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

Comments

1. Cory Bergman says

   January 10, 2012 at 3:31 pm

   Hey Adam, Cory with Breaking News here, great post. But I would argue that defining engagement solely as activity per post is missing the big picture. +Breaking News has a much higher number of comments, +1s and shares than +New York Times, for example, because we post frequently. (In fact, we’re the only news organization that publishes around-the-clock, 7 days a week). It would be great to combine the “per post” metric with an overall metric to get a better perspective of engagement.

2. Adam Sherk says

   January 10, 2012 at 3:51 pm

   Thanks for your feedback Cory. Breaking News is a great example of Google+ efforts done well.

   I see what you’re saying regarding the total figures. I opted not to use those because I felt it created more of an arms race comparison. Having more total user actions just because a page has more updates didn’t seem that insightful.

   I thought it was more interesting to look at the averages per post, to even things out a bit and make a more fair comparison. But you’re right that a page with very few updates will skew those figures too.

   I’ll try to swing back and capture the total figures too.

3. Jennifer says

   January 10, 2012 at 5:42 pm

   So what’s your conclusion? Does it seem worthwhile for these organizations to be using Google+? Would it be better if they focused their attentions elsewhere, like Facebook?

4. Cory Bergman says

   January 10, 2012 at 6:00 pm

   Awesome, thanks Adam!!!

5. Mi says

   January 10, 2012 at 10:54 pm

   Adam, we just started Google+ page for TFT and still need to work on it more. Thanks for mentioning us:-) @katyli

6. Arif says

   January 11, 2012 at 1:50 am

   What about the same for Facebook?

7. Nick Stamoulis says

   January 11, 2012 at 11:01 am

   Interesting data. Google claims that Google+ growth will continue with impressive numbers in 2012. It will be interesting to see if that holds true and how that effects brand page engagement.

8. Adam Sherk says

   January 11, 2012 at 11:27 am

   Thanks Nick. It will be interesting to see how things continue to evolve this year. And now with “Search Plus Your World” it’s even more important for brands to connect with their audiences via Google+.

   Jennifer – I do think it is worthwhile for news organizations to continue to experiment it. For audience engagement and content promotion Facebook and Twitter continue to be much stronger plays and deserve more attention. But having a Google+ presence makes sense too, especially because Google is doing what it can to get it better integrated into their overall search experience.

   Mi – I could tell you’d just gotten started with The Fiscal Times page, but I didn’t want to leave you guys out. 🙂

   Arif – I did something basic on Facebook pages quite a while ago (Which News Sites Have the Most Valuable Facebook Pages?). Maybe I’ll look for new ways to do a comparative analysis.

9. Arif says

   January 11, 2012 at 2:55 pm

   I am one of those who think that brands corrupt the real social environment. For example, social platform can remain social between two person or group, but when you mix in the brand, it no longer serves the purpose of being social.

   From a functional stand point, I can be social with another person or a group of people, but I cannot be social with a brand (brand is not a person). So I have one or few of the choices to pick from: (a) I can pretend that brand is a person and I should interact, (b) I ignore it, or (c) I use that platform strictly for reading or taking-in what brand wants me to take. You see, right here, the social is a slippery-slope for platforms mixing the brands. All these news platforms are one-way delivering news, their purpose is to serve the news. They are not in a business to take anything from me socially, for that, they have had Editorials and Write a Letter sections for long. In present day sense, they are only advertising their content through multiple mediums.

   It is obvious that Twitter has an upper hand here when it comes to brands utilizing a platform for maximum advantage. I was idle on Google+ until I saw your post and decided to reuse G+ only for the sake of following these brands/news, in a one-way fashion. I have Google Reader and Twitter doing the same exact thing very well, and I can already see that G+ is not really an effective platform for one-way interaction or reading.

10. Adam Sherk says

    January 12, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    Thanks for your input Arif; you make some valid points. I do think that there is middle ground though, for users that want one.

    Brands aren’t people, but they do have people working for them. So social does give users the opportunity to interact with real people who work for the NYT, Breaking News, Newsweek, etc. Specific to Google+ this could via discussion in the comments, video hangouts, etc.

    There’s not always a lot of value in that, but in some situations it can be pretty interesting. Especially when news organizations let users behind the curtain a little on what they’re working on and the editorial process, or when they solicit input for help in creating new content or special features.

    From the user perspective the good thing is this is all by choice. If I don’t want brands in my circles I don’t have to add them. And even if I do, I don’t have to interact with them unless I want to (and I can even filter out their content if I want).

    And from the brand perspective this creates a need for them to make their pages useful and engaging, so users want to follow and interact with them. Which in turn creates a better user experience on the pages.

11. peter zmijewski says

    February 8, 2012 at 8:16 am

    Official Google+ pages seems to be very helpful…