The rise of Reddit and the steady decline of Digg have been well documented. Just recently Reddit announced that its traffic has more than doubled in less than a year (to 2.07 billion pageviews in December), an impressive feat.

Has this translated into a significant change in social news referrals for publishers?

Anecdotally we’ve all seen Reddit gain in prominence at a time when Digg has struggled to maintain its relevancy. Adam Singer summed up the general sentiment in recent conversation we had on Twitter:

“Reddit / Stumble won.”

I wanted to get a better idea of just how much of a shift has occurred with some of the publishers that we work with at Define Media Group. So I pulled the 2009-2011 Reddit and Digg referral figures for selection of 12 major magazine and Web-only content sites.

I’m not able to reveal the specific sites or figures due to confidentially requirements but they are all well established brands. I intentionally chose sites from several different publishers and focused on those with content that is a reasonably good fit for social news sites.

To anonymize the data I combined each site’s figures into a total number for the group. The numbers represent visits, not pageviews.

12 sites is a very limited sampling so this survey is certainly not meant to be conclusive. I just found the comparison interesting and I thought I’d share the findings here.

First a look at the total combined traffic for all 12 sites in 2009-2011:

The trend lines tell the story loud and clear: traffic from Reddit is way up and traffic from Digg is way down.

Among the surveyed group, Reddit went from a combined total of 6.3 million visits in 2009 to 22.7 million 2011. Conversely Digg dropped from 31+ million in 2009 down to 4.6 million in 2011.

Here is the YoY change for 2010 and 2011:

Again the numbers look great for Reddit and not so good for Digg.

Nearly all of the surveyed sites have seen substantial gains from Reddit in the past few years and significant declines from Digg.

Only one site in the group saw a slight increase in Digg traffic in 2011 and just one saw a slight decrease from Reddit. Otherwise the figures are overwhelming in favor of Reddit.

The decline of Digg was already apparent when I did a basic survey of Twitter, Facebook and Digg traffic to newspaper and magazine sites in early 2010 and the negative trend continues today.

Digg is certainly trying hard to improve its position through initiatives like Newsrooms and Digg Social Reader. We’ll see if they can stem the tide.

What you are seeing with your own traffic? If anyone is willing to share their figures or experiences either in the comments or privately, I’d be interested to hear from you.

Related posts:

1. Survey: Twitter Less than 1% of Traffic to Newspapers and Magazines; Facebook 1%
2. Official Publisher Profiles on Digg One Year Later: Followers up 720% But Have They Died on the Vine?
3. Social Media Visitors More Loyal But Still a Very Small Percentage of Site Traffic

News organizations (along with businesses of all kinds) have been able to create official Google+ pages for a couple months now so I thought I’d check in and see how their pages are doing.

I’m going to forgo looking at which media outlets have attracted the largest following since that data becomes quickly outdated.

Instead I’ll focus on some basic signals of user activity and engagement: the number of 1+’s, shares and comments on each page.

To pull the activity and engagement figures I used All my +, an interesting tool created by Gerwin Sturm.

Submitting the profile ID for a particular Google+ page generates an overview chart like this:

I collected the +1, share and comment figures for a selection of 45 news organizations. The post volume varies greatly by page so I focused on the per post averages to allow for better comparison.

The list of organizations is not meant to be comprehensive; I chose a cross-section of print, broadcast and Web-only outlets. Most are from the US but there are a handful of international sites too. I omitted location-focused outlets such as local TV stations.

Normally in posts like Which News Sites Get the Most Social Media Engagement? I stick to mainstream news sites, but this time I expanded the scope a little to include TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, The Next Web and CNET.

Here are 45 news organizations ranked by the combined figure of total +1’s, shares and comments per post:

The New York Times leads the group by a considerable margin. Their total output on Google+ is considerably less than some of the more active pages but what they do post gets a lot of interaction.

Mashable and The Next Web at #2 and #3 is not surprising based on the nature of their audience. I expected TechCrunch to be right up there too, but they did make the top ten.

Fox News tends to get a high volume of comments per Facebook update, so I was curious if the same would hold true on Google+. It does to some extent, as 22.70 puts them in the top 5 for comments per post. But their fan base is not nearly as active on Google+ as it is on Facebook.

One organization that is missing is CNN. Surprisingly as of today they do not appear to have an official page. The top Google+ search result for “CNN” is a people result that no longer exists. So instead I included CNN iReport (although it is not a great representative since there are only a couple posts on the page).

Have you noticed any news organizations doing particularly noteworthy things with their Google+ pages?

UPDATE:
Based on feedback from Cory Bergman of Breaking News (see comments below) I went back and pulled the total +1, share and comment figures for each site.

Originally I chose not to use the total figures because it felt like more of an arms race comparison. Sites with more posts will typically have more user interactions, so that didn’t seem like a useful insight. I was more interested in the level of activity and engagement the pages are getting on average. In addition the total figures will quickly go out of date.

However I agree that a comparison based on averages can also be skewed by pages that have made very few posts. It’s sort of like baseball statistics; you need a minimum number of at bats in order for the figures to be meaningful.

So while I prefer to look at the average figures, it is a good idea to cross-reference them against the totals to get a better overall picture:

In this comparison Breaking News moves up two places to #3 overall. The Next Web, Mashable and Breaking News dominate the group in terms of total user actions, which is impressive.

The New York Times drops down to #11, but based on the welcome message in their first post they are apparently taking a more conservative approach in terms of total output. Attracting a decent number of user actions with a fairly limited number of posts is impressive too.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?
2. Which News Sites Get the Most Social Media Engagement?
3. A Closer Look at Fan Engagement on the Fox News Facebook Page

As another year comes to a close I thought I’d finish off with a roundup of this year’s most popular posts. Original idea!

Nevertheless, here are my top 10 posts of 2011 by pageviews:

1. Which NBA Teams Have Seen the Most Growth on Twitter and Facebook?
2. PRFilter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent
3. Google Expanded Sitelinks: Optimize Opening Text in META Description Tag
4. Is LinkedIn the New Old Boys Network?
5. Editorial SEO Tactics for the Newsroom
6. Beyond Facebook Insights: Useful Facebook Analytics Tools
7. Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips
8. eHow and Mahalo: How Many Keyword Variations is Too Many?
9. Is Using Facebook Comments Good for Publishers?
10. The Huffington Post’s Kim Kardashian Tag-o-Rama

Also a special mention for a post from 2010 that continues to bring in considerably more pageviews than anything else:

The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases

Looking at my 2011 posts, it is interesting that a sports topic got the top slot since that’s not a major focus for me. I used to do team comparison posts with some frequency but I scaled back, mainly because the figures become outdated so quickly (and since social media is more than a numbers game). But several of my sports posts continue to drive traffic so maybe I’ll look for new ways to examine sports and social.

The post on Facebook analytics tools did well considering I just published it last week. Short, simple lists of tools and tips tend to get traction.

I also thought it was interesting that the eHow and Mahalo post was written just a couple weeks before the first Panda update. I guess that was a bit of foreshadowing.

I’m pretty sure the Kim Kardashian post made the list simply because it contains her name and photo. But I was trying to make a real point there, so I’ll take it.

In checking out Google Analytics one thing I like about my top 10 is there were multiple paths to success. For some it was search referrals, for others tweets or LinkedIn shares, and it some cases it was a link or links on other sites. It’s good to see some diversity.

Thank You

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to devote much time to blogging this year. Looking back I only averaged 2-3 posts per month.

The good news behind that is that Define Media Group, which split off from The New York Times Company a year ago, is doing well and there is plenty of client work keeping us busy.

Define is launching a company blog soon and we’ve also arranged to do some articles for Search Engine Land, so it will continue to be a challenge to keep up here. But I’ll give it a whirl.

I enjoy writing this blog, and having a personal outpost has offered a good way for me to connect and network with others in the industry.

For those of you that stop by to read a post, leave a comment or share something via social, I just want to say thanks. It is much appreciated!

Enjoy the holidays and hope you have a great 2012.

Related posts:

1. My Top Posts of 2010 on SEO, PR and Social Media for News and Sports
2. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
3. Fewer PR Organizations Plan to Increase Focus on SEO and Social Media in 2011

What are the best third-party tools for advanced Facebook analytics? It’s a question I’m asked fairly often so I thought I’d do a round-up of options that are worth checking out.

It is fair to say that Facebook is getting better at providing this data itself; the latest version of Facebook Insights offers a wider range of information than ever before. But many still find it lacking so a number of companies have stepped in to try to fulfill this need.

In this post I’m purposely leaving out comprehensive suites like Radian6 or Lithium and focusing on solutions that are specifically (or at least mostly) geared towards Facebook analytics.

I’ve also left out the feature and pricing information as this frequently changes.

With that in mind here are some Facebook analytics tools to experiment with:

PageLever
PageLever may be the most frequently suggested third-party tool, having positioned itself as Facebook Insights on steroids. The functionality is good and the price is reasonable, and they offer a 14-day free trial.

Simply Measured
Simply Measured’s Facebook Fan Page Analytics gets a gold star for clear, simple data visualization. They roll up the analysis into a series of graphs and charts that can be viewed online or exported to Excel or PowerPoint. It is also easy for agencies to white label the reports.

EdgeRank Checker
EdgeRank Checker offers a good way to dig deeper into the specific actions that aid in Facebook newsfeed optimization. The Pro version is reasonably priced and worth the upgrade.

Buddy Media
Buddy Media doesn’t technically belong on this list because they’re now positioning themselves as a comprehensive suite. But in the past they focused primarily on Facebook Page creation and management so I’ve included them. Their Analytics offering provides advanced data for Page owners, and they recently partnered with ComScore to provide additional data and analysis.

Socialbakers
Socialbakers is also now branching out into Twitter, Google+ and others but Facebook is still the major focus. Their Engagement Analytics Pro offers performance monitoring and competitive analysis for Facebook.

SEOmoz Pro
While SEOmoz Pro is primarily a suite of SEO tools, they recently added a Social Analytics section that provides a range of data on Facebook pages and activity.

Webtrends
Webtrends has a Facebook add-on that pulls in data on Facebook pages and apps into their analytics suite. The catch is you need to be using Webtrends, so this is not an option for those on Omniture or Google Analytics.

Clickable
Clickable is a good solution for advertisers. Their Facebook Advertising Suite offers both deep analysis and effective management for Facebook Ads.

So that’s a good group to get you started.

Had positive or negative experiences with any of these tools? What else are you using?

Please let me know.

Related posts:

1. Which News Sites Have the Most Valuable Facebook Pages?
2. The Most Popular Summer Blockbuster Movies in Social Media
3. Is Using Facebook Comments Good for Publishers?

Pinterest is getting a lot of attention these days and deservedly so. The photo and video sharing site offers great opportunities for promoting lifestyle content and reaching niche audiences and specific demographics.

Need a primer on Pinterest? Kerry Jones did an excellent one on the BlueGlass blog: Everything You Need to Know About Pinterest.

While any photo-rich site can benefit from Pinterest, at least at this stage in its evolution there are particularly strong opportunities for lifestyle publishers and brands.

In scanning through user pins and boards things like recipes, decorating ideas, household items, art and fashion are among the most frequently shared content:

The boards automatically created by Pinterest for new users also guide them in this direction, with topics like “Products I Love,” “For the Home,” “My Style” and “Favorite Places & Spaces.”

Who’s Doing it Well

A number of lifestyle sites have already set up official profiles, including:

Real Simple
MyRecipes
Cooking Light
Better Homes and Gardens
Bon Appetit
Saveur Magazine
HGTV
Daily Grommet

Among that group Real Simple has attracted the largest following to-date. At the moment it has more followers than all of the others combined.

I am primarily covering publishers in this post but there are also solid opportunities for retailers. All the more reason to utilize high-quality, interesting photos for all key products.

What are the Benefits?

As with most social sites it is a good idea for brands to have an official outpost. On Pinterest publishers can showcase their content, build brand awareness and connect with influencers, evangelists and good old fashioned regular users who like their stuff.

Brands can also establish credibility and topical authority by curating and sharing content from other sources. Taking a diversified approach by supplementing the brand profile with personal profiles for staff members with expertise in specific areas is also beneficial.

But the largest upside comes from the Pinterest user base at large pinning, liking and repinning your photos and videos.

This not only generates additional visibility for your photo content and exposes the brand to new audiences. It also creates links back to your site:

At the moment the attribution links do not have the nofollow attribute, which means they have SEO value as well.

That may change in the future, but even if it does the links will continue to be a valuable source of traffic and content promotion. And even nofollow links have indirect SEO benefits since users who come across them may choose to link or share the content elsewhere.

Should Publishers Add “Pin It” Buttons?

For sites that want to encourage pinning Pinterest offers an official “Pin It” button as well as a range of follow buttons to promote a profile:

I’m not coming across “Pin It” buttons in the wild all that much yet but I’d expect their usage to increase.

For any publisher on-page real estate is a valuable commodity and it is important not to overwhelm users. With Facebook, Twitter and now Google +1 buttons becoming virtually required placements that doesn’t always leave room for niche sites like Pinterest.

[As an aside: third-party tools like AddThis or ShareThis can help reduce clutter but it is easy to go overboard in those drop-downs too, and they require an additional click or hover from users.]

And since the site has yet to go fully mainstream a healthy percentage of your user base may not be aware of it just yet.

But if your image content is a natural fit for Pinterest, it may be worth experimenting with the button at least on galleries and slideshows and on recipes.

Encouraging your users to get involved with Pinterest will ultimately benefit your site in the long term.

Have you incorporated Pinterest into your social efforts yet?

Related posts:

1. Does Google Want Brands in Your Social Circle?
2. Is Using Facebook Comments Good for Publishers?
3. Can Publishers Harvest Social Media Intent in a Meaningful Way?

