I have done several posts on news organizations and Facebook recently so I thought it was time to switch things up and look at Twitter again. There is of course much more to the social media universe than just The Bobbsey Twins. But Twitter, Facebook in some cases Digg still represent the majority of social media referrals to many news sites, so they continue to be a priority.

Since I have ranked news sites in various areas in the past (Facebook Pages, page speed and domain authority) I thought I’d do something similar for their Twitter profiles. The easiest thing to compare is reach based on Twitter followers and I’ve included that data below. But which news sites are making the most of their Twitter presence?

To help answer that question I used Twitalyzer to evaluate the main Twitter profile of 30+ major news organizations including a mix of newspapers, magazines, TV and online-only outlets. There are many different Twitter analysis tools out there but I’ve seen Twitalyzer mentioned several times recently so I decided to try it out.

The data point they make available without a subscription is called “Impact.” Impact is calculated by combining the following factors:

• The number of followers a user has
• The number of unique references and citations of the user in Twitter
• The frequency at which the user is uniquely retweeted
• The frequency at which the user is uniquely retweeting other people
• The relative frequency at which the user posts updates

A paid Twitalyzer account also provides Influence and Engagement scores which would be interesting to look at another time.

Please accept the usual caveats about the accuracy of the data, methodology of the tool, etc. What I am most interested in is making a relative comparison between the various news sites. With that in mind, here are the main Twitter profiles for 30+ news organizations ranked by Impact score:

@nytimes takes #1 by a small margin, but the top nine Twitter profiles are all closely bunched together with Impact scores between 75.8% and 78.5%. Starting with #10 things begin to drop off. At the bottom of the table poor @BW, @csmonitoronline and @aolnews each got scores below 10%.

I thought @ColonelTribune would have scored much higher than 23% since they have a decent number of followers and it is a dynamic, popular Twitter profile. It is also interesting that despite that low score the profile is still in the 99.4th percentile:

Perhaps @ColonelTribune is more popular among industry professionals (as an example of a great Twitter persona) than typical users and news consumers. Or maybe Twitalyzer missed the boat on that one. What do you think?

UPDATE:
Jeff Katz, Twitalyzer’s Product Lead, gave me some more information on how Impact scores are calculated and how this would factor into @ColonelTribune’s 23%:

“As you pointed in your post, the Impact score is calculated (and weighted) based on a few variables. While I would have to dig in a bit further, I did notice that @ColonelTribune does many things well on Twitter, but he (or she) does not retweet others, which is one of the factors of the Impact score. In fact, @ColonelTribune only RT’d someone else just once in the past 90 days. That said, @ColonelTribune is in the 99.4th % in terms of Impact and given that it is the only regional account (kind of hard to argue that NY Times is not a bigger national and international account) in the top 25 speaks volume.”

So specific to Impact, it is important not only to retweet but to retweet others as well. This also shows that despite its lack of retweeting and the fact that the Chicago Tribune is somewhat regional in nature (they do also compete for national news online) @ColonelTribune has done well to reach the 99.4th percentile.

Jeff also pointed out that because the free version of Twitalyzer is an on-demand service they only processes scores when someone manually requests a particular profile to be updated. This has an impact on the way the various metrics are calculated. The scores are based on 30 day averages, so profiles that are updated more often are working with a larger data set than profiles that may have been updated only once. So the number of times that @ColonelTribune has been updated in the last 30 days will also factor into its Impact score and other metrics.

Related posts:

1. Diversified Twitter Strategies for News Sites
2. Twitter Suggested Users – Today’s Studio 54 Velvet Rope
3. Fortune 100 Need to Get More Creative with Twitter

Between privacy issues, a sweaty CEO and technical problems with its “Like” buttons Facebook is having a rough time lately. But Facebook Pages remain a key audience development and content promotion opportunity for publishers so it is important to make the most of them. A good way to enhance Facebook Pages is by using Static FBML to customize tabs for an improved visual experience and greater functionality.

I have seen plenty of blog posts and conference presentations on how to utilize Static FBML but I rarely see news sites highlighted among the examples of good usage. So I thought I’d take a look at a selection of news organizations to see how many are taking advantage of FBML.

The short answer? Not so many. I revisited the 25 pages covered in Which News Sites Have the Most Valuable Facebook Pages? and found that the majority are making little or no use of Static FBML. There are a handful of examples however that are worth pointing out.

The Economist

The Economist has multiple customized tabs for subscription, featured articles and a news quiz:

Fox News

Fox News offers a more visual and interactive experience through its “Fun Stuff” tab:

Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune uses a welcome tab to highlight sections and features from its main site:

Yahoo! News

Compare the Fox News and Chicago Tribune tabs to Yahoo! News‘ welcome tab, which could certainly use a bit more pizzazz:

To be fair Yahoo! News is just using the welcome tab to establish some rules of conduct. But I think there is a middle ground between the Fox News and Yahoo! News tabs that would work well for most organizations.

The New York Times

I did not see any custom tabs on The New York Times page this week but in the past they have added them for major events such as the Winter Olympics:

Newsweek and Time

In going through the Facebook Pages I also noticed that several organizations are utilizing professional applications from Involver for things like Twitter and news feed integration, as seen in these examples from Newsweek and Time:

I don’t know much about Involver but it looks like they offer some good options for companies that prefer to outsource.

So the bottom line is that news organizations are dabbling with Static FBML on their Facebook Pages but few are doing anything that is noteworthy. Much of what I came across will not be particularly compelling to users or do much to drive repeat visits.

News sites have a big advantage over other companies on Facebook because they regularly produce breaking news and other forms of quality content that can be featured on their pages and placed in user news feeds. So perhaps they have less of a need to add extra bells and whistles. But the average Facebook user is only going to “Like” so many news pages so it is important to offer a strong user experience and stand out from the competition.

For more information on using Static FBML check out:

• How to Customize Your Facebook Page Using Static FBML
• How To Create the Perfect Facebook Fan Page
• Facebook Static FBML FAQ / Tutorial

Related posts:

1. Which News Sites Have the Most Valuable Facebook Pages?
2. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?
3. News Sites on Twitter: Who is Making the Most Impact?

Maintaining a Facebook Page is now a fundamental part of most news organizations’ social media presence. News sites utilize Facebook Pages to increase brand visibility, promote content, interact with users and drive traffic back to their main sites. But how much are these pages really worth to them, and which news sites are getting the most value for their efforts?

Only the news organizations themselves can fully answer that question; their own analytics data combined with internal estimates of the value of fans and various actions will paint the clearest picture. But when I came across Vitrue’s new Social Page Evaluator I thought it would be interesting to compare ballpark valuation figures for selection of major news sites.

The Social Page Evaluator (SPE) provides an estimated “Annual Page Value” for any single Facebook Page based on the last 30 days of activity. According to its disclaimer the SPE factors in fan count, user activity, brand activity and “a proprietary engagement multiplier” and then calculates an “Earned Media Value” using a default CPM of $5. The CPM can be adjusted between $1 and $25.

While the methodology and accuracy can be debated the tool does offer way to make a relative comparison of various Facebook Pages, so that is all I am attempting to do.

Here is a ranking of major news organization Facebook Pages based on activity in the last 30 days and using the default $5 CPM:

CNN earns the #1 spot by a considerable margin but The New York Times, Fox News and NPR also have impressive valuations.

