How social media curation can help improve audience engagement

Presented in association with Crowdynews.

The rise of social media over the past few years has permanently affected our media consumption habits, turning newspapers into more analysis-based sources of news and platforms such as Facebook and Twitter into a key source for breaking short-form content.

So as more and more readers turn to social for news, how can publishers draw audiences back on to their platforms, and keep them there for longer?

Julian Johns, international vice-president, Crowdynews, explained that by using social media curation, news organisations can remove the need for readers to look elsewhere, by automatically pulling in relevant social content from around the internet onto their websites.

"When someone comes from social, bounce rates are high – they read a piece of longform content with a social mindset, and then they disappear," said Johns.

"If there are other relevant articles there to engage with, you are keeping them on your domain for longer, without letting them dive back into social."

But Johns notes that curation platforms such as Crowdynews can also enhance the quality of publishers' output, enabling them to produce a quick breaking-news social stream related to a subject, or social content specifically focused to highlight the ideas and arguments within their specific story.

"We take content beyond the hashtag – all that is relevant to a particular topic or a theme is brought together from multiple platforms, creating content that is fresh, relevant and engaging," said Johns.

You are bringing a broader universe of content to your reader, which makes your story far more engaging and uniqueJulian Johns, VP International, Crowdynews

"Just imagine nine different social channels coming in to augment your story – you are bringing a broader universe of content to your reader, which makes it far more engaging and unique."

The company's work with Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc. (BBGI), a radio station conglomerate in the US, saved their news teams time when covering the shootings in San Bernardino, CA, in December 2015.

"BBGI were able to follow the shootings ahead of the curve, and were reporting on the incident 35-40 minutes before the national newspapers and media outlets," said Johns.

Publishers can apply filters to the channels to surface posts that are more relevant to their stories.

These filters range from geographic locations to the amount of Twitter followers contributors have, and can be applied to help publishers hone in on the social content they want, and discard the material they do not.

"We recently worked around the Oscars coverage, where we wanted to have content that was just from people within a 50m radius of where the event were being held, which had a different feel to that of coverage of the iPhone launch for a German newspaper, where we only wanted journalistic content coming in, but augmented by other local streams that people were reporting, and only in German," said Johns.

"Once you bring in real social voices into the articles that you are writing, it builds a community."

Looking for more information on social media curation? Register here to download the free eBook "The Impact of Social Media on Publishing and the Rise of Social Media Curation".

Or, you can contact Julian Johns directly via Twitter, LinkedIn and email.

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