When it comes to generating traffic for your content, your number of social-media followers isn’t as important as how well you engage them.
Success lies not just in getting your social-media audience to click on the links you post, but in getting them to share the link with their friends and start a chain reaction of engagement.
I had essentially the same number of Twitter followers (15,000+) and Facebook fans and friends (almost 2,000) when I posted my Dec. 19 post about granting confidentiality to sources as when I posted last Saturday about whether to avoid tweets that might tip competitors about breaking news or events you’re covering.
Only 127 people have read the post on confidential sources, which I regard as at least as important for journalists to read. But more than 6,000 people have read the post on tweets and competition. In one week, that post got more views than anything I’ve posted in the past year.
It’s reasonable to think that as many of my social media followers saw my initial tweets and Facebook updates on the two posts. In fact, most of my followers are journalists, who might have been less likely to see the Saturday tweet and update because they weren’t working that day.
The difference: My tweeps started a chain reaction of discussion and links about the post on competition and Twitter. They reached thousands of people who don’t follow me and brought those people to my blog.
At least four factors are at play in the difference between the two stories:
- Journalists have been discussing confidential sources for decades. Most of us know what we think on this topic, so people felt less need to read or share this.
- Twitter is newer, and lots of journalists (even though this fact confused, amused and frustrated some of my tweeps) worry a lot about tipping the competition with their tweets or wanted to share the competition post with colleagues who worry.
- I think “anonymous sources” is an inaccurate term most of the time and stubbornly refuse to use it. But it’s the term journalists use and if I had used that term in my tweet and the headline, it probably would have generated more traffic from social media as well as search.
- For some combination of those three reasons and perhaps others I don’t know about, the competition post got tremendous sharing on social media, especially Twitter.
This is how I announced the confidentiality post on Twitter:
One of four posts today dealing w/ confidential sources, this one on factors to consider in granting confidentiality: http://t.co/NFpjPchaMz
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) December 19, 2013
Yawn, four retweets, two favorites. Who really wants to read four posts at once? (I should have made them a series, not a package.) And I never used the controversial, familiar term that might have engaged more readers: anonymous sources.
Here’s what I posted about competition and tweeting:
Reporter asks why tip the competition by tweeting from a fire or meeting. I answer. http://t.co/BxqlDnuez2 #twutorial #advice4editors
— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) January 4, 2014
I got right to the heart of the blog post: Twitter and competition. I said I answered, but teased a little by not sharing my answer. Better results right away: 15 retweets and 23 favorites (and some of those who favorited it probably posted their own tweets, commenting on the link and sharing it but not retweeting me).
Those people who retweeted me? They have more than 104,000 followers. Even granting for duplication (these are all or mostly journalists, so you have to presume some following of each other), this tweet had already reached a much larger potential audience in retweets than my own audience. Two of the retweets came from accounts with more followers than me: @journalismfest (19K+) and @AntDeRosa (68K+).
Those retweets didn’t include Jay Rosen. Instead of retweeting, minutes after I posted the blog, Jay posted an original tweet, calling my post to the attention of potentially more than 130,000 people who follow him:
If we tweet from the scene of breaking news (like a fire) don’t we alert the competition? @stevebuttry answers that: http://t.co/sOXspiG8Db
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 4, 2014
That was retweeted 32 times. A few hours later, Jay tweeted another link (thanks for the kind words, Jay!):
Best journalism educator not employed by an educational institution: @stevebuttryhttp://t.co/1hiHP3Kl2G
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) January 4, 2014
That was retweeted 37 times. My potential reach from those two tweets added another 160,000-plus followers of the people who retweeted.
Let’s do some quick math here: My original tweet had a potential audience of 15K people. But the retweets of my tweet, plus Jay’s audience, plus the audience of Jay’s retweeters pushes my potential audience to 390K (minus whatever the duplication is).
