We look at the effect that mobile and social content distribution is having for broadcasters.
As the forces of mobile and social make their impact on content distribution, broadcasters are in the exciting position of being able to reach a wider audience than ever before.
But the changes bring their own set of challenges. They are disrupting the traditional news broadcast, where audiences could only find new stories by watching TV at prescribed hours.
Instead, viewers can watch short clips on their phone or laptop whenever suits them, and if a clip is not interesting enough, there are instant alternative distractions available on social media.
This brings fundamental challenges for all content publishers – text, audio or video. In particular, broadcasters must now ensure that their output is digestible for an audience that will likely be watching on much smaller screens, often while on the bus or making dinner.
Because of this, it’s more important than ever for all publishers to know their audience – not only their consumption habits, but also what they’re engaging with and sharing.
On the upside, social media gives publishers a new distribution channel, and also a unique new way to tap into what their audience is interested in learning about. Social can give a rich dataset to help inform decisions around their editorial output.
At NewsWhip, we have been observing changes in newsroom workflow and distribution of content over the past 3 years. We track the world’s content on social networks in real time. This allows our customers to surface stories and videos that are gaining traction on social media, through shares, tweets, comments, and more. We then analyse the data to figure out trends that are working in social publishing.
And there’s serious potential for the building of new audiences and reaching new viewers on social media. We already know that online video consumption is exploding. Facebook delivered around 3 billion video plays a day in the last few months of 2014, with 65% of those on mobile. There’s a significant knock-on effect for publisher engagement.
With many publishers now also competing for viewers, there’s a lot of competition in the space. The Financial Times now publishes 60 second news round-ups directly to Facebook, and the Wall Street Journal has been praised for their ‘explainer’ videos, which break down complex news stories.
That’s before mentioning “digital native” publishers. Social news outlet NowThis has ditched its website altogether, and now focuses on producing a variety of videos specially for different platforms. In the US, Vox, Vice and BuzzFeed News all saw strong engagement figures for their video interviews with President Obama on Facebook in the last month.
Broadcasters have a long history of creating compelling video content, and so are well positioned to capitalise on this new era of video distribution, but it requires changes to how video is viewed, made and distributed. Small screens, short snippets, and publishing direct to Facebook all need to be considered.
According to NewsWhip data, in January 2015, eight English language broadcasters achieved over 1 million shares of their content published in that month:
Broadcasters are having a significant impact on social in different countries and markets, too. N24 was the biggest Facebook publisher in Germany in January, with over 1 million interactions, while FranceTV was one of the biggest in France, ahead of the likes of Le Monde and Le Parisien. In Canada, Global News, CBC and CTV News dominated the top of that country’s Facebook rankings, ahead of well-known news sites:
The share numbers are impressively high, indicating that these publishers are getting people to watch and pass on their content.
But formats are changing fast. Video on Facebook is not the same as video on YouTube, just as YouTube is different to a news broadcast.
Just as traditional news sites are adapting their offerings from text only to graphs, explainers, podcasts and more, broadcasters must adapt their content in order to make sure that their audience is being served the stories that they want to see at any particular time, and ensure that they’re able to share them with their friends, thus amplifying their reach.
Some of the most shared stories on Facebook over the last 30 days came from broadcasters. But they weren’t conventional TV news packages.
The BBC’s story about a Seattle girl who receives gifts from the crows that she feeds in her backyard has attracted over 33,000 shares, nearly 240,000 likes, and 65,000 comments, making it one of the most engaged stories of the month. The key wasn’t in posting a clip straight from TV news, but rather by drawing readers in with a short video clip on their Facebook page, and adding strong images.
Some of the biggest stories didn’t even feature video. CNN had a big hit last month with a story titled ‘Meet the 10-year-old maths genius who’s just enrolled at college’ – an intriguing story that fascinated readers on Facebook, who shared it over 22,000 times. By pushing to an audience with the right tone, copy and timing, CNN’s social media team managed to reach the perfect audience for the story.
More and more, we see broadcasters using these sharing signals to see which stories matter to their audience in real time. What videos are getting traction this hour? What stories or events are getting traction on competitor sites? By monitoring how stories are breaking and developing on social from different publishers, these publishers are staying relevant and vital in the age of mobile and social distribution.
Tapping into the data around their own stories means that broadcasters can be better placed to make the most of their digital efforts. In the future, the publishers that will thrive digitally are the ones that have listened to their readers and viewers, and adapted accordingly.
In part two of this post, we’ll be looking at practical steps that digital teams at broadcasters can take to start capturing attention and audience on social.
This post originally appeared on the ENEX News blog. ENEX are a global association of broadcasters.
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