Social media is one of the tools newspapers have, over the years, utilized to reach a wider audience and engage their readers. Through it, the impacts and the reach of news outfits can be roughly measured. Twitter is one of the major social media platforms that has seen the influx of the presence of news outfits, which apart from getting wider readerships through it, need to engage their readers better.
One may be wondering how the national newspapers have fared on Twitter; which are the big dogs making the most use of it.
Which papers are the three big dogs on Twitter?
They are no other papers than the Guardian newspaper, Times newspaper, and Financial Times newspaper.
Note: the parameters used to arrive at this conclusion are largely based on the sizes of their followers and their activities on Twitter.
The paper with the largest followers is the Guardian. This paper accounts for almost 85% of the total followers of the nine national newspapers under review in this post. Their Technology and News desks have the lion’s share of this.
Coming second is the Times while in third place is Financial Times. These papers combined have at least 11% of the total number of people following the nine papers on Twitter.
The remaining meager 4% goes to the remaining six papers. These papers barely have up to twelve thousand followers combined.
What Guardian is doing differently
The Guardian is inarguably the biggest fish in the pond on Twitter. This position was not just attained by sitting back and doing virtually nothing like most other newspapers are doing on Twitter. Their presence on Twitter is felt wide and far, and possibly it would be so for long.
Those who monitor their activities on Twitter would agree that they have the largest followers, and by far, follow more people than any other newspaper. One thing is to have followers, those who show interest in what you do; another thing is to show that you equally value them by following as many as you can. Engaging the community of their readerships could not have been done any better. Perhaps, this accounts for the paper’s success story on Twitter.
What both the Guardian, the Times, and Financial Times have in Common – the Behind the Scene to their Success Stories on Twitter.
One thing we have observed is that these papers consistently publish a list of their Twitter accounts on their websites. Unlike most other papers, we have observed that these papers put energy and time into promoting their Twitter accounts on their websites at every opportunity they have. Therefore, their readers who are not their followers on Twitter do so not out of ignorance of the existence of their accounts, as is the common trend among the rest of the papers.
We have also observed that these papers are engaging their readers more on Twitter. Their accounts are not turned dead where silence or boring activities reign. Instead, what we have observed is that these accounts are used to meaningfully engage their growing followers. If you ever wonder which of the newspapers you can tweet to and get engaged meaningfully, any of these papers is all you have been taking a picture of.
Final Comment
With these trends, the coast is still very much clear for the Guardian, Times, and Financial Times, the Twitter three big dogs, to keep dominating Twitter.
