For the enterprising social media publisher, Facebook video and Snapchat represent a promising future
What does it mean to be a social media publisher these days? It means you’re willing to experiment. It means you’re willing to venture out of your comfort zone. It means you’re willing to invest in dedicated staff. It means you can cut it with video.
As you can see, it means a lot of things … and then some.
Digiday has some insight for multiplatform publishers looking for an edge. Recent articles focus on Facebook and Snapchat, two epicenters of social media strategy. Let’s take a look!
Publishers’ Facebook Video Links Shared More Often Than Links
Facebook video is changing the game for digital magazines, and the analytics are proving it, as Digiday reports.
“Digiday ran numbers from social analytics service NewsWhip across 14 publishers that are top performers on Facebook. Across the board, publishers’ video (including live and canned video) got an average of 4,036 shares per post. Images were also popular, averaging 3,364 shares per post. But when publishers shared article links (including Instant Articles, Facebook’s fast-loading article format), they got just 571 shares per post. The least-likely format to be shared were status updates, which got 538 shares per post. The period measured covers April 27 to May 27,” Lucia Moses writes.
As Facebook has changed its algorithm to put more video in people’s feeds, publishers have shifted resources to video production, in some cases, focusing predominantly on video. So even if publishers are still posting more text articles than video, each video is likely reaching more people. (It’s hard to know just how much, though; NewsWhip only provides that data to individual publishers about their own sites, but doesn’t share an industry-wide view of that data.) So it stands to reason that if Facebook’s algorithm puts video in front of people more, these will also be shared more.
Speaking of Facebook Video, How Is Facebook Live Treating Publishers?
Interesting Digiday feature that checks in on digital publishers’ efforts with Facebook Live, the social network’s streaming service.
[text_ad]
“Facebook’s emphasis on live video — and putting it in front of so many people — has compelled many publishers to experiment liberally with the format, deploying a spaghetti-at-the-wall tactic in an effort to see what sticks. Basically, everyone wants to create BuzzFeed’s exploding-watermelon viral hit. But while the algorithm may bump up live videos to the top of people’s feeds, it doesn’t mean they are going to watch for long,” Tanya Dua writes.
“Tastemade has no qualms with going all in on Facebook Live. The digital food and travel publisher has a goal of 100 live shows a month on the platform, including recipe tutorials, cooking programs with on-camera talent and other new formats designed specifically to be watched in a live setting.”
Final Frontier for the Social Media Publisher – at Least for the Moment?
Snapchat, of course, is a whole other “story,” and as the upstart social service works out the kinks for publishers, its Discover platform is undergoing a redesign, Digiday reports.
“Snapchat’s top publishing partners, the ones that get exclusive access to the Discover section, are preparing for a redesign that could give them more ways to show off their content. The messaging and media app plans to launch this new look to help attract more viewers to Discover, according to sources familiar with the redesign,” Garrett Sloane writes.
“Instead of static media logos in circles, representing the channels, publishers will have an actual cover image to draw readers into the content, according to one source. One publisher said the cover images would make Snapchat content look more like a magazine — and hopefully attract more eyeballs. It might not seem like much, but Discover still only captures a small portion of Snapchat’s more than 100 million daily viewers, who are mostly there to message with friends. Snapchat and publishers would like to get more of them into Snapchat Discover stories, because that’s where most of the ads run.”
Do you consider yourself a social media publisher? “Share” which networks are showing you the best results in the comments!
To read more about social media publisher news and other industry trends, visit Digiday.
