media seo analytics | push2digital

Want to capture the attention of your news director or GM? Try closing the loop on your social media efforts with a reference to higherTV Ratings.

[Scene: GM crosses newsroom, digital director trails speaking with elaborate hand gestures. GM stops, head tilted, one eye squinting, ‘Huh? … Wait what did you say?]

That’s right, according to a Nielsen study, (see full report Nielsen -- Social Buzz Impacts TV Ratings) social buzz generated about a TV program shows some moderate correlation to TV ratings. Lost Remote quotes Facebook’s Andy Mitchell, that he’s “pretty confident” a recent USA Network promotion linked to “Psych’s” Facebook helped drive a 10% ratings increase.

The Nielsen study asserts the same stating that increases in what they define as “social buzz” -- a formula based on social mentions, # of authors and other factors – generates ratings increases on a scale as strong as 9 to 1 [9% increase in buzz correlates to 1% increase in ratings for certain demographics].

It’s not a silver bullet, but the framework for proof that social media’s impact on the broadcast partner is emerging.

It's a good question, "What is the best day to publish content?"

It depends on your content, target audience and approach ... basically your digital strategy [if you don't have one, check out this post on building a web measurement model].

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Let's assume you're a media site that generates 20% to 30% of your traffic from search and another 10% to 20% from social. That's a pretty good chunk of your audience acquisition that depends on others (ie. Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.)

So what if you could obtain greater exposure by analyzing what days generate the most referrals? Good start huh, because if you average 50 FB referrals on Mon., 62 on Tue., 64 on Wed., 48 on Thu., 52 on Fri, 22 on Sat. and 18 on Sun. -- that tells you something right?

It does, but not entirely.

To get a clear picture, you have to factor in how many pieces of content you're pushing out on those days. If you're publishing 95 stories on weekdays and 32 stories on weekends, that's significant. Therefore you want to know the referrals-per-story.

WHERE’S THE OPPORTUNITY?

Dan Zarella published a study on the ideal time to submit blog posts that states the ideal Twitter retweet sweet spot is Friday @ 4p ET.  He also claims that Facebook sharing is highest @ 9a ET and spikes significantly on Saturday.

This confirms data I've seen that stories published on Saturday generate approximately 60% more Facebook and Google referrals per story than those published during the week. Sunday stories show @ 25% more Facebook and 40% more Google referrals per story. The problem is that these spikes are often masked by the total number of referrals which are typically lower on the weekends.

HOW TO MEASURE REFERRALS PER STORY?

Your results may vary, so you should review your own metrics and build this formula. The trick is to compile total number of stories published for the year and break them down by day. In Excel you can apply a formula =WEEKDAY(A1) [A1 is your first date] to convert that date to a simple day of the week. Then you can apply a filter by clicking the header of the Day of the Week column you just created, click Data Tab and Filter button. That will allow to group your yearly data by all the Mondays, Tuesdays, etc. If that sounds confusing, read this post on using Excel's WEEKDAY function.

Once you have the year's stories published and referrals broken down by day of the week, you can build your weekday referral rate. Repeat for each day, and repeat for each source (Google, Twitter, Facebook or any other key referral source.)

(Monday Facebook Referrals / Monday Stories Published = [Monday Facebook referrals per story])

OPPORTUNITY FOR ACTION

The takeaway here is not, "don't publish on weekdays", but that there is a greater opportunity to be shared and ranked on the weekends, Saturday in particular. And content published that is geared towards a Facebook morning audience or Google topics could do significantly better during this time frame. It’s not a simple task, but it’s not rocket science either and worth the time, especially if you can generate more audience with no real extra work – just a smarter choice of publish times and content topics.

When it comes to people following/liking brands – the top two reasons are pretty obvious (1. They’re a current customer, 2. They’re looking for a deal), according socialtimes.com.

But it’s the third reason media companies should take note of. The No. 3 reason people will like a brand is because of its “interesting, entertaining content.

Should news organizations devote themselves to water-cooler content? No, but they should sure as heck syndicate and integrate social invites into their best talker content.

Now that we have feasted on healthy portions of Osama Bin Laden news for more than a week. What did we learn about coverage of a worldwide event like that?  Two compelling columns point to a strategy and a trend of how our appetite for the various flavors of news can be measured.

First is Danny Sullivan’s insightful piece that touched on the “nuggeting of news” and how blogs and some mainstream media pursued the story in bite-size pieces and were rewarded by Google with more frequent and higher SERP positions. Is it an overt chase for pageviews? Absolutely. Is it a devious new blogger tactic? Hardly, it’s been a media mainstay since the telegraph.

“It was effectively doing what news organizations and wire services have long done, a “write though,” constant updates to a story. Chasing pageviews too? Maybe. But also part of what is native to some news organizations.”

– Danny Sullivan

The second piece, the Pew Research Center's analysis of Bin Laden coverage, was even more interesting and referred to a study that focused on which story angles garnered the most coverage and where those angles were more prevalent.  What was the No. 1 theme on Twitter, Facebook? Humor, followed closely by conspiracy theories and hoaxes.  

Profile picture is one of the few things in the design of your page that you can actually customize, so be sure to make the most of it. Here are two great articles that will help you: "5 Creative Ways to Hack Your Profile Photo"; "Making the Most of Your Facebook Profile Picture". 

UPDATE: Shortly after this posting -- Fox announced "tweet-peat" episodes of "Fringe" and "Glee" which synchs with this concept. It makes the episode a social event due to the Twitter tie-in and gives viewers a reason to skip the DVR and watch live. (Disclaimer: I'm employed by News Corp. -- Fox Interactive Media) 

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Very cool concept here -- social media could make appointment TV worthwhile. It's the next-day work chat ... "Did you see 30 Rock last night ..." except you can do it during the show. There's value there -- and its for the user this time not the network/advertiser.

Update:I’m not clear if this is new, but it appears that any story shared via Facebook’s bookmarking or link tool – is i-framing the linked story.  This means it presents a Facebook URL, i-frames your story and does not register your metrics -- at least not via Omniture.

Apparently this came online around the time of the Digg toolbar. Funny there was a much bigger flap about the Digg toolbar than this Facebook change.  Good post on this from Mihaela Lica of Search Engine Journal on the controversial trend in i-framed content.

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Not only that, but if the user clicks other links on that story file, they remain within the Facebook i-frame – so all site consumption is done under the Facebook i-framed URL and not yours.

For media sites, I would recommend any stories you add to your Facebook account be done manually via a cut-and-paste of the URL rather than using the bookmark tool or the link tool.  Both of those will present your link in a Facebook  iframe.

See the examples below:

MyFoxDFW.com URL

http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/weird/Bikini_Jeans_Take_Fashion_to_

Shared Facebook URL

http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=88574795663&h=rZ1tv&u=VqD6l&ref=nf