analyzing community engagement through social media
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"Analyzing Community Engagement Through Social Media" -- A Case Study in Online Community Management. Read this for a full breakdown and analysis of the outreach and engagement efforts that my teammates and I did on behalf of The Crimson White, the University of Alabama's student-run newspaper of record since 1894.TRANSCRIPT
Analyzing Community Engagement Through Social Media
By Victor Luckerson
Editor-in-Chief, The Crimson White
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Ala.
Abstract: Two members of The Crimson White Community Engagement Team and
four active users of CW social media were interviewed to determine the most
effective methods of sparking conversations in social media, how to effectively drive
traffic to a news organization’s website and how a social media presence affects a
news organization’s overall brand. Web analytics were also analyzed to measure
the influence of social media on overall readership.
This year The Crimson White (CW) launched a new initiative to better
connect with its audience and deliver content in an efficient manner. A community
engagement team was formed, comprised of a community manager, an assistant
community manager, a paid staffer and two interns. The team was given some broad
goals of increasing the CW’s following on social media, fostering more conversations
about campus issues and engaging students at in-person events as well. In practice,
the team operated fairly independently, almost as a third arm of The Crimson White
in addition to the editorial and advertising staff. This paper aims to gauge the
effectiveness of the Community Engagement Team, both in terms of brand
strengthening and driving traffic to the CW website.
Literature Review
Most texts concerning social media emphasize the point that social media use
is completely pervasive among young people today. In the article “Social Media and
Young Latinos: A Cross-Cultural Examination,” the article first references some
earlier studies which show that almost all young people today use social media.
People typically use social media sites for “reading and responding to notes and
messages, reading comments and posts written on their profile page and wall, and
browsing friends’ profiles and walls,” according to one 2008 study. The study also
found that TV suffers the most from Latinos’ use of social media; many respondents
said they use TV less because of the time they spend on social media sites. According
to the study, MySpace offers a strong feeling of social acceptance, while Twitter is
used to access news and information.i Understanding the nuances of the different
social media sites will be key going forward.
The article “What Some Young Adults Dislike About Print Newspapers and
Their Ideas for Change” was a very interesting look at what elements of newspapers
may no longer be viable in the future. In general, from the young people surveyed
for this study, newspapers today are too unwieldy and too slow to release new
information compared to the Internet. Many survey respondents said the print
newspaper limited their ability to multi-task and just the act of getting the paper
required more effort than going online. They also said it could be hard to find stories
relevant to them in a newspaper, since much of the information is redundant with
what other forms of media are covering.ii Social media addresses many of these
issues by playing into users’ desire to multitask (they can catch up on headlines
while scouring Facebook or Twitter) and providing for multiple avenues to access
content.
The article “Harnessing Social Media” from the American Journalism Review
talks about professional newspapers that have added the “social media editor”
position to their staff, such as the Associated Press, the Austin American-Statesman
and the Baltimore Sun. The article discusses the dual purpose of social media editors
in promoting a news organization’s content and engaging in conversation with the
audience to gather story ideas and hear audience concerns.
One interesting idea brought up in the article is topic-specific Twitter
accounts. The Austin American-Statesman created a brand new Twitter account just
for Hurricane Ike coverage, @trackingike, and was able to generate 300,000 hits to
their website through the account. This concept cleverly gets around the complaints
users sometimes have of news organizations clogging up their Twitter feeds—if you
want in-depth coverage of a certain topic, you choose to follow that account in
addition to a general news account. Such an approach has huge potential for big
breaking news events and for high-profile calendar events (sports, elections, etc.).iii
The fact that professional organizations are coming around to social media
shows its importance and that it is definitely here to stay. The Baltimore Sun social
media editor said that such avenues allow news organizations access to people who
otherwise probably wouldn’t read their content. One editor notes that people today
are less likely to seek out a news website—they’d rather have the information sent
to them through social media.
The article “Celebrating Innovation” outlined several award-winning online
journalism concepts that wouldn’t have been possible in the print age. The most
fascinating concept was the “Obameter,” in which the St. Petersburg Times evaluates
whether Obama has kept more than 500 promises he made on the 2008 campaign
trail. Such a concept has fantastic possibilities that can be applied at the state, local
and campus level. iv
All of the innovations highlighted make use of the Internet’s ability to present
vast amounts of information in an easily digestible way and gather information from
many different sources at once. The innovations show a promise for the
development of journalism in the future into an even more powerful tool in our
society.
