high engagement on Facebook, particularly if they have a larger national or international resonance. One other place that local news sites may consider trying to seed their content is through Facebook groups.

Facebook may have more plans for local news on Facebook. According to Recode, it’s testing a feature called ‘Today In’ in six U.S. cities, which is “a feed made up entirely of local news, events and announcements,” from sources vetted as being local publishers by the Facebook news partnerships team.

The top 15 sites, with data

See below for the top 15 U.S. regional sites on Facebook, ranked by total engagements on stories published in January 2018. These numbers count all Facebook engagement on these sites’ links in January, including shares from publisher pages, copy-and-paste shares and use of social sharing buttons on the websites themselves. The numbers don’t include engagement on live or native videos.

The biggest regional U.S. sites on Facebook, January 2018

Liam Corcoran writes about digital journalism and media trends, metrics and more for the NewsWhip blog.

The post The 15 Biggest Local News Sites On Facebook In January appeared first on MediaShift.

What type of stories go viral on LinkedIn, and how does the algorithm impact the visibility of certain posts? Below, we take a closer look at the content process on the business professionals’ network.

Earlier this month, we looked at how LinkedIn has been investing in video capabilities. But video isn’t the only area of content that has been succeeding on LinkedIn. Earlier this year, Digiday reported on how business publishers were seeing growth in referrals from the platform.

Here’s how engagement, measured as shares of links on LinkedIn, looked like for English language publishers on the platform from January to September:

August seems to have been a banner month, with over 50 million shares of new articles. Indeed, we’re now seeing that for some business-focused sites such as Forbes and Inc.com, LinkedIn engagement is beginning to rival, or even surpass, their shares on Facebook.

According to Executive Editor Dan Roth, the platform had three million writers and around 160,000 posts per week as of the end of 2016. Those articles either get distributed by LinkedIn’s in-house editorial team, made up of around 25 editors based around the world, or algorithms. LinkedIn claims that 87 percent of users trust the platform as a source of information, making it an attractive location for gaining people’s attention.

But what sort of messaging works on LinkedIn, and how does it get distributed? Unlike Facebook, there isn’t a whole lot of discussion about the influence of LinkedIn’s algorithm on what their users see when they log on.

As with most algorithm-based news feeds, we can divide the question of why certain stories go viral into two sections. First, we need to analyze the actual substance, tone and presentation of the stories themselves. Second, we need to consider the distribution particulars of LinkedIn, the role of its algorithm and the influence that a writer or publisher can have on that process.

The Content: Aim For High Quality

First, let’s consider the types of stories that are seeing high engagement on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is actually quite explicit about the types of stories that it sees as being likely to go viral on the platform. In a guide, they note that articles should “share professional expertise,” and suggest titles such as “What will (or should) your industry look like in 5, 10, or 15 years and how will it get there?” and “What advice do you have for career advancement?”

Looking at the most popular stories of the last few weeks on LinkedIn in NewsWhip’s Spike tool, we can see that these type of stories also resonate when they come from publishers. Career advice and professional development insights are extremely popular.

In presentation however, LinkedIn makes an effort to distinguish its content from more mass-appeal platforms. The platform discourages the use of listicles and obvious clickbait and recommends that writers “keep articles appropriate for the LinkedIn audience. Don’t post anything obscene, shocking, hateful, intimidating or otherwise unprofessional.”

Being able to maintain these editorial standards is something that LinkedIn takes very seriously, and to reasonably good effect. You won’t have noticed LinkedIn mentioned very often in ongoing discussion about the spread of “fake news,” and the platform is not known as a place where viral publishers go to thrive.

It’s also important that articles aren’t seen as overly promotional; it’s fine to mention where you work, or the product you’re building, but going overboard results in risking spam status and a visibility downgrade. LinkedIn isn’t trying to compete with Twitter for the breaking news audience, or Facebook for mass appeal. Its strengths lie in allowing users to develop thought leadership, and sharing content relevant to their careers. Developing a genuine persona on LinkedIn with expertise around a specific topic is a surefire way to build an audience base on the platform. LinkedIn also recommends that articles are at least three paragraphs long.

Distribution: the Algorithm at Work

Distribution of content on LinkedIn is an algorithmic process, and that algorithm is theoretically designed for engaging, interesting stories to go viral. In this sense, the algorithm isn’t all that different from the type that the bigger platforms employ, but it’s aimed at a more niche user base. LinkedIn is open about the effect that its algorithms have on content visibility in the news feed, using a “man+machine” approach to classifying content in real time based on signifiers such as early engagement, previous reaction to content from the page, and more.

LinkedIn uses a feature called “FollowFeed” to help determine what gets prominence in users’ feeds. FollowFeed aims to provide high precision and recall, or relevance. For a technical explanation of how FollowFeed works, see this great detailed explanation from LinkedIn engineer Ankit Gupta.

LinkedIn has a three-stage process for identifying and dealing with low-quality content. As the post is being created, a classifier buckets posts as “spam,” “low-quality,” or “clear” in near real time. Next, the system looks at statistical models based on how fast the post is spreading, and the networks engaging with the post, in order to spot low-quality posts. Finally, human evaluators review posts flagged by users as being “suspicious.”

There are some factors that help determine how much preference articles secure for algorithmic distribution based on factors related to the personal details attached to the author’s LinkedIn profile. Here’s what LinkedIn recommends regarding article distribution factors from individual writers:

(Stories are) shared with a subset of your connections and followers. This is determined by connection strength, your connection’s notification settings, and notification state (i.e. number of unread notifications). Members who aren’t in your network can choose to follow you and by doing so they will receive your articles and posts in their feed.

1. Followers may receive notifications when you publish an article. Your articles may be available in their LinkedIn homepage feeds and can be included in news digest emails.
2. In an effort to simplify the notifications experience, we often aggregate notifications to your connections.

