A growing number of brands and organizations look to get their messages out via the social platforms owned by legacy media companies.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. A totem of the digital age is that traditional media companies eventually will have their lunch eaten by all the scrappy online media brands that don’t suffer from legacy costs or layers of management (and meetings).
Yet amidst the ongoing proliferation of digital publications, traditional media brands have an ace in the hole: a flight to quality among consumers, combined with a robust presence on social platforms.
Old media companies are pouring tremendous resources into their websites and then heavily pushing the content onto their social channels.
A still-common refrain that senior managers make to their PR executives, we’re told, is, ‘I don’t care what you do, just get the story in The New York Times.’ But how long before managers change that tune to, ‘I don’t care what you do, just make sure the story gets on the Times’’ social channels?
Indeed, engagement for media publishers grew an average 186% across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in 2014, rapidly outpacing all U.S. brands, which grew by an average 108%, according to an exclusive study by social media analytics company Shareablee.
Frequency of posts and tweets increased by 71%, indicating that engagement is not close to being realized yet, with audience engagement far outpacing the content growth for the media publishing category, said Tania Yuki, CEO of Sharablee.
“For PR professionals, this represents a huge opportunity in partnerships, as social readers also show strong affinities for key brand categories,” she added. “Social readers are engaging with seven or eight publishers each month and, as engagement increases across platforms, we see more brands looking to partner with publishers who can truly drive engagement with quality audiences.” PRN
This article originally appeared in the January 12, 2015 issue of PR News. Read more subscriber-only content by becoming a PR News subscriber today.