Social Media is no longer just a buzzword. It is fast becoming a force to be reckoned with due to the impact it is having on publishers’ content strategies and the monetization opportunities it presents.
The 2009 Census by the Association of Online Publishers highlights the following Digital Publishing Industry trends for 2010:
• 95% of those surveyed have said that publishers need to embrace social media
• Just under 12% of all online traffic in the UK (19%+yoy) comes from social media interactions/sites
• 10% of traffic to news websites is driven from social media platforms
• By the end of 2010, 95% of the online US audience will be consuming ‘Social’ content
But what does embracing social media mean? In this article we discuss how social media can be the key to:
Content Generation and Discovery – how the introduction of social content improves user engagement
Social Pollination of content - how integrating with major social networking websites increases user participation and traffic referrals
Content Generation and Discovery
Over the last 12 months, we have seen a gradual convergence of User-Generated-Content (UGC) and digital monetization models. With more than 25 billion pieces of content (links, articles, blog posts, photos, videos etc) shared each month, Facebook was recently valued at $7.9 billion.
An increased propensity and opportunity for consumers to engage with online brands, presents both opportunities and challenges for publishers. It is no longer just about delivering expert commentary, but also about the way users interact with, enhance and share expert and user-generated-content via their social networks.
An industry historically hinged on driving page impressions must now also focus on driving reach and quality user interactions. In 2009, Proctor and Gamble, the UK’s second largest advertiser, became one of the first companies to launch a results-driven online advertising model, of which revenue for publishers is based on the amount of user engagement delivered. We believe that this is the beginning of a trend that will reward publishers who provide high quality, multi-platform integrated campaigns.
Moving forward, publishers will need to strike a balance between acquiring onsite engagement by integrating social elements while continuing to provide readers with quality content to share.
Social pollination of content
Publishers and advertisers will also increasingly come to realise that social media and referrals can be a key method of driving traffic and sales – 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, whereas only 14% trust advertisements and advertorials. This further proves the point that social pollination of content, that is, the way a brand integrates with social network features, will become the key to driving traffic and brand affinity. This reality spells good news for online shopping portals as well as social-media-ready sites generating revenue via affiliate deals.
A strong case study is Facebook’s Open Graph release alongside the proliferation of third-party social network integration options (eg. Facebook Connect, Gigya and OpenID). Since the Facebook Open Graph initiative was announced in April 2010, encouraging publishers to implement various Facebook Social PlugIns, there have been more than 100,000 integrations including major brands such as CNN and the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). In fact, since we launched Facebook’s Open Graph on our sites at IPC Media (ie. the ‘like’ feature), we have seen referral traffic from Facebook increase from 1% to over 20% for our fashion brands, such as Look and Marie Claire.
Social Media has brought down the barrier of entry so that readers have become both content generators and curators, highlighting what content is relevant to them and to their connections. It is changing and has changed the digital publishing landscape forever. In fact, it’s only a matter of time before we stop talking about ‘Social Media’ and realise we’re just talking about the Internet.
