“Digital+Social First” is our station group’s official digital and social media strategy, which I implemented in 2016 to strengthen our competitive positioning. The strategy strongly embraces social media and its role in converting digital traffic and newscast viewership, particularly Facebook. Witnessing ongoing adaptations to digital’s ever-evolving transformations, the strategy remains the backbone of our digital publishing standards.
It includes a mission statement that explicitly defines its purpose: “Establish an engaging and captive social media environment that ultimately converts users to additional digital traffic and newscast viewership.”
Within 6 months, we stole significant market share from our chief competitor and indisputably distinguished ourselves as the digital and social media market leader:
- #1 in traffic (based on Alexa rank)
- #1 in social engagement (total and rate)
- #1 in Facebook followers
- #1 in Facebook fan growth
- #1 in digital sales (based on Miller Kaplan).
Objectives
- Recognize the public’s expectation of immediacy and the importance of getting the lead ahead of the competition by embracing a “Digital+Social First” philosophy. Content is posted immediately rather than waiting for completeness or postponing for newscasts.
- Identify the best channels and methods for achieving high social conversions. This includes strategically shifting efforts to Facebook from other platforms, as well as improve virality and audience reach by prioritizing company pages with high fanbases over smaller pages.
- De-emphasize frequency and establish quality control that directly correlates to Facebook’s algorithm: Content that is engaging, relevant, and organic while reducing or eliminating content that is overly promotional, engagement-baiting, and shared from other sources.
- Educate publishers on Facebook’s algorithm, its role in conversions, and optimizing content to harness the algorithm’s strengths.
Outcomes
- Grew Facebook fanbase at nearly twice the pace of our closest competitor (39% versus 26%), surpassing their 20,000-fan lead within 6 months.
- 2017 ended with 170% better engagement than our chief competitor and 15% higher follower growth.
- Witnessed a noticeable spike in all other digital traffic from the onset of policy implementation.
- Received the “Best Social Media Strategy” Digital Innovation Award from the Local Media Association in 2017 and 2018… against hundreds of submissions.