In looking at the table, total number of fans certainly plays a large role but posts and interactions matter too. Fox News getting 67,808 interactions from just 41 posts is impressive, although the quality of those interactions is not measured. I had previously pointed out the high level of engagement that Fox News gets on its Facebook page; this data supports that further.

Additional Notes

I also wanted to point out a few things that I noticed while doing the analysis.

CBS News and Reuters are the only two news organizations in the group that have not created a short, customized URL for their page (e.g. www.facebook.com/nytimes):

That is a missed opportunity.

While on Facebook, the page URL shown to users in the browser changes radically depending on how it was navigated to. For example when I went to the CNN page by searching “CNN” while on the Fox News page I ended up on this URL:

There are multiple combinations that can occur. If you paste those funky URLs into a new browser tab they redirect to a better URL (in the CNN example www.facebook.com/cnn?ref=ts). But it is still not the main URL for the page and the redirects themselves do not appear to be permanent.

Also for Facebook Pages that were set with capital letters in the name (e.g. www.facebook.com/TheEconomist) the lower case version has a 302 redirect:

The same is true for capitalized URLs that were set in lower case.

So to minimize user confusion and maximize inbound links to the actual Facebook Page URL it is a good idea to display the main URL in a couple places on the page.

Some organizations do this on their Info tab:

Related posts:

1. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?
2. News Sites Not Making Much Use of Static FBML on Facebook Pages
3. A Closer Look at Fan Engagement on the Fox News Facebook Page

So Lebron and Kobe may (or may not) be heading towards a much-hyped NBA Finals matchup, but the real question on fans’ minds is: Which NBA playoff teams have the most user engagement on their Facebook Pages?

Ok fans could care less about that, but for myself and some sports and social media marketers out there it’s an interesting question.

In my post on the most popular NBA teams on Twitter and Facebook (and the more recent one on MLB teams) I looked strictly at the following each team has built up. This time I’ll compare user engagement on each team’s Facebook page.

With the second round of the playoffs recently under way I thought now was a good time to pull the numbers since all 16 teams were still recently active. So I checked the number of likes and comments for each team’s last 10 updates. I was going to go back to the first day of the playoffs but that turned out to be quite a few updates, so I’m using 10 as a representative sample.

I realize that counting likes and comments is a very limited measurement of engagement but it offers a simple way to compare user activity on each team’s Facebook Page.

So here are the 16 NBA playoff teams ranked by the average number of likes and comments on their last 10 updates (through Monday night prior to the start of any games):

The Lakers are dominating but more fans mean more opportunities for engagement so they do have an advantage. Denver makes a strong showing at #2 despite having fewer fans than four other teams. Orlando having a long lay-off between the first and second rounds had a negative impact on their numbers. Their most recent 10 updates got limited feedback but the 10 before that fared much better.

Oklahoma City was a surprise at #15; I expected them to do better after their impressive effort in the first round. The Charlotte Bobcats came in last – unless they can get Michael Jordan to start making updates they’ve got their work cut out for them.

So what types of updates drew the most user feedback? Here are the wall posts that received the most likes for each team:

Related posts:

1. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
2. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?
3. A Closer Look at Fan Engagement on the Fox News Facebook Page

There has been a lot of news and reaction around Facebook’s new additions to the Facebook Platform: Social Plugins, the Open Graph protocol and the Graph API. News and content sites are a natural fit for participation and Facebook is encouraging news site adoption by showcasing sites that are already experimenting with it. So I thought I’d take a look at some early examples of Facebook Open Graph integration on news sites.

(You can jump to the end for the Takeaways).

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post has added a “Hot on Facebook” module to its home page and in a sidebar on posts:

I like this and think it will do a good job of encouraging user clicks, similar to the Digg widget that has worked well on news sites. Seeing that stories have been liked thousands of times certainly caught my interest.

They have also added the Like button to their post template:

At least to-date a prominent Share button is still present too. Users may be unsure which button to use, and since the like and share numbers are different it creates the impression of things being out of sync (even though they are two different things). Add in the Facebook chiclet below the headline and I’d say they are going a little overboard:

I’m also not sure why the Hot on Facebook module shows 4,241 likes while the post itself shows only 1,363.

Time.com

Time.com is selectively applying the Like button in the “Must Reads” module on its home page:

It is not clear why in this particular case only one of four stories has the button. And interestingly when you click through on that story the Like button does not appear on the page:

Since this is a blog post it is likely that Time just hasn’t rolled out integration across all editorial templates yet.

The Like button does appear on their article template:

But at least on my computer it was a little slow to load, and once loaded it added some extra white space before the start of the editorial text. Like The Huffington Post there are also competing Facebook buttons at work.

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is using Facebook to create a branded featured called Network News that takes the form of a small widget on their home page and on editorial templates:

This looks like a nice, simple, useful integration but apparently it has caused user uproar to the point where they had to add an opt-out feature to the widget (the red X):

Over the weekend the situation was serious enough that they felt the need to feature an article explaining the widget and how to opt-out right at the top of their home page:

CNN.com

CNN.com has a “Friends Activity” module on their home page which shows stories that friends liked and those shared in high volume:

Clicking on “View more friends’ activity” brings up a full page version with more links and friend information:

As for button integration on articles, CNN has decided to go with “recommend” instead of “like”:

It would be interesting to learn what impact that difference in language has on usage.

Takeaways

• At this early stage news sites are still experimenting with various forms of integration, location and functionality. Start simple to see how users respond and measure the impact on Facebook referrals.




• Many users are still unfamiliar with the new offerings and concerns about privacy seem to be a common first reaction. So tread carefully and provide clear instructions, settings and (when relevant) opt-out functionality.




• Consider the impact that Facebook Open Graph protocol integration will have on your existing on-site community features and social functionality. This ReadWriteWeb article is a good resource: Facebook Open Graph: The Definitive Guide For Publishers, Users and Competitors.




• When adding to editorial templates make sure the new Like button compliments any existing Facebook implementations. Avoid button overkill and the potential user confusion that goes with it.




• It is also important to note that the Like button functions differently than the various Share buttons that many sites are already using, and at least in its basic form creates a less compelling output. (See Facebook Like Button Vs. Facebook Share: Why I’m Keeping Both from Danny Sullivan). Using the XFBML version instead of an iFrame allows for more customization.




• Carefully monitor the effect of any integration on page load time. Site speed is now a ranking factor so this impacts SEO as well as usability.




• Not covered in my examples above is the fact that Open Graph protocol can also provide sites with additional reporting data. This Inside Facebook post has the details: With the Open Graph Protocol, Any URL Can Be Treated Just Like a Facebook Page

Related posts:

1. News Sites Not Making Much Use of Static FBML on Facebook Pages
2. Google Buzz and News Sites: Good Potential But Facebook Still the Better Play
3. An Early Look at News Media Twitter Lists: Not Much Traction

A new baseball season is underway and we are in that wonderfully brief period when fans all over the country still believe this could actually be the year for their team. Enjoy it while you can.

But while major market teams have a big advantage in the real game, social media is the great equalizer online, so I thought I’d see which teams have attracted the largest following on Twitter and Facebook. After getting good response to the posts I did on NFL and NBA teams I wanted to add MLB to the mix.

So without further ado here are the 30 Major League Baseball teams, ranked by total number of Twitter followers and Facebook fans:

I’ll add the usual caveats: these numbers change very quickly but I find taking a snapshot at various points useful for comparison (perhaps I’ll update this at the All Star break and the end of the season). And of course social media is not a popularity contest; it’s how you engage your followers/fans that really matters. But reach has value too and I like to see which teams are faring best in that area.