Sree Sreenivasan is absolutely right that most people who follow you miss most of your tweets (or Facebook posts or whatever):
Almost everyone will miss almost everything you do on social media. Except any mistakes or errors you make. [What I told #FITASI #sunycuad]
— Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) June 8, 2013
I don’t know what percentage “almost no one” works out to, but for the sake of round numbers, let’s say that just 10 percent of your followers see any one tweet. That would mean only 1,500 people see my average tweet. Again using round numbers, let’s say only about 10 percent of the people who see a tweet click the link. That gives me 150 views (about what that confidentiality post got).
But if my base soars to 390,000, the numbers change dramatically. Even if you say half of that number that is duplicated and round the potential audience off at 200,000, that means something like 20,000 of those people saw the tweet and 2,000 of them clicked the link. Well, I got more than 2,000 views, so those round numbers aren’t quite right, but that 390K figure isn’t nearly all of the potential views.
I’ve detailed just Saturday’s tweets that mentioned me at the end of this post, and you can see that the potential audience just that one day was more than 700,000 (more than 340,000 followers of those tweeting that I haven’t mentioned yet), not subtracting duplication.
And those are only the tweets that mentioned my Twitter username. If someone just tweeted a link to the post, I didn’t count that. But the tweets whose audience I’ve counted aren’t even half of the tweets WordPress counted (pictured). And I haven’t even looked at the Facebook and LinkedIn shares).
And I retweeted some of those tweets, perhaps risking annoying anyone who actually reads most or all my tweets, but trusting that Sree is right and that most of the retweets caught some followers for the first time.
All those tweets from a traffic surge like my blog hasn’t seen in more than a year. The traffic stayed strong. Saturday was one of my busiest days ever on the blog, with more than 3,500 views. And I topping 2,000 views each on Sunday and Monday and 1,000 views each on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the competition post still leading the way, even though I published two new posts. It’s slowed down finally today, six days after I published, even though I got another tweet about the post today.
The chain reaction continued beyond social media: At least five blogs linked to my post. It was posted on WordPress’ Freshly Pressed blog, which drove another 300 or so views.
In addition, as I noted in an earlier post, the post and related tweets launched lots of Twitter conversations (two of them were Storified), and those conversations doubtless drove more people to click the links.
If you care about this topic, check out the detailing of tweets below. I’ve placed it at the end because it’s so long, made longer by the fact that Twitter’s option to exclude the media and the parent tweet doesn’t work, so you have to see the card for my post again and again (fix that, Twitter! It’s annoying.)
Before we get to that, though, I want to address the issue of anonymous sources. You’ll get the full argument on the post (read it please, somebody! It’s getting lonely), but most sources are not at all anonymous to reporters. Except for a few phone callers or tipsters in website comments or emails, reporters generally know their sources very well. And we never quote those truly anonymous sources; we check their tips out and if they’re valid, we end up quoting other sources, even if we don’t name them.
I have been thoroughly unsuccessful in my efforts to get journalists to refer to the sources we choose not to name as confidential sources. But my stubbornness on the topic kept me from using the phrase journalists use and find interesting to discuss — “anonymous sources” — in either my headline (to help search traffic) or in my tweet (to help social traffic).
Here’s the original headline:
I rewrote the headline this morning, to give me a better shot at reaching the people who search for “anonymous sources”:
You (meaning I) should never let stubbornness overrule sound engagement or search-engine optimization. I’m never going to win my argument over how to refer to sources if I don’t reach the people searching for “anonymous source” or those who would click on the link in a tweet with that term.
Back to the chain reaction: Here are some of the tweets sharing my post with different tiny slices of the Twitterverse:
You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them @stevebuttry #journalism #socialmedia #digitalfirst http://t.co/hIgsS8dLBK
— Melissa Juergensen (@MLJ_WebGirl) January 4, 2014
She has 449 followers.
Good read for PIOs MT @stevebuttry: Reporter asks why tip the competition by tweeting from a fire or meeting. http://t.co/7K9ViMGvjM
— Greg (@g_r_e_g) January 4, 2014
He has 640 followers.
Changing a reporter’s mindset for the new era: @stevebuttry schools us on using Twitter to break news. http://t.co/QHOwqNiuMM
— Mindy McAdams (@macloo) January 4, 2014
She has 8,682 followers.
