What are the best tools for publishers looking to track social media activity at the content level? There are a lot of options for social monitoring, tracking and analytics, with prices ranging from free to very expensive. I thought I’d share some of my favorites that are well suited to editorial content sites. The primary […]

Whenever I do a presentation on Google+ for publishers I mention that quite a few news and content brands are among the most followed pages. The point being that Google+ does indeed offer good opportunities for audience development, engagement and content promotion. Today I thought I’d check to see just how many news and content […]

Now that Instagram web profiles have been around for a few months I thought I’d check in on the participation and activity of major news brands. I keep coming across things like the Simply Measured study showing that 59% of top brands are now active on Instagram and the news that Instagram has surpassed 100 […]

The news of layoffs at StumbleUpon reminded me that in compiling some year-end social media referral data I’d noticed that a number of sites had experienced declines in StumbleUpon traffic. To get a better sense of the situation I pulled StumbleUpon referral figures from 2010-2012 for a group of 47 news and content sites that […]

Which news sites get the most engagement on their Google+ pages? It’s been a year since I took an early look at engagement rates for news organizations on Google+, so I thought I’d revisit the topic and do a fresh comparison. As with my previous comparison, I used All my + to pull data on […]

Lately I’ve been noticing a lot of Facebook posts in my news feed with a specific request to “LIKE” the post. Sports teams are among the biggest offenders:

As Pinterest continues to grow in popularity and usage it is becoming not only an important source of traffic and engagement for publishers but also a good source of links. What types of sites get the most links from Pinterest? I spend a lot of time auditing websites which means I am regularly in the […]

The demographics of Google+ are typically described as predominantly male and young. But that is not always the case; sites that are geared towards women are drawing a Google+ audience that is largely female. For example, take a look at the +1 Audience Report from the Google Webmaster Tools profile of a major fashion site. […]

While Pinterest is a natural fit for lifestyle publishers there are good opportunities for broadcast media too. Today Kim Wilson and I are leading a social media workshop for a group of local TV and radio stations. In preparing for the Pinterest portion I took a look at the pinning activity of local TV news […]

With a new baseball season underway I thought I’d check in on the 30 MLB teams on Twitter and Facebook. Which teams are seeing the most growth? I have not done a sports team comparison post in quite a while, mainly because the figures quickly become outdated and total reach is not all that important […]