So as with any news feed, there’s quite a bit at play behind the scenes in determining how many people will see and share your posts. Analyzing other success stories and changing techniques learned on other platforms can help in boosting your own signal.

Ultimately, LinkedIn’s editorial mission statement is to provide timely and professional content to users. Those users can be divided into different cohorts – engineers, salespeople, executives and countless other – but timely relevance remains the key consideration.

Liam Corcoran writes about digital journalism and media trends, metrics and more for the NewsWhip blog.

The post Your Quick Guide to Using LinkedIn to Distribute Content appeared first on MediaShift.

So you want to spread content analytics to more people in your organization. How do you make sure you go about it the right way? In many organizations, it’s still the case that metrics are owned by a data or analytics team, with knowledge staggered at various levels throughout the organization.

It’s not to say that other teams aren’t interested in the data. By now there’s a general acceptance that audience data is the critical strand in audience development. Most people in the newsroom have a curiosity about the readership anyway, or are keen to see how they can leverage statistical feedback to improve their work. To get a deep understanding of what readers are actually interested in reading and watching, a more-nuanced approach is needed from both journalists and content creators as well as those responsible for the story’s distribution.

When thinking about how to integrate metrics into different teams’ workflows, here are five questions to ask before giving everyone the master key to your audience.

1. Are these numbers relevant to the person seeing them?

Not all numbers will be relevant to individuals. Do video producers need to have access to ARPU (average revenue per user) numbers or homepage traffic? Sure, it’s nice to have, but more data on the site’s most and least popular videos of the last 30 days, 10-second and 30-second view rates, and competitor engagement data may be more useful for their immediate day-to-day.

Similarly, journalists can benefit from getting a 360-degree overview of the performance of their own stories, including time spent reading those stories, web traffic, and discussion and cross-sharing on social media, rather than something like internal UTM tracking data.

2. Will access to these numbers positively affect a person’s ability to do their job?

What impact does giving this information to a particular team have? Is there a danger that some metrics may negatively influence some practices?

These questions are particularly relevant with real-time data. Data doesn’t stop being created. There will always be a log keeping track of information like site visitors and impressions. That’s great for making those real-time decisions about content placement. But putting too much focus on those numbers risks getting stuck in the ‘eternal now,’ with a worst-case scenario being that creators feel the urge to keep churning out low-quality, sentimental content to keep their numbers ‘up,’ or tweaking content formats and tone without giving it time to circulate long enough online. For editorial staff, being able to see regular lists of the most popular stories over set time periods may be even more helpful than constant real time metrics.

Also, don’t fall into the trap of reducing datasets to an unrepresentative sample set. To take meaningful insight from the numbers, the full view is needed and not just a list of the top 10 most-shared stories or videos each day. Analyzing what didn’t work is often as useful for content creation teams as looking at what succeeded.

Ask about the potential positives before making metrics available. Ideally, access to these metrics will help positively inform the editorial agenda, rather than dictate it.

3. Are these numbers already available?

It’s possible that the person or team you’re trying to accommodate is already using some sort of measurement system or tool themselves. Perhaps they’re in a different format, or are being looked at over different timelines.

Making the numbers available in too many formats can potentially lead to messy scenarios, whereby teams are tracking metrics differently. If so, consider how to consolidate things. For instance, many NewsWhip Analytics clients use the dashboard to get a view of their social engagement data across multiple platforms, in one place.

It’s good practice to have an agreed-upon definition of the key numbers, and clarity on what they relate to. For instance, are you measuring the success of your link posts on Facebook by counting the total engagement on and off the platform, or just looking at the engagements from your owned pages?

It’s not to say that other data sources should not be consulted; it can be a messy business and a second opinion sometimes helps. But if that happens, the decision should be the prerogative of the data team, rather than desk editors.

4. Does the recipient know how to make use of the data they’re being provided?

Here’s a scenario some journalists may be familiar with: a Monday morning email provides them with login details to an analytics platform that they’ve never used. After logging in once or twice and not fully comprehending the system, the user forgets their password and quietly ignores the whole thing. The expectation is that the numbers will explain themselves.

For the beginner, metrics can be confusing. There are no stupid questions. Taking the time to explain what each metric represents, and how it relates to the user’s workflow can save lots of confusion further down the line, when KPIs may not be aligning as anticipated. And explaining the numbers themselves is only part of the effort; as mentioned above, the benefits really kick in when users can use those numbers to help inform their work. That’s a process that takes time, as well as plenty of conversation and collaboration.

5. Do the numbers align with organization-wide goals and strategy?

One of the risks of a metrics roll-out is the temptation to make use of absolutely everything, with the consequence that meaningful targets are obscured by less-relevant numbers.

By having agreement over strategic goals with set terms, it’s possible to make the metrics work for you, rather than just standing idle.

When explaining the role of the numbers, connect them back to the overall goal of the organization. For example, maybe it’s a company goal to be a market leader in mobile video; then it’s important that the individual doesn’t get too excited about traffic spikes to the site’s video gallery page, 85 percent of which came through desktop. Or perhaps your site wants to end up in the top three of their ten closest competitors by social engagement each month. In that case, a 20 percent bump in social engagement while ending the month in last place is not the happy outcome it might suggest at first glance.

Finally, it’s important to take KPIs seriously

Defining what metrics will have the greatest impact on your business and relationship with audience is the number one rule. If you or your team are the ‘data gatekeeper’ in your organization, make sure you keep a watchful eye on those metrics, even if you’ve rolled out other metric segments to various teams.

And of course, as is mandatory for any post about analytics, it’s important to stress the value of flexibility. Priorities, platforms, and audience avenues change. Being able to understand when to recognize and respond to those changes through their absence in the data is as important as reading the numbers in front of you.

Liam Corcoran writes about digital journalism and media trends, metrics and more for the NewsWhip blog.