Google’s recent algorithm change that favors the most recent content for certain types of queries offers good opportunities for news and content sites. But for individuals and organizations, does the freshness update make online reputation management more difficult?

If you cover breaking news, hot topics or regularly occurring events the freshness update will create more chances for your latest content to surface highly for general search queries (like the name of a celebrity, sports team or TV show). Essentially Google has turned up the dial on its “query deserves freshness” algorithm.

But let’s say you are an individual or company that is trying to combat negative listings that rank highly for your name.

A fundamental part of online reputation management (ORM) involves pushing down those negative listings and getting more positive or neutral results better entrenched on page one. This is typically done through things like subdomains, social profiles and more favorable media coverage.

At times when your name is in the news (for reasons you’d prefer it wasn’t) an increase in the number of “fresh” listings on page one means it will be more difficult to keep negative coverage off of page one.

How It Works

Unfortunately a recent example that illustrates this concept in action is Joe Paterno and the terrible events that allegedly took place at Penn State.

Last week a search on “joe paterno” brought up these results one page one in Google:

[Click to enlarge the image]

While the #1 and #2 organic listings are still a general bio and a Wikipedia page, the news onebox at the top and all eight listings under the embedded image results are related to the scandal.

Prior to the freshness change the news onebox would have still been prominent but only 2-3 of the natural listings would likely have been brand new content.

From a user perspective it makes sense to favor fresh content for this query, since it is likely that the majority of people searching for “joe paterno” or “penn state” last week were looking for information on the recent news.

But for the individual or organization in question, the resulting shake-up in the SERPs can be troubling.

To be clear, Joe Paterno is very serious example and I am not implying that he should have an ORM team helping to clean up his search results. It is simply a recent event that illustrates the Google freshness update in action.

What You Can Do

There are instances in which a company or individual is hit by a wave of negative coverage, whether fairly or not. At such times an increase in fresh results means it will be more challenging to keep unfavorable coverage out of the page one results.

So in that sense the Google freshness update does make online reputation management more challenging for PR and SEO professionals.

However, an important takeaway is the fact that the freshness update works both ways. It may bring more unfavorable content to the forefront, but it can just as easily give a boost to positive content.

At times when negative coverage is increasing, your ability to respond quickly with new content that conveys your side the story (through both owned media and earned media) will increase the likelihood that not all of the fresh listings will be negative.

It will also be important to continue to produce and generate additional favorable content for as long as the freshness algorithm continues to be triggered for your name.

You won’t be able to keep out all of the negative listings, but you can at least create a better balance in what users encounter in the fresh results.

Interested in learning more about Google’s freshness update? Check out:

• Giving You Fresher, More Recent Search Results – Official Google Blog
• Google Search Algorithm Change for Freshness to Impact 35% of Searches – Search Engine Land
• Google’s “Freshness” Update – Whiteboard Friday – SEOmoz

Related posts:

1. Rich Snippets: Increase Google Visibility for Reviews through Microformats
2. Do Google’s Expanded Domain Results Apply to News and Video Listings?
3. Google Social Search: Are You in Your Target Audiences’ Social Circles?

I was talking with John Shehata from ABC News yesterday about Facebook, and he brought up an interesting question. What’s a better approach for journalists, creating official Facebook Pages or enabling the subscribe button on their regular profiles?

Facebook is certainly encouraging the use of the new subscribe button. Journalists were specifically referenced in the launch post:

The Subscribe button also lets you hear from interesting people you’re not friends with—like journalists, artists and political figures.

They’ve also created a Subscribe for Journalists guide, and the Facebook + Journalists page frequently touts new journalists that users can subscribe to:

However their Getting Started page for journalists equally promotes both options:

So it seems they are still officially in favor of either approach.

Since the subscribe button has only been around for a month or so there are still plenty of well-known journalists using official pages, for example Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. Kristof’s page has 230K+ likes so it makes sense to keep that going.

But in checking around more journalists do seem to be utilizing the subscribe button on their regular profiles.

Shortly after launch Facebook put up a list of media professionals that had already enabled the button. And more journalists are doing so each week.

Forbes recently posted a list all of its journalists that users can subscribe to, so they’ve opted to go that route.

So what’s the right approach?

There are pros and cons of each.

One advantage of using Facebook Pages is access to better analytics data via Facebook Insights.

Another is they allow journalists to keep their personal profiles completely personal, which is attractive to those who like to maintain a firm boundary between their work and home lives. However the ability to control what is shared with subscribers from regular pages helps to offset this advantage.

Pages also allow for more functionality like special widgets and custom tabs. But in most cases functionality like that is best suited to a news organization’s main page as opposed to individual journalists.

In addition in Facebook official pages surface in Page search results, separate from People results, which is helpful if a journalist has a common name. However regular profiles with a lot of subscribers tend to surface high in people results, so that too is offset to some degree.

With all this in mind I’d expect that using the subscribe button on regular profiles will continue to evolve towards being the default approach for journalists on Facebook.

And since not every media professional is a “public figure” that necessarily warrants a Facebook Page, in practical terms this may prove to be the best fit for many news organizations.

So my advice to news organizations is to experiment with using the subscribe button on regular profiles and see how that goes.

You could consider mixing in few official pages for well known personalities, but you’d want to be careful about fostering a divide between “A-Listers” and the rest of the staff.

What do you think is the best approach?

UPDATE:
In January 2012 Facebook shared some new statistics on journalists using the subscribe button. According to Facebook thousands of journalists have enabled Subscribe and the average journalist has seen a 320% increase in subscribers since November 2011 (though that figure is based on a sampling of only 25 journalists).

However in response to that announcement Jim Romenesko made the point that for many journalists the quality of the subscribers is poor and spam is frequent.

Comments on Jim’s post from other journalists like Katherine Goldstein of Slate and Nisha Chittal of Travel Channel indicate that this is a common experience:

However Craig Kanalley of NBC News didn’t agree with that sentiment and set out to prove it.

Related posts:

1. Official Publisher Profiles on Digg One Year Later: Followers up 720% But Have They Died on the Vine?
2. News Sites Not Making Much Use of Static FBML on Facebook Pages
3. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?

Press release optimization doesn’t get the attention it once did, at least within the SEO community. But a considerable number of releases are distributed over the wires and added to online pressrooms every day, so it is still an important tactic for PR professionals. Why wouldn’t you try to increase the search engine visibility of your press materials?

Last week I needed to dust off a press release optimization checklist that I’d written several years ago, so I thought I’d share it here.

I hadn’t published this previously because there are already a number of other good resources out there. Todd Defren published a useful checklist back in 2008 and Lee Odden, probably the strongest advocate, has written multiple posts such as Essential Press Release Optimization Tips.

But since SEO and PR are my main areas of focus I thought I’d share my version as well.

I’d originally put this together in 2006; I found it interesting that there wasn’t too much I needed to update. Some of the research tools have changed but the fundamentals for optimizing the headline, body text and links are largely the same.

One thing I want to emphasize is not to put too much focus on keyword frequency or density in the release. You certainly want your target keyword phrase in the title and it should appear within the body too (ideally in the opening paragraph). But there’s no need to get caught up in making sure it appears X times or represents X% of all words.

Press Release Optimization Checklist

Keyword Planning

1. Select the main keyword phrase for the release

• Brand and product/service names will be naturally supported so choose a literal, descriptive phrase that matches how people search for the topic
• Use keyword research tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Google Insights for Search to evaluate and refine candidates and discover popular variations. Look for keyword phrases with reasonable search volume that accurately convey the key concept
• Check what news stories and press releases currently come up for your top candidates in Google News and Yahoo News. How much competition is there?
• Use Google Trends to compare keyword candidates, seeing how often they have been searched for in Google over time and how frequently they have appeared in Google News stories

Content Optimization

1. Title/headline

• Include the main keyword phrase in the title, close to the beginning when possible
• Reduce unnecessary words to improve keyword weight
• Put the most important information first

2. Subheading/summary (when present)

• Include the main keyword phrase or a common variation

3. First paragraph

• Include the main keyword phrase in the first paragraph, ideally in the first sentence

4. Rest of body

• Include the main keyword phrase (and/or variations of it) approximately one time for every 100 words. This is a very rough guideline not a strict rule. The key is to blend in keyword support without harming readability
• Total length: 250-500 words total is optimal, however longer releases are often necessary and not a problem
• Avoid over-use of “marketing speak.” Use direct, straightforward language
• Use the full form of terms throughout the release, unless the shortened forms or abbreviations also have search demand
• As possible, include the keyword phrase in executive quotes as that content may be highlighted by some services or used in resulting media coverage
• Optimize/tag images and multimedia content with target keywords

5. Links

• Link directly to specific pages in the release (not just the home page)
• Use keywords in the anchor text of links (3-4 links per release maximum)

6. For press releases on your own site

• Optimize the page’s title tag, URL and META description tag based on SEO best practices

So that’s my checklist. Have any additional suggestions or a different approach? I’d be interested to hear from you.

Related posts:

1. Email Press Release Optimization Circa 1999
2. A Look at Muck Rack’s Twitter Press Release Service, 51 Releases Later
3. PRFilter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent

Based on first impressions, I have to say I like The Washington Post’s Social Reader on Facebook.

It offers a clean, simple user experience – big and open with lots of white space (in fact too big to capture well in a screenshot):

(click to enlarge)

There are enough additional sources to offer a wide range of content choices which makes it more engaging.

And being able to read the articles right in the app is a big plus.

That alone is a big step for publishers, who are understandably tentative about social efforts that are not directly focused on bringing users back to their site. But with the right monetization strategy there is no reason that a news organization needs to be limited to the confines of its own website.

There are also attribution links to the original articles (although those links point to redirected feed URLs):

I like seeing what friends have read too:

Reporting friend activity gets overdone in social media, but in this particular app it did successfully get my attention.

I was curious to check out what some real friends had read. And seeing that Brian Solis – who isn’t an actual friend but is a respected voice in the industry – had read certain articles did encourage me to click on them.

Overall I’d give Social Reader the nod over WSJ Social which launched just before it.

For more background information check out Robert Scoble’s video interview with company chairman Don Graham.

The Washington Post is actively recruiting more content partners. I’m not familiar with the terms but it is worth investigating. And I’m sure more publishers will follow The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post’s lead and come out with similar offerings soon.

At that point it will be interesting to see what happens. Once everyone is doing it, how much attention and engagement will each get?

UPDATE:
For more on the impact of Social Reader on users’ news feeds, see Why Is the Washington Post at the Top of My Facebook Feed Yet Again? from Liz Gannes of AllThingsD.

Related posts:

1. Paywalls, Media Coverage and User Access: What’s a PR Pro to Do?
2. Is Using Facebook Comments Good for Publishers?
3. Google Buzz and News Sites: Good Potential But Facebook Still the Better Play

When I got a Google Alert that my name appeared in an article on NFL jerseys, I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Perhaps a reference to one of my social media super bowl posts?

Nope! Instead it seems I’d been given the honor of being in the first sentence of a spam article that had scraped together a bunch of random content.

I’m not going to link to it but it was on a subdomain of bloglines.co.za.

I guess you have to admire the automated attempt to transition from enterprise social media strategies to buying NFL replica jerseys:

And at least the advertisement was well targeted to me since I’m interested in press release optimization and I’m a fan of PRWeb.

I also liked the ambitious effort to close the article with some extra links for buying property in Africa:

I even got rolled into a tweet promoting the article:

Jokes aside, it’s understandable how frustrated publishers and bloggers get with content scraping and article spinning. It really is an epidemic.

Related posts:

1. Great Example of a Multimedia News Article from ESPN.com
2. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. Article Highlights: Good for Users, Good for Search Engines

News publishers are all too familiar with the fact that Google News doesn’t always do such a great job of favoring original sources in its story clusters. It is not usual to see a syndicated, aggregated or simply re-covered version of an article gain prominent visibility over the original.

Today I noticed an example that is worth pointing out because you’d think Google News would be able to handle it properly.

On the home page the lead article in a story cluster about the Facebook music platform came from Tom’s Guide.

What caught my attention was the fact that in the article summary the original source CNBC was mentioned twice, yet the CNBC article did not appear in the cluster:

And in fact if you look at the Tom’s Guide article in addition to multiple CNBC citations there are two links (although one is nofollow) to the original CNBC article:

You’d think that would be a strong enough signal for Google News to favor the CNBC original over Tom’s Guide.

But the CNBC article wasn’t present in the cluster and in clicking through to the Full Coverage page it was also nowhere to be found:

I clicked on each of the “All X related articles” links on the Full Coverage page but did not see the CNBC article anywhere.

Even a search on “cnbc facebook music” brought up the Tom’s Guide article but not the CNBC original:

The only way I could get the CNBC article to come up was with a “site:cnbc.com facebook music” search, confirming that it was in fact indexed in Google News:

In my post on Google News Optimization Tips I list the article ranking factors within a story cluster, in which Google specifically references that fact that it attempts to give priority to original articles and that Citation Rank is utilized to help determine original sources.

However that clearly was not working in this case.

Based on the story cluster ranking factors about the only advantage the Tom’s Guide article had going for it was the fact that it was about six hours more recent than the original (according to their Google News listings).

The CNBC article had more tweets, Facebook likes and Google +1’s than the Tom’s Guide piece, so social signals weren’t at play either.

I’m not directly familiar with either site’s SEO or news search optimization practices. The CNBC title tag is not great but both articles have decent headlines, which is more important for Google News. Perhaps Tom’s Guide is making better use of Google News sitemaps which calls better attention to their content.

But even if that were the case Tom’s Guide itself makes it abundantly clear that CNBC is the original source of the news, so you’d think Google News could account for that.

Doesn’t seem right, does it?