The Buttry Diary http://t.co/xCtLm6ykL6 via @stevebuttry
— Fuego (@NiemanLabFuego) January 4, 2014
That’s a bot with 2,529 followers.
Useful piece MT @stevebuttry: Reporter asks why tip competition by tweeting from a fire or meeting. I answer. http://t.co/qdziKIoyYM
— Patricia Zengerle (@ReutersZengerle) January 4, 2014
She has 2,890 followers.
The great @stevebuttry on how tweeting from scene doesn’t tip competition — it beats the comp http://t.co/BqTYgZ1J4r
— Neal Augenstein (@AugensteinWTOP) January 4, 2014
He has 5,241 followers.
THANK YOU! You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them: via @stevebuttry http://t.co/nOHbNXanFt
— Tricia Flatley (@TFlatley660News) January 4, 2014
She has 352 followers.
“@AugensteinWTOP: The great @stevebuttry on how tweeting from scene doesn’t tip competition — it beats the comp http://t.co/nHgDd62H2Y”
— Steve Klamkin (@NewsProvidence) January 4, 2014
He has 2,580 followers.
Good advice from @stevebuttry, who recently gave similar speech to @ccurrentargus newsroom: http://t.co/vV7nMBtKBX
— Brandon Bowers (@brandonbowers) January 4, 2014
He has 2,389 followers.
@kelly812 Lot of food for thought here. “@stevebuttry http://t.co/rSrheG26NY”
— Don O’Brien (@DOB23) January 4, 2014
He has 1,255 followers.
RT @brandonbowers: Good advice from @stevebuttry, who recently gave similar speech to @ccurrentargus newsroom: http://t.co/kNcqrZABZa
— Dean Zambrano (@DeanZambrano) January 4, 2014
He has 1,346 followers.
You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them (@stevebuttry / The Buttry Diary) http://t.co/jf7c4bXOls http://t.co/hGLT3shJ1W
— Mediagazer (@mediagazer) January 4, 2014
Mediagazer has 38,413 followers.
@stevebuttry‘s advice for thinking digital-first. “You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them” http://t.co/8i1GHe8uRG
— Elyse Skura (@eskura) January 4, 2014
She has 204 followers.
You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them, by @SteveButtry http://t.co/E8NnQ8mR6l
— Steffen Konrath (@StKonrath) January 4, 2014
He has 112,191 followers.
Good piece on Twitter journalism by @stevebuttry. I am surprised this still needs to be explained. http://t.co/iTsIwI8P2a
— Patrick LaForge (@palafo) January 4, 2014
He has 27,954 followers.
Twitter journalism explained by @stevebuttry http://t.co/wjrb8ujoEO (via @palafo)
— Brian wheeler (@brianwheel) January 4, 2014
He has 603 followers.
Good to see @dangillmor tweet some much needed biz reality to @stevebuttry‘s otherwise good ode to Twitter http://t.co/4ipC0SFhDG
— Raju Narisetti (@raju) January 4, 2014
He has 18,754 followers.
RT @raju: Good to see @dangillmor tweet some much needed biz reality to @stevebuttry‘s otherwise good ode to T… http://t.co/jPrThV4vcH
— mediacademie (@mediacademie) January 4, 2014
He has 386 followers.
You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them, by @SteveButtry http://t.co/Ox0ZUgxyZk via @StKonrath
— mark little (@marklittlenews) January 4, 2014
He has 52,648 followers and was retweeted 13 times by people with 16,000-plus followers.
Argues: “print-centric thinking” RT @NewsFuturist: You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them http://t.co/xfsC79Af7p @stevebuttry
— Desk of L. Riding (@leanneriding) January 4, 2014
She has 630 followers.
Spectacular Twitter primer for print (and other) journalists. Thanks @stevebuttry! http://t.co/pXLiMrim7M cc @digitalfirst
— Vivian Schiller (@VivianSchiller) January 4, 2014
She has 9,266 followers.
FYI @CaitlinKellyNYC MT “@VivianSchiller: Grt Twitter primer for journalists. Thx @stevebuttry! http://t.co/Cc6Hg9BPau cc @digitalfirst”
— Donna Behen (@MadonnaPatricia) January 4, 2014
She has 256 followers.