Methodology
In order to ascertain which elements of the Community Engagement Team’s
activities have been most effective, the community manager and assistant
community manager were interviewed and asked to discuss what they thought had
worked the best, what the biggest challenges were and how they thought their work
had affected The Crimson White brand. They were also asked to identify several
social media users who engage heavily with The Crimson White. Four of these users
were interviewed (two in person, two by e-mail) to try understand what they get
out of CW social media. Users were asked how much of their interaction with The
CW came through social media, whether the CW's social media presence had gotten
them to read more stories than in past years, what types of stories encouraged them
to comment on CW stories through social media, whether they preferred interacting
with The CW through Twitter or Facebook, how they viewed the CW's tone in social
media and how they thought The CW could make them engage more through social
media.
A variety of analytics tools were also used to gauge the impact social media
has had on Web traffic. Google Analytics tracks the overall traffic to a website as
well as all of the sources that direct traffic to a site. Bit.ly is a Twitter link shortening
site that The Crimson White uses for all its tweets--through this site one can track
the number of users that click any bit.ly link. Twittercounter.com was used to
measure the growth of the CW's Twitter followers over the last several months.
Facebook Insights provides demographic data and growth-over-time information
for a Facebook company page.
Results
Research Question 1: What has been the growth in the number of social media
users since the launch of the community engagement team?
I first wanted to establish what growth The Crimson White has found on
Facebook and Twitter since the establishment of the community engagement team.
The Crimson White first established Facebook and Twitter accounts in mid-2009;
however, growth increased sharply following the takeover of new editorial
leadership in April 2010.
Facebook grew from 944 fans on April 1 to 3,672 fans on December 1. A
significant portion of this growth occrred between April 21 and May 5, when the
number of Facebook fans grew by almost 1700. This rapid growth can be attributed
to an active effort by the CW staff to acquire more fans; all CW staffers were asked to
invite all of their Facebook friends to become fans of The Crimson White. Because
the fan count before was so much lower than the CW’s readership, there was
massive potential for new fans, leading to a very rapid initial wave of growth.
Since that time, Facebook growh has been very sporadic, ranging anywhere
from 20 to more than 100 new fans per week. In the two weeks between August 18
and September 1, The Crimson White gained 200 Facebook fans. This was likely at
least in part because of a week-long contest held on The CW’s Facebook page giving
away tickets to the Greekfest concert on the University of Alabama campus. Users
had to answer trivia questions by writing on the CW’s Facebook page to be entered
for a chance to win tickets. The contest was also advertised in the print edition of
the paper. This contest seemed to be effective in increasing the fanbase by a
significant amount. A similar contest was held between September 29 and October
6, and Facebook fans grew by 71 that week.
Twitter growth has been much more consistent increasing by about 15-20
followers per week throughout the summer and 45-55 per week during the school
year. Typically contest giveaways have been handled exclusively through Facebook
instead of Twitter.
CW readers said the increased social media presence has made them more
interested in The Crimson White as a whole. “It seems like something that is
interested in my views,” junior Chris Izor said. “Not only because every day when I
get on Facebook, there’s something from The CW that says, ‘What are your
thoughts?’ but also the improved website helps.”
“I feel like it’s more in-tune with students,” junior Walker Donaldson said.
“[The CW] is always very good about printing student opinions and multiple sides of
an argument, but this year because social media is so prevalent on campus, [The
CW] is becoming more [a part of] the student population. Last year and freshman
year, it was like, ‘Well, I’ll pick up a CW, read it, and throw it away before I leave
campus. I don’t feel like I’m getting any immediate feedback.’ With social media, you
post an article on Facebook, people are going to comment on Facebook to you right
there. People who wouldn’t necessarily be interested in writing a 250-500 word
letter to the editor to the CW and submitting it are going to give you a response right
there.” In general the students interviewed said The CW’s social media made the
paper feel more connected to campus.
The Community Engagement Team shared a similar perspective. “I think it
helped to put the brand back into students’ hands,” community manager Marion
Steinberg said. “I think people have a much more personal relationship with the
paper now. I have never in my history of being at this university heard anyone say
they loved the paper, that they couldn’t wait to read it. On social media, they will be
like, ‘I love The CW. I loved picking up The CW today.’ People see themselves in the
paper, they get excited. People see us talking to them, they get excited.”
Research Question 2: Does increased social media presence correlate to
increased web traffic?
From the first day through the last day of publication in the fall 2010
semester, The Crimson White received 548,642 pageviews on its website,
cw.ua.edu. During the fall 2009 semester, the website received 423,145 pageviews.
That’s a 30% increase year over year. How much of that increase can be attributed
to increased social media efforts?