Related posts:

1. Great Example of a Multimedia News Article from ESPN.com
2. Google News Now Recrawling Updated Articles
3. Google News Optimization Tips

Google’s expanded sitelinks give sites greater exposure for branded searches and the ability to dominate the page one results above the fold.

User reactions have been mixed so far (some find them overwhelming or borderline obnoxious) but Google is touting the user benefits and the expanded sitelinks appear to be here to stay.

That means that sites should take advantage of the opportunity to increase clickthroughs to those pages by optimizing their META description tags in a slightly different way.

As can be seen Google typically pulls in about 30-35 characters for each snippet:

This gives new importance to the first several words in the META description tag on those pages. While not a lot of room to work with site owners should ensure that those opening words result in a meaningful snippet.

It is also important to make sure that each of the sitelink pages has a META description tag. MLB and the Chicago Bulls offer examples of what can get pulled in from pages with no META description tag and not much text content:

—

Related posts:

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It has been a year since I took at look at the followers and activity of News Sites on the New Digg so I thought I would see how those official profiles are faring today.

When I did my original post Digg v4 was just about to come out of alpha so there has been a significant increase in exposure for the profiles and many more publishers have created them.

However once Digg discontinued the ability to automatically submit content via RSS after negative feedback from users, activity on the official profiles dropped off considerably. So where do things stand today?

For comparative purposes I will stick to the 30 mainstream and business news profiles that were examined in my original post.

First a look at follower counts one year later:

Not surprisingly the follower counts for all of the profiles are way up. The YoY increase for the collective group is 720% and quite a few profiles have much higher increases than that.

In terms of total following Time jumped from #4 in August 2010 to take the top stop from The New York Times today. The Daily Beast also had a large jump that puts it in the top 10.

How about user interaction and engagement? Most of the publishers continue to follow very few others:

Time stands out in this group but it is actually following two fewer profiles than last year so it does not appear to be a priority for them.

The number of diggs by each profile is up quite a bit but there has been little commenting activity:

Reuters, Bloomberg Businessweek and Forbes have much higher digg counts than the other publishers. But a quick look at the diggs by the Reuter’s profile shows that it is mainly just digging its own content.

The same is true for Businessweek and Forbes as well as many of the publisher profiles. One exception is Breaking News which appears to be digging a variety of content.

I didn’t look at the submission counts for the profiles last year since it was very early days for many of them.

But here are the submission counts as of today:

Reuters and Bloomberg Businessweek again lead the pack by a considerable margin, but this came from self-submission (which is no longer possible to automate via RSS) as opposed to active participation.

So what do you think? Have official publisher profiles already run their course or is there still a good opportunity for those that are willing to engage users through genuine participation?

Related posts:

1. News Sites on the New Digg: Who is Active, Who is Gaining Followers?
2. Publisher Survey: Reddit Traffic Way Up, Digg Way Down
3. NBC Targets Local Markets on the New Digg

While going through some old documents I came across an article I’d written on email press release best practices back in 1999. It’s a fun look back at the early days of online media relations so I thought I’d share it.

I started doing online public relations activities in 1995 and from 1996-2000 I managed an online PR team and helped run an email press release service called Internet News Bureau that was eventually acquired by Internet.com.

By 1999 we’d been sending press releases via email for several years and this article was meant to help others avoid some of the pitfalls of pitching the media in this way.

I’m not sure when “press release optimization” became a common concept but it wasn’t being used at that time. Our main focus was direct delivery to journalists via email. (As a side note “e-mail” was the more common spelling then as the AP did not standardize on “email” until this year).

One thing I enjoyed is the fact that I called out the use of terms like “unique” and “revolutionary” since I’m still doing that now through posts like The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases and PR Filter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent.

It’s also interesting that the common sense concepts haven’t changed much, nor were they new at the time. Communication vehicles continue to evolve but the fundamentals remain largely the same.

So without further ado here is my article on e-mail press release best practices from 1999:

E-mail Press Releases: Do’s and Don’ts

by Adam Sherk, VP Internet Public Relations, Multimedia Marketing Group
October 20, 1999

Sending press releases via e-mail can be a great marketing tool – if you do it right. As with offline media relations, you need to cater to your press contacts just as much as your clients. With this in mind, I’ve put together some basic tips for writing and distributing e-mail press releases:

Length

Keep it short: online journalists are bombarded by e-mail; long, wordy releases will often fall victim to the delete key. It’s best to use short paragraphs, as they are easier on the eyes in an e-mail.

Get to the point right away, and skip all the fluffy PR stuff. Avoid words like “unique” and “revolutionary” – they’ve heard it all too many times.

Formatting

Proper e-mail formatting is essential. If your release comes through as gibberish or with over-wrapped lines, it will never be read, and worse – it will annoy the journalists. The safest way is to keep it simple: left justified with hard line breaks at 65 characters or less.

Don’t use special characters like the trademark symbol. A lot of e-mail programs read them fine, but not all of them, so why take the chance? Instead use text abbreviations, like: [tm].

Also, it’s best to compose a release in your e-mail program instead of a word-processing program. Even basic things like quotation marks from a word-processing program can come through as gibberish in someone else’s e-mail program.

Avoid the temptation to send attachments, even if the file is small. You don’t know how it will come through on the other end. A long download – or worse, a mail server crash – will not endear you to the “victimized” journalist. Instead provide a URL where they can view, download or do what ever you’d like them to do.

Relevance

Don’t just blast out your release to every journalist’s e-mail address that you can find. Avoid sending unsolicited releases (it’s still spam) and make sure that your material will be relevant to each individual journalist.

Unsure what a journalist covers? Ask. A short e-mail can do tremendous good. With one message, you can find out what they are interested in, get permission to send them material, and best of all, build a relationship.

Another good option is using an established online distribution service with a subscription-based list.

###

Good stuff, huh?

Related posts:

1. Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips
2. A Look at Muck Rack’s Twitter Press Release Service, 51 Releases Later
3. PRFilter Shows Press Release Buzzword Abuse Still Prevalent

While watching the film The Social Network over the weekend one scene in particular caught my attention. Mark Zuckerberg and key members of the early Facebook team are meeting to discuss roles and ownership stakes in the company.

To quote the Mark Zuckerberg character in the film (emphasis is mine):

“Now here’s the arrangement. Eduardo is CFO and owns 30% of the company. Dustin is vice president and head of programming and his 5% of the company will come from my end. Chris is director of publicity and his compensation will depend on the amount of work he ends up doing. Any questions?”

I had to laugh at the implication that the PR guy might not end up doing much work or contributing substantially to the success of the company.

Certainly team members that were providing capital or creating the actual product had greater value at that point, and Facebook was doing well through word-of-mouth so a comprehensive PR plan was probably not a primary concern.

But based on public reports the real life Chris Hughes did apparently make a valuable contribution to Facebook and he went on to do good work for the Barack Obama campaign and then found Jumo. [See FastCompany and The New York Times for more on Hughes.]

And few would argue against the importance of PR and marketing in launching and growing any new business regardless of how formalized those efforts are. Rand Fishkin covered this well on SEOmoz earlier this year.

So the question is: how much is a PR professional worth to a startup?

The short answer is it really does depend on the situation; how much of a role PR will play in the early phases of the company, what the specific PR person brings to the table, etc.

It also depends on who you ask! Those more focused on technology or finance may have a different perspective on the value of public relations in getting a company off the ground. There may also be a tendency to not assign as much value to things that are not necessarily as tangible early on.

But that doesn’t mean that PR and marketing do not play a vital role in the development of a company. So what do you think a PR person is worth to a startup?

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Earlier this week Search Engine Land reported that Christian Oestlien, the Ads Lead for Google+, had posted a message asking businesses to hold off on using personal accounts to create business pages and that non-user profiles would be shut down.

Quite a few media outlets have already created personal Google+ accounts and many of them are still up and running. With business profiles potentially not available to everyone until later this year will news sites keep using personal accounts, and will Google let them?

In checking today several high-profile news sites still have active pages including Mashable, the Chicago Sun-Times, Breaking News, The Next Web and Search Engine Land.

[UPDATE: Most of the pages referenced above have now been taken down so I removed the links; see below].

Others that had been previously reported as active now result in a 404 page including CNET, ABC News Radio and ITV News.

According to Dan Patterson ABC News Radio took its page down after learning that Google did not want businesses to create personal accounts. Other media outlets have similarly followed suit.

As for Mashable, in a Google+ discussion (that is no longer available so the link has been removed) started by Brent Csutoras, Sean Carlos noted that the Mashable News page had stopped appearing in search results for Google+ pages with “news” in the title but then later reappeared. Some saw this as a sign that the page had been banned or taken down and then allowed to reappear, potentially indicating a double standard for some brands.

It will be interesting to see how long news and content sites will continue to use personal accounts and whether or not Google enforces stricter compliance.

The best solution is for Google to fast track the Google+ business pages, which they now appear to be doing at least in terms of working with an initial test group. With various media sites already reporting good referral traffic from Google+ it is hard to blame any news organization for wanting to establish a presence ASAP.

For news sites that have not yet created a personal account I’d heed Google’s request and wait for the business pages. In the interim there are plenty of ways for individuals within an organization to engage users and promote content from their own accounts.

In addition, businesses can apply to be part of the initial test group for Google+ business profiles. But hurry; yesterday Oestlien told AdAge that they have already received thousands of applications and they’d likely stop taking more early next week.

UPDATE (7/22/11):
In the 7-10 days after I published this post a lot more brands (in news and other categories) created a Google+ presence using personal accounts. Many of the pages were getting a lot of activity and engagement, creating the impression that experimenting with personal pages might be worth it after all.

But then this week Google started suspending many of those profiles. In fact all but one of the pages I linked to above have now been taken down.

See Google Removes Mashable, Sesame Street & Other Prominent Accounts From Google Plus for more information.

Yesterday Mashable posted an announcement that it was converting its page to a personal profile for Pete Cashmore:

The good news is all this activity, as well as the flood of applications that Google apparently received for the business page test program, has prompted Google to accelerate its timetable for business pages.

Yesterday Google+’s Christian Oestlien published a new post indicating that business pages would be available to everyone within the next few months.

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According to the new Pew Internet study Social Networking Sites and our Lives there are nearly twice as many male LinkedIn users as female. What gives?

So what accounts for this disparity? More males in the workforce? Do men prefer LinkedIn’s brand of simple, stripped down, business-oriented networking?

For what it is worth, females have stronger participation overall and in every other social network that was examined. In fact the male/female usage percentages are the exact opposite on Twitter.

That’s interesting in and of itself, as marketers sometimes (over) generalize that men prefer Twitter while Facebook is more appealing to women.

How about age? While MySpace continues to have a strong pull with younger demographics the age distribution is fairly even across the other social media sites, although users age 50+ prefer both Facebook and LinkedIn over Twitter:

The Pew Internet study also takes a detailed look at specific activity on Facebook by age and gender that is worth checking out.

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Twice in the past year I’ve covered the most overused PR buzzwords and marketing speak and press release buzzword abuse. It is fun to point out the biggest offenders but even well-intentioned marketing communicators can find it difficult to avoid them.

Ready to stop being a “leading provider” of “unique,” “innovative” and “award winning” overused terms but need a solution? (Doh! “Solution” is an overused term too. But not in this context, so I get a pass.)

Enter Better than Great, Arthur Plotnik’s new book containing nearly 6,000 alternate terms for praise and acclaim. Arthur mentioned that he was working on it in the comments of my first buzzwords post and now that it’s been released I’m happy to say he achieved his aim and then some.

Better than Great covers a wide range of fresh superlatives in a number of categories, pulling from rare gems and vintage gold all the way through current phrases influenced by hip-hop.

To show the book in action while proving the point that portions of press releases do sometimes get picked up in media and blog coverage I’ll quote directly from the release that Associate Publisher Brenda Knight sent to me:

“Better than Great is the must-have reference for anyone seeking to rise above tired superlatives when the quality of acclaim matters….Critics, copywriters, journalists, poets, speakers, sales reps, bloggers, Twitterers – word-slingers from the whole digital and literary spectrum – should find it to be a concussively brilliant, euphoriant, supernal, larky, trill, spikeable, epiphanic, über-cool, soul-juddering experience, an upful of endorphining jubilee to make the heart warble.”

While we probably need to call out the use of “must-have” that paragraph sure is jam-packed with non-overused terms.

Now admittedly the best antidote for marketing speak in press releases is to explain things simply in clear, direct terms and let the media professionals take it from there. So blending in some of Arthur’s fresh superlatives won’t always be the right approach.

But there are plenty of forms of marketing communications that could use of an injection of less-worn adjectives and even press releases can benefit from some of Arthur’s offerings in the right situation.

So for writers of all shapes and sizes Better than Great is indeed just that.

Note: The book is just $10 on Amazon right now. I’ll avoid the link so this post doesn’t get misinterpreted as a play for affiliate revenue, but go check it out.

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Alterian recently released some data on the most popular summer blockbusters in social media, focusing specifically on movies with May and June release dates.

According to their data Fast Five and Thor are far and away the most popular summer movies with each getting 38%+ of social media activity among the selected group of films:

(click to enlarge)

Share of social media activity:

1. Fast Five 38.46%
2. Thor 38.05%
3. Green Lantern 9%
4. X:Men: First Class 4%
5. Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides 2.7%
6. The Hangover: Part II 2.26%
7. Super 8 2.25%
8. Cars 2 1.7%
9. Kung Fu Panda 2 1.5%

Apparently much of the discussion of Fast Five was generated by Vin Diesel’s Facebook page, showing the value of star power and a loyal fan base in any endeavor. The Vin Diesel Facebook page has more than 24,000,000 likes.

At the other end of the spectrum, in Alterian’s sentiment analysis two summer movies had more negative opinions than positive: Green Lantern and The Hangover Part II.

