Digital Publishers have for several years tried to quantify and improve audience engagement using a single ‘golden metric’, however, according to a recent study from Parsely (with 130 respondents), measuring the success of this factors multiple metrics the strongest being shares through creating unique content on social media (also known as social media curation).
Following the release of this survey and according to the subsequent guide released by Crowdy News, traffic sources, platform engagement (specifically mobile) and retaining returning visitors as the key challenges towards developing an engaged website platform with social media curation contributing as the overarching solution.
As with any social network there are naturally concerns with fake news. An exclusive Ipsos poll conducted for BuzzFeed News found that 75% of American adults who were familiar with a fake news headline viewed the story as accurate.
However with social media curation, having multiple streams of social media content integrated within your website content can allow readers to:
- Remain on the site longer as they scroll through the social feed
- Like, retweet, or share the posts from the social stream without leaving your property (no click outs)
- Consume more content when a user clicks on a user stream which as a result providing the opportunity for users to return to the site.
Upday is a very good example of this, whereby the app provides a suggested list of curated topics that can be consumed based on its popularity from the collective readers. It has essentially become another referral traffic platform that digital publishers can use, by providing an RSS feed for submitting fresh content.
As with any social media content curation the quality of the content, attribution of sources and adding your own insights to curated pieces is a continually important practice for developing thought leadership, trust and ultimately good referral traffic from syndication partners.