Baseball is a game of statistics after all, so looking at numbers seems fitting. I could take it further and come up with analogies for batting average and on-base percentage like average tweets per day or retweet percentages, but maybe another time.

Not surprisingly the Yankees and Red Sox are at the top of the standings, although Boston is far behind the Yankees and Phillies in Twitter followers. I believe that playing in the World Series got the Yankees and Phillies added to the previous version of Twitter’s Suggested Users list, which is likely why their numbers are so much higher.

In looking at the figures above, it is clear that teams are attracting much larger audiences through Facebook than Twitter at this point.

On a different note, if I was the Detroit Tigers I’d get in touch with Facebook. While the Tigers fan page has 248k+ fans, as of today the only page Facebook search shows for “Detroit Tigers” is an unofficial, outdated page with 841 fans:

Even clicking “See More Results” doesn’t surface the real page – I had to use Google to find it.

As Markus points out in the comments below, the problem with Facebook search and the Detroit Tigers page was actually that I used the misspelling “Detriot” in my search query. Pretty embarrassing. I guess I can salvage things by using this to point out that Facebook search needs to do a better job of understanding the user intent behind common misspellings!

Related posts:

1. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
2. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. NBA Playoff Teams Ranked by Facebook Page Engagement

It has been a couple months since Google Social Search was made available in beta to all users on Google.com, so I thought I would revisit it from a marketing perspective.

As I covered when Social Search initially launched in Google Labs, for companies the main objective in social search optimization is to get included in their target audiences’ social circles. That’s great for marketers, but is it what Google wants?

On The Current State of Social Search panel at SMX West a few weeks ago, I asked Johanna Wright, Google’s Director of Product Management, Web Search, about this. Johanna said she could understand why brands would want to connect with users through Social Search, but that Google had developed it with individuals in mind, not companies.

Thus there isn’t any type of official Google profile for companies as there is with Facebook Pages or branded YouTube channels. It is still possible for a company to set up a Google profile; Tad Miller offered tips on this last year. But the lack of an official corporate option complicates the process for businesses, particularly if someone else has already created a Gmail account with their brand. Danny Sullivan wrote about this in connection with Google Buzz last month.

Despite these challenges companies are experimenting with Social Search and the launch of Google Buzz has increased the number of brands setting up Google profiles, particularly news and content sites. But ultimately what companies need is for users to connect with them through various social media outlets and then link to those accounts from their own Google profiles.

So how well does this translate into brand visibility in Google Social Search?

To get a sense of how it’s working, I took a look at my own social circle and Social Search results. I follow a number of different news sites (and other companies) on Twitter, Facebook and other social media, and each of those accounts is linked on my Google Profile. I’m also subscribed to 368 feeds in Google Reader including a wide range of blogs and news sites. So in theory I should have as good a chance as anyone of having brands and especially news sites in my social circle.

In the current “snapshot” of my social circle there are 432 direct connections and 28 secondary connections. Of those 460 connections, 67 are companies, news sites or blogs, roughly 15%. (This information is available by clicking the “My social circle” link above your social results or going directly to this page while signed into your Google account).

So while Google created Social Search with individuals in mind, at least in my own experience brands are not specifically being excluded although they are certainly a minority.

I was also curious how Google Social Search was connecting me to the 67 non-individuals. Here’s the breakdown:

• Twitter 42
• FriendFeed 19
• Digg 4
• Flickr 2

At least in my case, following a brand on Twitter offers the best chance of having them added to my social circle. Content included in my social results through Google Reader subscriptions is not covered in Google’s social circle snapshot so I can’t tie any numbers to that.

Of the 67 brands in my social circle, only five are major news sites or magazines: The Huffington Post, Sports Illustrated, Real Simple, Business Insider and Hürriyet (a national newspaper in Turkey). I’m not sure why these five made the cut. At least to-date the only one that frequently pops up in my social results is Sports Illustrated, but it is nearly always just a link to their SI_24Seven Twitter profile, or one of its Twitter Lists, as seen in these results for “nba”:

(By the way…go Bulls!)

In a couple months of checking I’ve never had a SI.com article appear in my social results. I can get the other four news sites to surface for branded searches, but I’ve yet to see them come up for any non-branded queries. That seems odd since all five produce content every single day and I’m often shown outdated or not fully relevant listings from other members of my social circle. But I think this is more related to Social Search still being an early beta product than content from brands being intentionally de-emphasized.

The bottom line: Google Social Search does offer opportunities for brands, but it is still early days and the results are mixed at best. In addition, having a news site in your social circle via Twitter does not necessarily mean that actual editorial content from the site will be included in your social results. But as the overall quality of Social Search improves I expect this to get better. And hopefully Google will decide to offer Google profiles for companies in the future.

How often are you seeing content from brands in your Social Search results?

Related posts:

1. Google Social Search: Are You in Your Target Audiences’ Social Circles?
2. Google Buzz and News Sites: Good Potential But Facebook Still the Better Play
3. Google Living Stories – Just Snazzy Topic Pages or is Google onto Something?

For my presentation on Twitter Marketing Tactics at SMX West this week I wanted to get a sense of just how much traffic Twitter is driving to major news sites. So I conducted an informal poll of 10 US newspaper and magazine sites that Define works with or I am friendly with.

The surveyed group included a mix of sites covering general and breaking news as well as specific topics such as lifestyle, sports or entertainment. Most organizations prefer to keep their figures private so I’m not able to share the actual sites but they are all well-known brands. I looked at referral data for 2008, 2009 and 2010 to-date and for comparison also included Facebook and Digg.

So what percentage of total site traffic came from Twitter and the other social sites? Here are the group averages:

To-date in 2010 Twitter represents an average of 0.7% of total site traffic.

10 newspaper and magazines sites is not a sufficient sample so take this survey for what it is, but the data does provide a rough idea of what major publishers are experiencing. Among the surveyed sites the highest Twitter percentage was 2.9% but the majority fell below 1%. The highs for Facebook and Digg were 2% and 7.2% respectively. The Digg percentages varied the most with straight news sites faring best.

Some notes:

• While all of the surveyed sites have some form of social media strategy none of them are doing as much as they could be. So these figures represent the experiences of typical news sites, not ones that have fully dialed in SMM.




• Despite the low percentages, to-date this year Twitter and Facebook are top 25 referrers for all of the sites and top 10 referrers for most. It is interesting that a top 10 referrer can represent such a small percentage of total site traffic. But since total monthly traffic for most of the group is in the millions, tens of millions or more those small percentages do represent substantial numbers. And if social media is bringing in traffic that the sites might not have otherwise received that’s a nice bump.




• Well-established brands still get a large portion of their traffic via direct navigation. Among the sites surveyed the figures ranged from 30-60%. Partnerships with other large content sites and cross-network promotions were another major driver.




• Natural search engine referrals ranged from about 10% to over 40% and Google.com was the #1 or #2 referring domain for nearly every site. So despite all the attention that social media deservedly gets, search is still its daddy.




• It is interesting that Digg is trending down this year. Not every site in the group was a natural fit for Digg and we are still in Q1 2010 so it is difficult to draw any strong conclusions. But even among the sites that do very well in Digg the numbers have dropped.