Green Lantern

The Hangover Part II

(click to enlarge)

It will be interesting to see if early negative reactions translate into poor performance at the box office.

Does the Alterian data match what is available through some of the free tools out there?

Here is the Social Mention data for Fast Five, Thor, Green Lantern and Hangover 2:

Social Mention’s strength and reach scores are fairly similar for all four films so there is not much separation for Fast Give and Thor in its data. In terms of sentiment analysis, Green Lantern actually has the best ratio of positive mentions (8:1) in its dataset.

Specific to Twitter, Topsy Analytics shows that Fast Five’s highest peak in the past month was greater than Thor’s but both films have pulled in a lot of mentions, and both are significantly outpacing Green Lantern:

(click to enlarge)

Hangover 2 was omitted because a maximum of three terms can be compared with the Topsy tool.

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This year’s NBA playoffs have been great so far, a nice surprise considering it is still early in the second round. Since I like looking at the social media presence of NBA teams I thought I’d run the 2011 playoff teams through the beta version of the new Klout to see how the fare against each other.

Last year I simply ranked the NBA playoff teams by Facebook engagement, so this year I thought I’d try a different approach for Twitter and apply Klout scores to the actual bracket and declare a winner for each matchup, round by round.

First the Eastern Conference:

Chicago and Miami cruised through the first round, similar to how it happened in the actual playoffs. Atlanta had the worst Klout score in the conference so that doesn’t sync with their surprising performance thus far in the playoffs. Their 67 is more symbolic of how they laid an egg in last year’s playoffs. Boston had a much tougher matchup against the Knicks on Klout than they did on the court.

In the second round the Magic proved no match for the Bulls. Boston and Miami was a great matchup; let’s hope the real series is that close.

In the Eastern Conference Finals the Bulls and Heat tied with a Klout score of 81, so I used additional data from Klout to declare the winner. As a Bulls fan it pains me to say it but the Heat have a stronger Twitter profile:

Now for the Western Conference:

Memphis matched up well against the Spurs but unfortunately for them when it comes to Klout they fell just short. The Thunder beat the Nuggets in a fairly close series and Portland managed to sneak past Dallas. The Lakers had no trouble with New Orleans.

In the second round the Spurs made it through another matchup 74-73, close to how many fans thought the veteran team might perform in the actual playoffs. The Lakers blew past the Blazers, so no revenge for their loss with Scottie Pippen to the Shaq/Kobe Lakers.

Los Angeles easily defeated the Spurs in the conference finals.

The Lakers’ 84 also gave them a close victory over Miami, making them the 2011 NBA Klout champions:

Will they make it happen on the court?

POST-FINALS UPDATE:

Not even close! But the point was to compare the teams head-to-head by Klout score, not to try to use Klout to predict the actual champion. So it’s really a better indicator of popularity from past success plus current level of engagement.

Related to that, since winning the NBA title the Mavs’ Klout score is up 11 points to 81, making it comparable to the other top teams in the league. However the Heat’s score is also up to 85, meaning that at least in the world of Twitter influence the Heat come out on top. By contrast the Lakers have dropped to 74 so a lack of recent activity has harmed their score:

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1. Which NBA Teams Have Seen the Most Growth on Twitter and Facebook?
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3. NBA Playoff Teams Ranked by Facebook Page Engagement

Thanks to Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead we know that the band’s approach over the years offers useful insights for marketers. But how is the organization itself doing with social media today? Based on a current promotion on the Grateful Dead Facebook page I’d say they’re doing great.

In support of the release of the complete recordings from the Europe ’72 tour (and the 40th anniversary of that tour) the Grateful Dead Facebook page utilizes a separate tab to create a multi-page interactive experience for fans.

Users can follow the tour route on an animated map, view set lists and photos and read accounts from people who were at each show. Best of all, a live track from each date is streamed right from the tab. It’s not every day you hear a rip-roaring Truckin’ suddenly jump out of a Facebook page.

They have also done a good job of building in elements to encourage repeat visits. The tour took place in April-May 1972 so the content for each show is featured on the Facebook page during the corresponding week this year. This gets users coming back week after week:

The tab also includes a sweepstakes which allows them to collect fan email addresses and of course a link for buying the complete recordings.

In terms of the technical setup I like how the use of sub-navigation buttons makes it possible to offer a multi-page experience within the same tab (see below). And effective use of colorful, interactive pages with multimedia content brings it all to life.

One thing that needs improvement is the message that is provided when a user clicks the “Share” link on the intro page:

An image and a more compelling message will significantly improve the click-through rate.

Since the content won’t be on the Grateful Dead Facebook page indefinitely I’ve grabbed some screenshots:

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eHow is back in the news after claims it was hit hard by latest expansion of Google’s Panda update and subsequent denials from Demand Media. Articles like “How to Pour Water Into a Glass Cup” make it difficult to dispute eHow’s reputation as the poster child of content farms. But in terms of keyword targeting, how different is eHow from major news sites?

To get a rough idea I used SEMRush to look at the sites that have the most keywords in common with eHow. SEMRush’s “Competitors in Google” report ranks a site’s competitors by the number of keyword phrases for which both sites appear in Google’s organic search results.

So at a very basic level the more common keywords two sites share, the more similar they are at least in terms of keyword targeting.

I exported the first 10,000 results from SEMRush and went through the first few thousand looking for major news sites, primarily newspapers, national and local news organizations and online news sites. Then I added in a few major tech news sites to round out the list.

Here are the 50 news sites with the most keywords in common with eHow, according to SEMRush:

The New York Times tops the list with more than 100K keywords in common with eHow. It was #46 on the overall list of competitors. It should be pointed out however that with over 10 million nytimes.com pages in Google’s index the keyword overlap represents only 1% of NYT content.

USA Today and CNN also have considerably more common keywords than the other news sites on the list. The top 10 all share 29K or more keyword phrases with eHow.

What kinds of keywords do the news sites have in common with eHow?

Here are some of the terms shared with The New York Times:

Kind of an odd mix, but I spot checked the terms and both sites do surface in my Google results. In looking at the shared keywords for several sites, the commonality stems from both evergreen content on the news sites and news content on more general topics.

An important thing to point out however is that shared keywords do not necessarily mean shared quality. Just because some news sites are covering similar topics to eHow does not mean the quality of the content is the same.

That said Google is surfacing both the news sites and eHow for related search queries.

Which sites of any type share the most common keywords with eHow?

Here are the top 25 according to SEMRush:

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1. eHow and Mahalo: How Many Keyword Variations is Too Many?
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The launch of Google’s Page Speed Online (which allows users to get Page Speed scores without installing a browser extension) reminded me that it has been a year since I looked at the page load times of major news sites. So I thought I’d go back and see if there have been any performance changes in the past year.

Last year in 25 Major News Sites Ranked by Page Speed I ran the Page Speed tool on the home page of a selection of online news sites including newspapers, magazines, TV sites, wire services and other news organizations.

Today I checked each of those home pages again and ranked the sites by improvement. As a reminder Page Speed scores range from 0-100 with a higher score indicating better performance.

While the average improvement across all of the sites is only 2.3% several sites saw significant improvements, particularly The Economist at 27%. However eight sites had lower Page Speed scores than last year with seven of them showing decreases from 2.9% to 17.6%.

The Reuters home page was the poorest performer, dropping from 74 to 20 for a massive decrease of 73%. I checked it several times so the score is correct according to Google. Maybe there was just something odd on the Reuters home page on this particular day, or perhaps there is a larger problem that can be addressed (see below). I also checked a couple of articles on Reuters; while those pages fared better than the home page they still scored poorly (36 and 40).

Regardless of the cause, this shows why it is good to frequently monitor site performance because you never know when an issue will crop up. On news and content sites sudden, significant changes in page load time are often related to advertisements or third-party implementations.

So which sites are now the best performers? Here are the news sites ranked by current home page Site Speed score:

The UK’s Daily Mail was tied for third last year; this year it is the only site to break 90. (The 92 rating is actually for http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html which is the URL that the Google tool was redirected to). One year later Yahoo News and CBS News are still in the top three. Telegraph.co.uk went from tied for 7th in 2010 to being tied for 4th this year.

It is important to note that home page load times will vary depending on what is on the page on a particular day, so each site’s scores fluctuate a bit from day to day. Nonetheless these single-day snapshots allow for some basic analysis and comparison, both competitively and YoY.

Back to poor Reuters and its 20 Page Speed score, here are the improvements that Google suggested:

Related posts:

1. 25 Major News Sites Ranked by Page Speed
2. 20+ Major News Sites Ranked by Domain Authority
3. The Top News Sites on Blekko

Many publishers are now doing a good job of developing social media strategies for brand awareness, content promotion and user engagement. And they’ve made good strides in utilizing social media monitoring and measurement to better understand user behavior and quantify the success of their efforts. But is it possible to extract user intent in a meaningful way?

This week I’ll be part of a panel discussion at Socialize that will address just that question: Social Media: Harvesting Intent for Better ROI. It’s an interesting topic and one that is more challenging for news and content sites than some other types of businesses.

In search marketing extracting basic intent signals is fairly straightforward since users’ search queries often reveal their intentions. Shari Thurow has written some good articles on key types of searches to be aware of (beyond navigational, informational and transactional queries) and on drilling down on commercial intent.

Thus by understanding searcher behavior publishers can position their content to be well matched to searches with editorial or informational intent.

But can the same approach be successfully applied to social media?

A lot of social activity around editorial content is focused on sharing something simply because the person likes the content or finds it useful or interesting. There is not always intent beyond that and harvesting meaningful signals can be challenging.

One reason is that the language used in social sharing does not often include much more than the article headline (be it in a tweet, Facebook like or some other share). And even when a user adds a personal comment (e.g. “great article or “good tips”) that information may help with sentiment analysis but it may not reveal intent.

Another reason is that just because a user shares something once doesn’t mean they will regularly share content on that topic. Similarly, just because someone engages with a publisher once doesn’t mean they are a strong candidate to become a repeat visitor or site evangelist. So a single social media touch point may not shed much light on user intent.

That said, by looking at social media activity in aggregate publishers can start to get a better understanding of user behavior as it relates to their content.

Even the basic benchmarks like the number of tweets/likes/shares/comments per article as well as the types and quality of interactions provide some meaningful signals. And when tied to referral traffic, pageviews and time on site, repeat visits and interactions, subscriptions and sign-ups, etc. the data becomes more useful.

Is this harvesting intent? Not exactly, but it is a step in the right direction. At a minimum publishers can develop a reasonable understanding of what topics and types of content users prefer, how best to package it and when and how to promote it. All of which leads to opportunities for better monetization and improving ROI.

What else can publishers do to accurately harvest and interpret social media intent? What tools and methods are you using?

Photo credit: Khalid Albaih

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Social media news releases have lots of advantages, and what’s not to like? They offer a clean, simple format that encourages companies to be clear and succinct. While multimedia content can be added to any press release, SMNRs are much more likely to incorporate images and video. It is easy share and repurpose the information in the releases and in many cases they are strong enough to stand on their own as an ongoing resource.

That all sounds great, but do social media news releases actually generate more media coverage? According to research from the UK’s RealWire, they do.

After an interview with Shel Holtz on the value of press releases RealWire CEO Adam Parker revisited some previous research to see how SMNRs are faring against traditional press releases.

Based on data from 1,044 releases distributed via RealWire from September 2010 to March 2011, social media news releases earned three times more coverage than traditional releases:

There are any number of things that influence the success of a press release, most of all the content of the announcement itself and its relevance to particular news outlets. And as statisticians like to say correlation does not imply causation.

But the data is certainly encouraging and it is good to see evidence that social media press releases are performing well.

Related posts:

1. Where Do You Want Your Social Media Press Releases to Live?
2. Press Releases Do Get Shared on Google News
3. My Top Posts of 2010 on SEO, PR and Social Media for News and Sports

There were some interesting posts over the weekend from Steve Cheney and Robert Scoble on whether utilizing the Facebook Comments Box plugin kills or in fact increases user authenticity within on-site commenting. TechCrunch also shared that comments are down but quality is up since implementing the system and they’re going to stick with it for the time being.

Is it what users want?

As someone who limits his Facebook friends mainly to actual friends but who frequently reads and comments on industry and marketing blogs, for me the main concern with using Facebook Comments is the desire to keep my professional and personal lives separate.

It’s safe to say that most of the things that I read and comment on professionally are of little interest to my friends from high school, college, time spent overseas, etc. So I’d rather not put that activity into my Facebook news feed. And in my professional interactions I want to represent myself through a link to this blog or my Twitter profile, not my Facebook page.

Regarding the first issue you don’t actually have to post your comments on Facebook:

Malcolm Coles had a good suggestion for the second issue: set up my blog as a Facebook Page then do professional commenting as the Page and personal commenting via my personal profile.

I like this idea but not everyone has a blog or a professional Facebook Page. Hopefully in the future Facebook will allow users to share comments with only certain friends; you can do this now with wall posts if you have lists set up.

It is also important to note that most Facebook users are interacting largely with mainstream media and general interest content that is not professional in nature. So for the average person these concerns are not always relevant. But there are plenty of users out there that are concerned not only with privacy but also with having to mix their personal and professional interactions.

Is the system good for publishers?

There are certainly downsides like the lack of backup/export, ceding control and giving Facebook access to valuable data for free, weakening your own on-site community, etc. Ryan Singel covered this well last week.

But publishers also get increased exposure on Facebook and with that more opportunity for traffic, engagement and social sharing, all of which has the additional benefit of helping directly and/or indirectly with SEO.

It also proves helpful to sites that are battling with comment spam and low-quality or inappropriate comments. And the reality is that not every site is able to build up a strong, active on-site community of its own.

So if you publish content that appeals to a wide audience, and if you don’t already have a well-engaged on-site community, the positives outweigh the negatives and the Facebook Comments Box plugin is worth experimenting with.