A guide to journos & more via @stevebuttry “You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them” http://t.co/alsLs0GZ5E via @wordpressdotcom
— Kirstine Stewart (@kirstinestewart) January 4, 2014
She has 21,686 followers.
#osucomm2221 RT @VivianSchiller: Spectacular Twitter primer for journalists. Thanks @stevebuttry! http://t.co/bBN3cWLYO7 cc @digitalfirst
— Nicole Kraft (@Nicole_Kraft) January 4, 2014
She has 1,066 followers.
Spectacular Twitter primer for print (and other) journalists. Thanks @stevebuttry! http://t.co/RWMu6JdvOD cc @digitalfirst
— hlalande (@hlalande) January 4, 2014
He has 293 followers.
Excellent: L’usage de Twitter pour les journalistes et la rédaction @stevebuttry http://t.co/owkcNxPSbn
— Bruno Boutot (@boutotcom) January 4, 2014
He has 1,411 followers.
Great ‘Digital First Journalism’ advice here @stevebuttry http://t.co/ZeSkaIRnfJ @morgtait @TrackChatt @profithb @andrewaustinHBT thoughts?
— ryan (@ryaninnz) January 4, 2014
He has 899 followers.
Good stuff from @stevebuttry http://t.co/p3m6qrYMFb #journosandtwitter
— Doug Fisher (@dougfisher) January 4, 2014
He has 779 followers.
.@stevebuttry explains why good journalists today Tweet & how we serve our audience @TCPalm Digital first, foremost http://t.co/yIyE3GeGI2
— LaurenceReisman (@LaurenceReisman) January 4, 2014
He has 342 followers.
Just shared this @stevebuttry gem with our newsroom team, and we’re not even a DFM pub. http://t.co/huQ3ZOegZv cc @digitalfirst
— GlenFaison (@GlenFaison) January 4, 2014
He has 406 followers.
You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them http://t.co/5mSOZNDxeS Great post by @stevebuttry
— Sarah Marshall (@SarahMarshall) January 4, 2014
She has 4,821 followers.
Some journalists still don’t get Twitter. @stevebuttry explains breaking-news tweets don’t tip comp; they beat it http://t.co/ag813WmpRJ
— Brad Greenberg (@bradagreenberg) January 4, 2014
He has 1,965 followers.
Agree with all this. “@bradagreenberg: Some journalists still don’t get Twitter. @stevebuttry: tweets beat comp: http://t.co/KE2IhOr381”
— Scott Stanford (@Scott_Stanford) January 5, 2014
He has 758 followers.
Agree with all this. “@bradagreenberg: Some journalists still don’t get Twitter. @stevebuttry: tweets beat comp: http://t.co/KE2IhOr381”
— Scott Stanford (@Scott_Stanford) January 5, 2014
She has 478 followers.
RT @martajewson: Enjoyed this @stevebuttry read today, “You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them” http://t.co/phDzaOlOZJ
— Craig Newman (@craignewman) January 5, 2014
He has 4,460 followers.
Some journalists still don’t get Twitter. @stevebuttry explains breaking-news tweets don’t tip comp; they beat it http://t.co/856hpZdXXf”
— FifeFreePressEd (@FifeFreePressEd) January 5, 2014
He has 1,999 followers.
I’m late to the party but @stevebuttry is 100% right here. The key is getting journalists to see this as obvious. http://t.co/HBoJpJl8dR
— Christopher James (@BECJ2k) January 5, 2014
He has 486 followers.
.@stevebuttry is right about using Twitter here. http://t.co/GEoE8Ep6GS It’s really irritating that we still need to discuss this.
— Jamie Kelly (@jamietie) January 5, 2014
He has 1,357 followers.
Live-tweeting conferences too MT @bradagreenberg @edyong209 @stevebuttry You don’t tip comp on Twitter; you beat them http://t.co/AxBrcsa5N6
— Will Slaton (@wslaton) January 5, 2014
He has 650 followers.