In fall 2009, Facebook accounted for 10,253 visits to the CW website, and
5.04% of the CW’s overall web traffic. Twitter accounted for 991 visits and 0.49% of
the CW’s overall web traffic.
In fall 2010, Facebook accounted for 31,639 visits to the CW website, a
209% increase. Visitors from Facebook made up 12% of the CW’s oveall web traffic.
Twitter accounted for 5,446 visits, a 450% increase compared to 2009. Visitors from
Twitter made up 2.12% of the CW’s overall web traffic. In total the CW’s traffic from
social media increased from about 5.5% of overall traffic to 12.5% of overall traffic.
Given available tools, there is no way to determine how much of this increase
is because of people clicking on links provided by The Crimson White and how much
is because of students choosing to retweet CW stories or post them on their
Facebook walls. The CW website has easy-to-use Twitter and Facebook “Share”
buttons that were not on the website last year. However, the numbers do show that
in general The CW is much more present in users’ news feeds, whether it’s coming
from other users or The Crimson White itself.
“It seems like more people I know who do not necessarily go out of their way
to get The Crimson White have interacted with it because of social media,” Izor said.
“I don’t pick up a Crimson White every day. In fact, most days I don’t. And yet, I
know more than half the stories on a daily basis, mainly because social media
directs me there in the ten minutes I’m killing between classes. When there are
important things…I see other people posting it through social media. It’s almost like
the social media progress the CW has made this year has inspired social media
interaction with The CW from people who are not necessarily in The CW.”
Donaldson said he usually picks up the print edition. If he sees an article he
really likes and thinks should be read by others, he’ll retweet it. He said he does this
at least once a week. Senior Phillip Grant said that when he sees an interesting story
from the CW Twitter, he’ll actually go get a print edition to read it in that format.
Research Question 3: Which stories and topics garnered the most click-
through on Twitter and Facebook?
It’s clear that the Community Engagement Team’s efforts to harness social
media have raised the CW’s web traffic, but which stories specifically are people
flocking to through social media? The five most heavily clicked CW links during fall
2010 were:
Kappa Sigma gets charter revoked – 381 clicks
Brawl at BP leaves man hospitalized – 307 clicks
Who is Cameron Newton? – 248 clicks
Farewell Four Loko – 84 clicks
CW Facebook Semester in Review – 80 clicks
The stories that received the most clicks were big breaking news stories.
Following the breaking news were features on names and products very
recognizable to college students—Cameron Newton, Four Loko and Facebook. The
data seems to show that students are most interested in receiving from The Crimson
White dramatic breaking news or odd stories that catch their eye based on name
recognition.
The Community Engagement Team identified controversial opinions columns,
sports stories and big national stories as the types of stories that can often attract a
lot of clicks.
When CW Content Goes Viral
However, what The CW chooses to present and what users decide to
distribute through social media can be very different. On Nov. 8 The Crimson White
published a column called “Scientific support for creationism strong,” which
attempted to provide a scientific basis for teaching creationism in science classes in
schools. The column was tweeted by movie critic Roger Ebert with the comment,
“Supports creationism in Alabama paper, gets annihilated in the comments.” That
tweet was retweeted by 52 other people and the column ended up attracting 771
visits through Twitter on that day alone. Overall the column received 1900
pageviews from Twitter, about 20% of its total of 9600 pageviews (35% of its views
came from being posted on reddit.com). A similar situation happened with a Dec. 3
column critical of Qatar’s selection as the host of the 2022 World Cup. The column
garnered hundreds of hits from people outside the UA community through Twitter.
While the creationism article garnered huge hits largely by being placed on a
national pedestal, there have also been articles that have gone viral on social media
within the UA community. A September 17 article that was extremely critical of the
University of Alabama marching band received almost 4500 pageviews from
Facebook (two thirds of its total pageviews). It only received 648 views from people
navigating directly to it from the CW website. This example shows the powerful
effects social media can have in distributing information rapidly.
Research Question 4: What stories and topics generated the most
conversation through social media?
Sometimes the stories that attract a lot of hits and the stories that generate a
lot of conversation can be very different. While comments on the actual CW website
are almost entirely for opinions articles, interactions on Twitter and Facebook are
much more diverse. The five articles/questions that garnered the most comments
on the CW Facebook page were:
A debate about the role of unpopular opinions in a newspaper in the fallout
over the marching band column – 26 comments
A reposting of an al.com article that showed that Tim James was leading the
polls for the gubernatorial Republican primary – 19 responses
Reactions to the gubernatorial debate held on the UA campus in September –
13 comments
Asking people to describe their experience at the Universit’s “Quiddtich on
the Quad” event in 3 words – 13 comments
Discussion about the World Cup over the summer – 11 comments
While people will use The CW’s Facebook page to talk about CW content, they
also seem to have a very strong interest in using the page as a gathering place to
discuss state and national issues. It can also be a good place to get simple, “fun”
reactions or responses to certain stories—the Quidditch response is a good
example, and requests for favorite mobile phone apps and favorite Christmas songs
also received strong responses.