UPDATE:
April 2011: Facebook has added new features to the Comments Box plugin including an improved News Feed story format, permalinks to each comment and the ability to access comments for every URL via the Graph API, among other things. Hotmail has also been added to the list of login providers (Yahoo! and AOL were already options).

June 2011: Facebook has added reverse chronological sorting to the Comments Box plugin.

Related posts:

1. Google Buzz and News Sites: Good Potential But Facebook Still the Better Play
2. The Washington Post Social Reader on Facebook: Good First Impression, Good User Experience
3. Newsweek on Tumblr: Good Effort, Needs More Engagement

Press release search engine PRFilter came out of beta last week. It aggregates press releases from 10 wire services and distribution services and pulls them in directly from 60+ technology and media companies. Users can filter by specific industries, countries and time periods and create personalized accounts for further customization.

It seems to work fairly well. The user interface is simple and easy to use and the sample queries I tried brought up decent results. Press releases from PR Newswire, Business Wire, PRWeb and Marketwire frequently appear in the listings. PitchEngine releases do not appear to be in the index.

While testing it out I thought I’d revisit the press release buzzwords research I did last year. So I pulled the top 25 overused terms from that post and ran them through PRFilter.

UPDATE:
PRFilter’s Adam Parker was kind enough to pull more accurate data on the terms (see the comments below for information on why my original figures were incomplete).

Here are the updated results, covering 3,000 press releases in a 24 hour period. I’ve left my original table and the associated analysis intact below.

In this sampling of releases “leading” edges out “solution” as the most overused term.

–original post resumed–

Here are the matches for each term in the past 24 hours:

“Solution” was the most overused term but that figure is skewed by regular usage of that word. “Leading provider” also suffered considerable abuse which is a shame because that one really is devoid of meaning.

It was good to see that six overused terms from my full list did not have any instances in the past 24 hours, but the holiday weekend in the US slowed down press release activity.

A few notes on searching with PRFilter:

• The index gets updated very quickly. Checking some of the terms even 15 minutes later resulted in more matches.
• Using quotation marks to limit the results to exact matches for multiple word queries (e.g. “cutting edge” instead of cutting edge) did not seem to work.
• There was a lot of overlap in the results for “innovative,” “innovator” and “innovation.” While I wanted exact matches for this list combining those results does make sense for the average searcher.

For more information on PRFilter see the launch press release and this video:

Related posts:

1. Email Press Release Optimization Circa 1999
2. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
3. Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips

In reading a Search Engine Land article about Jason Calacanis’ remarks during “Ending the Content Arms Race” at Signal LA this passage caught my eye:

Calacanis shows a “How to cook a turkey” page on Mahalo which he says has tons of good video content, then decries it has to compete against 17 different articles from eHow on every variation of how someone might want to cook a turkey. “Do you guys understand now why I’m going insane?”

eHow and Demand Media’s reputation for creating large volumes of low quality content are well known so no need to go into that here. But a more practical topic for content publishers is when it comes to keyword targeting, how many variations is too many?

As I covered in my post on editorial SEO tactics mapping out the keyword universe around a particular topic and making sure that all aspects of it are being effectively covered is a worthwhile effort. It is particularly helpful for sites with a lot of evergreen content. But that is very different from recycling what is essentially the same information on multiple pages in an effort to target several keyword variations.

So what’s the right approach? Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. If there is not enough unique content to warrant a separate article, don’t make one. In such cases a single high-quality page is better for users and ultimately better for SEO. It avoids keyword cannibalization and allows internal and inbound links to be focused on a single URL.

In cases where there is enough unique content to warrant multiple articles, then smart keyword targeting combined with an effective internal linking strategy offers good opportunities to increase the search engine visibility of all of the pages.

For help with targeting multiple keywords on one page vs. several pages see When Keyword Targeting Gets Tough and Keyword Targeting: How to Employ Multiple Keywords for SEO & Conversions from SEOmoz.

Let’s go back to the “how to cook a turkey” example. There is little benefit to recycling the same basic instructions on multiple pages with slightly different keyword targets. However, there are in fact a lot of different ways to cook a turkey and many different turkey recipes out there.

So having a reasonable number of unique pages focused on different ways to cook turkey is ultimately helpful to users and allows a site to go after a variety of different keyword targets. It’s just a matter of striking a proper balance.

Finally, Jason Calacanis might not want to throw too many stones at eHow. As of today Mahalo has 123 pages in Google’s index with “cook” and “turkey” in the title tag. And 53 of them have been filtered out by Google for being very similar to other pages:

UPDATE:
Be sure to check out the comments; there’s a good discussion going between Jason and several others on the quality of eHow vs. Mahalo and Mahalo’s plans for improvement.

Related posts:

1. Which News Sites Have the Most Keywords in Common with eHow?
2. Press Release Optimization Checklist and Tips
3. Editorial SEO Tactics for the Newsroom

Who will win Super Bowl XLV, the Green Bay Packers or the Pittsburgh Steelers? Vegas gives the Packers a slight edge but most people think it could go either way.

Last year after winning my Social Media Super Bowl the New Orleans Saints went on to win the actual game. So this year I thought I’d do a similar competition by comparing the official Twitter profiles of both teams.

Will it predict the winner of Super Bowl XLV? Who knows, but I like looking at sports and social media signals and the Super Bowl offers a good analogy for comparing teams.

The figures referenced below are accurate as of February 2, 2011.

Ok, let’s move on to the opening kick-off.

1st Quarter: Most Followers

This is a close one but the Steelers edge out the Packers by roughly 8K followers:

It’s worth noting that both teams’ followers are significantly up since the beginning of the season (see: The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook: 2010 Season). In fact to my knowledge the Steelers didn’t even have an official presence until recently so that shows how quickly they’ve grown their reach.

A TwitterCounter chart for the past three months shows how quickly @Steelers has been gaining followers:

One negative for both teams: neither is particularly interested in following others. We’ll call that a turnover by both sides.

Advantage: STEELERS

__________________________________

2nd Quarter: Topsy Social Analytics

Topsy recently came out with a new Twitter analytics tool so I thought I’d look at mentions and replies for @Steelers and @Packers in the past month:

The level of activity is pretty similar for both teams but that giant peak for the Steelers gives them the edge.

Advantage: STEELERS

At halftime the Steelers are up but it’s a close game. Let’s see what the Packers can do in the second half.

__________________________________

3rd Quarter: Twitalyzer

Which team is making the most impact on Twitter? Twitalyzer gives the Steelers the edge:

See my post on the Twitter impact of news sites for an overview of how Twitalyzer calculates its Impact scores.

The game remains tight but the Packers can’t seem to close the gap.

Advantage: STEELERS

__________________________________

4th Quarter: Klout

Ok, it comes down to this. Which team is more influential on Twitter? Let’s look at their Klout scores:

Once again the Steelers beat out the Packers in a close competition.

Advantage: STEELERS

__________________________________

So that’s it. The Packers scored well and the teams were closely matched, but the Steelers win all four quarters to become Super Bowl XLV Champions – at least based on Twitter signals.

WINNER:

PITTSBURGH STEELERS

Now let’s see if the social media winner becomes the real Super Bowl champion for the second year in a row.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Super Bowl: Which Team Has More Reach?
2. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook: 2010 Season

While on The Huffington Post yesterday I couldn’t help but notice the large number of tags they’d added to a couple posts on the Kim Kardashian photos in W Magazine, and the rather “interesting” terms being targeted.

First on Kim Kardashian: W Magazine Showed ‘Full On Nipple’:

Then a link in that article led me to Kim Kardashian Goes NUDE For W Magazine:

That’s when the full-on tag-o-rama began.

In case you’re counting that’s 47 blog tags between the two posts targeting some pretty amusing terms. Can all those tags really help? In a word: no.

As I covered in my post on blog tag optimization this type of over-tagging has little SEO benefit and in the extreme it can even be a negative.

It’s certainly not helpful for users either. In the second post above the tags take up almost as much space as the actual editorial content. At best that’s a distraction; at worst it looks spammy.

The Huffington Post is a strong enough domain and brand to overcome the SEO and usability issues, but not every site is.

So my advice: take it easy on those blog tags.

Related posts:

1. Blog Tag Optimization Tips for News Sites
2. My Top Posts of 2010 on SEO, PR and Social Media for News and Sports
3. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media

Last year I did a couple of posts on the reach and engagement of NBA teams on Twitter and Facebook. Yesterday Yago Colás came across one and shared it with the students in his Cultures of Basketball course.

The students thought it was an interesting concept and one of them, Blake McLimans, pulled updated numbers for all of the teams.

Since it has been a year since my original post I thought I’d use Blake’s figures to look at the growth percentages for all of the teams.

These figures are accurate as of January, 26, 2011.

Twitter

First the official Twitter profiles. Here are the most followed NBA teams as of yesterday:

A year later the Lakers and Magic are still the top two teams. Boston moves up a spot to #3 and not surprisingly the Heat jump from #15 to #5.

Here are the NBA Twitter profiles ranked by percentage increase since last year:

I figured Miami and would have the highest growth percentage and they almost do, coming in 2nd with a massive 582% increase. Golden State has actually seen the most growth, but despite a 597% increase they are still #26 in total followers.

Facebook

As for Facebook, here are the most popular official team pages:

One year on the Lakers and Celtics still have the most likes. The Bulls move up to #3 and the Heat jump from having the fewest likes of any team last year to being #4. The Cavs are hanging in there at #5 so there hasn’t been much abandonment by the fan base.

Here are the NBA team pages ranked by percentage increase since last year:

It’s no surprise that the Heat have seen the most growth. Since their official team page had only 599 likes at this time last year their jump to over a million likes brings with it a crazy percentage increase. Oklahoma City and New Orleans also saw very high growth.

Nearly all the teams saw greater growth on Facebook than Twitter which also makes sense given Facebook’s much large user base.

Related posts:

1. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
2. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook: 2010 Season
3. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook

For the past couple years Google has been embedding a Hot Trends graph in the regular search results for the top 100 fastest rising terms.

I referenced this in my post on tools for monitoring search and social trends because it was a useful way to check for trending terms beyond the top 20 shown on the Hot Searches page.

Then in December a colleague pointed out that the graphs were no longer being embedded in the search results. I’ve been spot checking since then and have yet to see them again in my own results.

Clicking on the Hot Searches links still brings up the graphs for the top 20 (see below) but the graphs no longer appear in the SERPs.

Did Google discontinue this feature?

I did some checking but can’t find any official confirmation or references in other places.

Related posts:

1. Free Tools for Monitoring Hot Search Trends
2. How to Identify Your Own Top Trends
3. Do Google’s Expanded Domain Results Apply to News and Video Listings?

By now most editorial sites are employing basic SEO best practices in the newsroom but how many are taking full advantage of every opportunity?

To be successful an editorial staff needs to do more do more than just optimize headlines and title tags; there are a wide range of editorial SEO tactics that need to be employed.

Here are some of the key areas to address:

To be clear this is not meant to encompass the full spectrum of technical, editorial and marketing components in a comprehensive SEO program. The aim is to highlight the fundamental tactics that an editorial staff should incorporate into its daily workflow.

• Optimize for relevant, popular keywords – this is the tactic that most newsrooms focus on, typically in a reactive manner. First content is created then the key page elements (title tag, headline, URL, image attributes, etc.) are optimized to improve keyword focus. Keyword research tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool or WordTracker are used to determine the best terms to optimize for. It is a fundamental part of editorial SEO but it is only the beginning.
• Take advantage of trending topics and hot searches – regularly monitoring search and social media trends provides insight into what users are looking for, discussing and sharing right now. There are a variety of free search and social trend tools available and the data is useful both for keyword targeting and for discovering content opportunities. While this tactic is most applicable to sites that cover breaking news and popular topics like sports and entertainment it works in other areas too (see Search Trend Optimization for Evergreen Content).
• Integrate with social media efforts – social media is having an increasing impact on search engine visibility as the engines incorporate more social signals into their ranking algorithms. A spike in social activity around a particular piece of content will directly and indirectly lead to greater exposure in search, so it is important to coordinate editorial production and content promotion through social media. As I covered in my post on Twitter tips for publishers the goal is have new content surface in news search, real-time search and social search all around the same time, all of which helps with regular Web search visibility too.
• Use tools for content ideas and planning – Keyword and research and trend tools are not just for optimizing content that has already been created; they are also a good resource for new content ideas. An editorial staff can map out the keyword universe around a particular topic or story and make sure that all aspects are being effectively covered by the site. This can then be blended into both short and long-term editorial planning. There are a number of free and paid tools that are helpful in this area such as Google Insights for Search and SEMRush as well as enterprise-level options like Hitwise and ComScore Marketer. Other sources include looking at Google Instant results and even the Google Wonder Wheel. A site’s own analytics reporting and the search queries data in Google Webmaster Tools will provide further insight into current coverage and performance as well as opportunities for expansion and improvement.
• Package content to maximize ranking potential – it doesn’t matter how compelling or keyword-focused a piece of content is if its format is not conducive to SEO success. Articles and blog posts are fairly straightforward but other types of content can create challenges. Over-use of galleries is a common issue as this can result in pages with too little content to be effective search landing pages, or content buried too deep to attract inbound links. Conversely covering too many topics in a single page format splits keyword focus and makes it difficult to compete for any of the targets. And graphic-intensive or interactive formats may leave the engines with little to use in understanding what the content is about. When it comes to content packaging there is a balancing act that needs to be achieved between business objectives, user experience and search-friendliness. Editors and producers should evaluate format options on a case-by-case basis.
• Make effective use of linking – most publishers aren’t shy about internal and cross-networking linking. Go to any content site and you’ll see plenty of navigation, tout, related and recirc links in a variety of forms and locations. But many sites are not making good use of inline editorial links, which tend to have greater SEO value (see #5 in All Links are Not Created Equal from SEOmoz). That’s where the editorial staff comes in; their ability to incorporate useful, appropriate links within content is a powerful tool. This kind of curated approach is much more effective than automating the process. Building some form of suggested link functionality into the CMS is a good idea but the editorial staff should decide what links to include and where.

