Publisher Survey: Reddit Traffic Way Up, Digg Way Down

by Adam Sherk on January 25, 2012

Reddit and Digg logo

The rise of Reddit and the steady decline of Digg have been well documented. Just recently Reddit announced that its traffic has more than doubled in less than a year (to 2.07 billion pageviews in December), an impressive feat.

Has this translated into a significant change in social news referrals for publishers?

Anecdotally we’ve all seen Reddit gain in prominence at a time when Digg has struggled to maintain its relevancy. Adam Singer summed up the general sentiment in recent conversation we had on Twitter:

“Reddit / Stumble won.”

I wanted to get a better idea of just how much of a shift has occurred with some of the publishers that we work with at Define Media Group. So I pulled the 2009-2011 Reddit and Digg referral figures for selection of 12 major magazine and Web-only content sites. [click to continue…]

News Organizations on Google+: Which Pages Get the Most Engagement?

by Adam Sherk on January 10, 2012

Google+ logo

News organizations (along with businesses of all kinds) have been able to create official Google+ pages for a couple months now so I thought I’d check in and see how their pages are doing.

I’m going to forgo looking at which media outlets have attracted the largest following since that data becomes quickly outdated.

Instead I’ll focus on some basic signals of user activity and engagement: the number of 1+’s, shares and comments on each page. [click to continue…]

My Top Posts of 2011 on SEO, PR and Social Media for Publishers

December 21, 2011
Thumbnail image for My Top Posts of 2011 on SEO, PR and Social Media for Publishers

As another year comes to a close I thought I’d finish off with a roundup of this year’s most popular posts. Original idea! Nevertheless, here are my top 10 posts of 2011 by pageviews:

Beyond Facebook Insights: Useful Facebook Analytics Tools

December 12, 2011
Thumbnail image for Beyond Facebook Insights: Useful Facebook Analytics Tools

What are the best third-party tools for advanced Facebook analytics? It’s a question I’m asked fairly often so I thought I’d do a round-up of options that are worth checking out. It is fair to say that Facebook is getting better at providing this data itself; the latest version of Facebook Insights offers a wider [...]

Pinterest: Great Opportunity for Lifestyle Publishers and Brands

November 21, 2011
Thumbnail image for Pinterest: Great Opportunity for Lifestyle Publishers and Brands

Pinterest is getting a lot of attention these days and deservedly so. The photo and video sharing site offers great opportunities for promoting lifestyle content and reaching niche audiences and specific demographics. Need a primer on Pinterest? Kerry Jones did an excellent one on the BlueGlass blog: Everything You Need to Know About Pinterest. While [...]

Does Google Freshness Update Make Online Reputation Management More Difficult?

November 14, 2011

Google’s recent algorithm change that favors the most recent content for certain types of queries offers good opportunities for news and content sites. But for individuals and organizations, does the freshness update make online reputation management more difficult? If you cover breaking news, hot topics or regularly occurring events the freshness update will create more [...]

Journalists on Facebook: Official Pages or Subscribe Button on Regular Profiles?

October 26, 2011
Thumbnail image for Journalists on Facebook: Official Pages or Subscribe Button on Regular Profiles?

I was talking with John Shehata from ABC News yesterday about Facebook, and he brought up an interesting question. What’s a better approach for journalists, creating official Facebook Pages or enabling the subscribe button on their regular profiles? Facebook is certainly encouraging the use of the new subscribe button. Journalists were specifically referenced in the [...]

Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips

October 18, 2011

Press release optimization doesn’t get the attention it once did, at least within the SEO community. But a considerable number of releases are distributed over the wires and added to online pressrooms every day, so it is still an important tactic for PR professionals. Why wouldn’t you try to increase the search engine visibility of [...]

The Washington Post Social Reader on Facebook: Good First Impression, Good User Experience

September 28, 2011
Thumbnail image for The Washington Post Social Reader on Facebook: Good First Impression, Good User Experience

Based on first impressions, I have to say I like The Washington Post’s Social Reader on Facebook. It offers a clean, simple user experience – big and open with lots of white space (in fact too big to capture well in a screenshot): (click to enlarge) There are enough additional sources to offer a wide [...]

Hey, I Got the Lead Sentence in a Spammy Scraper Article

September 14, 2011

When I got a Google Alert that my name appeared in an article on NFL jerseys, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Perhaps a reference to one of my social media super bowl posts? Nope! Instead it seems I’d been given the honor of being in the first sentence of a spam article [...]

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