The University of Lancashire’s School of Journalism and Digital Communication has published the groundbreaking World Newsmedia Innovation Study for the past four years. This year’s Journalism Leadership INSIGHT report draws on research conducted by the authors while completing the Master of Arts in Journalism Leadership at the University. Business Day’s Steve Matthewson was one of the those who attended. This is part one of his report, Fans, followers and finding value: an exploratory study of the contribution made by social media to organisational strategy in traditional media firms.
Many recent studies confirm the widespread adoption of social The Financial Times (FT) and The Guardian have made choices in media across most traditional media organisations, driven by the view that such tools offer a wide range of potential benefits or certainly that media companies are compelled to follow their audiences there.
Respondents in the 2011 World Newsmedia Network Innovation Study were asked which platforms could be opportunities for their organisations in the next five years. Social media emerged as the single most important issue, ahead even of investigations into payment models for digital media, which have become a central preoccupation of many magazines, newspapers and websites around the world.
This is part two of the story. Part one can be found here.
Subscribers
Social media further support the FT’s content monetisation strategy by helping it to manage its relationship with its current subscribers and registered users, by accepting and dealing with subscription queries, technical problems and complaints directly on social platforms.
Where social media are used as a promotional tool to create interest around conferences and other events for both the FT and
Marketing staff emphasise their role in reviewing all mentions of
the FT on social media and applying sentiment analysis to these to strategically manage the brand. This would appear to reinforce the perception among interviewees from both firms of the potential risk to brand reputation that they see social media posing, alongside the possible benefits to the brand. This is particularly important since the value of the brand and its positioning supports the FT’s strategy.
Social media, differentiation and competitive advantage
The value of the data generated by and linked to social media accounts and activity emerged in the study as a key factor enabling these firms to differentiate themselves and segment their markets – arguably a necessary condition for these firms to adopt a strategic position in the first place11. Data, in fact, is a strategic resource.
The intelligence the firms acquire from social media content itself feeds into the character and quality of the journalism and therefore allows the firms to create content that is possibly not available elsewhere. Secondly, it gives the firms a greater understanding of the audiences themselves, a means to segment them and, in some instances, to market to them.
The Guardian, for instance sees the data it has built through its Facebook application and its adoption of “social sign on” to its site as a potential strategic resource that it can tap to support a segmented advertising model.
The FT’s engagement funnel, supported as it is by sophisticated soFTware, allows it to track users from social media links on to its site if they are registered users or subscribers and match their profiles to their reading behaviour.
Metrics
The Guardian was, at the time of study, developing a suite of engagement metrics having traditionally used analysis of its site – unique browsers, page views and so on – as its main measure of what topics or stories were popular. Ultimately, it wants to the metrics to be “proxies for the behaviour we want to see, based on our strategy” [S-GD].
On a basic level, both firms are aware of which social media drive the most or least amount of traffic to their platforms. The FT identified Twitter as not only the number one social source of traffic to the FT.com but also the platform that delivers the “more engaged … traffic” according to M-FT. That is, Twitter users are more inclined to share content and comment on it.
Both firms expect social media to support traffic and, through that, advertising impressions, but both recognise a deeper value in increasing engagement and loyalty, seeing it in terms of a funnel that leads to registration, which means different things for each of them but supports a unique proposition for both.
Newsroom
At The Guardian, if one follows one of the main thrusts of its current strategy – that is, Open Journalism – the fact that that strategy is publicly promoted by the editor, and the fact that social media plays such a key role in that strategy, clearly, in terms of the links between the newsroom and the audience, then it would seem that the strategy is very focused on relationships. That is, the relationships are almost an end in themselves. At the FT, the relationships are important, but they are seen in terms of the audience’s registration and subscriber status.
Social media directly support differentiation at both firms. In the case of The Guardian this is by demonstrating its character as being “of the web” [S-GD] through the ease and frequency with which
it uses these tools. For the FT, it is by promoting its exclusive, interpretive content.
Social media and delivering value to stakeholders
The study suggested that social media can make a contribution to reader management and segmentation in the context of the advertising propositions of these firms. Offering audience intelligence, as well as more engaged audiences, potentially enhances the value proposition for advertisers.
For subscribers, registered users and readers in general, regardless of whether they consume content on digital platforms, the emergence of social media as a customer interface where they can receive assistance or lay a complaint, may enhance the value they too receive.
