MediaShift
Despite the growth of social media referrals, the NYTimes.com home page is still the leading entry point into the site.
“On most days 50 percent to 60 percent of the site’s traffic comes from people starting at the home page,” Mark Glaser writes.
Glaser spoke with Jim Roberts, an associate managing editor at the paper. Roberts called Facebook traffic “important and growing,” especially as the paper recently surpassed 1 million fans on the social network.
But Roberts told Glaser that the paper’s strategy is not focused on a single social media service:
“When I talk about our efforts … I think of it as an overall strategy instead of a Facebook strategy. In some ways we’ve been as successful on Twitter as on Facebook … We have close to three million followers on our main Twitter feed and we’ve been very successful taking advantage of that platform.”
Other news sites, such as Philly.com, report increased engagement from readers arriving via social media sites. Roberts echoes that focus on community:
“It sounds a little cliche, but we develop a relationship with our readers in social media that transcends page views.”