Twitter succeeds in spite of lousy technology and service @stevebuttry: http://t.co/oF7WWZ9DSi
— Lyle (@Citizensnews) January 5, 2014
He has 1,758 followers.
Thanks, @stevebuttry. We’ve all been asking for this: http://t.co/pSEiDeu7WS
— Markell DeLoatch (@markellPO) January 5, 2014
He has 275 followers.
“You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them” http://t.co/x7DemnMS12 by @stevebuttry via @robbiethompson #CJSM
— Isabel Lara (@isalara) January 5, 2014
She has 3,736 followers.
Best explanation of journalism in the new world, at least in the new year: http://t.co/5G8IsIyvZh . OK @stevebuttry , talk about visuals!
— bob sacha (@bobsacha) January 5, 2014
He has 4,574 followers.
como usar o Twitter em coberturas jornalísticas http://t.co/V6SipYB8Qf #twotorial via @bradagreenberg @stevebuttry
— Mariana Fioravanti (@marifiora) January 5, 2014
She has 333 followers.
About these numbers: I worked on this post on and off over a few days. The numbers of followers I cite for people were accurate when I collected them, but probably have moved a little as people followed or unfollowed.
A final point: I thought I had an important point to make about the chain reaction, but I hated the initial draft. Felt too much like boasting about all the traffic that my competition post attracted and all the retweets I got. As regular readers know, I’m not averse to boasting, but that was too much even for me. I hope the self-deprecating references to the post on confidential — er, anonymous — sources leavened that a bit.
Earlier #twutorial posts
This post is part of a series I call #twutorial. Earlier posts:
Ben Garvin’s advice: Illustrate your tweets
Using ScribbleLive, you can livetweet except for the longer posts
You don’t tip competitors on Twitter; you beat them
Advice and examples on how and what journalists should tweet
Denver Post staffers’ #theatershooting coverage demonstrates Twitter breaking news techniques
Don’t be selfish on Twitter; tweeting useful information is good business
10 ways Twitter is valuable for journalists
Should a journalist livetweet a funeral? If so, how?
Step one for using Twitter as a reporter: Master advanced search
Use lists, TweetDeck, HootSuite, saved searches, alerts to organize Twitter’s chaos
Hashtags help journalists find relevant tweets and reach more people
9 ways to find helpful people and organizations to follow on Twitter
To build Twitter followers: Join the conversation, tweet often, be yourself
Updated Twitter time management tips
What’s the best way to view Twitter’s users? 16 percent or 30 million
Twitter data shows journos’ ‘burstiness’ boosts followers
#Twutorial guest post from Deanna Utroske: Tips for twinterviewing
#Twutorial guest post by Menachem Wecker: How to use Twitter to find the best sources
#Twutorial guest post by Jaclyn Schiff: How using Storify can help you find great sources
Getting started on Twitter: #twutorial advice for a friend
Use Twitter for conversation about an event, not just promotion
How to verify information from tweets: check it out
With Twitter archives now available, how would you use old tweets?
Twitter search gets even better with twXplorer
If you hit Twitter’s (stupid) follower ceiling, use lists to follow people
This definitely should be a journalism award category: Best journalism educator not employed by an educational institution.
Your Twitter / beat the competition post had legs cuz it discusses the intersection of print and digital journalism, where many of us still work. It was an early topic in our newsroom, and requires a change of mindset for those trained in a print environment.
My attitude is simpler: If I get it first, I don’t care who gets it second.
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As someone not in the journo business, I enjoyed your original post about ‘tipping” off journalistic competitors, and forwarded it to my daughter who’s in the biz. Thank you! Hope there will be more shares of this post. Now, off to click on some of the links for your earlier posts….
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You’re a good parent!
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[…] I’ve noted before, the chain reaction of people sharing of your tweets or the content you tweet can generate more traffic than you get simply from your […]
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[…] Engagement success: a chain reaction of sharing on social media (2014) […]
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[…] So did a post on journalists quitting their jobs. He also figured prominently in my posts on the engagement chain reaction, students using laptops in class, the reaction to Baquet’s post, the Twitter reaction to my […]
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