Social media questions for online publishers

 

Another write up by Social Media Strategist Chi-Tola Roberts.
A lot of our digital generation publishers are enjoying the benefit of the large audience created for them by their prominence in the social media. Notwithstanding, some are still trying to find their feet. They aren’t able to strategise properly, execute and incorporate their plan into a unified program.

Here are eight social media questions that publishers should be asking themselves:

•Do we have the right sharing buttons?

I got a mail from one new blogger who is eager to carve a niche. Excellent blog, great idea but the sharing buttons were misplaced and incomplete. This just emphasiswes the need for effective selection, placement and formatting of social buttons on all key templates, and customising those elements for different types of content.

•When is Facebook integration too much?

It is true that a high degree of Facebook integration can feel a bit like being assimilated into the Borg.  But the truth is there’s quite a handful of audience across all demographics. So you need to experiment. Like buttons, Open Graph tags (which much like Twitter formatting, need to be done right!) and reasonable use of Facebook Social Plugins have essentially become standard practice. The challenge for publishers is figuring out their level of comfort with frictionless sharing.

One interesting takeaway is that the user base and types of content that do well in Social Reader can be quite different from the main site. But that is proving to be an effective way to reach new audiences as opposed to creating a mismatch.

•Are we optimising our social media visitors’ experiences?

One thing to keep in mind optimally here is that as the social platforms vary, so does its user objectives. This includes comparison to search and direction navigation. By studying things like page views, time on site and click paths, publishers can gain insights and attempt to create optimised experiences for social visitors.

This might relate to the packaging or even selection of content and it can tie into advertising sales and conversion rate optimisation too. Thoughtful intent can be tricky but monitoring behaviour and activity often proves valuable.

•How do we maintain active social outposts without sacrificing on-site community?

Considering the advantages of sharing links as an integral part of social media activity is a fantastic advantage for publishers. Unarguably, the increase of content marketing is determined largely by the fact that non-content businesses know that they need content to succeed in search and social.

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