The post 5 Steps To Sharing Analytics Throughout The Newsroom appeared first on MediaShift.

Last month, we named the Washington Post as one of the best publishers on Facebook in 2016. That’s down to the way the site has grown engagement and traffic in the last 12 months.

In November, the Washington Post had over 20.1 million Facebook engagements on the 10,818 articles they published that month. That’s a huge 68% jump in engagements from November 2015, during a year when many publishers struggled to grow engagement with their web-based content on Facebook.

Visitors to washingtonpost.com were at around 100 million per month in the last few months of 2016.

So, what changed for the site’s Facebook distribution in 2016?

We used NewsWhip’s soon-to-be-launched Analytics platform to break down how the Post performed on Facebook over the last few months of 2016. NewsWhip Analytics is the definitive data platform for audience development teams, with an unrivaled view of the performance of sites, authors, stories and more on social platforms going back three years. This allowed us to take a closer look at the Post’s Facebook performance over the last few months.

For a start, it’s true that the Post produced more articles in 2016 than in 2015. In 2016, the site averaged 11,342 articles per month, compared to 9,764 per month in 2015.

Given that it was an election year, that perhaps isn’t all that surprising.

But what’s really changed is the average Facebook engagement rate on each of those articles, which grew from 1,092 Facebook engagements per post in 2015 to 1,293 per month in 2016. That’s an average of an extra 200 engagements for every single article over the year.

While the Washington Post famously went ‘all in’ on Instant Articles almost from launch, use of that format is only one potential reason why it’s seeing increased gains.

Using NewsWhip data, we’ve come up with three reasons contributing to the Post’s success on Facebook in 2016.

• Fostering organic engagement on Facebook.
• Writing descriptive headlines for Facebook readers.
• Strength of original reporting.

1. Fostering Organic Engagement on Facebook

Since last summer, Facebook has been trying to initiate more organic conversations on the platform. What does that mean from publishers?

As news feeds become more crowded and difficult to stand out in, this can lead to decreased reach and engagement for large ‘one size fits all’ pages, which is what many large publisher pages resemble.

Instead, more organic sharing, and shares from pages with smaller followings on more specialized topics, tend to see increased visibility. The more targeted you can be in getting your stories to the right people on any social network, the higher the engagements are likely to be. The easiest way to grow this process is by creating stories that your audience are genuinely interested in, and likely to pass on to their own network.

In order for publishers to succeed in a meaningful way on Facebook, they need to replicate that at scale. The Washington Post seems to be grasping this concept fairly well.

Through NewsWhip Analytics, it’s possible to compare the engagement on stories that came from the main publisher’s Facebook page. For example, this story has 13,427 engagements from being shared on the main Washington Post Facebook page, out of 190,983 in total.

If we look at the Post’s 10 most engaged stories from October 1 to December 31 2016 (ranked by total Facebook engagements), we can track how many of the engagements came through the main Washington Post Facebook page.

If we compare this to other top publishers, the ratios are good. Many viral publishers will see an overwhelming majority of their engagement (80% or more) on top posts come from their main Facebook page.

Being able to rely on other distribution sources means that publishers will be less susceptible to algorithm changes from social platforms.

2. Descriptive Headlines Made For Social Readers

Since an algorithm change in August 2016, Facebook has looked to reduce clickbait headlines in the news feed.

As we’ve previously noted on the blog, good headlines on Facebook tick certain boxes. As well as not tricking the reader, headlines on social work best if the have one or more of these attributes:

• They’re conversational and descriptive.
• They speak to a personal experience.
• They’re vivid and interesting.

One of the first things you’ll notice about the Post’s articles is the descriptive and conversational tone of the headlines. For their opinion pieces, which attracted a significant proportion of the site’s total engagements in 2016, the stories were titled in a way that would pique the interests of any reader, while giving them a reason to click and read on.

But these headlines weren’t just restricted to the politics or opinion pages. In the science section, an article headlined ‘Hot dogs are now considered carcinogens. Here are roughly 480 other things the WHO says might cause cancer,’ picked up over 19,000 engagements.

Another article on climate change, which ended up being on the the site’s most engaged stories of the period, was titled ‘The North Pole is an insane 36 degrees warmer than normal as winter descends’. This isn’t exactly the type of headline you’d expect in the Washington Post up until recently.

The Post accompany the links and Instant Articles with short copy, which gives enough context to the reader to avoid being seen as clickbait, while still giving a reason to read on.

3. Original Reporting Remains Key In Driving Engagements

It’s not just the headlines themselves that ensure that the Washington Post’s Facebook footprint has been growing.

For traditional news publishers like the Washington Post, the ability to report exclusive news stories that haven’t already appeared on people’s timelines and news feeds is a critical advantage in building their social audience.

Those stories made up a significant part of the Washington Post’s engagements in the last three months of the year.

How much do these stories impact on the Post’s daily Facebook engagements? By looking at the site’s daily Facebook engagements from October 1 to the second week of December through NewsWhip Analytics, you’ll notice some very obvious spikes in engagement:

We can further focus on the big bumps in engagement over different time periods. Most obvious are the three numbered bumps. In each case, each rise coincides with the publication of a heavily engaged news story. Two of those were exclusive stories.

The bump labelled “1” above can be attributed to the publication of a video where Donald Trump was recorded making lewd comments about women, a Washington Post exclusive in early October.

The second point coincides with election night and its aftermath, when Washington Post readers turned to Facebook to find news of the election, as well as reaction from analysts and opinion writers.

Finally, the third point on December 5th is attributable to the publication of an exclusive news story by the Post’s investigative team, titled “Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste,” which attracted about 300,000 engagements on Facebook.

Taken together, these climbs in engagement point to a strong level of engagement with original reporting from the Post’s audience.

