Bauer Media’s James Carson spoke at the BrightonSEO conference last week on how publishers can successfully engage their audiences through social media. Naturally, this was my favourite talk of the day (followed closely by C&M founder Roger Warner’s talk on what social can learn from Mad Men). So here is why Publishers (and everyone) need to care…

Lets kick off with some fascinating facts:

• 42% of social network users get news through social network sites
• 43% of all news sharing is via social networks
• 44% of all sharing online is through Facebook!

There is serious competition out there for audiences and market share in the publishing industry. Publishers are reorganising internally to focus on digital, investing heavily in digital and seeing returns and they are making a point of shouting about it – because who are advertisers more likely to buy with when choosing between a publication that embraces digital and one that ignores it?

What are publishers doing to invest in digital?

Here’s just a few stories that have been in the press over the last month about Publishers getting digital:

Story 1 – Emap sees growth in revenues with strong digital investment. Read all about it.

Story 2 - Future invest in tech blog Gizmodo as part of effort to expand digital activity following 10% drop in print revenues. Read all about it.

Story 3 - Guardian dumps print supplements whilst investing £25m in expanding digital operations. Read all about it.

If you sit still you will fall behind. You will lose audience and you will lose market share. So how do you make sure you are getting in front of your audience before your competitors?

How does Facebook Edge Rank work?

Most publications will have a Facebook account and to get your news stories listed above the competitions you need to score highly on Edge Rank. Facebook stories are listed in the newsfeed by the most recent on mobile devices but by “Edge Rank” on computers. Here’s how it works:

You can find a great white paper on improving your Edge Rank here.

Making your social media better than the competition.

Here are James’ top tips when it comes to scoring high on Edge Rank and successfully engaging you audience:

1. Make great content.

2. Explicitly tell users what to do, e.g. “Share this.”

3. Use competitions to grow your social network following – links will follow.

4. Facebook Stories are a great way to increase followers.

AND MOST IMPORTANTLY:

5. Love your people – think interaction over SEO.

6. FIX YOUR SITE!

If you want to talk to us about the work Makemedia have been doing with publishers to generate revenues from classifieds, directories and data insight products you can call myself, Rob or Ric on 0845 017 8777.

We can fix your site too!