At the center of all this is quality content; without that none of these tactics matter. However it is equally true that simply creating quality content is not enough. To succeed today content needs to be effectively targeted and optimized for search and social.

What other SEO tactics should newsrooms employ?

Related posts:

1. AOL Newsroom: A Model for the Future or Shades of 2001?
2. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
3. Fewer PR Organizations Plan to Increase Focus on SEO and Social Media in 2011

Another year has passed and that means it is time for marketing blogs to do their obligatory top posts of the year roundups. Despite the cliché I like reading them because it is a good way to discover things I may have missed during the year. And on my own blog I’m certainly curious to know which posts brought in the most traffic this year.

So yes I’m joining the club.

Here are my 10 top posts of the year by pageviews:

1. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
2. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. 10 Quotes on the Apple iPad and the Business of News
4. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
5. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook: 2010 Season
6. Survey: Twitter Less than 1% of Traffic to Newspapers and Magazines; Facebook 1%
7. 25 Major News Sites Ranked by Page Speed
8. An Early Look at Facebook Open Graph Protocol Integration on News Sites
9. 10 Practical Twitter Tips for Publishers
10. Which News Sites Get the Most Social Media Engagement?

The press release buzzwords post is the most popular post I have ever done by any measure. That one really took on a life of its own and it was fun to be a part of it. Six months later I am still getting engagement on it every now and then.

I thought it was interesting that three of my top 10 were related to sports and social media because I write about that only occasionally as a side interest. I guess I should step that up a little next year.

The iPad quotes post is just a simple roundup of thoughts from around the industry that barely got noticed on Twitter but it continues to bring in natural search visitors each month.

Another post not listed that did pretty well was News Sites on the New Digg: Who is Active, Who is Gaining Followers? A version that was republished on SocialTimes ended up being submitted to Digg and things took off from there. If my original had been submitted that would certainly have cracked into my top 10 overall.

I’d like to thank everyone who has engaged with my blog in some way this year be it a comment, link, tweet, Facebook like, LinkedIn or Google Reader share or just stopping by to read a post.

While I write this blog in my spare time for my own enjoyment it has become a valuable part of what I do professionally. So I am grateful for the connections I have made through it and I appreciate the positive feedback I’ve received.

Enjoy the holidays and have a great 2011.

Related posts:

1. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
2. My Top Posts of 2011 on SEO, PR and Social Media for Publishers
3. Social Media Dominates 2010 PR Planning, But SEO Increasingly in the Mix

This is a guest post from Christian Arno, founder of Lingo24, a global translation service. I asked Christian to provide some tips for publishers looking to expand their presence in international markets. – Adam

To reach an overseas readership online publishers must ensure that they properly localize their content. Here are a few issues to consider when localizing an online newspaper or magazine.

Translation

One of the pivotal processes when localizing your online publication is ensuring the content is properly translated.

Depending on your budget there are a couple of ways you can go about this. If your budget is limited you could use an online translation service like Google Translate. These services give fairly acceptable results but there is a risk that your translated copy will contain errors and inconsistencies. Which, let’s face it, won’t reflect well on you.

The only way to be sure you have a completely accurate translation is to use a professional translator. They will also be able to help you maintain the style, tone and voice of your publication.

Your editorial tone may well be an important factor in the success of your online publication so you want to be sure it persists when your content is translated.

Internationalize before you localize

Before attempting to localize your online publication you should make sure it is properly internationalized.

What does this involve? Basically it is the process of ensuring that your website is consistent with international standards by ensuring that the widest range of character sets are supported and ensuring that any regional settings are not hard-coded. Unicode’s UTF-8 for your text is a good starting point.

This preparatory work will ensure the localization process runs smoothly. LISA (The Localization Industry Standards Association) states that proper internationalization can save money: “Anecdotal evidence from many, many people over the years consistently indicates that proper internationalization reduces the cost of subsequent localization by about 50% and reduces the time needed for localization by about half.”

Localize images

As well as ensuring your written content is properly translated you may need to do some work to ensure your images, video and other visual content is localized. If your publication uses a lot of ‘people’ imagery it is important that it properly reflects the people of the country you are publishing in.

For example, if you are publishing a magazine about human resources management it might seem odd to readers in Japan if all the images depict European workers.

Add local content

Many publications will syndicate the major features and articles from their most important journalists across all their websites, which makes their publication consistent across different regions and helps to establish an international brand. However, they can also provide some regional content that is only available to local readers. This helps to engage readers within the target region and adds an element of trust and familiarity.

The amount of local content you can provide will depend on your resources and if you have access to any local journalists. Even if you don’t have local staff you could use freelancers or source content from local news agencies.

Cultural differences

When you publish your online newspaper or magazine in other countries you need to be aware of cultural differences. These can include different attitudes to moral and ethical issues, political opinions and attitudes towards power and authority.
Even seemingly mundane things like the way numerical data is formatted need to be considered. For example, some parts of the world prefer imperial weights and measures (e.g. pounds, ounces, feet and inches), whereas elsewhere the metric system (e.g. kilograms, grams, metres, centimetres) is the norm.

And whilst the UK and US would structure a number like this: 1,000,000.00, many parts of Europe (e.g. Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Sweden), would write it like this: 1.000.000,00. Indeed, some countries (e.g. France, Croatia, Poland and Finland) don’t use any thousands separator at all and would write it thus: 1 000 000.00.

Beware of local laws

All journalists and editors must be well versed in the laws of their own country to avoid issues of libel, defamation, copyright, sub judice, censorship and the like.

Equally when you are localizing your online newspaper or magazine you must ensure that you are acting within the laws of the regions you are publishing in. For example, some countries have far stricter rules on censorship and free speech than others. If your publication has a political bent you must ensure that you are not infringing these types of rules.

Using social media

Social media is now an integral part of most online publications. When you are localizing your newspaper or magazine make sure you are using social media appropriately for the region you are targeting.

This means researching which social networks are popular within the region. For example, while Facebook and Twitter dominate the USA and many other Western countries, in China the most popular networks are RenRen.com and Kaixin001.com. Russia likes Vkontakte.ru whilst Brazil has a slight leaning towards Orkut.

Once you have established which networks to target for your promotional activity make sure you are aware of local social media etiquette and which marketing techniques work.

You should now have an idea of the planning and research that is required to take your online magazine or newspaper to an overseas readership. It’s not an over-complicated process and is easily achievable, even if your resources are limited.

Christian Arno is founder of global translation service and localization company Lingo24. With 150 full-time employees working across three continents, and clients in over sixty countries, Lingo24 achieved a turnover of $8m USD in 2010.

Related posts:

1. 10 Practical Twitter Tips for Publishers
2. 7 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips for Publishers
3. Google News Optimization Tips

I saw Malcolm Coles’ post on Google’s reading level scores for UK newspapers and thought it would be fun to do the same thing for US news sites. Last week Google released a new search filter that allows users to refine search results by reading level. So what reading level does Google assign to major news sites in the US?

I was going to look at top 25 US newspapers online according to Journalistics but I decided to include a wider variety of news sites. So instead I pulled out the US news sites from my comparison post on news site social media engagement to come up with a sampling of newspapers, magazines, TV, wire services and Web-only news organizations.

How do the US news sites stack up? Google assigns the majority of content on all of them an intermediate reading level which makes sense since that level appeals to the widest audience. But which sites are aiming high or low?

Among the news organizations I checked, here are the sites with the greatest percentage of content at a basic or advanced reading level:

Most Basic Content

1. ABC News 41%
2. Boston.com 29%
3. CBS News 28%

A commentary on mainstream TV news? There’s probably a joke about Boston residents here too but I’m not touching that.

Most Advanced Content

1. Bloomberg Businessweek 11%
2. The New York Times 7%
3. Reuters 7%

Bloomberg Businessweek has a much higher percentage of content at an advanced reading level than any of the other sites. Must be some smart folks over there.

Here are all the scores. The sites are arranged alphabetically:

ABC News

AOL News

AP

Boston.com

Bloomberg Businessweek

CBS News

CNN

The Christian Science Monitor

Forbes

Fox News

The Huffington Post

Los Angeles Times

MSNBC

Newsweek

NPR

The New York Times

Reuters

Slate

Time

UPI

USA Today

The Wall Street Journal

The Washington Post

Yahoo! News

Related posts:

1. Google Page Speed Ratings One Year Later: News Sites Range from Up 27% to Down 73%
2. Which News Sites Have the Most Keywords in Common with eHow?
3. 25 Major News Sites Ranked by Page Speed

The results of the Vocus 2011 PR Planning Survey are out and the number of organizations that plan to focus more on SEO and social media has declined.

In this year’s survey 51% of the respondents indicated that they would focus more on SEO in 2011, down from 57% in 2011. And the number of organizations that stated they would focus less on SEO increased from 4% to 6%:

While these are small changes I find the trend discouraging. The PR industry has made good strides in its understanding of SEO in recent years but more often than not implementation beyond basic best practices falls short. So if anything more attention needs to be paid to SEO.

There may also be a tendency for some PR pros to think that social media has reduced the need for SEO, as evidenced by the “SEO is Dead” memes that resurface from time to time. The reality is quite the opposite; social media marketing and SEO are completely intertwined and each strengthens the other.

Speaking of social media, last year it dominated the mix with 80% of the respondents stating they would increase their focus on it. In the 2011 survey that figure drops to 69%, which is still very high considering how much attention is already being paid to social media in the PR world.

For comparison here is the 2010 chart that I included in my post on last year’s Vocus survey. At that time 57% for SEO was an encouraging figure:

Let’s hope the SEO trend shifts back up in 2012.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Dominates 2010 PR Planning, But SEO Increasingly in the Mix
2. My Top Posts of 2011 on SEO, PR and Social Media for Publishers
3. Does Social Media Increase a Journalist’s Value?

In reading a post on Google Operating System about the Most Shared section on Google News I found it interesting that a press release from NASA was among the leaders.

I checked today and it is still at the top of the list for the week:

Press releases tend to be the ugly stepsister when it comes to Google News visibility but here’s a sign that they do sometimes get traction from users.

So what does it take to break through? For NASA it was promoting an announcement that will “impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.”

I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to apply a similar angle to typical business press releases.

But jokes aside, if you have something of genuine interest to announce people will pay attention and spread the word.

Related posts:

1. Social Media News Releases Get 3x More Media Coverage
2. The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases
3. Where Do You Want Your Social Media Press Releases to Live?

Sites have been using the rel=canonical link element for a while now to help offset duplicate content issues that cannot be eliminated through URL consolidation.

While not a perfect solution it is often the best option available in cases like duplicate content caused by appending tracking codes to URLs (e.g. ?source=rss, ?xid=newsletter, ?nav=home).

Marketing teams like to track referrals from newsletters, RSS, partnerships, internal navigation, etc. and they typically don’t want to give that up. So rel=canonical has been a welcome tactic and it works relatively well at least for Google (c’mon Bing, you can do it!).

But you still end up with lots of inbound links to non-canonical URLs because users will naturally link to and share the URLs they see in their browsers. While rel=canonical in theory sorts out the indexation and link popularity issues it doesn’t work perfectly, and not every engine supports it or processes it effectively.

Furthermore, if a link coded with “newsletter” gets shared widely on Twitter or somewhere else the data provided by that tracking code is no longer an accurate representative of newsletter traffic.

Here’s an idea: why not let browsers help out?

For pages with a rel=canonical link element, browsers could display the canonical URL instead of whatever duplicate URL the user may have clicked on to arrive at the page. The referral to the coded URL would still be passed to the site’s analytics software but users would see the canonical URL. Thus any resulting new links would point to the canonical URLs.

Users would get cleaner, simpler, consistent URLs and over time there would be fewer links to duplicate URLs and less work for the engines to do in processing duplicate content.

There may be technical reasons why this wouldn’t work and it could only be applied when the canonical URL is on the same domain (though cross-domain implementation of rel=canonical is still rare). Plus not all causes of duplicate content are as straightforward as tracking codes so there might be situations in which displaying the canonical URL in the browser could create a confusing user experience. But it seems like an interesting idea.

Google could test it with Google Chrome to see if it can help itself out; Microsoft could do the same with Internet Explorer to ease the burden on Bing. And Firefox, Safari and other browsers could follow suit just to be helpful.

Related posts:

1. Publishers: Solve Tracking Code, Duplicate Content Issues with the Canonical URL Tag
2. Will Publishers Add Cross-Domain Rel=Canonical to Syndication Deals?
3. Syndication Best Practices: Reduce the Risk of Being Outranked for Your Own Content

This is a guest post from Paras Chopra, founder of Visual Website Optimizer. Paras has been doing some interesting work with A/B testing and conversion rate optimization so I thought it would be good to get some tips for publishers from him. – Adam

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is perhaps the easiest method to increase revenue without pouring extra dollars into paid marketing campaigns. For readers who aren’t familiar with the terminology, CRO consists of moving around and changing different elements on a website to increase conversion rate (signups, downloads, engagement, sales, etc.). As the director of Visual Website Optimizer (A/B testing software) I have had the opportunity to observe hundreds of A/B tests by our (publisher) customers and analyze what works for them.

In this post I will detail conversion rate optimization tips for publishers and media sites. For general best practices for all websites you may want to check my post on conversion rate optimization tips for landing pages.