REQUEST:

I’d like to expand the size of the survey group, so if any newspaper or magazine professionals out there are willing to share their percentages it will be much appreciated. You can contact me via this form or direct message me on Twitter. Your anonymity will be maintained. Alternatively if anyone is willing to share their figures publicly please leave a comment below. Thanks!

Related posts:

1. Social Media Visitors More Loyal But Still a Very Small Percentage of Site Traffic
2. Hitwise Reports News and Media’s Share of Search-Referred Traffic Declining
3. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook

In working on my presentation for the Twitter Marketing Tactics session at SMX West next week I’ve been looking at the various types of share and retweet buttons used on news sites.

I’m partial to the Tweetmeme button, although displaying the number of tweets is a double-edged sword. It looks great when there are a lot of retweets; when there aren’t many it can weaken user perceptions of the content.

But regardless of which tool is used, the formatting of the tweet text is something that not every site is making the most of.

When users click a retweet button, they expect to see something along the lines of:

RT @[brand] [headline] [URL]

That exact format does not need to be followed, but you want to minimize the work that users need to do before sending out the tweet. You also want to guide them toward using compelling text that will encourage further retweeting.

Some tools automatically utilize the page’s title tag instead of the headline, which can add unnecessary phrases to the tweet and force users to clean it up before sending.

In other cases no headline or descriptive text is provided, as in this example from Time:

On this Silicon Alley Insider article, clicking the Twitter link in the share toolbar brings up nothing but the full length URL, which is interesting because a shortened bit.ly URL is also displayed in the toolbar:

If users click the “Share” link on that same toolbar they are shown a second Twitter link which produces this tweet:

The problem here is that there is no branding for Silicon Alley Insider and users are less likely to click through when they don’t know the source. Also since SAI opted to use all caps in this particular headline and title tag, the resulting tweet comes off like shouting.

Finally, don’t forget to include the URL, as Newsweek did on this page:

That one is probably a technical glitch, but it’s a big one.

Related posts:

1. Google News Wants Title Tags to Match Headlines?
2. Publishers: Solve Tracking Code, Duplicate Content Issues with the Canonical URL Tag
3. Smart Move from Condé Nast: GQ and DETAILS Should Have Their Own Websites

Google Buzz has certainly gotten a lot of attention in the past week be it for privacy concerns, suggestions for improvements or its “Code Red” push to get things right. But at this early stage, how strong are the marketing opportunities for news sites?

Sharing and discussing content is a key component of Google Buzz, so it’s a natural fit for article promotion and audience development. At a minimum news sites should set up an official profile and experiment with “buzz this” buttons on their templates.

Mashable was one of the first to set up a branded profile and they’ve done well in attracting more than 18K followers to date, although at least for now they are not choosing to follow their audience back:

Despite this their followers are actively engaging with the content; many Mashable submissions are getting a decent number of “likes” and comments:

I wouldn’t expect this to be driving significant traffic yet but as Google Buzz adoption and usage grows the traffic will grow with it.

To what degree that happens depends on how well Google does at improving the interface and functionality. Outside of the privacy issues, most of the current criticism lies with the fact that Buzz is simply too busy and overwhelming. Adding more filtering and organization options will help, and continuing to (safely and appropriately) tie it with Gmail will give Buzz a major leg up on services like Friendfeed that never made it mainstream.

But will it ever catch up with Facebook? That’s a much tougher road, because Facebook has done a great job of gaining adoption across a wide range of demographics. And while there are many improvements that could be made to the interface, Facebook Pages offer a clean, simple way for news sites to promote their content and interact with readers. Facebook itself is making a push to get users to create personalized news channels that benefit both users and news sites.

So at least for now Facebook is the much stronger play.

Related posts:

1. Does Google Want Brands in Your Social Circle?
2. Google Social Search: Are You in Your Target Audiences’ Social Circles?
3. An Early Look at News Media Twitter Lists: Not Much Traction

Now that Foursquare is all the rage (or the bane of existence if you don’t like all those check-in and badge tweets invading your Twitter stream) news sites are looking at how best to leverage location-based social networks.

The recent partnership between Foursquare and Canada’s Metro is a good early example of the potential that exists. Metro will provide Foursquare with location-specific editorial content such as reviews, tips and articles on points of interest.

While the most natural opportunities for publishers will be tied to current news and information, there are also some compelling things that could be done with historical content.

I’d love to see a partnership between The New York Times and Foursquare. With content in the NYT Article Archive dating back to 1851, there is a world of fascinating stories that could be shared.

Imagine coming across Cooper Union in Manhattan and getting to read an article on Abraham Lincoln’s campaign speech there in 1860. Or walking past a nondescript building and learning that it was once the scene of a notorious crime or a landmark club. Not from a recent Wikipedia entry; from actual news coverage from that time.

I bet that nearly every location in Manhattan has been in the news at some point in the last 159 years. Foursquare and the NYT could bring that history to users in a powerful, personal way.

The NYT could also just build this functionality into their own mobile apps, but partnerships offer greater cross-promotional and audience development opportunities.

That’s just one idea. What else can news sites do with Foursquare and other forms of location-based social media?

UPDATE:
A few days after I posted this The New York Times and Foursquare launched partnership for the Winter Olympics. Foursquare users in Vancouver will have access to reviews, tips and recommendations provided by NYT travel and entertainment writers. While different from my archive idea, this is a great example of location-based opportunities for news sites. Check out The New York Times page on Foursquare to see it in action.

Related posts:

1. New York Times Plans to Implement Permanent Redirects on IHT.com URLs
2. Top 10 Reasons The New York Times is Really Putting up a Paywall
3. The Daily Show Visits The New York Times

A major newspaper is about to undergo another dreaded round of layoffs. After the first wave of buyouts, a tough choice has to be made been two journalists of equal talent and seniority. One journalist has a large following and active presence on several social media sites. The other does not. Who offers more value to their organization?

While things are not that simple, the fact is that being social media savvy is becoming an increasingly important part of a reporter’s skill set.

In developing social media strategies for news sites, marketing typically takes the lead on the audience development and content promotion aspects, while the editorial staff focuses more on using social media for sourcing, identifying trends, coming up with story ideas, etc. But there is actually a lot of overlap between the two groups.

Take content promotion. Who would readers rather interact with about a particular story – someone from marketing or the reporter who wrote the article?

A couple weeks ago Tom Foremski and Todd Defren looked at the question of whether or not PR firms could or should use their ability to drive exposure and traffic through social media as a carrot in media pitches. A similar question could be asked of news organizations. Could the strength of journalists’ social media presence impact their ability to get assignments? Will editors favor those who will bring greater exposure to the piece and the organization through their social networks?

That might be taking it too far, but there is no doubt that social media blurs the lines between marketing and editorial and offers a number of new ways to interact with audiences. News organizations that take advantage of these opportunities are putting themselves in a position to succeed.

This blurring benefits the journalists too. In an era where “journalist job security” is becoming an oxymoron, having a strong social media presence makes reporters less expendable and more marketable should they need to find new work.

So what should journalists do? At The Future Journalist session last night in New York, Sree Sreenivasan and Vadim Lavrusik talked about the skills and qualities that media professionals now need to possess. I wasn’t able to attend, but the powerpoint and the syllabus for Professor Sreenivasan’s “Social-media Skills for Journalists” course offer some insights into where they see things heading.

The bottom line: The ways that people consume news and define the “news media” are rapidly changing, and the role of the journalist is evolving with those changes. Journalists who are active in social media bring more value to their news organizations and strengthen their own job security.

