In the digital world, making content easy to share is vital to engagement success.
When we looked at three top U.S. news publishers — CNN, Fox News, and The Huffington Post — what we gleaned from the content on their websites, Facebook pages, and Instagram accounts is that there is a lot of cross-pollination with what content is engaging on which platform.
For instance, an article that is successful on a publisher’s web page may not be as much so as content on their Instagram, or the captions or tag lines are altered in some way to encourage clicks on social media. Conversely, more newsy or well-articulated headlines are more popular on the news publishers’ websites than on their social accounts.
Our takeaway? Content must be curated for each platform it is intended to be shared on, which makes us wonder how publishers decide what content to share on which platform – and how they package it differently to attract engagements.
CNN
For October, the most popular post type on CNN’s Facebook was video, accounting for 59 percent of total engagements, and the most common reaction for the month was “Sads” with nearly 28 percent of all engagements, due to content in relation to Puerto Rico, gun violence, President Trump, and the Las Vegas mass shooting. On CNN’s Instagram, the most popular post type was photos, with 53 percent of total engagements, which shows us how CNN mixes up its post types for audience success.
Trends in content we observed were very few political commentary images, contrasting with its very newsy website, and mostly human interest photos and current events, remarking on the people and places in the images.
What we noticed is that CNN’s website focuses on hard politics, news updates, and investigations/current events that lets their audience stay up to date with the newest information. CNN seems to curate its website as an audience resource rather than how it focuses on its Facebook and Instagram for snack-sized, sharable, and primarily human-interest pieces of content, thus formatting its website headlines to be sharp and informative.
Video generated CNN’s most shareable content with snippets of CNN’s shows as well as curated content on human interest pieces, like a video documenting a truck driver managing a 90-degree turn with a 189-foot wind turbine blade. The “wow” factor of CNN’s videos, their click-bait titles, and their informative, shareable design make them highly engaged-with content.
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We see a similar strategy on Instagram, where CNN shares images of events from some of its popular content, and maintains that theme across its Instagram: for instance, on CNN’s website, it had a page dedicated to updating in real time on the Las Vegas shooting, and carries over this theme on Instagram by subsequently sharing emotional images over the following days, like a man praying in Las Vegas and the Eiffel Tower turning its lights off out of respect for the people who lost their lives. On Instagram, we see CNN making an appeal to the emotion in its audience and derives that content from what is successful on its website.
Fox News
The most popular post type for Fox News’ Facebook in October was photo with making up nearly 35 percent of total engagements, and the most common reaction for the month was “Angrys” with accounting for 30 percent of all engagements, due to content in relation to the American Flag, NFL protests, and President Trump. The most popular post type on Instagram was photo with 76 percent of all engagements.
Trends in Instagram content were similar to Facebook: politically charged posts involving the military, the American Flag, President Trump, and the NFL protests/football in line with Fox’s much more politically conservative viewpoints.
The takeaway from Fox is their ability to create content from their website onto their social platforms that is small and sharable, which is why they mostly go for photos. There was a lot of overlap from their Facebook and Instagram, especially because the content is perfected for their social platforms with short, quippy captions and video or image content that is easy to share and engage with. Content on their website is generally more news articles and click-bait related to politics and politically-charged news, comparable to CNN.
Most content is posted across Fox’s platforms on the same day, however; in one instance, we noticed that an article on Fox News’ web page got reposted on the publisher’s Instagram the next day rather than on the same day as the original article. When compared to the top performing content on Fox News’ site, this piece of content did not garner as much attention, nearly 400,000 engagements to the number one content’s 1.8 million.
When posted to Instagram, the publisher turned the post into a video, making it shareable and compressing its content, which resulted in an additional 100,000 engagements and the number two slot of top overall content of all publishers we analyzed on Instagram. A content strategy here that we see Fox News employing is evaluating what content might need a social boost and then reposting that less popular article on another platform to strengthen engagement.
Huffington Post
Huffington Post’s Facebook Page garnered the most audience interaction with links at 20 percent of all engagements, and the most common reaction for the month was “Angrys” with amassing nearly 33 percent of total engagements, due to content in relation to Puerto Rico, gun control, and President Trump. The most popular post type for Huffington Post on Instagram was photo content with nearly 78 percent of total engagements. Trends in their content were very politically inclined images and quote cards that align with HuffPo’s political stance.
The Huffington Post has a lot of overlap on their website and their Facebook, as their strategy revolves around simply reposting links rather than taking the time to re-design and re-articulate their content for different platforms, as is evident in links being the most engaged with post type.
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Interestingly enough, its most engaged-with content on both Facebook and Instagram is the same post that appeals to a more emotionally engaged audience, with its links pushing for the audience to “ooh” and “aah.” It is evident that while HuffPo focuses most heavily on news on their website and Facebook, that, although their Instagram is still politically inclined, their posts are more conscious of the social platform.
Huffington Post goes for a conscious and trendy voice on Instagram, utilizing hashtags and emojis for audience engagement, which is a huge contrast from the voice it has on its website and Facebook, which is more in the news-reporting vein.
When comparing these three publishers, we can see in the data how CNN and Fox News churn out engagements by re-articulating their content for different social media platforms and different audiences. Contrastingly, Huffington Post’s verbatim link-sharing from their domain rather than curating for Facebook in photo or video results in less engagements than the other publishers’ Facebook pages.
From the data, we can see just how important rewording and captioning content differently can affect audience engagement.
For more information on what content is performing well on social, and to see how publishers spice up their content headlines, check out NewsWhip Spike.