Research Question 5: What are the most effective methods in sparking
conversation and driving traffic through social media?
In general, the stories that resonate strongly through social media reference
a common experience that many users can relate to—hence the “social” aspect of
the discussion. Steinberg pointed to parking problems on campus as an issue that
had gotten lots of responses on Twitter. “Thousands of students are going through
campus trying to park and it’s really easy for people to be like, ‘This is frustrating
me.’ Done. You don’t have to have any knowledge of any particular reference to
culture to talk about parking or Bama Dining. It just appeals to everybody. Broad-
based, low intellectual-level topics are usually pretty big.”
The Crimson White also puts tweets in the print edition through an
occasional “Tweet of the Week” section, where the Community Engagement Team
will gather tweets with opinions for an upcoming news story, and the most
interesting tweets will be printed alongside the story. This program usually
generates lots of conversation, and all the users interviewed remembered exactly
how many times their tweets had been selected to be printed in the paper.
Izor said stories about campus issues inspire him to become engaged with
the CW. “We have an apathetic campus and we have a campus full of apathetic
students,” he said. “Social media is a way that all of us can essentially put forth our
complains or our ideas that never make it to University officials. Social media is a
way that we’re already interacting and expressing our opinion so readily that it
takes a platform like that to engage a campus where students are not usually
engaging themselves.”
Donaldson, Stephens and Grant also said hot-button issues are most likely to
get them talking and sharing.
Discussion
Overall the Community Engagement Team’s use of social media seems to
have significantly affected users’ perception of The Crimson White and made them
feel more connected to the publication. Their efforts have also helped to create a
greater culture of sharing CW content, so that users are more likely to distribute CW
content themselves through social media than they were a year ago.
The CE Teaam has achieved some of its success by being much more
conversational than many news organizations. Most tweets from the CE team do not
post link to headlines, but instead lead discussions or provide students answers to
questions about campus life. “We try to stay aloof but also progress the
conversation,” said Josh Hedrick, assistant community manager. “We try to respond
to everyone who engages with us.” Hedrick said they typically talk to 90-95% of t he
people that tweet them, especially if they are first-time engagers. The CW also
follows anyone who engages with The CW on Twitter.
“Sometimes we can use other people’s ideas to progress the conversation. So
we can be opinionated, but it’s not our ideas,” Steinberg said.
It was interesting that users feel that The CW is only now engaging and
listening to them through social media, when the publication has had an opinions
page that accepts student columns and letters to the editor for decades. Donaldson
said students today prefer social media over letters for expressing their views
because it’s easier and more interactive. “It’s easier to defend yourself. Once you
send a letter to the editor, you’re likely not going to respond to what could be a
response to your letter. On Facebook, if you write a comment and someone writes a
comment responding to you, you can write back and have dialogue on Facebook.”
Interactivity—a concept completely foreign to newspapers a few short years
ago—plays a key role in getting young people to care about a product. Because The
Crimson White has become a much more interactive publication, it has managed to
get people more deeply invested in its coveage.
Regarding the future development of the team, Hedrick said he’d like to see
the team develop more autonomy, with a similar amount of power to the editorial
and advertising departments of the organization.
Steinberg said she’d like to see the group begin making attempts to use
FourSquare to get people to “check in” at the CW table at various physical events.
She also stressed getting students to send in more photos, through tools such as
Twitpic and Flickr.
She said more specific roles for team members would be useful—having a
social media coordinator, an outreach coordinator and other roles.
i Albarran et. al (2010) Social Media and Young Latinos: A Cross-Cultural Examination (Academic paper presented at Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication 2010 Convention)
ii Zerba, Amy (2010). What Some Young Adults Dislike About Print Newspapers and Their Ideas for Change. (Academic paper presented at Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication 2010 Convention)
iii Gleason, Stephanie (2010, March). Harnessing Social Media: News outlets are assigning staffers to focus on networking.. American Journalism Review http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4860
iv Rieder, Rem (2010, September). Celebrating Innovation: Exciting new approaches to journalism. American Journalism Review, http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4919