Oct/092
Social Media Proven to Boost Site Traffic
The numbers are in and it’s official: embracing social media increases site traffic.
When the Huffington Post launched its Social News site on Facebook Connect in mid-August, the site received 6,925,000 unique users in September according to comScore. Social News allows users to link to Huffington Post articles directly onto their Facebook profile using a pop-up window and one section even them see what their Facebook friends are reading on the site.
According to Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, Facebook-referred
traffic is up 48% since the launch of its Facebook Connect site and 15% of all comments now come through Facebook. Users of the political news blog increased by 50% over the last year, surpassing The Washington Post and BBC. This is pretty impressive for an independent blog that is barely four years old.
We predict that many news organizations will follow in the HuffPost’s footsteps and encourage all of our online news publishers to appoint a social media editor ASAP!
Source: guardian.co.uk
Sep/090
Connecting with Your Readers
In August, we listed some helpful online tips for small newspapers, including creating a Twitter tree of accounts, tweeting a live headline feed, posting online events, and blogging. With more and more online news publications signing up for our technology, we've decided to introduce another basic way to connect readers to your organization: user-generated blogs.
Using user-generated content can help enhance the relationship between you and your readers. Implementing social tools that your readers are already using is a great way to involve your audience and enable them to share information through photos, videos, and written posts. For example, CNN's iReport allows users to submit articles, videos, and photos that are unedited or screened before they are posted. "At CNN we live for news," states the About section on iReport. "We love talking about it. And we know that there's a whole lot more to it than what you see on TV or read on your favorite Website. So we've launched an independent world where you, the iReport.com community, tell the stories we're not used to seeing. And the most compelling, important, and urgent ones may get seen on CNN."
The best part is, user-generated photos can be added to your Image Space Media Image Manager so you'll end up with more images on your website. Not only will you build a stronger sense of community, but you could potentially increase the earnings for your site!