Define your conversion goals

For most publishers the conversion goal is usually a click on an advertisement. In other words ad revenue is what publishers aim to optimize. However, for a specific visitor on a specific page the aim is not just optimizing for immediate revenue. As a publisher you should instead optimize for lifetime ad revenue generated by a visitor. Granted it is harder to measure than Click Through Ratio (CTR) and other simpler metrics but lifetime ad revenue will definitely force you look at conversion rate optimization in a different light.

To increase lifetime ad revenue you essentially need to optimize for three specific goals:

1. Increasing CTR on your content pages (so that visitors click on ads more often)
2. Increasing visitor engagement on your pages (so that visitors browse more pages per session)
3. Increasing content distribution (so that visitor shares your content on social channels)

I will outline how to optimize for each of these goals individually. Note that even though these are practices have been shown to work I recommend doing an A/B split test before implementing them directly.

Tips to increase CTR / clicks on advertisements

• Ads in the sidebar don’t work – let’s face it, people have significant ad blindness. Made popular by blogs, ads in the sidebar get pathetically low CTRs. In fact, sidebars provide an easy filter for your readers to ignore practically everything contained in them. So you need to get creative with your site layout and ad placement. You should avoid placing ads at traditional locations such as header and sidebar.
• Ads inside the content work best – you know why print advertising is still flourishing? Because magazine/newspaper readers have no option to ignore ads that are interspersed with actual stories / articles. Similarly, in the online world publishers that embed ads within content (say in the middle) get much higher CTRs. Of course you must ensure that it does not adversely impact the user experience (because you are optimizing for life time ad revenue, not just CTRs).
• Use a mix of display ads and textual ads – having multiple display ads on a single page results in all of them competing for visitors’ attention. Instead, you should have multiple textual ads and a single display ad (which stands out on the page). Thanks to contextual advertising, text ads have become incredibly well-targeted to the content on the page. Moreover, by nature of being text-only such ads blend well in the article and actually catch visitor’s attention as they scan or read your content.

Tips to increase visitor engagement

• It’s all about content recommendation – as soon as a visitor is done reading your content you should recommend other interesting articles on your site. It’s hard to get the recommendation process right – some sites fail to do it or others include too many links at random. Ideally you should present only one or two recommendations for the most relevant articles and the recommendation process should catch visitors’ attention. The New York Times slides in an article recommendation as soon as you are done reading a story (shown above). It’s a great way to make sure visitor notices it.
• Don’t ask users to create an account just to comment – many publishers make the mistake of forcing a visitor to create an account to do even basic activities on site like rating an article or commenting. This is a serious hindrance to having visitors interact and engage with your site. The majority of the functionality of your site should not require a login (including buying a subscription!)

Tips to increase content distribution

• Prove to visitors that the content is worth sharing – nothing inspires a visitor to share a piece of content more than the proof that many others have found it helpful and shareworthy. You have to treat your content as something you are selling to visitors with the currency being their time and access to their friends / colleagues. You have to show social-proof to your readers which can be in the form of a widget displaying “1267 people liked it” or “900 people tweeted about it.” In fact, you can even have something as simple as an internal rating system that shows stats such as “96 people found this article helpful and would recommend it to their colleagues, would you? Yes / No.” People want to know that they are not alone in liking a piece of article and that it is OK to share it with their network.
• Make it easy to share – you should try to remove all friction between your visitors and their social networks. There are plethora of widgets available that make it very easy to implement this functionality on a media site. However, be aware of the mistake that many media sites make in implementing social sharing. They tend to include many different social networks which does two things: a) adds to visual noise on page; b) confuses people and makes it hard for them to locate the social network of their choice. Instead you should research your target audience, see where they participate online and include just one or two large widgets for sharing. In many cases, especially with Facebook and Twitter, these widgets also double as “social-proof” because they show how many people have shared a particular piece of content.

Conclusion

To reiterate, as a publisher or media site you have three goals to optimize for:

1. CTR
2. Visitor Engagement
3. Content Distribution

If you manage to optimize these three goals, you will see total ad revenues from the site increase steadily. Good luck!

Paras Chopra is the founder of Visual Website Optimizer, the World’s Easiest A/B Split and Multivariate Testing Software. Made for marketers who hate technical & integration issues, Visual Website Optimizer makes A/B testing dead-simple by providing an easy-to-use interface, WYSIWYG editor and tag-less integration. This means no messing with HTML or JavaScript code and that tests can be ready to run in less than 5 minutes.

Related posts:

1. Translation and Localization Tips for Publishers
2. 10 Practical Twitter Tips for Publishers
3. Google News Optimization Tips

By now Twitter is an important part of most publishers’ audience development and content promotion efforts. But in reviewing the Twitter presence of newspapers, magazines and other content sites on a regular basis I’m often surprised by the mistakes and missed opportunities that still occur.

So to help out I’ve created a list of Twitter tips for publishers.

I have intentionally left off some of the basics like being genuine, fostering two-way communication, participating not just promoting, etc. that I hope are now well-established fundamentals. In this post I’ll focus on simple, practical tips for getting better results from Twitter.

While my list is geared towards publishers the tactics are applicable to most organizations.

1. Diversify your approach – a Twitter profile can’t be all things to all people and a high volume of tweets can overwhelm followers. So spread things out through a diversified Twitter strategy. Supplement your main profile with additional accounts for key sections and topics and incorporate editorial staff profiles into your efforts. But be careful not to spread yourself too thin; how much you diversify depends on the size of your audience and your area of focus. For some titles a single branded profile is the right approach.

2. Give edit a voice – who would followers rather interact with, a marketing person or the actual writers of your content? Let the editorial staff take the lead on branded profiles, and promote individual profiles on-site to extend engagement further. Personal profiles are a great way to share additional information around a story and allow users to get more than just headlines and links.

3. Style and word choice matters – the language used in tweets can greatly impact click-throughs and retweets. Be compelling enough to encourage user action without neglecting the literal, keyword-focused terms that help your tweets surface in Twitter search, real-time search and social search. This is turn helps the content linked in your tweets perform better in regular Web search. For some sites editorial headlines with a link work quite well; for others a more personal touch is needed. The best approach is to mix things up; avoid being too formulaic.

4. Frequency and timing matters too – it’s not just what you tweet, it’s when and how often. Frequency of tweets has a major impact on attracting and keeping followers. Every profile has to find its sweet spot – often enough to maintain interest and foster regular engagement, but limited enough to avoid losing followers. The volume of tweets and when tweets occur (time of day, day of week) also have a strong influence on user retweets. Dan Zarrella has done great research in this area (and the one above); get a copy of the “The Science of ReTweets” on his site.

5. Curate, don’t just self-promote – no one likes the guy at the party who does nothing but talk about himself. Be sure to share things from other sources too and get involved in related conversations. Make your Twitter profiles topical authorities on your areas of coverage. Twitter Lists are another good way to do this; create lists around specific topics, stories or events. It’s a good way to network while improving the strength of your own profiles.

6. Breaking news and trending topics – when news is breaking or a topic is trending in search and/or social media, maximize the visibility of your related content by coordinating promotion through Twitter and other social vehicles. The goal is to have your articles pop on news search, real-time search and social search all around the same time, all of which helps with regular Web search visibility too (immediately and longer term). By monitoring trend tools you can discover what topics are hot and how users are searching for and discussing them.

7. It’s not just for new content – while your latest articles and features will naturally get the most attention, take advantage of opportunities to promote older content too. This is particularly useful for sites that cover evergreen content and seasonal topics but it can be applied to any publication. You can also use Twitter to give a boost to underperforming sections and content types.

8. On-site promotion – most publishers promote their main Twitter profiles through things like sidebar modules and footer links but not always prominently enough. You don’t want to go overboard but you do want to make it easy for people to learn about and follow your profiles. The New York Times created a Twitter page to showcase its profiles and Twitter Lists. Adding Twitter links to staff bios and bylines is also a good idea. Twitter @Anywhere makes it easy to do this without taking users off-site; just keep eye on how it affects site performance.

9. Optimize your Twitter buttons – the biggest on-site issue I come across is the way that Twitter share buttons are implemented and the tweet text that is automatically generated. The most common tweet text mistakes are things like not referencing the Twitter profile, including the profile of a third-party tool instead of your own, exceeding 140 characters, not using shortened URLs or showing the full length URL and nothing else. It’s also common to see 2-3 different Twitter buttons on the same page, each generating different tweet text and/or a different shortened URL. Many users will choose to customize the tweet text, but give them a strong default choice and minimize the work they need to do.

10. Incorporate Twitter content on-site – tweets are transitory in nature so look for ways to extend their value by incorporating them into your own site experience. Entertainment and sports sites sometimes stream tweets from celebrities and athletes. News sites can showcase user reactions around a story or event on individual articles or even the home page and section fronts. User contributions solicited though Twitter can be turned into special features (or at least used for content ideas). Rand Fishkin offered a good suggestion for turning tweets into SEO-friendly on-site content.

Each of these tips could warrant a separate post and there are many more things to consider, but hopefully this list gives you some things to think about.

What Twitter tips would you add?

Related posts:

1. 7 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips for Publishers
2. Diversified Twitter Strategies for News Sites
3. Fortune 100 Need to Get More Creative with Twitter

The discussion around my post on press release buzzwords has brought my attention to a variety of resources on language and writing, the latest being a new book called Wordcatcher.

Long before getting involved in marketing communications I was a kid who grew up loving stories and more specifically words.

The stories found in books, articles, songs, poems – you name it – have an amazing ability to conjure up entirely new worlds around us. And the primary vehicle of the storyteller is words. The right word in the right place is an incredibly powerful tool and some words just have a way of jumping off the page at us.

In Wordcatcher author Phil Cousineau explores the derivation of 200 or so words that have jumped out at him over the years. A lifelong lover of words, Cousineau has spent decades collecting and exploring the ones that fascinate him.

In the book he focuses on words with surprising derivations and those that are “fun to say…or mellifluous to hear.” Each word gets about a half-page entry digging into the history and usage of the term along with some companion words.

Bamboozle, bandersnatch, false friend, frizzle, heckle and honeymoon – there are all kinds of interesting tidbits to learn.

For example:

• Kibosh is an old Gaelic word referring to the Irish funeral practice of putting a black cap on the deceased. So to “put the kibosh” on something is to declare it as good as dead.
• Nostalgia was coined in 1688 by an Austrian medical student who joined two Greek words to describe the longing for home of Swiss soldiers stationed in the mountains.
• Pun comes from the Anglo-Saxon “punion” meaning “to pound.” So a pun’s play on words is arrived at by beating them into new senses, as Walter William Skeat once said.

I could share more of the “word stories” but I wouldn’t want to take away the fun of exploring them for yourself.

It’s a great read and I enjoyed Cousineau’s introduction almost as much as the book itself because it paints a vivid picture of how he became fascinated with words.

For those of us who spend all too much time muddling through marketing copy, Wordcatcher is a wonderful reminder of the magical qualities of words.

Related posts:

1. Better than Great: A Cure for Buzzwords and Marketing Speak
2. Why the News Business Isn’t Profitable
3. Pro PR Tips: 100 PR Tips from Rafe Needleman Published as a Book

With Blekko officially launching this week the new search engine is getting a lot of attention particularly in the search marketing community because of SEO data it provides.

There is a good overview of Blekko’s SEO Tools on Search Engine Land so I won’t go into detail on that here. But I was curious to compare the data provided for major news sites. I’d previously done this for SEOmoz domain authority and page speed so I thought I’d add Blekko to the mix.

To access Blekko’s SEO data for a domain or a specific URL click the “seo” link within Blekko’s search results:

Or simply type the domain or URL into the search box followed by “/seo”:

You can also access the SEO data through the Blekko toolbar.

For the purposes of comparison I pulled the hostrank, inbound links and site pages data for 30+ major news sites. As usual I picked a cross-section of news outlets that cover national/international news including newspapers, magazines, TV, wires and Web-only properties.

In the table below the news sites are ranked by hostrank. Blekko doesn’t provide information on how the hostrank scores are calculated but think of it roughly along the lines of Google’s PageRank or SEOMoz’s mozRank (though on a different scale).

BBC News and The New York Times lead the pack with The Guardian, CNN and The Washington Post not too far behind. It is interesting that BBC News beats out the NYT despite having significantly fewer (reported) inbound links and indexed pages.

A large group of sites have hostrank scores in the 3,000s or 4,000s so there is not a lot of separation between the news organizations in the middle of the pack.

The AOL News hostrank figure seems strangely low but I doubled checked it and that’s what Blekko is reporting:

Side note: when I compared news sites on social media engagement there was a question about which domain was used for MSNBC. As with the PostRank data used in that post, even though the MSNBC site is on msnbc.msn.com the Blekko data for msnbc.com shows larger figures so I used that domain instead.

Related posts:

1. 20+ Major News Sites Ranked by Domain Authority
2. The Most Buried News Sites on Digg
3. Which News Sites Get the Most Social Media Engagement?

Monitoring search trends and hot topics for keyword targeting and content ideas is a common practice among publishers these days. While this pollutes the search results when taken to the extreme (see below), done right it is an effective editorial SEO tactic.

The Hot Searches on Google Trends tend to be dominated by topics like sports, politics and entertainment with frequent breaking news and stories that attract a lot of attention. It is also common to see terms that suddenly enter the popular consciousness for one reason or another.

For publishers that focus on evergreen content such as lifestyle topics the available trend data is much more limited. But that doesn’t mean that opportunities never arise.

For example yesterday I noticed this tweet from @YahooSearchData:

I’m not sure what drove the sudden spike in search activity around “polenta” but it is a perfect fit for sites that cover recipes, cooking and food-oriented topics.

