People continues to find and read your news all over; not just on your “newsroom”. People does not visit “your website” directly, as they used to do. A trend that has been going on for a while, but is now more clear than ever before. Does it matter? It depends who you talk to.
Last year Jeff Bullas asked himself: “Is Facebook Killing Off The Company Website?”
“While Facebook is becoming the biggest relationship marketing tool for brands, it seems like that instead of increasing traffic to the company website, Facebook is actually absorbing it. Marketers across the globe are wondering whether their brand websites will disappear and if there will still be a need for an official website in five years.”
He asked himself: “Will the users still visit the company websites or will they only use Facebook and apps to check the news and offers?”
He refers to a study by Webtrends that reveals that a majority of the the Fortune 100 websites (68% in fact) have been experiencing negative growth over the past 12 months with a 24% average decrease in unique visitors.
He mentioned Coca Cola as an example. A company which had 22 millions fans on Facebook by then, and whose website traffic was down more than 40% in just 12 months at the same time.
Does it bother Coca Cola, do you think?
I don’t think so really. I believe they “integrate and optimize their digital online assets whether that be on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blog, Flickr, YouTube and including their search engine optimized website”.
I guess Content Marketer, PR pro’s and Story tellers do create a lots of great news about their organizations to show their audience what it’s all about. To inform them, maybe to entertain them and to engage them. In order to capture interest and get some attention. In order to create great relationships with them. In order to get buzz and publicity. In order to solve your customers problems, and satisfy their needs, with your solutions, one day or another.
It doesn’t really matters where it all happens.
I believe that’s what’s happening IRL (in real life) as well. For an example; I guess the reason to why you’re represented in an exhibition, is to meet your audience, where it’s looking for solutions and inspiration. And I guess you strive to serve your visitors with information, interact and engage with them on place, without necessarily the purpose to drag them to your headquarter nor your shop, that particularly day, right? But you do keep their business cards, to be able to keep in touch, maybe over phone, Twitter, Linkedin, or somewhere else.
It doesn’t matter because your news and your newsroom is all about PR.
But when it comes to traditional newsrooms and its news organizations it does matter a lot, because it’s not only about PR.
The fact is that fewer and fewer people visit their newsroom directly. Nieman Journalism Lab wrote recently that “more people enter news sites sideways, via search engines, links they see in emails, or via Facebook and Twitter. And “newsrooms are finding their homepages aren’t the starting points they once were”.
Does it bother them?
No, not really, as long as it’s a part of your PR/Marketing strategy: PR for what you’re selling; the full length stories and advertising.
But what’s happening when NYTimes readers, do like Coca Cola’s fans? When they choose to stay on NYtimes social media pages, like Twitter and Facebook, instead of move on to NYtimes homepages/newsrooms? For an example it seems that NYTimes +6 million Twitter followers don’t move on to NYtimes newsroom?
According to the Pew Research Center’s annual report on american journalism: “The State of the News Media 2012“ only 9% of digital news consumers follow news recommendations from Facebook or from Twitter.
And that does bother Rupert Murdoch, who doesn’t like when other “media” steal his stories, to such an extent that he once did plan to hide his sites from Google. As far as I know he didn’t do it, after all.
Do you remember this interview a few years ago?
He says in a Mashable article: “…it’s better to have quality audience, willing to pay for their news, than having just everyone coming to their sites, by which he refers to people finding articles on one of his sites via search engines such as Google”.
To be continued…
