We talk to the editor of Mpora.com, an action sports site that sees 75% of referrals from social media.
We frequently talk to media professionals about how they’re using social media to reach readers, and what they’re learning in the process.
This week, we talked to Tristan Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief of Mpora, a UK-based Action Sports site. Tristan told us about how his team are crafting their content to appeal to readers on social media, whether that be through longform travel features, or ‘news hacks’.
1) Can you explain who Mpora’s audience are, and the type of content that they enjoy?
Mpora caters for a broad audience of action sports and adventure enthusiasts who are into everything from skateboarding to mountaineering. Our audience are mostly men (80-20% male-to-female split) but range in ages from 18 – 55.
They enjoy everything from 15 second Facebook or Instagram videos of BMX tricks to 2,000 word travel features about mountain biking in the Himalayas.
While Facebook videos, lists and bite-sized, and short-form stories typically perform the best on social, we’ve been consistently surprised by the reach and engagement we’ve had with longform features on social.
These features for example:
- Switzerland’s Best Kept Secret: Skiing in the Shadow of the Murder Wall
- I Went On Holiday To A Country That Doesn’t Exist
2) How important is social media in reaching those readers?
Hugely important – currently 75 per cent of Mpora’s traffic comes from referrals from social media.
3) How are you measuring the success of your content – through engagement, referrals, reach, or a combination?
We look at a whole range of stats, but the two most important are engagement and reach.
4) As an action sports site, are there platforms that are particularly well-suited to your content? Which platforms have you experimented with?
Facebook is the most important platform for us. Action sports are visually spectacular and look great on video. The introduction of autoplay on Facebook newsfeed videos has allowed us to deliver stunning videos directly to our fans, which has led to a massive reach.
It’s not all about Facebook though. Photography is also a massive part of action sports and recently we’ve seen impressive audience growth on Pinterest. This in turn is driving increasing amounts of traffic back to our site. Instagram users are also naturally receptive to visually-stunning content and that has proved a very useful platform for reaching our fans, although the inability to post links means it’s obviously not much good as a traffic driver.
5) How are the Mpora team using Spike every day?
The Mpora team uses Spike to search for news and viral stories and videos that are relevant to our readership. It’s one of the first sites we log into every day, when we look at the leading stories in the ‘action sports’ and ‘travel’ tabs.
We’ll also check the ‘pre-viral’ tab periodically and we use it to keep an eye on trending mainstream news stories that we can come at from an action sports angle. For examples, our Associate Editor James very successfully ‘news hacked’ the launch of the Apple Watch with this spoof article: Apple’s Big Announcement Isn’t What Anybody Expected: Introducing The iBike.
Other examples of successful stories we’ve found on Spike include a video of a Norwegian teenager’s amazing ski trick, and a story about an Aussie that seemed to take a selfie with a shark.
Previously in this series:
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