News Numbers

"If it can be rated, it will be rated"

So says Rich Barton, founder or co-founder of Expedia, Zillow and Glassdoor.com, in Kevin Maney's article "The Rating Game" in the July/August issue of The Atlantic.

Maney points out that not only do "one-third of all American Internet users rated something online," but also that "the proliferation in ratings is already changing societal dynamics."

The story was a reminder that:

• Ratings and comments are essential to have on everything in a news organization's collection of sites, even if it's just a simple "like this" rating (e.g., "89 people like this story").


• News orgs must candidly assess their standing vs. niche competitors such as TripAdvisor, Yelp and local news blogs.  I'm still seeing news orgs comparing themselves only against their own kind, e.g., daily newspapers vs. weeklies and magazines.  And it's interesting - sad? - that Maney's article doesn't use a single news org in its examples.


• With comments, it's all about the quality of the comments and the contributors, not the quantity.  This means defining and measuring success will be labor-intensive and and relatively subjective.


• To be truly usable, attitudinal surveys must be highly targeted by category and cover both current and non-users.  I mourn the money and time wasted by those "market studies"  that focus mostly on the news org and its position in a broad geographic region rather than the current and potential audiences for specific niches.
  
  Surveys should not only ask where people are going for information to make decisions but also where they submit ratings and comments, and how often.  What a person reads vs. what he rates vs. what he comments on will differ by topic.

Traffic spikes aren't always good news

Here's a good point about interpreting high traffic spikes.  It's from Google's Brett Crosby, as reported by Online Media Daily.

If you get a sudden bump in visits due to a breaking news event, don't celebrate until you look at the time of day of the spikes, the timing of your competitor's posts, and your bounce rates. 

Your competitor might have posted before you did.  And if your competitor had better coverage, your bounce rate would probably reflect it. 

Then, use attitudinal research to gauge whether the traffic spikes led to building audiences in the long run.  For example, you can survey people to see whether they think your site "always has the latest news about [a topic] before anyone else."  

Be sure to include a healthy sample of non-users and light users in your surveys.  It will be more time-consuming and expensive - and perhaps painful.  But listening only to your current users through online pop-up surveys won't give you the insight you need to grow online audiences.  

Now this is "engagement"

Whether you think it's astounding or just pathetic, 71 percent of Facebook users say they can't live without it.

The Anderson Analytics study, as reported by Online Media Daily, included 5,000 U.S. social media users and covered MySpace and LinkedIn.  Only 35 percent said they could give up MySpace. 

How connected are your communities to your social media services?   Be sure to ask "Could you do without it?" - and why - on your next surveys.  This is essential information that you just can't get with counting page views, visits and unique visitors.

Measures of news brand equity now need to include social media

A Deloitte survey about ethics in the workplace (nicely summarized by eMarketer) illustrates the need for news organizations to measure how their social media activities are affecting their brand. 

The survey points out that 74 percent of employees think it's easy to damage a company's reputation on social media.  However, 53 percent feel their online profiles are none of their employers' business, and 49 percent say that a company policy wouldn't change their behavior. 

News orgs' attitudinal surveys should now try to assess whether a news org's Facebook groups, Twitter tweets and the like - whether they are run by the news org or by a reporter who's known in the community - have any impact on traditional brand equity measures such as "provides me with information I can't easily get elsewhere,"