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March 28, 2024

Three Words to Remember: Social Media Optimization

First published at Outsell, Feb. 15, 2010

Important Details: Google opened up a new war front this week, as its Google Buzz product aims to take user attention and market share from fast-growing Facebook and Twitter. Google Buzz basically connects social networking functionality to the Google Mail inbox, potentially allowing users to watch both e-mail and social exchanges from those in their networks on one screen.  The product does a number of thing, but one thing is clear — it promotes sharing.

That sharing was also the focus of a team of University of Pennsylvania researchers, which recorded the meanderings of the New York Times’ most e-mailed stories list every 15 minutes for six months. They offered some unexpected analysis.  Among the findings were that people prefer to send positive, uplifting stories, and longer-form “intellectually stimulating” stories.  The researchers claim that the emotion of “awe” is a thread found through the story picks, articles with the “emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self.”

Less awesome, but also revelatory of social network power, is the tale of two recent would-be acquisitions. Monster bought Yahoo! HotJobs, creating the number one — by job listings — online recruiting supersite.  The price was a surprisingly low $225 million, plus whatever value the parties agreed upon as Monster and Yahoo! enter into a long-term distribution agreement. One reason the price came in low: the burgeoning social web that is linking positions and candidates through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a swarm of niche, social-oriented sites, like Jobvite.

The other socially related acquisition of note is one that fell through, at least for now (see Insights 12 January 2010, Google: One Yelp and its Local …or Not).  Both Google and Microsoft tried to buy city guide social site Yelp, a popular user-generated, local destination for readers in many cities, and now number one in local reach, in at least one survey, in the Bay Area. The $700 million reportedly offered by Microsoft was rejected as insufficient, given the growth trajectory of the site.

The common thread here is that social sharing of information and news (and job information) is now a phenomenon with which to be reckoned.

Outsell’s own News Users’ survey (News Users 2009) tells us that 44% of news readers say they use social networks to share news and information. Of those, half use Facebook to do it; one in five use Twitter. Further, a recent Rutgers  survey of social use shows that 20% of posts in the “statusphere” come from “informers,” those that share news and information. The other 80% are “meformers,” telling their followers what they had for breakfast and what they’re doing with their day.

In addition, consider that Nielsen reports that Internet users worldwide now spend 5.35 hours a month on social networks, up from just three hours a year ago. The social web is the new home page.

Finally, one other emerging datapoint: Bit.ly, one of the top “URL shortening service providers” –  sends about two billion link referrals a month, largely given its Twitter stronghold.

Implications: Recall how a few years ago we heard cries from editors about “lost serendipity”?  That’s what many pointed to as being lost as readers migrated from you-never-know-what-you-might-find-inside newspapers to the search-driven, one screen at a time web.  Editors — gatekeepers — had long picked out stories for their readers.  Now we’re picking out stories for each other, flinging them about the digital universe, into our e-mail inboxes, Twitter accounts and Facebook walls.  The Google Buzz news just reinforces this wider phenomenon and tries to harness it.

We’re becoming each other’s editors, creating a new serendipity.

We’re at the very beginning of this revolution and the realization of its meaning.

Outsell believes that publishers should consider three words for now: Social Media Optimization, a concept noted in Outsell’s January 2010 report on Analytics-Wired Content.  That’s a somewhat hazy idea that may be the child of search engine optimization.  Just as publishers once thought SEO strange, but have slowly adapted to its power, they’ll want to adapt to social optimization.  For now, consider just three ways that social optimization can find its way into news publishers’ skill sets:

  • Story sharing: Most national news publishers have now adapted their smartphone products to include basic sharing via e-mail, text message, Facebook and Twitter. Such a move is now fundamental to all news publishing, not just mobile.
  • Engagement of staff: Some news staffs have been restrained from Tweeting by understandable craft concerns, while others have been told to tweet away. The Wall Street Journal’s Alan Murray has gone farther, saying reporters’ job descriptions now include getting the word out about their stories on social networks. Staff engagement, and training as necessary, is another vital piece of the puzzle.
  • Engagement of advertisers: Sharing deals is another thing we like to do. Begin figuring out how to leverage the news-related social net for such basics as couponing; what’s old is new again, just in different clothing.

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