Good data is vital

Beyond what we’ve outlined, there are plenty of other reasons why the Washington Post has been growing on Facebook and other platforms, and they include the smart use of native formats like live videos. But as this data shows, it’s still very possible for publishers to grow engagement with their web-based content in 2017.

The key is putting in place good social distribution strategies, and making sure that your organization can scale them effectively. To do that, having the right data to inform and guide the right newsroom decisions is vital.

Liam Corcoran is Head of Communications at NewsWhip. His analysis and opinions on news, publishing and social media are regularly featured by the likes of AdWeek, BBC, Business Insider, Digiday, Huffington Post, Mashable and Wall St Journal.

The post Here’s Why the Washington Post Is Growing On Facebook appeared first on MediaShift.

Click on the photo or here to see the full series. Creative Commons photo.

This article was originally published on the NewsWhip blog.

As we noted on the blog last week, 2016 has been a fairly turbulent year for publishers on Facebook. While engagement and use of social media generally has never been so high, publishers found it a little harder to get noticed in news feeds, and were asked questions about the relationship between their social presence and their own websites.

Despite that, there have been lots of great examples of publishers engaging with their readers (and viewers) in imaginative and innovative ways.

We didn’t pick these publishers on the basis of overall engagement alone. While consistently high engagement was a factor in deciding the winners, we looked for an overall pattern of content format experimentation and success.

We’ll keep analyzing social distribution throughout 2017. To make sure you stay ahead of the curve, subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Best Publishers on Facebook

#1 – The Huffington Post

In a year where attracting Facebook engagements on website content proved tricky at scale, the Huffington Post defied expectations.

After being briefly usurped from the top spot in June, the Huffington Post surged back clear into the lead the following month, adding 3.6 million engagements to their monthly total from June. As usual, their biggest stories were personal posts.

They’re consistently up at the top of our top Facebook publishers rankings, a constant presence since we started looking at the most engaged publishers on the platform in late 2013.

As we noted in a post earlier in the year looking at what makes for a successful Facebook headline, their most successful stories on Facebook ‘take the unique part of the personal approach and make it relatable for readers.’ Our data also shows that the Huffington Post are doing very well in terms of election coverage on social media over the last six months.

Tackling the challenges for publishers on social, the Huffington Post are staying on top of their audience in a serious way.

#2 – The Washington Post

For the Washington Post, 2016 was a banner year online. The site passed 100 million visitors in October, an all-time record and almost a 50 percent year-on-year rise.

On Facebook too, those gains were evident.

The site recorded a strong year for engagement on the platform, climbing high in our monthly rankings on a number of occasions. While there was plenty of opportunity for news-focussed publishers on social media this year, the Washington Post made the most of things. In one month alone, from July to August, they increased Facebook engagements on website-based content by almost 25 percent.

In 2016, the Washington Post made bold strides to get the most out of Facebook. The site went all-in on Instant Articles, pushing their content in front of extra eyes and into new news feeds.

Meanwhile, while their content itself has been broad, the Post’s traditionally strong political coverage makes up many of their most engaged stories and posts on the platform. Many of their journalists regularly update their own pages with specific content themes, and have also been using Facebook Live regularly.

The Washington Post shows that there’s room for legacy publishers to reinvent themselves on social media.

#3 – Goal.com

Goal have placed strongly in our rankings throughout the year, but the culmination of the Euro finals in July helped push them to their highest placing yet, in second place overall.

Goal produces an enormous amount of articles each month (almost 26,000 English language posts during July), and a very engaged Facebook audience, broken out into numerous pages, helps boost activity substantially.

Goal also shows an interesting model of granular audience development on Facebook. Their sports fanbase helps them reach very targeted fanbases, and with algorithmic changes pushing publishers in the direction of more personalised niche content, it’s a strategy that other publishers will likely be looking to emulate in 2017.

Look in the comments threads of Goal.com posts from their myriad pages for local teams, and different countries, and you’ll find plenty of passionate discussion amongst football fans.

In 2016, Goal showed that a major global publisher can successfully have a local presence on social media.

Best Instagram Publishers

 #1 – National Geographic

The National Geographic has a formidable presence on Instagram, with over 65 million followers on their flagship account.

Our database puts them as the number one most ‘liked’ publisher on Instagram since June 1, with over 690 million likes alone on their posts since then. That puts them ahead of major Instagram presences such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Bieber, and the NFL.

Photo by @daviddoubilet A tower of barracuda form a near perfect curve around a diver in Sipadan, Malaysia. Barracuda form large schools during daylight hours as a defense against predation. This species is often found swimming in circular patterns around objects in the sea. At dusk the school begins to dissolve as individuals leave to patrol for food. with @natgeo @natgeocreative @thephotosociety #ocean #extreme #life #barracuda #beauty #real for #moreocean follow @jenniferhayesig and @daviddoubilet

A photo posted by National Geographic (@natgeo) on Dec 10, 2016 at 1:52am PST

But it isn’t just engagements alone that drove National Geographic to the top of the pile. Their content strategy on the platform is enviable, and illustrates the range of the audience that publishers with access to strong visual assets can achieve with Instagram.

With a healthy number of active daily users, Instagram is certainly a platform to watch for audience development.

From a publisher perspective, there’s no better model than the National Geographic.

#2 – Fox News

When we recently looked at the rise in engagement with publisher content on Instagram, we found that Fox News managed to increase engagement on their main Facebook page by almost 200%. That’s impressive engagement for Fox, who developed a strong community in a busy year in US politics.

How did they do it? We think there’s a number of factors. First, Instagram’s rising numbers of active users exposed more and more publishers’ content in their feeds. An algorithmic change in June may also have had the effect of surfacing more posts that were being actively engaged with.

Breaking News: #JohnGlenn, the all-American #astronaut and senator who rocketed into history on flights 36 years apart as the first American to orbit the #Earth and the oldest person in #space, has died.