The ability to interact with editorial staff and the firm may enhance the perception of value that readers receive, but this does pre-suppose that the audience sees value in such access in the first place (something that was not addressed by the research).
Benefit
The FT interviewees acknowledged the role of social media in traffic growth and marketing its site. These are distinguished as tangible benefits. However, the “intangible” benefit identified by the FT is that of presence: being part of conversations, bringing unique perspectives to those conversations and “getting the brand out” [E-FT]. It could be suggested that this ties into the value of the business overall, including the value for investors, and may have a reflective benefit in that it increases the appeal for advertisers as well. By building brand equity in the firm, social media contributes to the value received by the shareholders in the firm.
The relatively low cost of investing in and running social media tools for media firms, given the potential returns, could contribute to better returns for investors in media firms. However, the findings suggested the firms had developed no means to isolate these costs nor a specific means to measure the return on this investment.
Advantage
It is particularly hard to discern any strong connection between these strategies and the use of social media in a way that would benefit individual staff. Ostensibly, encouraging and helping journalists to use these tools more effectively can help them do their jobs more effectively and contribute to fulfilling organisational strategy which, if it does indeed provide a sustainable, competitive advantage, could benefit them as employees.
With respect to their content strategies, and the role of social media, the study made a few key observations. Both firms have attempted to carve out particular positions for themselves in what are heavily contested global markets where the audience is assaulted by significant volumes of content. Both have distinct brands and social media appear to support those positions by promoting what is largely exclusive content in order to capture attention. In the case
of The Guardian, exclusivity means applying its particular voice to content and furthering engagement, and ultimately advertising revenue, while for the FT, the exclusivity of that content – its particular quality, but also its non-availability elsewhere – is key to making it monetizable.
Professional
While both firms declared themselves digital-first operations as a key principle of the way they worked, interviewees at both firms indicated that it was not a strategic objective to be first with breaking news stories, so speed as a strategy per sé, was a feature of neither firm, as much as social media platforms might be used to promote content when it did become available.
Neither The Guardian nor the FT are specialist publications as such, but they both aim to serve specialist markets within their broader audience, either through industry or topic-focused sections, through subsidiary brands, specialised professional networks that they run
or events and conferences aimed at particular cohorts of readers, around which advertising and content monetization strategies have been built.
In each of these areas and at both companies, social media was being used to promote content and events and to engage readers with specialist interests. For the FT, in particular, addressing groups of readers on this basis was potentially very important in the sense that it could serve adverts to segmented groups at a higher rate, with an obvious revenue benefit for investors, as well as serving the needs of advertisers who want to reach these groups in a targeted way.
The FT however was cognisant in its social media efforts in the US of cultural differences in the use of social media and made a few regional concessions for that market. He cited, as an example, the way in which US consumers are accustomed to using Facebook as a more public tool and are used to receiving high volumes of news feeds on this platform, whereas Facebook is regarded as a more private forum in the UK and elsewhere.
The marketing department of the FT, however, does use geo-targeted advertising on social media (specifically Facebook) to reach those markets and get attention. It got a higher virality score when it geo-targeted content.
The FT does not currently break down traffic sources from social media by country but it is something it may look at. If it did so, this might reflect the value of social media in different markets and possibly of using it in ways that are geographically specific.
The Guardian was already attracting a third of its online audience from the US by the time it decided to launch its US edition but appointed a dedicated team in the US to manage a separate US-focused social media campaign around its US site and US content.
Presence
The FT, meanwhile, also has a strong focus on developing markets, and particularly on Asia. In China, where it runs a digital-only Chinese edition with quite different content from its main site, it has, much more like The Guardian in the US, tailored its social media efforts entirely around this market, with a strong presence on exclusively Chinese social media sites. At the time of the study it had well over one million followers on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Tencent Weibo.
Finally, the use of social media is a factor when the firms consider their approach to multiple platforms for the distribution of content or what Picard calls cross-media activities12.
Both firms are prepared, in principle or practice, to use social media as a publishing tool – that is, as an additional platform – but for different reasons and under different conditions.
The way in which The Guardian contemplates using and indeed has used such platforms as a means to engage users, provides potential value for readers, who can express their views and, in principle, influence The Guardian’s coverage and also enjoy the convenience of consuming more widely available content. On the other hand, it is potentially a major departure from the strategy of driving users to a proprietary platform where the traffic can be monetized through advertising. The mechanics of advertising on these various platforms would, however, have to be individually unpacked and understood in order for one to devise a definitive answer on their value.