Related posts:

1. Journalist Social Media Usage Increases, Concerns About Reliability of Information
2. Where Do You Want Your Social Media Press Releases to Live?
3. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media

So the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints will meet in Miami for Super Bowl XLIV. NFL analysts and sports writers now have two weeks to dissect the matchup, talk about players and schemes and come up with good storylines. But I’m here to look at what really matters – which team has more reach via social media?

Now we all know that social media isn’t a numbers game – it’s not just about reach, it’s about making the most of your connections. Furthermore it’s not possible to fully quantify reach across all social media, especially since that brings up the discussion of what should or shouldn’t be considered “social media.” So I’m going to gloss over all of that and just look at four things, one for each quarter in the Super Bowl.

1st Quarter: Blog mentions
Two days after the conference championships, which team is being blogged about more?

Google Blog Search has 519,933 total results for “Indianapolis Colts” and 20,776 in the past week. For “New Orleans Saints” it’s 726,855 total and 31,215 in the past week.

On Icerocket the Colts have 24,526 total / 2,466 past week, and the Saints have 29,603 total / 3,666 past week.

And Technorati is showing 4,973 posts related to the Colts and 6,178 for the Saints.

Advantage: SAINTS

_________________

2nd Quarter: Digg
Ok, which team has seen the most activity on Digg? According to Digg’s search tool 1,549 Colts articles have been submitted, with only eight being promoted to the front page and three receiving more than 500 diggs. That compares with 1,645 articles submitted, 11 promoted and two with 500+ diggs for the Saints.

Advantage: SAINTS

…At the half, the Saints head into the locker room ahead. Can Peyton Manning and the Colts pull out another come from behind victory?

_________________

3rd Quarter: Facebook
Facebook offers one of the best ways for teams to engage with their fan base, so which team is making the most of it? As of today the Colts’ official Facebook page has 249,481 fans and their wall posts are getting a good amount of “likes” and comments. But from what I can see, and I searched with both Facebook and Google, the Saints do not have an official page. There are several unofficial pages, the largest one with 368,365 fans, but since the Saints appear to be missing the opportunity to engage Facebook users in an official capacity, this is a major fumble.

Advantage: COLTS

_________________

4th Quarter: Twitter
It gets worse on Twitter – from what I can see neither team has an official profile. So here we’ve got the equivalent of one team throwing an interception and then the other giving it right back.

There are several unofficial Twitter profiles for each team run by fans and media sites, but I could not find any official accounts. @NOScom comes close for the Saints, but this appears to be run by the people managing the team’s website, not the team itself. (Please correct me if I’m wrong).

Too bad the teams aren’t choosing to directly engage their fans via Twitter.

How about the players? Twitter-athletes.com currently lists profiles for six Colts players and 15 Saints players. Plus I suppose the Saints can count Kim Kardashian as a “spokesperson” of sorts.

So the Saints have a small edge here, but without an official presence from either team I’m calling this quarter a tie.

Advantage: NONE

_________________

WINNER:

Despite what looked like a Colts comeback, after a poor 4th quarter by both teams the winner of the Social Media Super Bowl is:

THE NEW ORLEANS SAINTS

It’ll be interesting to see how these figures increase as the hype builds over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully we’ll see some creative use of social media by both the teams and some of the players. And good luck to both teams in Super Bowl XLIV.

P.S. Vikings fans, I feel your pain. You had it.

Photo credit: Steven Snodgrass (it’s a Creative Commons photo on Flickr, but I couldn’t get WordPress to link to it directly above).

Related posts:

1. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
2. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media

Want to use your Facebook Page to build out your mailing list? Alicia Keys knows how to do it.

Users who go to the “Sign Up” tab on her Facebook Page get a personal appeal from Alicia Keys herself, extolling the virtues of her mailing list. Here’s how the video appears on the sign-up form (watch it here):

(click on the image to enlarge)

I have no idea what kind of following she’s built up, but this direct, multimedia approach is certainly increasing the conversion rate on the form. Users who sign up see a second video with a thank you message from Keys.

Now not every business will have as engaging a representative, but that does not mean a personal video appeal isn’t applicable beyond celebrity. The key takeaway: the more ways you can bring your Facebook Pages to life, the better.

I noticed that in addition to the email list users can sign up for text and voice updates via mobile phone. Perhaps for that Alicia Keys should adopt the same style as she did in her Saturday Night Live digital short:

Just saying.

Related posts:

1. Videos in Press Releases are Cool – If They Provide Meaningful Content
2. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. Pro PR Tips: 100 PR Tips from Rafe Needleman Published as a Book

NBA players, like many professional athletes, have taken social media by storm, but what about their teams? Fans love hearing directly from players, but they also identify strongly with the teams themselves. Twitter and Facebook offer a great opportunity for NBA teams to connect with their fans in a more personal, interactive way. So which NBA teams have the largest following on Twitter and Facebook, who is making the most of their presence?

I got good response when I looked at the most popular NFL teams on Facebook and Twitter back in November, so today I thought I’d do the same for the NBA.

In the table below the 30 NBA teams are ranked by total followers/fans on their official Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. I realize these figures change quickly, but the snapshot is useful for comparison.

The Lakers and Magic are well ahead in terms of total following, which isn’t surprising considering the popularity of the two teams and their stars, and the fact that both teams were in the Finals last year.

While a number of smaller markets and weaker teams are at the bottom of the list, I didn’t expect to see the Miami Heat down there. They are competitive on Twitter in terms of reach but their lack of a real presence on Facebook sent them down to #28. It doesn’t look like they even have an official page on Facebook; the one with 599 followers was the best that I could find.

But while building up followers is great, it’s what you do with that following that really matters.

So what should NBA teams be doing on Twitter and Facebook? The most important thing is to communicate with the fans, plain and simple. Let them know what’s going on with the team, and more importantly LISTEN to what they have to say.

Beyond that there’s no right or wrong answer, but teams will certainly get a lot more traction by being compelling and interactive. Facebook pages offer a better opportunity for expanded content and extended conversations, but there’s a lot you can do with Twitter too.

A simple thing that many teams do is providing in-game updates via Twitter. As a Bulls fan living outside of Chicago I don’t get to watch many games, but I feel connected to the team when I see a scoring update:

Here are a few other things NBA teams should think about:

• Dish: offer insights and information that fans can’t get anywhere else
• Go behind the scenes: give them sense of what the organization is really like
• Humanize: not just the players, let them get to know the entire organization
• Speaking of players: the more they are involved with the team’s official social media activities, the less likely they’ll be to “go rogue” and say something regrettable on their own profiles
• Multimedia: photos and video bring sports content to life, and social media users love to share them
• Contests and promotions: tickets, gear, autographs, chances to meet players – you can quickly build buzz by giving away the good stuff
• Tie it to the community: let fans see that the team cares about the city and what’s going on there

Now if we could only get the NBA to change the first round playoff series back to five games…

Related posts:

1. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
2. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. NBA Playoff Teams Ranked by Facebook Page Engagement

Awareness of Newsweek’s Tumblr site has been increasing of late. It’s actually been around for a while but Newsweek seems to have been giving it more attention over the past few months.

I like it. The layout is clean and simple, the content is interesting and Newsweek is mixing in plenty of items from other sources. That’s critical for giving the site stand-alone value as opposed to just being a feeder site to Newsweek.com.

