1. 63rd WORLD NEWSPAPER CONGRESS
Session: Digital
Title: SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE A LIFELINE FOR NEWSPAPERS
Speaker: Rich Beattie
Mark your calendar
64th WORLD NEWSPAPER CONGRESS
19th WORLD EDITORS FORUM
Vienna, Reed Messe Wien
www.wan-ifra.org/kiev2012

2. SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE A
LIFELINE FOR NEWSPAPERS
PRESENTED BY: RICH BEATTIE,VP EMEA
63rd World Newspaper Congress
Friday, Oct. 14, 2011
“Digital” Panel & Social Presentation
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3. TODAY’S DIGITAL WORLD
SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES
 Newspaper & Publishing’s Digital Dilemmas.
 What Must a Newspaper Do?
 Think Like Some of Today’s Smartest Brands.
 Embrace Social As A Communications Pillar!
“Yes, of course…but how?”
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4. SOCIAL LIFELINES
FACEBOOK
Growth numbers and reach incredible and growing.
Redefining how consumers interact with the social web.
Increasingly a driver of traffic to media sites and projected to increase.
A Pew Research Study (May 2011) reports Facebook ranked as second or
third driver to news websites, behind Google.
 Huffington Post readers who sign in via Facebook read 22% more
articles and visit longer than the average reader;
 The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300%
increase in referral traffic; and
 ABCNews.com, Washington Post and The Huffington Post are said to
have more than doubled their referral traffic from Facebook since
adding social plugins.
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5. SOCIAL LIFELINES
TWITTER
100 million active users.
Processing 230 million tweets a day, a 110% increase 1/2011.
Established provider of real-time “news”; Breaking big news events.
BrightEdge (Sept. 2011) shows that pages displaying Twitter share buttons
get 7x the social media mentions/engagement.
Half of the largest 10,000 sites still don’t display sharing tools.
Incredible outlet for journalists for newsgathering, promotion and
branding.
Social Links/Plugins on Homepages of Top Sites
Social Site With Social Links/Plugins Change From Previous Month
Facebook 50.3% Up from 49.5%
Twitter 42.5% Up from 42.4%
Google+ 8.1% Up from 7.3%
LinkedIn 4.0% Unchanged
Source: BrightEdge Research, SocialShare Analysis, September 2011
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6. SOCIAL LIFELINES
 The facts are undisputable: Media sites must strategically leverage
social.
 Facebook, Twitter and other outlets like Google+ (when pages open),
LinkedIn and YouTube.
 Those that don’t fully embrace social will not overcome the challenges
of the digital world.
 Dynamic and engaging social pages that incorporate share
functionalities across the web; delivers valuable, relevant (customized)
and engaging content; leverages the latest social marketing
technologies; measures and learns from sophisticated analytics tools
and much more.
 Then the digital world becomes an open opportunity, not a sea of
challenges.
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7. BEST PRACTICES
Content is King: Get Local,
Relevant & Personalize
Truly get to know and develop a
relationship with your readers.
Customize and personalize content
instead of pushing one-size-fits-all.
Newspapers can do “local” well:
popular local columnists, tie-in locally to
offer specials, deals and promotions
across their footprint.
Content that is of value, engaging,
relevant and real. Targeted, custom.
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8. BEST PRACTICES
Remember Social Is A
Different Digital Medium
Don’t treat social as you do your Editorial >
“editorial” outlet and dot com.
Social is a two-way
communication platform where the Social
consumers truly have control and
brands can develop a relationship v
with their users.
Facebook is a more personal
community interaction platform
that allows for more comprehensive
engagement.
Twitter only 140 characters, more
of a news feed.
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9. BEST PRACTICES
Personalize, Empower Your People
Journalists actively and regularly engaging with your readers – and in an
open and real fashion.
Breakdown those editorial walls and strict guidelines.
Social thrives is because it’s social and personal.
Journalists have adapted more quickly to Twitter than Facebook.
Tremendous opportunity for newspapers for expanded Facebook.
Vitrue helped Amway develop individual business pages worldwide for
their thousands of representatives – incorporating Amway branding
throughout – so they have the flexibility, tools and technologies to build
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10. BEST PRACTICES
Learn, Listen & Respond
The marketing paradigm has completely shifted. Consumers now
have the control; embrace it.
Develop real, two-way relationships -- listen, learn and respond.
Interaction at both at your corporate level and with individual
journalists.
Experiment. Try new things. Facebook is a dynamic and fluid
medium.
Get feedback from your users. Get to know them by listening and
learning.
Platforms today have sophisticated monitoring capabilities that
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11. BEST PRACTICES
Don’t Blatantly “Sell” on Social
Don’t use social to blatantly push your products.
It’s a great avenue to seed, say, subscriptions, classifieds and local
deals.
package it as a value for them, with relevancy, your readers will
interact.
Deliver coupons or deals based on their story/reading habits and
interests.
Push subscription offers that front content – perhaps even
exclusively – that you know will resonate with them.
(Your brand’s sCommerce approach with an obvious storefront and
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12. BEST PRACTICES
Mobile Devices,
Technology & The Future
Proliferation of smart phones and tablet
adoption – set to explode.
Today, in fact, more than 250 million
users access Facebook via mobile.
Every day technology changes the way
consumers interact with content.
Google is reported to be creating a
Flipboard-type competitor.
CNN’s purchase of iPad magazine
platform Zite.
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13. Closing Thoughts …
to not just think about
“We tell our journalists and encourage them
it as distribution and promotion. In fact, if you just think
about it only as distribution, you’re not getting what you can out of
social media, the most that you can, which is really about user
interaction, engagement and news gathering… We really
want them [journalists] to have a strategy so they know how to
use it well… Develop relationships and reply when people
talk to you… We want to do a lot more projects where we build
platforms around our journalism…We really want to start
focusing on Facebook more…Facebook is this huge community
that journalists haven’t really figured out how to interact with it in
the best way yet.”
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14. facebook.com/vitrue
@vitrue
vitrue.com/blog/feed
youtube.com/vitrue
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