Here’s another example: this past weekend both Google Trends and Social Mention were showing multiple trending phrases around “pumpkin carving patterns” and “jack-o-lantern templates”:

It doesn’t take trend tools to realize that pumpkin carving searches rise sharply around Halloween. But monitoring these tools also provides insight into exactly how users are searching around a particular topic (right now as opposed to historically). That offers an immediate and actionable optimization opportunity.

So regardless of your area of coverage, it pays to keep an eye on trending topics. Search trend and social media data is useful for optimizing specific pieces, developing new content ideas and ongoing editorial planning.

For more ways to track activity, see my post on Free Tools for Monitoring Hot Search Trends. And don’t forget to identify your own top trends by looking at your internal data.

The Down Side

That all sounds great, but unfortunately reputable content sites are not the only ones employing these tactics. There are a growing number of sites that pump out low-quality, ad-heavy articles targeting whatever search terms happen to be trending that day.

Amazingly some qualify as Google News sources which enables them to secure high placement for popular searches via embedded news results.

Here are a few examples of embedded Google News results I saw yesterday for searches around pumpkin carving:

I’d rather not link to the articles in question so I’ll include some screenshots and let you judge for yourself:

Do these articles offer users what they were looking for, actual pumpkin carving patterns and templates? In going through 6-8 embedded news results in most cases the answer was no.

The Liston Daily article does have some (rather small) carving templates at the bottom of their article, but the headline and the giant block of ads at the top seems to reveal their motivation in creating it.

Interestingly the Examiner article appears to be going after both the “pumpkin carving pattern” search trend and the spike in searches around President Obama’s visit to Rhode Island.

At the bottom of the page they even link to a large group of “related” articles (most of similar quality) in an attempt to convey greater topical relevancy:

It is certainly ambitious.

I can’t imagine Google is happy with the quality of these embedded news results and they certainly don’t want it to be this easy to game Google News. But it happens quite a bit.

To be clear it is not just evergreen content that is affected; Google News manipulation happens every day in all kinds of subject areas. But since there is less news content around lifestyle topics and many reputable lifestyle sites do not qualify as Google News sources the bad examples tend to get prominent placement more easily.

The good news is that manipulative practices and poor quality results do tend to eventually get weeded out. And the main Web search results are typically fairly good for evergreen content searches (trending or otherwise). So don’t get discouraged; there is plenty of upside for sites that produce quality, relevant content on things like seasonal lifestyle topics.

Related posts:

1. Real-time Search Optimization for News Sites
2. Google Trends Graphs No Longer Embedded in Search Results?
3. Do People Search for “Breaking News”?

What gets more traction for publishers: content shared on Facebook or Twitter? According to the Social Media Sharing Trends 2010 report from SocialTwist, Facebook dominates content sharing among social media sites but links shared on Twitter have a much higher click-through rate.

SocialTwist examined content shared with its Tell-a-Friend widget from August 2009 to July 2010.

Among social networks Facebook accounted for 78% of shares, well more than any other choice. Twitter was third with just 5%:

But in looking at click-through rate Twitter’s CTR was 1904% compared to 287% for Facebook:

That means that on average Twitter shares got 19.04 clicks vs. only 2.87 clicks per share on Facebook.

This makes sense since by design Twitter usage is focused on short comments/exchanges and sharing links while there is a lot more happening on Facebook that can take up users’ attention. But the sheer volume of Facebook sharing means that total referrals from Facebook shares are still higher for many publishers.

Another thing worth noting from the study is that email still dominates content sharing though it is starting to lose ground:

Related posts:

1. 7 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips for Publishers
2. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. Press Releases Do Get Shared on Google News

It is safe to say that most news sites are now experimenting with various forms of user engagement and content promotion through social media. In recent years many larger news organizations were still coming to terms with the need for a social presence and the nature of their participation. Now the focus is decidedly more tactical with sites looking to understand how to maximize the benefits of their efforts and better integrate them with other marketing initiatives.

So which news sites are getting the most out of their social media efforts?

That’s not an easy question to answer without having access to each site’s analytics data and knowing their goals and objectives. But it is possible to make some basic comparisons using data from some of the free tools that are available.

Since I’ve been comparing major news sites in variety of areas (Facebook and Twitter impact; YouTube and new Digg activity; site speed and domain authority, among others) I thought I’d look at overall social media engagement too.

PostRank has a comparison tool that uses its Domain Activity API to measure total engagement based on user participation across multiple social platforms. So I ran 30+ news sites through the tool.

PostRank counts “engagement events” which it defines as individual activities such as a tweet, like, comment, digg, RSS view, etc. It then assigns “engagement points” to each event; events that demonstrate a higher level of effort and engagement are given higher values. These points are combined into a total engagement score (for more information see What is Engagement? on their site).

So which news sites are getting the most social media engagement?

The New York Times leads the pack by a considerable margin. CNN, BBC News, Yahoo News, The Guardian and The Huffington Post form the next tier. The top 15 sites earned scored over 1 million; from that point the scores begin to drop considerably.

Here is a head-to-head look at the top three (click to enlarge):

The BBC News score is somewhat inflated because the PostRank tool cannot isolate by subdirectory so I had to measure all of bbc.co.uk, not just bbc.co.uk/news/. But in going through the site a substantial portion of the content is news so I opted to include it.

In looking at these figures it is important to note that sites with larger audiences have greater opportunities for engagement, so bigger brands are likely to have larger numbers. But reach and total engagement do still matter so I wanted to make that comparison.

More important is the quality of the engagement and the actions that are triggered by it. A smaller number of engagement points that directly lead to traffic, links, fans, signups, revenue or any other desired action can be much more valuable than just raw user activity across social platforms.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Pages: Which News Sites Get the Most Engagement?
2. My Top 10 Posts of 2009 on News Media, SEO and Social Media
3. The Top News Sites on Blekko

Was Time magazine “scurrilous and utterly shameless in its willingness to distort” in 1964?

In a used bookstore over the weekend I came across some old issues of Fact: magazine. I’m not familiar with Fact: but Wikipedia tells me it was published from 1964-1967 and edited by Ralph Ginzburg and Warren Boroson.

The cover of the very first issue caught my eye; it is full of quotes from people disparaging Time:

Here is the full page illustration opposite the article in which Time is called “The Weekly Fiction Magazine”:

And here is an excerpt from the opening of the article:

To quote the first paragraph (bolding is mine):

“Time’s technique for handling news is so simple that it seems to have eluded several generations of critics – and yet it is almost solely responsible for (A) Time’s monumental commercial success and (B) Time’s equally monumental failure in the fields of ethics, integrity and responsibility.”

The article goes on to chronicle all sorts of alleged malpractices by Time with quotes from a variety of figures.

So what was up with Time magazine in 1964? I have a feeling this article reveals more about the style and approach of Fact: than the practices of Time but I found it very interesting nonetheless.

As a side note, Define provided consulting to Time.com for several years. So I have first-hand knowledge that they seem pretty ok nowadays.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out the comments for more background from people with knowledge of both publications at that time, including Fact’s Warren Boroson.

Related posts:

1. Real-time Search Optimization for News Sites
2. The Huffington Post’s Kim Kardashian Tag-o-Rama
3. Social Media Visitors More Loyal But Still a Very Small Percentage of Site Traffic

With a new football season under way I thought I’d take a look again at the NFL teams that have attracted the largest following to their official Twitter profiles and Facebook pages.

The usual caveats:

• Social media isn’t a popularity contest and reach does not equal influence, engagement or action
• These figures will quickly be out-of-date (they probably were before I could hit the “publish” button)

But those things aside, it is interesting to take a snapshot at various times for the purposes of comparison. And since I did the same thing in November 2009 I can now provide some growth percentages too.

Twitter

Let’s start with Twitter. Here are the 32 NFL teams’ official profiles ranked by number of followers:

The New England Patriots are still #1 (they held first place last season too) with the San Diego Chargers and the Dallas Cowboys close behind. From there the follower numbers start slowing dropping. Quite a few teams have fewer than 20K followers and several are still below 10K.

The Philadelphia Eagles have yet to reach 2K followers which seems very low for a sports-crazy town, but their official profile is fairly new. An EaglesInsider profile (that looks semi-official) with 5,300+ followers has been around longer.

It was surprising to see four teams still without official profiles. The Giants and Cardinals do have official representatives on Twitter (giantspathanlon and cardschatter) but no official team profiles. And I’m not sure what’s up with the Steelers and Colts (please correct me if I somehow missed theirs).

In terms of percentage increase since last year the Cowboys have seen the largest growth. The Detroit Lions and Houston Texans have also grown considerably but their total counts are still comparatively low. The Saints and Redskins did not have official profiles last November so I did not include a growth percentage for them.

Facebook

So how about Facebook? Here are the NFL team pages ranked by number of fans:

The Cowboys are dominating, which is interesting because in November 2009 they did not even have an official page (at least that I could find). The Steelers, Saints, Bears and Patriots also have significant followings. After the Vikings at 500K+ the counts start to drop down.

The Oakland Raiders are interesting in that their official page has only 23,075 fans but an unofficial Raider Nation page has 184,199. I guess that’s a fitting testament to that Oakland fans and their reputation for being a little out of the ordinary.

Once again the New York Giants do not have an official presence which is really surprising. There is an unofficial page with over 50K fans but I could not find an official page for the team.

In terms of growth, nearly every NFL team has considerably higher fan counts than last year. This is likely connected to the launch of the external Facebook “like” button and the fact that Facebook page promotion is much more prevalent than it was even a year ago.

One exception is the Raiders, but I believe this is because I used the figure from the unofficial Raiders page in my 2009 post. I don’t think they had an official page at that time.

League-wide the Facebook numbers are much higher than Twitter which makes sense considering Facebook’s larger user base and adoption rate.

Combined Reach

For one final comparison I’ve ranked the NFL teams by combined Twitter and Facebook following:

The Cowboys’ large Facebook fan base was more than enough to give them the #1 overall spot. The Steelers, Saints, Patriots and Bears are also doing very well. That’s impressive considering the Steelers do not have an official Twitter profile and the Saints did not have an official presence on either Twitter or Facebook last year.

All the teams have seen significant total growth since last November (excluding the Raiders exception), and the Cowboys and Panthers percentages are through the roof.

Related posts:

1. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
2. The Most Popular NBA Teams on Twitter and Facebook
3. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has published the results of its latest survey on news consumption and related topics. The content on search engines and social media gets a little lost among all the stats and charts so I thought I’d summarize that data here.

Search Engines

• 34% of the public now use search engines to find news at least three days a week, up from 19% in 2008.
• Yahoo and Google were among the most frequently mentioned websites for online news, indicating that users see them as sources for news (be it original reporting or aggregation) and not just search vehicles.

Social Media

• 19% of the public regularly (7%) or sometimes (12%) get news or news headlines through social networking sites. Only 3% regularly or sometimes gets news from Twitter.
• 24% of Twitter users follow news organizations or individual journalists, compared with 16% of social networking users.
• Among social network and Twitter users, fewer share news than receive it. 21% of social networking users regularly (4%) or sometimes (17%) share news. 15% of Twitter users regularly (6%) or sometimes (9%) share news.

For the full findings on search engines and social media see section two of the Pew report.

Related posts:

1. Google Social Search: Are You in Your Target Audiences’ Social Circles?
2. Survey: Twitter Less than 1% of Traffic to Newspapers and Magazines; Facebook 1%
3. Hitwise Reports News and Media’s Share of Search-Referred Traffic Declining

This is a guest post from Aaron Goldman, author of Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google. Aaron is doing a blog tour in support of the book launch (covering 30 blogs in 10 days) which I thought was an interesting concept. I’ve been through the book and it’s a good read; for more information check out GoogleyLessons.com. – Adam

The traditional news business, as we have known it, is dead. OK, maybe not dead. But dying a quick death. It’s simply no longer profitable for companies to report “news.”

There’s too much overhead and too little immediacy. But, even for online news outlets — where overhead is low and immediacy is high — there’s too little commercial mindset.

In my book, Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned from Google, I share 20 “Googley Lessons” that marketers can learn from the world’s most ubiquitous brand to better engage customers and prospects.

The lesson of chapter 4 is Mindset Matters. Among the many reasons the Big G has become so successful is that ads on Google reach people at a time when they’re in a commercial mindset.

Where do you turn when you’re comparing phone plans? Looking for the closest copy shop? Or trying to find a handyman?

You just Google it, right?

Of course, Google is also the first place people turn when they’re looking for the latest news, sports, weather or other categories traditionally served by the “news” media.

But it’s those commercial queries that are so desirable to advertisers.

When people search, they’re in between places on the web. They’re going form point A to point B. That’s a great time to reach people with a commercial message. When they’re already consuming content, it’s too late. They don’t want to hear from you.

No wonder Google’s making over $20 billion a year in ad revenue.

To be sure, Google — and search marketing in general — is not the only way to reach people in a commercial mindset. It’s just the best way, so far.

However, people spend just 5% of their time online searching. Over 40% is spent with content. Accordingly, there are limited opportunities for marketers to reach people via search.

So what is a traditional news media outlet to do? How can it position itself to capture the “next” dollar from the ad budget after search is maxed out?

Look at AOL. The company has remade itself into a new era media firm by eliminating a lot of the overhead associated with producing content — via Seed.com — and focusing on topics that are more commercial in nature — travel, finance, auto, etc — rather than news.

Accordingly, AOL has (once again) become an important venue for advertisers while also reaping the benefits of strong search rankings — after all, people are searching for all that commercial content. It should come as no surprise that AOL went this route considering a number of its top execs (Tim Armstrong, Jeff Levick, etc.) came over from Google.

So, to all those publishers out there who built their businesses on news. The time has come to reinvent. The time has come to get Googley!

Related posts:

1. 10 Quotes on the Apple iPad and the Business of News
2. Pew Research News Survey: Findings on Search Engines, Social Networks and Twitter
3. Do People Search for “Breaking News”?