Expansion
With respect to another of the content strategies identified by Picard, that of increasing the distance over which content is published, the two firms have global expansion as a key part of their strategies. In the case of both, these are explicitly supported by social media.
Although Picard makes the point that in general, the availability of news and information in the digital age does not equal relevance, both the FT and The Guardian address this with reference to the particular character of the content they offer to audiences in places such as the US. Both have adopted distinct means of using social media to fulfil those strategies.
Both firms have, for instance, as part of their publicly expressed strategy, made major efforts to build their presence in the US where they both have a strong foothold, but also room to grow.
Although it publishes a US print edition, the FT does not have a version of its digital product tailored to the US market like The Guardian does.
Gateway
As much as he regards social media as “kind of the gateway to news in the US” [E-FT], the interviewee said the FT would not single out the audience there on social media any more than the FT would tailor its content for that market. The FT was offering a global view rather than trying to play to regional interests, and the use of social media in a market such as the US was content-driven.
The FT however was cognisant in its social media efforts in the US of cultural differences in the use of social media and made a few regional concessions for that market. He cited, as an example, the way in which US consumers are accustomed to using Facebook as a more public tool and are used to receiving high volumes of news feeds on this platform, whereas Facebook is regarded as a more private forum in the UK and elsewhere.
The marketing department of the FT, however, does use geo-targeted advertising on social media (specifically Facebook) to reach those markets and get attention. It got a higher virality score when it geo-targeted content.
The FT does not currently break down traffic sources from social media by country but it is something it may look at. If it did so, this might reflect the value of social media in different markets and possibly of using it in ways that are geographically specific.
The Guardian was already attracting a third of its online audience from the US by the time it decided to launch its US edition but appointed a dedicated team in the US to manage a separate US-focused social media campaign around its US site and US content.
Presence
The FT, meanwhile, also has a strong focus on developing markets, and particularly on Asia. In China, where it runs a digital-only Chinese edition with quite different content from its main site, it has, much more like The Guardian in the US, tailored its social media efforts entirely around this market, with a strong presence on exclusively Chinese social media sites. At the time of the study it had well over one million followers on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Tencent Weibo.
Finally, the use of social media is a factor when the firms consider their approach to multiple platforms for the distribution of content or what Picard calls cross-media activities12.
Both firms are prepared, in principle or practice, to use social media as a publishing tool – that is, as an additional platform – but for different reasons and under different conditions.
The way in which The Guardian contemplates using and indeed has used such platforms as a means to engage users, provides potential value for readers, who can express their views and, in principle, influence The Guardian’s coverage and also enjoy the convenience of consuming more widely available content. On the other hand, it is potentially a major departure from the strategy of driving users to a proprietary platform where the traffic can be monetized through advertising. The mechanics of advertising on these various platforms would, however, have to be individually unpacked and understood in order for one to devise a definitive answer on their value.
The FT, on the other hand, sees the use of social media in cross-media activities mostly in terms of its content monetization strategy so individuals who can afford to subscribe would enjoy the convenience of accessing content on a social media platform. This convenience may increase the number of subscribers and therefore the FT’s revenue, but it is not clear how advertisers would benefit, if at all.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the study found that social media activities contribute to functions as diverse as the firms’ attempts to build their brand and grow in new markets, the management of subscriptions and their efforts to create new revenue streams. One of the most important findings was that social media are emerging as a source of market and customer data that is potentially critical in giving firms a sustainable competitive advantage.
The findings confirmed a critical point about the technology choices traditional media make since these choices have implications for the outcome of strategy. Fundamentally, different social platforms do different jobs in terms of the strategy. In addition, social media do contribute to the efforts of the subject firms in differentiating themselves from other media firms.
Although the findings of the research at the Financial Times and The Guardian are not generalisable, they do suggest that, given the variety of strategic options that are represented in the respective approaches of these firms, there is a strategic role for such technologies, not just in the newsroom but indeed across the modern news organisation.
Steve Matthewson is managing editor of news at BDlive.
This post was first published in the Journalism Leadership INSIGHT report edited by Francois Nel, director of the Journalism Leaders Programme at the School of Journalism and Digital Communication, University of Central Lancashire