In looking through the site though one thing stands out – nearly every item has no comments or reactions:

That seems odd, but it’s not just a holiday season slowdown. I went back several months and it’s not easy to find items that have gotten comments. I don’t have any data on what kind of traffic the Tumblr site is getting, but either it is fairly low or visitors simply aren’t starting discussions there.

To investigate further I did a quick check for Twitter activity. I didn’t find any shared newsweek.tumblr.com URLs through Bit.ly search, and TweetMeme isn’t registering any recent activity:

A search right from Twitter doesn’t bring up much, but there are some nice comments about the site itself:

So based on just this quick look it doesn’t seem like Newsweek is getting a lot of engagement with its Tumblr site yet. Some visitors are likely clicking through to the full articles on Newsweek.com and then commenting there and/or sharing the newsweek.com URLs, which is also a good thing. But it would be nice to see the Tumblr site have a more interactive feel.

In terms of search engine visibility, as of today the Tumblr site is #9 in my Google results for “Newsweek” so it’s working its way up. Looks like they need to adjust the META description tag on their home page though:

UPDATE:
FishbowlNY did a good interview with Mark Coatney, the editor who is responsible for Newsweek’s Tumblr.

Related posts:

1. A Closer Look at Fan Engagement on the Fox News Facebook Page
2. Newsweek Cares about (some of) your Tweets. Fox News Not so Much.
3. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?

Yesterday Facebook shared its Top Status Trends of 2009, providing insight into what terms most commonly occurred in users’ status updates. Last week Twitter gave us their Top Twitter Trends of 2009 for categories like news events, people, movies, etc. And throughout December we’ve gotten top 2009 searches lists from Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.

Data like this is interesting to check out, and it can provide useful insights for marketers and content producers in getting a better understanding of user interest and activities in both search and social media.

But while you’re going through this year’s top trends, don’t forget to apply the same practice to your own sites. Getting a clear understanding of how your target audiences locate and interact with your content and engage with your brand will give you actionable data to use next year and beyond.

Things that news and content sites should look at include:

1. What terms and content types brought in the most search engine referral traffic?
2. What were your top referrers/trends in Web search, news search, image search, blog search and video search?
3. What sections, special features, individual articles, etc. were most (and least) popular?
4. What were your top internal search queries for the year?
5. What types of content generated the most social media sharing and inbound links?
6. Which social media sites brought in the most traffic and links, and how well represented are you in each?
7. Which Twitter profiles built up the most followers and engagement? (main profiles, personas, individual staff members, etc).
8. What types of stories got the most retweets?
9. What generated the most “likes” and comments on your Facebook Page?
10. What types of stories gained traction (or were buried) on social news sites like Digg and Reddit?

There is a lot more that you can look at, but hopefully these 10 will get you pointed in the right direction. And while I focused on editorial sites, the same general approach works for e-commerce, B2B and any other category.

Understanding user behavior in 2009 helps you to grow your audience or customer base and increase engagement in 2010.

Related posts:

1. Free Tools for Monitoring Hot Search Trends
2. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
3. Top 10 Reasons The New York Times is Really Putting up a Paywall

The role of social media in professional sports is getting a lot of attention these days, unfortunately mostly in the form of teams and leagues trying to clamp down on it or players making mistakes with it.

Despite this, fans are passionately supporting and discussing their teams through a range of social media outlets, in particular Twitter and Facebook. Since we’re in the heart of football season, I thought I’d take a look at which NFL teams have the largest following on both sites.

In the table below the 32 NFL teams are ranked by the total number of followers/fans on their official Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. These figures obviously change quickly but this current snapshot is useful for comparison.

Interestingly, despite no official presence on Twitter the Pittsburgh Steelers have the largest reach thanks to their large number of Facebook fans. I was also surprised that the Dallas Cowboys do not have an official Facebook page as they would certainly attract a significant number of fans.

I had expected all the teams to have more followers on Twitter. The San Diego Chargers lead the league with only 28K followers. (UPDATE: Thanks to Mike Blewitt for noticing that it is actually the New England Patriots that have the most Twitter followers at 30K+).

The New Orleans Saints and New York Giants are currently at the bottom of the social media heap with no official presence on either Twitter or Facebook. However an unofficial Saints page is very popular on Facebook with 163,760 fans.

Capturing data on only “official” accounts and pages was actually somewhat difficult (I welcome corrections if I’ve missed any). Twitter is a wild west for NFL teams right now – there are far more unofficial accounts, and even those that that claim to be official aren’t always actually so. Twitter should consider extending its “verified accounts” to team sites as well. On Facebook the official team pages are easier to identify, but they often face competition from other pages created by fans or local media. For several teams the unofficial pages have significantly more fans.

So the main takeaway is that NFL teams need to take better control of their social media presence and come up with more a cohesive engagement strategy. NFL fans are among the most passionate, so there is a great opportunity to leverage their loyalty and enthusiasm and further extend the relationships.

Related posts:

1. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
2. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. Social Media Super Bowl: Which Team Has More Reach?

While many companies now have some form of presence on Twitter, how well are they utilizing it? According to a new study by Weber Shandwick, when it comes to the Fortune 100 the answer is not so well.

Among the Fortune 100 Twitter accounts analyzed by Weber Shandwick, 53% did not convey any personality, tone or voice and 15% were either inactive or placeholders:

Additionally, 26% of the accounts were primarily used for a one-way flow of information that offered no engagement with followers, and only 9% of the accounts focused on customer service:

The end result for the Fortune 100? No so many tweets, and understandably not so many followers:

As I covered in my Diversified Twitter Strategies for News Sites post, there’s no “right” way to utilize Twitter. Every company needs to come up with its own customized strategy that fits its corporate culture while meeting the needs of its customer base. But since a single Twitter account cannot be all things to all people, it is important for companies to experiment with a diversified approach.

Corporations also need to make sure that the desire to play it safe does not rob their Twitter efforts of creativity. If you are not providing value to your followers (by being some combination of informative, interesting, engaging, insightful, valueable, etc.), you are going to lose your audience and the resulting opportunities from having that relationship.

Related posts:

1. Diversified Twitter Strategies for News Sites
2. Pro PR Tips: 100 PR Tips from Rafe Needleman Published as a Book
3. Twitter Suggested Users – Today’s Studio 54 Velvet Rope

With all the buzz about Twitter Lists I thought I’d take a look at how some major news sites are doing so far with their own Lists.

Looking at selection of Twitter accounts from 30 31 news sites, I checked the number of Lists that have been created and how many followers each has attracted to-date. These figures will change quite a bit in the weeks and months to come, but I wanted to capture an initial snapshot. (Note: currently Twitter allows users to create a maximum of 20 Lists.)

As can be seen it is still early days for both Twitter List creation and user adoption.

As of today half of the news sites have not created any Lists, and only four sites have more than 10. The average number of followers is still very low, and all of the Lists have less than 1,000 followers (many of them significantly less). The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Huffington Post have done the most so far with List development.

It will be interesting to see how things evolve over time.

Related posts:

1. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
2. Diversified Twitter Strategies for News Sites
3. Social Media Super Bowl: Which Team Has More Reach?

This week Google unveiled Google Social Search, an opt-in feature that provides additional search results with content from a user’s “social circle” of friends and trusted sources. A limited number of listings will appear at the bottom of the main search result pages, or users can drill down to see more extensive listings:

Currently a social circle is determined by the social media accounts linked from a user’s Google Profile, the feeds they subscribe to in Google Reader and their Google chat and Gmail contacts. So if you link to your Twitter account on your Google profile the people you’re following on Twitter become part of your social circle. The same goes for the sites and blogs you follow via Google Reader.

