"Facebook + Media" a Sign of Social Journalism Reality
Facebook officially launched a media page that's dedicated to journalists, developers and media partners to help them learn and use best practices and tools to drive referral traffic.
Dubbed "Facebook + Media," the real juice for media companies is how the page offers data on how users engage with news content shared on Facebook.
For example, Neiman Journalism Labs, via an email received from Facebook, reported that:
- Stories published in the early morning or late evening showed higher engagement
- Websites experienced 3-5x greater click-through rates on the Like button when they included thumbnail photos of a user’s friends, enabled users to add comments (which 70% of top performing sites did), and placed the Like button at the top and bottom of articles and near visually exciting content like videos and graphics Sites that place Facebook social plugins above the fold and on multiple webpages receive more engagement. For example, sites that placed the Activity Feed plugin on the front and content pages received 2-10x more clicks per user than sites with the plugins on the front page alone.
- Sites have used the Live Stream box to boost engagement with live video content. During the World Cup, there were over 1.5 million status updates through the Live Stream box on media websites such as Univision, TF1, ESPN, Cuatro, RTVE, and Telecinco.
While from a face-value perspective, this appears to be a PR move by Facebook, it's more than likely a by-product of the media business hitting skid row (not to mention that playing nicely with major content creators is a smart business move for Facebook).
With newspapers closing up shop, news staffs being cut, news holes shrinking and journalists under the gun to create rapid fire content that results in burn-out, the media business needs social media to stay alive.
It's a catch-22 situation where the media needs social media and consumers want the content for free, via social media. So, how then will the news business make money (the million dollar question for which there doesn't seem to be an answer)?
Regardless, "Facebook + Media" is a clear sign that, one, the worlds biggest social network is looking to help arguably major content creators (media) stay engaged and relevant; and two, journalism will never be like it was 20, 10 or even five years ago. It's now called social journalism. Outlets that learn how to leverage these channels effectively to drive revenue will survive. Those that can't, won't. It's that simple.
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