Case Study: Why The NYT Is Winning in Social Media

Case Study: Why The NYT Is Winning in Social Media

When it comes to news, I like to stay up to date using a variety of sources. When it comes to publishers' use of tech, though, one brand really stands out in my feed: The New York Times (@nytimes).

What I find most interesting is that it's not NYT's headlines that grab me, much as these are always well-written; rather, it's their savvy use of Twitter, both in terms of the platform's features, but also in terms of appealing to their followers' needs, motivations and interests.

The first thing the NYT social team got right was the icon they've used for their profile picture. It may not include their whole name, nor their complete brand identity, but the simple, white 'T' on a black background helps the brand's posts stand out amongst the clutter in a busy feed:

They've also adopted a highly 'open' approach to social media, making more of their news available in their feeds, in contrast to the teaser or closed approach that many of their competitors have.

It seems that the NYT is actively using Twitter to report the news, not just to link through to news articles on their website.

In particular, their use of embedded YouTube videos in tweets starts to tell the story right their in followers' feeds (this example is from a sister feed of the NYT, @NYTMetro, but was retweeted by the main @nytimes account):

Taking this approach in a slight different direction, the NYT social team have also started to use these 'briefing' cards that share the key aspects of a big story:

These briefing cards are particularly interesting from an ROI perspective. Some might argue that they actively detract from the number of people visiting the site (and so perhaps cannibalise ad revenue), but from a long-term brand-building perspective, this is a very savvy move; by delivering need-to-know news directly in their followers' feeds, the NYT positions itself as the go-to source for news when people are ready to dig deeper into a story, which won't always be every story.

The NYT appears to be playing the long-game on social, building life-time value by adding value to people's lives over time, instead of chasing short-term gains through the link-bait approach that seems to have become the norm for many news outlets.

In a similar vein to the briefing cards, the NYT has also recently adopted these excellent quote cards - something that builds on a common practice amongst social media audiences, who often pull out key quotes from articles as 'intro text' before posting a link to the article itself:

Aside from their clever adoption of user behaviour, these quote cards are very well designed, too: fully on-brand, with a high-impact white-on-black design, and a very subtle use of a watermark that not only serves to maintain brand impact when others choose to re-share the content, but also acts as a stamp of authority on the content itself.

It's that re-sharing element that makes these quote cards so effective; by creating native Twitter content that followers will be compelled to share, the NYT maximises its organic reach, and harnesses powerful peer-to-peer endorsement at the same time.

The NYT has adopted the watermark tactic it uses on these quote cards for most of the photos it posts to Twitter, too. Each of these photos appears to have been carefully selected for maximum impact in busy social media feeds, with strong colours and situations that inspire curiosity:

The social media team understand how to use social media to bring followers to their site too, though; posts such as the infographic below give readers just enough information that they become involved in the story - engaged enough that they will feel compelled to want to click through to the site to read the rest of the article:

The NYT feed strikes a great balance between up-to-the-minute news and more 'lifestyle' elements too, including daily recipes:

Even their coverage of news can be light-hearted; for example, this witty use of One Direction lyrics to announce the departure of Zayn Malik from the popular 'boy band', and the impact his departure has had on fans around the world:

It's worth noting that the post above generated a considerable volume of reaction from the account's followers (see it 'live' here); some was negative, bemoaning a perceived 'dilution of journalism' in the tweet's text, whilst other followers - the probable intended audience - responded with emoticons expressing approval. It's clear from episodes such as this that the NYT has achieved broad appeal; an achievement borne out by the account's 16 million followers.

The last point to note is that the NYT doesn't overdo rich content, despite its apparent success; the account maintains a highly varied feed, ranging from straightforward text updates through to the embedded videos and complex infographics featured above:

So what can we learn from this? Critically, the approach that the NYT has adopted isn't just relevant to publishers; the NYT seems to have a solid grasp on reporting the news in social media, but their activities offer plenty of inspiration for any brand that wants to adopt a more 'real-time' approach to engaging its audience.

Note: I am in no way involved with the New York Times, nor its social media team.

This is a greatly crafted article that pushes focus towards a lot of the little things that I personally feel are overlooked. For example,their adaptation and further adoption to the ideal of "the 'open' approach to social media, making more of their news available in their feeds, in contrast to the teaser or closed approach that many of their competitors have."..... This tactic of openness is ultimately pushing highly informative content to more minds vs approach of "Let's give you a little and save the guts for the subscriber" -- Yes, monetizing of content is quite necessary for survival in certain instances but overall structure of holding content hostage isn't something I'm a fan of.

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Luba Czyrsky

Building brands, telling stories and connecting people through compelling content and marketing communications | opinions my own

8y

Two further thoughts on this, Simon. How long do you think before these cards become so widely adopted they lose their efficacy? More importantly, what do you think the next great innovation will be? (I realize you don't have a crystal ball, but curious what the possibilities might be).

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Concise article. Great analysis of The New York Times' holistic approach to social media. Keys to success on Twitter.

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Benjamin Ang

Head of Centre of Excellence for National Security, Future Issues in Technology, Digital Impact

9y

great article, gave me many ideas to try implementing for my own content

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Sue Keogh

Founder of Sookio, the strategic digital marketing agency in Cambridge. Talk to me about strategy, content and campaigns. FRSA

9y

Great analysis and I agree with all your points. One thing to throw in though...it annoys the heck out of me the way they repeat tweets. Sometimes it's as much as four times in 24 hours, and it's quite irritating to have the same content cluttering up your feed again and again. I know there's the Guy Kawasaki argument that it leads to more engagement (I grudgingly admit he's right, with NYT it does) but this thirst for clicks makes them come across as a little dismissive of their followers I think.

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