It’s still an experimental feature in Google Labs and users have to be signed into their Google account to use it, so it’s safe to say that adoption of Social Search will be slow. But in case in takes off, the questions businesses should be asking themselves now are: Are we in our target audiences’ social circles? If not how do we get there?

For news and content sites the task is fairly straightforward as lots of users are already subscribed to their RSS feeds, Twitter accounts, Facebook Pages, etc. Such sites also produce new content every day, so there are plenty of things that Google can pull from in creating social results. Other types of businesses will have to be more creative, which is where smart content marketing and social media strategies come into play.

I don’t believe it is currently possible for businesses to create Google Profiles in the same way that they can create Facebook Pages, but the individual(s) responsible for their social media outreach can build up social circles through their own Profiles, just like they do in a variety of social media outlets.

There have been many Google features over the years that never gained traction – a few years ago Subscribed Links offered a similar opportunity for content sites but never found mainstream adoption. But Social Search has a better chance of making it, so it’s a good idea to start developing a strategy for it now.

Related posts:

1. Does Google Want Brands in Your Social Circle?
2. Search Marketing Dwarfs Social Media in Interactive Marketing Budgets
3. Google Buzz and News Sites: Good Potential But Facebook Still the Better Play

Yesterday posts from eMarketer and Marketing Pilgrim called my attention to some interesting social media statistics put out by advertising network Chitika.

First, a study of 33 million unique users from Chitika’s network in September showed that visitors coming from Facebook and Digg were more loyal than those coming from the three major search engines and Twitter. Chitika defined “loyal” visitors as those who came to a site four or more times in the same week:

Facebook leading the pack isn’t much of a surprise since a high percentage of search engine referral traffic is “one and done” – searchers find what they were looking for and then move on. But I wouldn’t have expected Digg to be a strong second, since the social news site is known for sending large spikes of visitors that quickly scan the page and then move on.

It’s also important to note that while search engine visitors may be less loyal their volume is much greater, especially visitors from Google. Another Chitika study showed that social media represented only 0.55% of total referrals across their network, compared to nearly 98% for search engines:

This highlights the fact that there is more to SEO than just increasing search engine referral traffic – it is essential to convert those visitors once they arrive. In publishing that typically means additional page views and time on site, RSS and e-mail newsletter subscriptions, user account and on-site community sign-ups, etc.

I’d also like to point out that for major media sites, search engine referral traffic is typically a much smaller percentage than Chitika’s network is receiving. According to a Hitwise US News & Media Report back in 2007, on average search engine referrals represent about 23% of traffic to print media sites. (Side note: Hitwise, you’re overdue for an updated version of that report!). That’s a pretty good figure considering that direct navigation still represents the lion’s share of traffic to newspaper and magazine sites. For many news sites (especially poorly optimized ones) search engine referrals are still considerably below 20% of total traffic.

As for social media traffic, while still quite small those figures are definitely trending up strongly for news and content sites, especially when looked at year-over-year. Even just a year ago the majority of news sites were barely dabbling with things like Twitter – now most have Twitter mania.

For a social media presentation at the Publishing Business Conference earlier this year I surveyed 12 major magazine sites that Define works with, and found that in 2008 social media referrals ranged anywhere from 0.6% to 18% of total site traffic, the average being between 1-3%. This is more in line with the figures for Chitika’s network:

(Click on the image above to see the full size slide).

And while the figures for specific social media sites vary from site to site, total social media referral traffic is up considerably in 2009 to-date.

Related posts:

1. Survey: Twitter Less than 1% of Traffic to Newspapers and Magazines; Facebook 1%
2. Hitwise Reports News and Media’s Share of Search-Referred Traffic Declining
3. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media

My post on Facebook Page engagement for news sites has drawn some interest in the fact that Fox News averages many more “likes” and comments per update than any other news site, despite having significantly fewer fans than CNN, NPR or The New York Times. So I thought I’d take a closer look at what Fox News is doing on its Facebook Page, as well as some engagement examples.

After reviewing several days’ worth of activity, I have to say that nearly anything Fox News posts to its page ends up getting a decent amount of likes and comments from fans. Even more mundane news items still manage to spark a round of commenting. So it seems to me that it is the strong, passionate opinions of the fans themselves more than anything specific that Fox News is doing.

That said Fox News does attempt to solicit fan opinions, particularly on more controversial topics, which certainly helps to encourage participation:

Referencing political figures that are known to generate strong reactions from their user base is also working for them:

As for the type and quality of comments being posted, I’ll share this sampling of today’s comments on Barak Obama’s address to the UN General Assembly and let you make your own assessment:

Related posts:

1. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?
2. NBA Playoff Teams Ranked by Facebook Page Engagement
3. Newsweek Cares about (some of) your Tweets. Fox News Not so Much.

Now that the improved Facebook Pages have been around for a while I wanted to check the level of engagement that major news sites are achieving with them.

Most news sites have an official Facebook Page now, with the typical approach being to add a daily stream of links to new content while promoting site features, apps, feeds, etc. in the sidebars and subpages. Some news sites are supplementing content links with direct questions and comments to users, but this does not appear to be happening in any significant volume.

Using a sampling of 15 16 news sites, I captured the total number of fans on their Facebook Pages as of today. To judge user engagement and activity, I also calculated the average number of “likes” and comments that the last 10 updates/links to each page received.

CNN currently has the most fans, with The New York Times not too far beyond. Fox News and The Economist have crossed six figures, after which the figures start dropping quickly.

Fox News is strongly ahead in terms of fan engagement and activity – their like and comment numbers are significantly greater than any of the other sites. This is not surprising based on the reactions that Fox News reporting tends to generate from both sides of the political fence.

A couple of notes: The Guardian’s page has only 4 updates total, so their averages are based on a smaller selection. The Daily Telegraph has N/A for likes and comments because they do not appear to posting any updates or links at this time.

UPDATE:
After seeing Matt Gallivan’s comment I added NPR to the table today. They are indeed #2 in terms of total fans (among the group of news sites that I looked at). Their fan engagement figures also rank high.

Related posts:

1. A Closer Look at Fan Engagement on the Fox News Facebook Page
2. Which News Sites Have the Most Valuable Facebook Pages?
3. NBA Playoff Teams Ranked by Facebook Page Engagement

This week’s Sysomos study of the 5% most active users on Twitter includes a list of the top 25 users (with more than 50,000 followers) ranked by average tweets per day.

@foxnews tops the list averaging 135.85 tweets per day. @nytimes and @time also made the top 25, averaging 39.25 and 29.22 tweets respectively.

Is 135.85 tweets a day too much? It certainly seems excessive, but the 99,703 followers of @foxnews don’t seem to think so.

While I wouldn’t go to that extreme, it does emphasize the point that just like everyone else, news organizations can use Twitter however they see fit, and Twitter users can choose to follow or not follow them accordingly.

