how major publishers are using social media to drive traffic

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"Teenager finds bat asleep in bra"

or

How major publishers are using social media to drive traffic

Martin BelamInternational Social Media Summit, May 2009

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Information Architect at The Guardian

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*disclaimer

"The views expressed in this presentation are my own,and do not represent the views of Guardian News & Media"

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The Final Frontier

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What is "Social Media"?

Diagram by Brian Solis

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Let's not get over-excited here

"Nobody talks about people down the pub laughing as a 'social drinking sensation'. You don't call people giggling on the phone a 'social telecommunications sensation'."

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Social bookmarking icons

Social bookmarking icons have infected major publisherwebsites like some kind of Internet design plague

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Nobody likes to be pointed at as the odd one out

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Popular services

The services you are most likely to see are Delicious, Digg, Newsvine, Reddit and StumbleUpon. Yahoo! Buzz is popular in the US

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Popular services

Popular services will vary from country to country and from language to language. And planet to planet.

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The single icon approach

Some sites use ShareThis or AddThisto reduce the number of icons on the page

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Bookmarks give value back to your site

The BBC and The Telegraph, for example,show people on their site what has proved popular off-site

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Links drive traffic

These services can drive significant traffic.Getting on the front page of Digg can drive many new unique visitors

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Where there is traffic, there is cash, so there are cheats

Services offer to sell votes and recommendations,or build robots to do it "automagically"

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Twitter

Winner: Communications Technology Media Hype Award 2009

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Announcing content on Twitter

Some publishers use Twitter as a pure 'push' medium, just like RSS

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Selective promotion of content via Twitter

@GuardianVoices points to spikes of interactivity aroundThe Guardian's blogs or Comment Is Free site

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A conversation with the audience

Channel 4 News have earned praise for their approach to Twitter

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Good use of Twitter can really enhance your brand

ITV's football coverage is often criticised, but the person (or people) running their Twitter presence are very engaged with the audience

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Counterfeit goods

You need to monitor what is happeningto your brandname in the Twittersphere

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Blogging

It turned out not to be the CB Radio of the 2000s

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Robert Peston has been the face of the "credit crunch"

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You can't force people to blog

A successful corporate blog needs to work hard on tone -a chronological list of press releases is not a blog

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Build relationships, not email lists

Don't mass email bloggers - target them.I wouldn't open a packet of crisps in London without inviting these two…

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What about when it all goes wrong?

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You will get criticised online…

…but then you used to get criticised in the pub, office and school playground, and you didn't have an opportunity to respond

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It isn't going to go away…

http://soshable.com/

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You want people to carry your content with them

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How major publishers are using social media to drive traffic

Martin BelamInternational Social Media Summit, May 2009

currybet.netmartin.belam@currybet.nettwitter.com/currybet