A photo posted by Fox News (@foxnews) on Dec 8, 2016 at 12:26pm PST

Our data showed that Fox had made much use of Instagram’s extended video clips, uploading 89 videos in September, up from 10 in January. Average engagement rates on those posts were pretty high. Plus of course, the election probably had a role to play.

At the end of 2016, Fox News is one of the most engaged news publishers on Instagram.

#3 – ESPN

Like Goal.com on Facebook, ESPN can thank a very devoted fanbase for its success on Instagram.

Their Instagram feed is a ticker feed of sports highlight from important games, as well as news updates. ESPN post very regularly on Instagram. They posted almost 700 times in the last month, making sure their posts stay relevant to their followers in crowded feeds.

It’s this consistency of output that helps their numbers, as well as the posts themselves. As well posting the popular game highlights, the ESPN team also use Instagram as a means of adding context and crucial numbers for sports fans. Captions are short and to the point, reaching their readers in the terms they’re already familiar with. And there’s no shortage of action footage.

Russ Westbrook’s season is starting to remind us of someone else’s …

A video posted by espn (@espn) on Dec 5, 2016 at 9:40am PST

Like National Geographic, ESPN reside in the very upper echelons of engagement on Instagram generally, not just for publishers.

Best New Publishers on Social Media

#1 – ATTN

ATTN (pronounced ‘Attention’) was a very visible presence on many news feeds this year.

Its founders say that its mission is to make social issues easier to understand for a millennial social media audience, specifically through the medium of Facebook videos.

And they’ve managed to make some significant engagements since they launched. Our data shows that their main Facebook page had around 4.7 million engagements on new content in November, with some of their most popular posts attracting hundreds of thousands of shares.

Bu Facebook videos aren’t the only types of posts that they’ve seen success with: their website articles have also been seeing large volumes of engagement, perhaps signaling that they’ve struck a sweet spot in terms of coverage and delivery.

Certainly one to watch in 2017.

#2 – Insider

This time last year, Insider changed its focus from another general news page to target “people who seize life rather than letting it happen to them,” says editor Nicholas Carlson.

Business Insider’s native channel, Insider, got a website of its own this year. But it still isn’t the main focus for the new outfit.

Insider was conceived as a wholly distributed channel, and their Facebook videos get enormous engagement each month. Much of their success comes from smartly editing longer, more complex stories into a short clip. Their lifestyle coverage and tips are made to be shared, and viewers have been doing so in droves. We recorded them having 4.1 million engagements on their main Facebook page in November, and many more on their various sub-pages, such as Insider Food, Invention and Design.

#3 – Great Big Story

Great Big Story are a social native publisher looking to bring the feeling of long-form content to a mobile and social audience.

That sounds tough, but by focussing on unique stories and quality production, the Turner-owned outfit succeeded in 2016.

During the summer, we talked to Great Big Story’s Director of Audience Intelligence, Khalil Jetha, about how they’ve managed to grow their audience without a website. He explained it was liberating:

“It’s a little bit liberating. For one thing, you don’t have to worry about becoming a destination. With delivery systems like Facebook, we are able to focus more on the substance and delivery of the content, rather than the distribution. Before Facebook, when we used to create things and digitally distribute, we worried more about the relevance of a specific piece.

We’d have to think about its relevance to the general populace. We’d have to think about what makes them click through to our site, find the video, and then hit play. They have to navigate through a myriad of different obstacles.”

By going after the less obvious stories on social, GBS seem to have developed an audience of their own.

What were your favourite publishers on social media this year? Let us know on Twitter.

Liam Corcoran is Head of Communications at NewsWhip. His analysis and opinions on news, publishing and social media are regularly featured by the likes of AdWeek, BBC, Business Insider, Digiday, Huffington Post, Mashable and Wall St Journal.

The post The Best Publishers of the Year on Facebook and Instagram appeared first on MediaShift.

The AT&T-Time Warner merger could be one of the biggest business news stories of the year. How did social media users react to the data on social media?

AT&T’s weekend acquisition of Time Warner, consisting of HBO, Turner Broadcasting and Warner Bros., is set to be one of the biggest business news stories of the year.

Unsurprisingly, the story blew up quickly on social media, from the rumors on Friday afternoon, through the weekend when the deal was announced and presidential candidates made statements on the deal.

Here’s how engagement around stories mentioning ‘Time Warner’ or ‘AT&T’ in the heading and subheading evolved from October 20th (before news of the potential deal emerged) to October 25th. The graph counts all engagements on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Pinterest, and comes from NewsWhip’s new Analytics tool.

When the deal was confirmed there was significant interest on Twitter, with around 225,000 tweets of stories mentioning ‘AT&T’ in the topline from October 20th to 25th. Overall, engagements on stories mentioning both brands jumped hugely on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Data again via NewsWhip Analytics:

The engagement peaked on Saturday, when the deal was confirmed.

Where did audiences turn for their merger news?

Looking at the data around individual stories, we see that the news of the deal itself was the most engaging topic, and the publishers that were best-placed to add detail and additional info early in the story cycle benefitted most.

These were the ten sites with the most engagements for stories with ‘AT&T’ or ‘Time Warner’ in the headline and subheading from October 20th to 25th.

Despite huge interest on both platforms, ultimately it was Facebook where engagement kicked in on Saturday. The top five breaking news stories (Wall Street Journal, the Verge, the New York Times, CNN Money and USA Today) made up 45% of the total engagements on the platform.

We’ve already reviewed why it can be very advantageous to publishers to break news first on social, and this example illustrates that perfectly. Overall, the biggest story of the whole deal (so far) was the Wall Street Journal’s breaking news piece on the deal.

Why did it work?

In our analysis of the most-engaged business sites on Facebook, we mentioned that the WSJ’s approach to sharing exclusives as free-to-read on social media was helping push their engagement metrics up and up. This was certainly a factor here.

