Online Publisher Results and Predictions of the Year: Social Media Helps Increase Publishing Traffic

Original author: Parse.ly
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The fact that the media are brakes is no longer necessary to prove. Journalists are like a few urban taxi drivers, and users of social networks are like Uber, that is, everywhere. Therefore, it becomes more interesting "fight" at a higher level - between search engines and social networks, where search engines in the medium term also do not shine, due to the prohibitions for search engines (technological or legal) that set up large social networks to collect user messages.

The pairing of archives / search engines and operational / social media is quite natural, the human brain - with short-term and long-term memory - perfectly combines and helps to solve numerous problems.

What do publisher-bloggers-people do in the dynamic world of the changing habits of growing humanity? Listen, hear, respond and shape trends. Next is a translation of an article by colleagues from Parse.ly with a small analysis of popular (for English-speaking readers) materials in online media and suggestions on actions for publishers in the new year. How appropriate - decide for yourself. Catch the trends.

How did the public learn the most popular news of the year?


The Parse.ly team has identified the top 7 news events based on the most frequently read Internet stories. We took into account only those stories that were based on only one specific event (our apologies to fans of Donald Trump and Kardashian!), And then normalized the data on the size of sites, because we do not want the largest sites to dictate trends. After the list of stories was completed, we began to consider where the readers got from each specific story.

Since the online publishing industry focused on the use of social media as an intermediary in the dissemination of information instead of search services, we wanted to see how things were going with each specific story. And the Parse.ly team analyzed the incoming traffic for each of the top news from social networks and search engines. The results can be found below.

The image shows the sources of transitions to the most popular news of 2015:



Key findings from data analysis:

Bobby Christina Brown: Reposts (rather than transitions from social networks or search engines) - a new form of expression of sympathy

Probably one of the main reasons that the story of Bobby Katerina Brown has attracted so much attention is that it was constantly supplemented by new facts. The situation was changing in the eyes of readers - here Miss Brown was taken away from home by ambulance, doctors confirmed that she was in a coma, here she regained consciousness after a coma, and right up to the time of her death - readers used social media to spread the latest turns of the situation among his friends.

The number of page views increased at the time of Miss Brown's death, but not by much. But when they analyzed the data, they found a sharp increase in the number of reprints - 2 times more than at the moment when Miss Brown fell into a coma, and this despite the fact that the number of published articles on this subject practically did not change.

One of the reasons for the increase in the number of reprints with the low number of further publications on this topic may be that for users the repost of the article was a form of expression of sympathy for Miss Brown's untimely death, and the articles did not receive much attention since users already had a full picture of what happened.

Leo Cecil : Coverage of the development of viral stories for online publishers does not pay off the number of views

The story of Leo Cecil was not related to major national trends or news stories, this story was so widespread, as it caused an emotional reaction and outrage - two components of a potentially viral story .
According to the data, it can be concluded that viral stories are a kind of “one-time miracles”: further coverage of the history of the lion Cecil did not cause the same violent reaction as in the beginning.

Hacking Ashley Madison site : Psychological features of the event affect the attendance of publications

Hackers hacking the site Ashley Madison attracted a significant share of attention on social networks (34.1% of clicks), but most clicks (65.9%) came from search engines. We assume that users perceived this topic as immoral, but, nevertheless, wanted to know more about the issue, and at the same time did not want to show their interest to their friends on social networks. If this is true, then this example illustrates well the influence of psychological characteristics of the situation on the formation of social traffic.

Ahmed Mohamed: Public outrage leads to an increase in visits to online publications by users of social networks

The story of Ahmed Mohamed had the shortest life span of all stories in 2015. The local news report attracted the attention of the public, the story quickly gained “virality,” but since it almost did not receive its natural share of search queries, it subsided as quickly.
This happened most likely because the story did not receive further development, and readers shared articles in the context of their own views and opinions about the event, and similar activities mainly took place on Facebook and Twitter.

What to expect in 2016?


Both social and search traffic, in response to various news stories, attract visitors to websites of online publications with different efficiencies. And although there are no two identical news, as, in fact, two identical topics, online publishers can still study user trends in 2015 to understand what should be given priority in the coming year.

Based on the data from the latest report, it is safe to say that “hot news” is spreading on social media with increased speed.

Suddenly pop-up topics (as opposed to stories long and carefully prepared for publication by the publisher) in 2016 will be promoted mainly due to the interest of social media users. Sites specializing in similar news should invest in increasing their presence on social media.

Search engines are less effective at attracting readers, but they still remain one of the most effective sources of transitions to so-called “evergreen” articles. Publishers specializing in long-term materials should constantly monitor readers: who reads their articles and be aware of the preferences and interests of visitors.

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