Social Media Presence of the Top US Newspapers
Glen / 
12 Comments / 
December 15th, 2008 / 
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A good friend of mine likes to call me ‘Mr Analytics‘ so I thought I would keep up the trend and get back into statistics mode. This time, I’ve taken the top 10 US newspapers in terms of distribution and scanned the web to see how well their online counterparts are doing within social media.
I usually conduct these sorts of tests out of personal curiosity but I also find it interesting to see whether the sites with the most traffic are doing well in social media or missing out on a huge traffic source.
The 10 Newspapers
I took the top 10 newspapers from this page and decided to rank them based on their Alexa & Compete data to get a fairly accurate idea of which of the sites get the most traffic. Here they are, with the first being the site with the most traffic:
- NY Times
- Washington Post
- Wall Street Journal
- LA Times
- USA Today
- NY Post
- Chicago Tribune
- NY Daily News
- Houston Chronicle
- Long Island Newsday
Presence on StumbleUpon
The LA times are really lacking on StumbleUpon compared to the big 3 sites before them. It is interesting note that in this case, the sites with the most traffic get far more attention in StumbleUpon than the rest.
Presence on Digg
The NY Times has more than double the exposure on Digg compared to second-place, Washington Post. The LA times fairs slightly better against the competition this time, far better than they are doing with StumbleUpon. The Chicago Tribune also seems to be doing well on the site.
Presence on Reddit
Once again, the NY Times are completely dominating the competition when it comes to social media presence. The Long Island Newsday and NY Post are really struggling for any exposure on Reddit whereas the NY Daily News seems to be quite popular.
Presence on Delicious
The NY Times are closing in on what could soon be triple the presence of any other newspapers online entity in regards to Delicious. It’s interesting to see that there are 5 websites which really don’t seem to be getting any hold on the site. I wonder if this means they write less ’sticky’ content that you would want to come back to.
Presence on Mixx
Mixx is quite a bit newer than any of the other websites so you would expect them to have lower figures in terms of newspaper mentions. The Chicago Tribune appears to have been an absolute hit with the Mixx community as well as the Houston Chronicle which tend to get minimal traction elsewhere.
What to Take from This
First of all, I’m quite amazed at how much the NY Times are dominating every other newspaper for each website. The Washington Post are doing amazingly on StumbleUpon but could definitely ramp things up on other websites such as Digg.
I’m going to email every single newspaper that was mentioned in this and hope they read up to here. If you are a representative / developer / marketer for any of these websites then here is my advice:
NY Times -You are getting millions of visitors from the top social media websites. Why not greet each site visitor with a custom site specific welcome message, encourage them to subscribe to your RSS feeds (which should be ad supported).
Washington Post - Let people access a few pages of content before having to log in. If they aren’t logged in then potentially millions of people are missing your content.
Wall Street Journal - Keep up the great work across the park, there is a lot of feature style content on the site that is obviously attracting a large audience. If don’t think you should change what you are doing just for an increase in Reddit traffic i.e. humorous content.
LA Times - You have absolutely no presence on Delicious which can be a great source of web-savvy traffic. Try to write more resourceful and sticky content that people will come back to.
USA Today - Things are going well for you, you’re performing much better than competitors, especially in regards to Delicious.
NY Post - Quite possibly the worst performing site in regards to how many mentions the site has for the traffic it receives. Encourage users to promote your content with bookmarking buttons and try to create some ‘feature’ pieces with attractive titles.
Chicago Tribune - Keep up the great work on Mixx, you are obviously doing right in those regards. It also looks like you are writing some great digg-bait that is helping you on other sites as well.
NY Daily News - You are struggling to pick up much traction in any of the sites, although you certainly aren’t off the radar. Encourage current site visitors to help you promote your content, the key is making it easy.
Houston Chronicle - Although the figures are low, you are actually doing quite well for your traffic level. See if a concentrated push towards a site like StumbleUpon (active users, appealing content) could help you across the board.
Long Island Newsday - You guys are really struggling across the board, read my advice for the Houston Chronicle above and monitor the results.
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I see the NY Times a lot on social media sites, so I’m not surprised to see their results.
On a separate note, I wish you the best of luck with the rebranding Glen. I’m confident that it will work out for you.
Thank you Steven!
I’m new to your blog(s), Glen, and I have to say: What an AWESOME idea for a post — both from an SEO and a “providing interesting info” perspective. Well done, and it’s TRULY a pleasure to make your acquaintance!
Debi, I really appreciate comments like that so thank you. I look forward to seeing you back around here
Glen, Great post here love the stats, very interesting to see all these top print media on social media (ironic)
Goodluck on your rebrand and did I see this site go down due to exceeding the bandwith? Thats always a great sign of success
Excellent post, and really interesting stats. Pretty useful when considering building backlinks from social media sites and press releases sevices via viral marketing.
Wow, the NYPost needs some lessons on the interwebz. Interesting stats, I found Mixx’s the most intriguing - I wouldn’t have expected such a dominate audience from Chicago and Houston. It would be interesting to see a list tying geographic hotspots with social media sites.
Well done, Mr. Analytics. Looks like you’re keeping your nickname
Couple additional points that may help give some explanation behind the numbers:
1 - Your study proves that Colonel Tribune is starting to have some traction, in Digg and Mixx especially.
2 - Mixx has content agreements with several of these sites, meaning that you go to places like LA Times, CT, NYT, CNN…and they have a Mixx badge right on the article.
3 - I know it isn’t a newspaper, though it would be cool to see how CNN stacked up against its newspaper rivals.
1. Thanks for that
2. I thought that was the case, but then I went to check out the NYT website and didn’t see anything linking to mixx.
3. Yep, I would like to see the BBC vs CNN vs TechCrunch etc
Found this great post while searching for what the big newspaper sites do in terms of social media. I liked reading your suggestions for the newspapers, especially. What do you mean by “‘feature’ pieces with attractive titles.” ?
Now how many of those sites are profitable? Personally I enjoy using Mixx. I see many Mixx stories in the search results.
Your posts are always so amazingly thorough and analytical. I’d love to hop inside your brain for a day and let some of the numbers slap around the swirling syllables in my head.