Looking in Spike, we can easily track the key steps that sent the post on its way on Facebook and Twitter. Firstly, it was the earliest substantial news report on the deal that we could find. They published at 6:24 p.m. GMT, ahead of the Verge (6:39 p.m.), the New York Times (7:06 p.m.) and USA Today (7:26 p.m.). That meant that the WSJ was able to break this news first to its established social audience on different platforms ahead of everyone else.

At the same time the story went live on their site, they posted this tweet, which was retweeted over 1,800 times:

Breaking: AT&T reaches deal to buy Time Warner for more than $80 billion https://t.co/mGzzxZBZIq

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 22, 2016

Just over an hour later, the post got another huge bump when Journal staffer Todd Olmstead tweeted the link out, adding some contextual information that added depth to the story for Twitter readers:

Handy guide to who owns what https://t.co/lwkM4hJ4Lv pic.twitter.com/Tnl2oetOoS

— Todd Olmstead (@toddjolmstead) October 22, 2016

Things took a little longer to spark on Facebook, but engagements didn’t take long to accelerate. The initial post from the WSJ’s main Facebook page came around 20 minutes after their first tweet.

An hour later, the Breaking News Facebook page shared the story to their followers, creating more engagement on Facebook. But it was a share from Bernie Sanders’ official Facebook page a few hours later that really sparked an uplift in news feed visibility.

So, what can publishers learn from this? Engagement patterns on different social networks can differ, particularly on Facebook where a large audience might not see the story until a few hours after it was initially posted. But by establishing yourself as the authority around that story, you stand better-placed to capitalize on the potential engagement.

The post How the AT&T-Time Warner Merger Played Out on Social Media appeared first on MediaShift.

We already know that video is extremely popular for publishers on Facebook and Twitter. But what about Instagram?

In the six months leading up to April 2016, the time people spent watching video on Instagram increased by more than 40 percent. More and more publishers are examining how they can most effectively use video on the platform.

We took a closer look at Instagram videos in Spike to see what the most successful videos on the platform have in common.

1. Length: Stick to the point

The average length of the most shared videos is growing.

In March, Instagram raised the permissible length of a video from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. Despite this change, the most popular Instagram videos are still fairly short, our data shows.

The average length of the top 10 most ‘liked’ videos from BBC News in June was 32 seconds, our data shows. Of those 10 clips, three were the maximum 60 seconds, and they all had one thing in common: lots of stunning visual footage. Here was BBC News’ most liked Instagram video of June:

25 JUN: From kissing on the beach to smug smiles over cocktails, most couples will document their honeymoon with romantic selfies. But Japanese newlyweds Kaz and Mariko, from Kyoto, took it one step further, by taking their drone with them on their round-the-world trip. Find out more: bbc.in/dronies #Travel #Dronies #BBCShorts #BBCNews @BBCNews

A video posted by BBC News (@bbcnews) on Jun 25, 2016 at 1:19am PDT

Bleacher Report had some of the shortest videos (frequently 15 seconds or less), while maintaining the highest average engagement rate per video post in June (48,703 Likes per post).

The message is simple: Be strict in editing the footage that makes it into your Instagram video, and only use as much as you think is really worth including.

2. On-screen captions to help storytelling

One of the most common elements of Instagram videos were the on-screen captions. We’ve seen this to be the case for Facebook videos, too.

We found that captions were even more common on Instagram videos than on Facebook.

Almost all of the videos we reviewed from the BBC News profile had large on-screen captions that were very easy to read. Fox News opted for a strip across the bottom of each video, spelling out the dialogue on each clip.

Fox News Screenshot via NewsWhip

Meanwhile, NowThis prefers larger, coloured font, over-layed on the footage itself.

NowThis Screenshot via NewsWhip

3. Text captions that speak to the audience

As well as the video captions, there’s always the regular post caption that publishers still have control over. What you decide to do with your caption space depends on your audience.

Text captions on Instagram are valuable for publishers looking to expand on the post. TIME make theirs long, expanding on the story in the clip and reminding viewers to visit their site if they’d like more information.

TIME Screenshot via NewsWhip

Meanwhile, Bleacher Report’s captions were much shorter, and made abundant use of emojis.

You can use up to 2,200 characters in your Instagram captions, although you’ve got to consider how long people are going to spend reading the fairly small text on their phones.

Hashtags are particularly important, as they point Instagram users towards your clips and get new viewers involved with your posts.

It’s also important to tag any other users that might have been responsible for any of the footage you used in your clips.

4. Shapes: More square than long

Since last year, it has been possible to make landscape videos for Instagram. And while some of the videos we reviewed were in the landscape format, the vast majority of the most liked clips we looked at were square.

There could be a simple explanation for this. Square videos get more space on a person’s phone than the landscape video.

That’s not to say that the landscape option has been completely neglected. Fox News uses it extensively to share its TV clips, as does NowThis. It’s interesting to note that both of these pages caption their videos heavily, ensuring that they’re completely understandable.

It’s a good idea to experiment with the different styles to make sure that whatever the format, your viewers can easily watch and understand the video.

Do you have any tips for making the most of videos on Instagram? Let us know on Twitter, or in the comments below.

Liam Corcoran is Head of Communications at NewsWhip. His analysis and opinions on news, publishing and social media are regularly featured by the likes of AdWeek, BBC, Business Insider, Digiday, Huffington Post, Mashable and Wall St Journal.

The post 4 Tips for Successful Instagram Videos appeared first on MediaShift.

Click the image for more in this series.

This guest post was originally published on the NewsWhip blog.

To get a better understanding of what’s working with Facebook Live video, we looked at 30 days worth of live video from the New York Times and BBC News.

Since getting a boost in the news feed earlier this year, you may have noticed more clips of reporters taking questions, livestreams of press conferences, public interviews and more in your feed.

