We rank the biggest UK publishers by their Facebook interactions, and find that things are hotting up when it comes to UK content on social media.Â
In recent months, we’ve noticed that UK publishers have been making more and more of an impact in our social rankings each month.
First the Mirror became the first ‘legacy media’ outlet to ascend to the top 10 Facebook publishers internationally. Then the Telegraph entered the top Twitter publishers, and we noticed some strong performances from regional UK publishers.
This comes in tandem with the news that the Independent is to become the latest London-based news outlet to expand its interests to the US, joining the Mail and the Guardian (both of which also offer digital Australian editions).
Because of all this, we decided it was time to take a look at the biggest UK sites on Facebook, just like we did for France, Canada and Germany recently.
With data via Spike, these were the top ten, ranked by total Facebook interactions for the month of January:
For the moment, we haven’t broken out interactions specifically for the Guardian or Mail Online, both of which have international editions. BuzzFeed’s numbers are for the UK edition only.
The Mail Online is the most engaged site of the bunch, with nearly 14 million interactions during the month. Their biggest story of the month was titled ‘Man creates Nigerian doll for his niece and it now outsells BARBIE‘, and had 33,000+ shares, and over 241,000 likes. The Mail uses very descriptive, often lengthy, headlines on their website, which presumably draws readers attention on the homepage, as well as search engine traffic. But these headline change suddenly when they’re posted to Facebook. In a clever piece of social optimisation, headlines are shortened dramatically, making them much more appealing to social readers.
The Mirror’s rise through the ranks has been pretty well-documented on this blog. Over the past few months, they have quickly overtaken many of their British counterparts (and some US ones) to become a formidable presence on Facebook news feeds.
The BBC and the Guardian both have over 9 million interactions. The Guardian’s most-shared story of the month was a report on terrorist attacks in Nigeria, which saw nearly 185,000 interactions on Facebook.
It’s been just under two years since BuzzFeed opened their London bureau, with a small staff. They’ve grown impressively in that time, with over 7.8 million Facebook interactions for the relatively low number of stories that they produced in January. That’s a nice portion of the overall total for BuzzFeed.com, and seems to be growing.
After BuzzFeed, there’s a bit of a drop-off to the next five sites, all of which still manage to get over 2.5 million interactions.
It’s also interesting to see the absence of some big names in the top ten. Tabloid staples The Sun and the Daily Express are nowhere to be seen, while quality titles the Financial Times and The Times are also absent. One thing that at least three of those titles have in common is a rigid paywall, which helps explains the lack of social presence.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph’s porous paywall, which allows for click-to-reads from social media, looks to have had few (if any) ill-effect on their social reach. They had over 3.6 million Facebook interactions in January, and managed to climb into the top 10 sites worldwide on Twitter in the same month.
In such a competitive space, the Metro, once better known as a morning free sheet, will be pleased to make the top 10.
Looking further down the list, more big names in British media make themselves known. ITV pips Sky in a battle of the broadcasters. There is very healthy regional press representation, with the Liverpool Echo, Newcastle Chronicle, Wales Online and London Evening Standard all featuring.
See below for the top 25 for January, ranked by total Facebook interactions.
Where Does the Data Come From?
We compiled our data using Spike, which tracks the stories, videos, and other content that people are sharing and engaging with in real time. It’s used by some of the world’s leading digital newsrooms and content creators.
While we strive for complete coverage, sometimes we will miss some content for some publishers. If it looks to you like we’re missing something, drop us a line.