With this in mind, it is beneficial for news and content sites to take a diversified approach to Twitter, offering a range options for users to subscribe to. While the variations are limitless, the main opportunities include:

• Content Broadcasting – this is essentially RSS feeds on Twitter, used for simply pushing out links to new content. A main profile can be set up as well as separate profiles for site sections or specific topics. While the opportunity for engagement is limited, these types of accounts do tend to attract large numbers of followers and the links do get retweeted. So there’s no reason not to set up them up as a foundation building step.
• Brand Ambassador / Personality – a person or persona that officially represents the company on Twitter. It’s a more humanized approach that offers much greater opportunity for direct engagement with users. Some sites give this responsibility to a specific individual, others create a persona – @ColonelTribune is good example of this approach. The advantage of using a persona is that multiple people can share the work, and it’s easier to make a transition when the people behind it move on.
• Individual Journalists and Bloggers – participation by the editorial staff offers a great way to engage users on a more specific, personal level. Letting readers “behind the curtain” by sharing insights into the story development process, soliciting input and providing previews or exclusive tidbits (such as additional information that didn’t make it into a particular article) is a great way to build relationships and gain a loyal following. There should certainly be policies in place to prevent missteps in this area, but there is a big upside to encouraging editorial participation.

Of course the PR and marketing staff should also play an active role in your Twitter strategy, and company employees of all kinds should be considered in the overall social media plan. But for the purposes of sharing news content and interacting with users, these three approaches offer a great start for news organizations looking to get more traction from Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Fortune 100 Need to Get More Creative with Twitter
2. News Sites on Twitter: Who is Making the Most Impact?
3. How to Identify Your Own Top Trends

It’s no secret that mainstream news sites are experiencing increased exposure on social news sites like Digg. Back in March Soshable noted that 46% of the Digg front page is controlled by 50 websites.

Major news sites have seen strong increases in social media referral traffic over the past couple years, and Digg continues to be among the top referrers. But I was curious what kind of push back some of these sites might be experiencing from Digg users.

Using di66.net’s list of the top sources in Digg in the past 30 days, I pulled out 22 general news sites from the top 100 or so sources. Then using Digg’s advanced search I checked how many submissions from each domain had been buried.

CNN wins the prize for the most buried news site, with Yahoo News not too far behind:

Of course some news sites have a lot more content submitted to Digg than others, so it stands to reason that sites with more submissions will have more buries. So I also looked up the total submissions for each, and ranked the news sites by percentage of submissions that were buried.

CNN and Yahoo News are still the most buried news sites by percentage of content, but ABC News and MSNBC are pretty close:

Going back to the di66.net list of top Digg sources, out of the 22 news sites I pulled out, CNN was the 10th most popular source and Yahoo News was 9th. So their bury rankings are probably higher than they should be. By contrast Telegraph.co.uk was the 2nd most popular source but it ranks 19th in bury percentage in this group. BBC News was the most popular source out of the 22; its bury percentage is right in the middle at #11.

It should also be noted that what’s most important is social news success is quality of content and user appeal, not to mention who the submitter is. But it does appear that some major news sites are more likely to be buried than others.

Related posts:

1. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
2. How to Identify Your Own Top Trends
3. Free Tools for Monitoring Hot Search Trends

One of the ways that higher profile Twitter accounts have built up large numbers of followers is by being included among the “suggested users” shown to users signing up for a new account:

Each new user has a group of 20 Twitter profiles suggested to them; one click of a button and they’re automatically following each one. It’s not the same 20 every time – Twitter randomly shuffles in 20 profiles from the group it has deemed worthy of recommendation.

Since new users aren’t always sure exactly how to use Twitter, this starter group can be quite helpful, so the profiles that are featured do end up getting a steady stream of new followers.

So the question is, how do you get on the list? I hear this question asked a lot now, with the most common answer being you have to know someone at Twitter. I also hear that Twitter is bombarded with requests to get on the list, so they don’t like people asking anymore.

All of this conjures up images of the infamous velvet rope at Studio 54. How cool do you have to be to get recommended by Twitter?

Photograph by Peter L. Gould, nymag.com

It’s also important to emphasize that number of followers is a very weak metric for measuring success on Twitter. It’s understandable that companies focus on this, since it’s an easy figure to monitor. However things like level of engagement, referral traffic and links to content are much more worthwhile barometers of success.

UPDATE:
After posting this today I came across a post from Twitter explaining their selection criteria: Suggested Users

I also noticed that just last night on Search Engine Land Danny Sullivan published an extensive look at who’s on the list: Who Does Twitter Love? Breaking Down The Twitter Suggested Users List

Related posts:

1. An Early Look at News Media Twitter Lists: Not Much Traction
2. Diversified Twitter Strategies for News Sites
3. Fortune 100 Need to Get More Creative with Twitter

Inside Facebook published some new statistics this week on Facebook’s US audience growth over the last 60 days. Interestingly, users over 55 decreased by 650,000 during this period:

This is a big change from the previous 60 days which had shown considerable growth in that demographic.

I can share anecdotally that my own mother, who is in her early sixties, joined Facebook a few months ago along with a number of her peers. From what I’ve observed she doesn’t necessarily know she’s doing half the time (sorry Mom!), but her and her friends seem to be sticking with it. Email is by far still the preferred tool for online communication and content sharing in her age group, but social media is beginning to make inroads.

Let’s see what they make of Google Wave.

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Today Newsweek offered live streaming of Jon Meacham’s interview with Treasury Security Tim Geithner on its Facebook page. This is a good example of how publishers are attempting to add more value to their official pages on social media sites, which is certainly needed as many of the pages are still fairly one-dimensional.

However in going to the interview page on Facebook after the fact I didn’t see any links to the recorded video of the interview that has been published on Newsweek.com. (The video is not currently available on Facebook). The large graphic links to the home page, and the “More from Newsweek” links point to other content:

Hosting the video on Newsweek.com is a good idea because long-term that’s where you want users and search engines to access it. But it’s also really important to direct Facebook users who may come looking for it to the right place. I’d imagine the “Geithner Interview” tab won’t stay on their Facebook page for too long, so it’ll be important to include a link on the main tab for a while as well.

UPDATE:
Last night Newsweek added a wrap-up article to the page where the video was posted on their site, and linked to it in a wall post on their Facebook page:

The wall post will quickly move down the list, but in the short-term it will help people who come looking for the video.

2ND UPDATE:
Some time later on the Facebook interview page, the “Thanks for Watching the Live Q&A!” graphic (shown above) was changed to “Miss the Live Interview? Watch the Video on the New Newsweek.com”, which links to the video on the Newsweek site. Glad to see this was addressed, and hopefully they didn’t lose too many visitors during the critical early period when people were actively seeking out the interview.

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I’ve been surprised by how many people choose to follow the main Twitter account of major news sites. I know in some cases it’s because they are featured as “suggested users” to people who sign up for a new Twitter account. But it seems like there are much better ways to monitor daily news feeds.

Just out of curiosity I thought I’d check how many users some of these news sites are following back from their main accounts.

I pulled these charts from Twitter Grader (which incidentally gave all of these accounts a grade of 99 or higher). The figures are from today.

You can see that Newsweek wins the prize for following the most people, and Fox News hasn’t followed a single person:

Of course none of this really matters, since for the most part these Twitter accounts are just for pumping out article links. Actual reader interaction happens through the personal accounts of members of their marketing and editorial staffs, and a number of media outlets are starting to get the hang of it.

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It’s a simple concept, but one that many companies are still struggling with in terms of practical implementation. In developing a corporate social media strategy, making the transition to direct participation, genuine engagement and two-way communication is not always easy. But that’s just what needed.

In driving home this point I like to show people Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas‘s Conversation Prism, because it’s a great way to illustrate the landscape and the opportunity. They released an updated version last month:

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