We wanted to gain a better understanding of how news broadcasters are using Facebook Live to connect with their audiences. Using NewsWhip’s social database, we looked at 30 days worth of videos posted to the main New York Times and BBC News Facebook pages. Well over 100 clips later, one thing was clear: Both publishers are putting serious resources toward live video.

In the 30 days we reviewed, the New York Times posted 40 Live videos to their main Facebook page, out of 141 in total. That number rose to 73 when we included Live videos from other NYT Facebook pages (such as NYT Video, Politics, Theatre, Style, Food and more) that were cross-posted to the main Facebook page. Other NYT pages are also using Live video heavily on their own. The Times has a contract with Facebook to produce Live videos. BBC News posted around 60 live videos to their main page in the last 30 days, or an average of two per day.

Although the subject matter of the videos varied widely, we noticed some interesting ways that the feature is being used. Here’s what we learned from looking at the output of Live videos from the New York Times and BBC News over 30 days.

1. Facebook Live gives publishers a new way of adding to news stories

The two pages we reviewed were heavily news-focused, but they also serve as hubs for other coverage for their organizations. Regardless, the most popular videos from both pages were heavily news-focused.

Our analysis showed that both the New York Times and BBC News use Live Video as a way of adding to a story that they’re already covering. Whether it’s having reporters in the field explore the implications of events like Brexit, or having senior reporters break down the context behind certain stories from the newsroom, both publishers are leveraging the format to bring the news to a social (and largely mobile) audience. In their use of Facebook Live, NPR has found the same.

The formats vary. Having reporters give their own insight and answer questions on events was popular, but reporters on the ground talking to eye-witnesses, experts and others attracted plenty of engagement.

So, what makes a good live video report?

It helps if it’s about an issue that has major relevance. For the New York Times, a majority of their live broadcasts in June focussed on events around the June 12 Orlando shooting. Their most engaged video of the period was a live interview with a survivor of the attack.

Talking to many people also seems to be a feature of these broadcasts. The most engaged BBC News Live video of the period was also related to the Orlando shooting, with a live broadcast outside a blood clinic looking for donations.

In the clip, reporter Rajini Vaidyanathan talks to numerous donors and organizers at a blood donation center, bringing the viewer on a journey through the scene that wouldn’t be practical with the constraints of a regular TV broadcast. Another clip of a BBC reporter talking to fans at Wimbledon about their thoughts on the day’s matches went on for 30 minutes.

Finally, while Facebook Live’s most famous moment to date starred just one person and a Chewbacca mask, most of the videos we looked at required more resources.

While successful Live videos are possible to pull off solo, many of the videos we reviewed had a minimum of two (video and audio, plus presenter) on the ground, plus others choosing the best of the questions in real time and promoting the stream and posting information in the comments on Facebook itself. It doesn’t take the high production standards of live TV, but going live in front of thousands of people and making sure everything goes smoothly still takes a bit of planning.

2. From drones to quizzes, new Live formats are being tested heavily

Our analysis proves that Live video lends itself to lots of creativity.

As well as the more ‘traditional’ piece-to-camera type videos, the Times also experimented with live drone footage, streamed panels, public interviews and even a live music performance in the 30 days we reviewed.

Each of these clips had solid engagement rates, but didn’t break into the top tiers. Yet their consistently high view counts indicated that they have lasting appeal. The challenge for publishers with live interviews and personalities is to try and ensure that the subject matter is targeted as closely as possible to the right audience.

Other formats, however, have more potential to be appealing to wider audiences. Check out this live drone footage that the New York Times posted of a flyover of a Chinese national park:

One NYT experiment saw them challenge viewers to see if they were ‘smarter than a New York Times journalist‘ in a live quiz. Another interesting take was a live drawing of the day’s news by artist Christopher Niemann. Meanwhile, BBC News’ ‘Fact Check’ team answered viewers’ questions about the UK’s EU referendum live, the day before the vote.

It’s clear that there are attempts to find the sweet spot for Live video. Figuring out the user experience and preferences are key. Are the audience happy to listen into a 60 minute-plus interview? Or would they prefer watching stunning footage explained to them in real time? More experimentation is necessary.

3. The length of the videos depends on the subject matter

It’s obvious that Live videos are going to be longer than the standard pre-made clips, which we’ve seen be successful when quite short.

The main appeal of Live videos is that they’re actually live, and so there’s a reason that they may do better the longer they go on. But ultimately, it’s down to what they’re about.

Looking at the Times’ Live output, the panels we looked at went on for over an hour each, but they were at the very upper-end of the scale. Here’s how long the NYT’s most engaged Live videos ran over the 30 days:

1. Interview with Orlando shooting survivor: 31 minutes, 19 seconds
2. A Times editor explains what happened in the shooting: 11:02
3. Drone footage of Chinese national park: 17:21
4. A Times journalist reports on flooding in Paris: 18:14
5. A Times journalist reports from New York’s Pride Parade: 12:00

Many of the BBC’s on-the-street pieces came in at around 30 minutes long.

While Facebook recommends a five-minute minimum, all the Facebook Live videos we reviewed from the New York Times and BBC News went on for significantly longer than that.

4. Social media editors are really getting involved in the comments

While many social media editors are used to jumping into comments of Facebook posts, the comment sections of Live video posts take on a new importance.

The comment section can add important context or clarity for some of the videos, and can direct interested viewers to relevant related posts on your site. Our analysis showed that the comment sections were being utilized much more frequently by social media editors with live video, in a variety of ways.

The New York Times used the comment section to engage with viewers on a live drawing video:

BBC News helped explain the context of the video to viewers that were joining late. This allows new viewers to quickly tune into the conversation:

In the comment section of a live interview with the actor Jude Law, the Times’ social media team linked to relevant stories on their website. This was a common tactic that allowed the viewer to learn more about the story:

While back on the BBC’s page, the comment section acted as a useful platform for apology when one subject forgot interview etiquette:

We’ll continue to analyze how publishers and brands are using Live Video to attract engagement, so be sure to subscribe to our blog for new updates. In the meantime, let us know if you have any observations in the comments below, or on Twitter.

