News organizations are getting more scientific about studying the value of the online readers they are hooking through social media services like Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc., as they seek new ways to exploit the channels without cannibalizing their businesses.
A story by Jessica E. Vascellaro at wsj.com reports Sports Illustrated is researching the habits of its 1.2 million Twitter followers through informal surveys and polls, and examining what they click on. Kenneth Fuchs, vice president of digital for Sports Illustrated Group, says he hopes the work will help the company build products that resonate with its core fans.
The Time Warner Inc. magazine is also tracking the impact of stories that spread virally, such as a recent project on the best NFL performers by jersey number.
At the Washington Post, managing editor Raju Narisetti says his team is looking for patterns that could illuminate whether certain types of stories are more appealing to audiences in social networks than on other sites but that it is "very early in the game."
The paper has started compiling a daily tracking report showing what social networks are driving audiences to the Post and what those users are reading. "The cause and effect" of how an action from the Post, such as tweeting a story, affects the story's viewership is still "fuzzy," Mr. Narisetti said, "but over time, it will get better."
The efforts come as publications are reporting surging traffic from social media, as they rush to load up their sites with new tools that encourage readers to share their content among friends on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Google and others.
Forty-two percent of social-networking users regularly or sometimes get their news through social-networking sites, according to a report released this week by the Pew Media Center. That is leaving some publishers with the sense that they are better off trying to reach users where they are congregating than trying to corral them on their site.
News companies have been pursuing a more metrics-driven approach to disseminating their stories for years. To date, they have often focused on quantifying the impact of search traffic, studying what keywords usually land people at their sites.
Read more here.
No comments:
Post a Comment