How Major Media Brands Are Using Twitter Buttons To Their Advantage

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Having your business connected to Twitter has never been more essential. The rapidly growing service has shown time and time again how the quick-paced, direct and on-the-go approach works for businesses around the world – especially in regards to news organisations.
Twitter can be used to break the stories before they even make it onto the websites of the major news brands, let alone their physical newspaper counterparts. With the number of users joining the platform increasing rapidly each day, it is important to know how to use Twitter most effectively.
Our latest infographic poses this such question by investigating how news organisations are using Twitter to benefit their company. We spent quite some time researching and surveying major news brands in the US and the UK in the hope of understanding what were the standards in terms of social media practices. Once our data was in, we paid special attention at the customization of Twitter buttons and compared the results to those achieved for new media platforms and big businesses Twitter practices.
 

How Major Media Brands Are Using Twitter Buttons

 

Why customise the social media buttons?

If you’ve got a company blog, it’s strongly recommended to use a floating social sharing sidebar, particularly when working with long-form content as this will increase the engagement opportunities throughout the piece. At NeoMam, we love AddThis, as the tool allows us to fully customise not only the buttons but the messages shared on each social media platform when setting up your bar.
The idea of incorporating either the @brand or @author within the Tweet will be a key element contributing to promoting your business online without having to lift a finger, whilst building the personal brands of those who write for your blog — mentioning the company’s Twitter account will eventually equal out to an increase in followers the account will have. It’s basic math really: The more people that share the tweet, the more people will see the tweet (and the account name included in it) which will result in more followers and brand recognition.
 

How many news organisations use Twitter correctly?

In preparation for this latest infographic, we looked at the 44 biggest newspapers in the UK and USA. Our results showed that all the brands had an onsite Twitter button which allowed readers to instantly tweet out the article to their followers.
Only 18 out of the 44 actually included the @author or @site name within the default tweet message set up on the share button – showing how almost 60% were not taking full advantage of the opportunity to increase their brand awareness.
 
See also: How To Determine The Type Of Tweets To Publish?
 

Are there any differences between traditional and non-traditional publishers?

By surveying Quantcast’s top 50 most popular sites in the US, we found that all the sites included also featured an onsite Twitter button for their readers to use. 38 out of the 50 brands also were sure to include their Twitter handle (@brand) within the default tweet, which made up for 76% of the brands.
 
Lastly, we looked at the ‘Sunday Times 100 Best Companies To Work For’ list and found that only 48 of the 100 sites had an onsite Twitter icon, and only 8 of those 48 were using their own Twitter handles within the message to be shared by anyone who clicks on the “Tweet” button.
The results showed that the most popular sites were leading the way in incorporating their brand name within their shareable icons. This is probably down to the fact that as they are primarily businesses based online, they would be much more effective in keeping up with digital techniques and practices than businesses making the transition over to digital.
 

What does this mean for traditional news brands and big businesses?

Newspapers are definitely catching up in making the journey over to digital and seemed to be more than open to getting their identity and brand across their readers sharing habits. The transition from print to pixels continues as major publications adapt to an evolving online readership.
There is a definite need for social media buttons customization. Adding @brand and @author to those tweets coming out of your content is certainly a first step. By doing so, both businesses and publications run less of a risk of getting lost in the ever competitive online market where there are not only numerous news outlets breaking and sharing stories but leading businesses who are fantastic creating content on a daily basis.
Are you making sure your social network handles are featured into your sharing buttons? Don’t let the opportunity for a little bit of free promotion pass you by!
Check out the infographic below and be sure to visit NeoMam for more information.
 
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