Liam Corcoran is Head of Communications at NewsWhip. His analysis and opinions on news, publishing and social media are regularly featured by the likes of AdWeek, BBC, Business Insider, Digiday, Huffington Post, Mashable and Wall St Journal.

The post What NewsWhip Learned From Analyzing 30 Days of Facebook Live Videos appeared first on MediaShift.

We look at three key areas content creators should be focusing on following Facebook’s news feed updates.

By now, many of you will have read about Facebook’s news feed updates, which were made public this week.

As well as listing News Feed Values, there was also some news for publishers about how content is to be displayed in the news feed.

These updates are among the most significant for publishers that we’ve seen. However, while this is obviously big news for many different sites and online news providers, those with strong audience development strategies won’t be too worried. From now on, here’s what Facebook says the news feed will particularly value.

• Friends and family posts. “Our top priority is keeping you connected to the people, places and things you want to be connected to — starting with the people you are friends with on Facebook.” Increasingly, those posts will be towards the top of users’ feeds.
• Informative posts. But not just from friends and family. “This could be a post about a current event, a story about your favorite celebrity, a piece of local news, or a recipe,” says the statement.
• Entertaining posts. Again, these posts can come from a range of sources, from friends’ photos to a backstage live video from a famous TV anchor.

It’s important to note that this announcement does not signal anything like a wholesale depreciation of news content on Facebook. Strong stories that are interesting, original and well-packaged resonate like few other posts on social media, and it’s hard to see that changing in the short term. As an example, see the reaction to BuzzFeed’s recent publication of a rape victim’s courtroom impact statement or the New York Times’ gun control editorial after the San Bernardino shootings, each of which attracted hundreds of thousands of engagements. As long Facebook users continue to engage with and share these types of stories, it’s unlikely that they’ll be completely demoted in news feeds. Indeed, if the algorithm deems these stories to be particularly ‘informative’, they may perform even stronger.

What is likely to change is the way that readers find those stories. The update means that what your friends post will have even more resonance in your feed, while pages that you like, but don’t interact with all that much will probably do a disappearing act.

With that in mind, here are three things that we think publishers should be focusing on.

Photo by Bhupinder Nayyar and used here with Creative Commons license.

1) “Organic” engagement is the best way to break into the news feed

The first value that Facebook outlines looks to make the news feed a more personable experience for each user. Stories that are shared directly to a friend’s page or directly to the news feed are more likely to be surfaced.

The idea is that a user may be more inclined to stop and read a story if it’s posted by their friend, rather than a page. For publishers that already see healthy levels of ‘organic sharing’ (such as use of share buttons), this won’t be an issue. Other publishers will need to think about how important their main Facebook page is in delivering engagements and clicks overall. Are people finding your content on your site and through friends’ sharing habits, or is it overwhelmingly through your main Facebook pages?

Your main Facebook page should be treated as a strategic distribution point. Many publishers will have worked hard to build a large fan base on their main page, and that is often a source of pride. But social media teams will understand that not every one of those fans is going to see everything your page posts. Given the competition for space in news feeds, it’s prudent to think about how relevant each post is to the wider audience. Hot-button topics that unite the varied interests of your audience? Probably. More obscure features that speak to a very specific readership? Maybe not.

You should see your main page as a flagship account, broadcasting the best of your content with an analytics-driven approach.

Screenshot of New York Times Gun Editorial on Facebook

2) Look to engagement metrics to help inform strategy

Sites of all types will be familiar with using different analytics to help figure out how their site’s content has performed. Now, engagement analytics can help give publishers more guidance on Facebook, too.

Facebook anticipates that the update “may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages.” If you’re unsure as to how much of an impact the changes are going to have, careful analysis of your analytics over the next few months will be important. One way of doing this is by figuring out how your total likes and shares are growing over time, with the aim of emulating the successes and learning from the underachieving posts.

At NewsWhip, we track and log all likes, shares, comments and other reactions on Facebook posts and web-based stories, allowing us to pinpoint what’s working on the platform in terms of content. Our clients use our data to figure out which of their stories and posts performed strongest on Facebook over specific periods, and how they’re doing against their competitors.

By looking at the structure of stories that attracted high levels of shares, it’s possible to learn more about the type of stories that perform particularly strongly on Facebook.

Screenshot of Bild Facebook pages courtesy of NewsWhip.

3) Establishing a niche audience becomes even more important

If there’s one thing that the digital media wars have taught us over the last few years, it’s that specialization matters.

That means providing a very high level of expertise in specific areas, like the Financial Times, or creating must-reads for your target audience, like Politico.

At NewsWhip, our clients stress the importance of getting close to their audience as a number one factor in their editorial decisions. To that end, we’ve seen Bild in Germany break out their content streams by page in an effort to really connect with their more niche audiences. Meanwhile, CNN en Español have a social trends team that monitors what their online readers are sharing and talking about around the clock.

By listening closely to what your readers connect with each day, there’s a better chance that they’re going to feel inclined to pass your stories on to their wider network. Publishers need to home in more and more on the content topics and themes that their readers are interested in talking about, as well as when they’re interested in them. As the News Feed Values manifesto states, “authentic stories are the ones that resonate most.” A combination of good editorial judgement and distribution savvy is needed.

For anyone interested in cultivating a loyal online audience, those steps will continue to resonate.

Liam Corcoran is Head of Communications at NewsWhip. His analysis and opinions on news, publishing and social media are regularly featured by the likes of AdWeek, BBC, Business Insider, Digiday, Huffington Post, Mashable and Wall St Journal.

The post 3 Tips for Publishers in Wake of Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm Change appeared first on MediaShift.