63rd WORLD NEWSPAPER CONGRESS

Session: DigitalTitle: SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE A LIFELINE FOR NEWSPAPERSSpeaker: Rich Beattie

Vienna, Reed Messe Wien

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64th WORLD NEWSPAPER CONGRESS19th WORLD EDITORS FORUM

www.wan-ifra.org/kiev2012

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PRESENTED BY: RICH BEATTIE, VP EMEA

63rd World Newspaper Congress Friday, Oct. 14, 2011

“Digital” Panel & Social Presentation

SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE A LIFELINE FOR NEWSPAPERS

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TODAY’S DIGITAL WORLD

Newspaper & Publishing’s Digital Dilemmas.

What Must a Newspaper Do?

Think Like Some of Today’s Smartest Brands.

Embrace Social As A Communications Pillar!

“Yes, of course…but how?”

SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES

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FACEBOOKGrowth numbers and reach incredible and growing.

Redefining how consumers interact with the social web.

Increasingly a driver of traffic to media sites and projected to increase.

A Pew Research Study (May 2011) reports Facebook ranked as second or third driver to news websites, behind Google.

Huffington Post readers who sign in via Facebook read 22% more articles and visit longer than the average reader;

The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic; and

ABCNews.com, Washington Post and The Huffington Post are said to have more than doubled their referral traffic from Facebook since adding social plugins.

SOCIAL LIFELINES

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SOCIAL LIFELINES

TWITTER100 million active users.

Processing 230 million tweets a day, a 110% increase 1/2011.

Established provider of real-time “news”; Breaking big news events.

BrightEdge (Sept. 2011) shows that pages displaying Twitter share buttons get 7x the social media mentions/engagement.

Half of the largest 10,000 sites still don’t display sharing tools.

Incredible outlet for journalists for newsgathering, promotion and branding.

Social Links/Plugins on Homepages of Top Sites Social Links/Plugins on Homepages of Top Sites Social Links/Plugins on Homepages of Top Sites

Social Site With Social Links/Plugins Change From Previous Month

Facebook 50.3% Up from 49.5%

Twitter 42.5% Up from 42.4%

Google+ 8.1% Up from 7.3%

LinkedIn 4.0% Unchanged

Source: BrightEdge Research, SocialShare Analysis, September 2011 Source: BrightEdge Research, SocialShare Analysis, September 2011 Source: BrightEdge Research, SocialShare Analysis, September 2011

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The facts are undisputable: Media sites must strategically leverage social.

Facebook, Twitter and other outlets like Google+ (when pages open), LinkedIn and YouTube.

Those that don’t fully embrace social will not overcome the challenges of the digital world.

Dynamic and engaging social pages that incorporate share functionalities across the web; delivers valuable, relevant (customized) and engaging content; leverages the latest social marketing technologies; measures and learns from sophisticated analytics tools and much more.

Then the digital world becomes an open opportunity, not a sea of challenges.

SOCIAL LIFELINES

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Content is King: Get Local, Relevant & Personalize

Truly get to know and develop a relationship with your readers.

Customize and personalize content instead of pushing one-size-fits-all.

Newspapers can do “local” well: popular local columnists, tie-in locally to offer specials, deals and promotions across their footprint.

Content that is of value, engaging, relevant and real. Targeted, custom.

BEST PRACTICES

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Don’t treat social as you do your “editorial” outlet and dot com.

Social is a two-way communication platform where the consumers truly have control and brands can develop a relationship with their users.

Facebook is a more personal community interaction platform that allows for more comprehensive engagement.

Twitter only 140 characters, more of a news feed.

BEST PRACTICES

Editorial >

Social v

Remember Social Is A Different Digital Medium

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Personalize, Empower Your People

Journalists actively and regularly engaging with your readers – and in an open and real fashion.

Breakdown those editorial walls and strict guidelines.

Social thrives is because it’s social and personal.

Journalists have adapted more quickly to Twitter than Facebook.

Tremendous opportunity for newspapers for expanded Facebook.

Vitrue helped Amway develop individual business pages worldwide for their thousands of representatives – incorporating Amway branding throughout – so they have the flexibility, tools and technologies to build

BEST PRACTICES

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Learn, Listen & RespondThe marketing paradigm has completely shifted. Consumers now have the control; embrace it.

Develop real, two-way relationships -- listen, learn and respond.

Interaction at both at your corporate level and with individual journalists.

Experiment. Try new things. Facebook is a dynamic and fluid medium.

Get feedback from your users. Get to know them by listening and learning.

Platforms today have sophisticated monitoring capabilities that

BEST PRACTICES

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Don’t Blatantly “Sell” on Social

Don’t use social to blatantly push your products.

It’s a great avenue to seed, say, subscriptions, classifieds and local deals.

package it as a value for them, with relevancy, your readers will interact.

Deliver coupons or deals based on their story/reading habits and interests.

Push subscription offers that front content – perhaps even exclusively – that you know will resonate with them.

(Your brand’s sCommerce approach with an obvious storefront and

BEST PRACTICES

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Mobile Devices, Technology & The Future

Proliferation of smart phones and tablet adoption – set to explode.

Today, in fact, more than 250 million users access Facebook via mobile.

Every day technology changes the way consumers interact with content.

Google is reported to be creating a Flipboard-type competitor.

CNN’s purchase of iPad magazine platform Zite.

BEST PRACTICES

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“We tell our journalists and encourage them to not just think about it as distribution and promotion. In fact, if you just think about it only as distribution, you’re not getting what you can out of social media, the most that you can, which is really about user interaction, engagement and news gathering… We really want them [journalists] to have a strategy so they know how to use it well… Develop relationships and reply when people talk to you… We want to do a lot more projects where we build platforms around our journalism…We really want to start focusing on Facebook more…Facebook is this huge community that journalists haven’t really figured out how to interact with it in the best way yet.”

Closing Thoughts …

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