Where do most adults get their news?
They’re not turning on the TV, opening the newspaper, or tuning in to NPR. Not a chance. At least, not as their main source for information. A new survey by Pew Research Center finds that the majority of adults in the U.S. (62%) get their news on social media.
We can debate whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, whether it is driven by Millennials and Generation Z, and even whether it’s a waste of time for consumers who can’t seem to put down their mobile devices, but we will still come back to the same conclusion: if 6 in 10 people get news from social media, then content providers need to have a strong presence on the top social platforms.
Content is King
As the saying goes, content is king when it comes to marketing. Business leaders who blog about trending topics find their content being quickly consumed by media, consumers, and agencies. With more than 60% of Americans getting their news from social sites, it’s a no-brainer that your content needs to find its place among the posts.
So which social media sites have the largest portions of users getting news there? To answer this question, the research gets a bit trickier. According to Pew Research Center, 66% of Facebook users get news on Facebook, 59% of Twitter users get news on Twitter, and 19% of LinkedIn users get news on LinkedIn.
Who Does Social Media Reach?
It’s also useful to see the reach of each social network, combined with the proportion of users getting their news there. In this case, Facebook leads the pack by far, with YouTube coming in second (yes, it’s true! Remember, YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world, second only to Google. It’s also owned by Google…).
But simply posting content from your blog onto these sites isn’t enough. You need the fire-power of employees and connections interacting with the post in order to expand your reach. More than a like, you need to take action on social media. Share, engage followers, and push that reach to grow. When done correctly on each social channel, your reach has potential to grow exponentially. Chances are though, you may not feel comfortable that you quite know how to do this. A report from Thunderhead shows that only a quarter of businesses feel confident in their customer engagement methods. Let’s get you out of that statistic and grow your ease of use with social engagement.
The Power of Social Engagement
Social media engagement is essentially a relationship with each individual follower you have online. You build each relationship by providing timely, relevant content that meets the needs of your followers. In time, you build loyalty and trust, and begin to turn each follower into a brand ambassador who then likes, comments on, and shares your content. As Thunderhead shows, you’re creating an open line of communication over a period of time.
The power of social media comes when your loyal followers begin to interact with your content. While each social media platform is different, they all use interaction as a major factor in how relevant your content may be to others. This creates a snowball effect; as more people interact with a post, the reach of that post begins to grow. With each like, share, or retweet, you gain potential to reach the connections of the people who are interacting with your content, and then their connections, and their connections… Exponential potential.