Social Media Followership as a Predictor of News Website Traffic |
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| Authors: | Ioannis Angelou Vasileios Katsaras Dimitris Kourkouridis Andreas Veglis |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece yangelou@jour.auth.gr https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1287-2669;3. Department for Knowledge and Communication Management, Danube University of Krems, Krems, Austria https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8751-2732;4. School of Spatial Planning and Development, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8698-771X;5. School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0286-2304 |
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| Abstract: | ABSTRACT News organizations increasingly focus their efforts to boost traffic on their websites to grow their share of online advertising. We investigated the relationship between news websites’ traffic ranking and their social media tools of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Plus. For a year we monitored the followers of all Greek regional newspapers in relation to the traffic on their websites. We continued monitoring for a second year to validate the robustness of the findings and we hereby present results for 86 weeks. Statistical analysis leads to the conclusion that the number of social media subscribers can predict the competitive position of a newspaper in the market based on its website traffic. The effect lasts for a limited period of time, one to three weeks, depending on the specific medium. Importantly, results indicate the potential of developing a prediction model of the website’s traffic, based on the social media metrics of the organization, as a useful tool to increase traffic and revenues from online advertising. |
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| Keywords: | Facebook newspapers social media Twitter website traffic YouTube |
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https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1287-2669;3. Department for Knowledge and Communication Management, Danube University of Krems, Krems, Austria