“Social Exchange” is a column focused on the evolving roles of social media in online advertising.
Today’s column is written by Andrew Pancer, Chief Operating Officer of Media6Degrees.
The rise of social tools has given the publishing industry an opportunity to leverage connections to increase traffic and time spent with their core audience, while attracting new readers based on their core audience’s social graph.
Just about every major publisher I can think of has enabled social applications on their sites. Some of the more popular are: Facebook, Twitter, AddThis, StumbleUpon and Digg. Enabling the audience to share, tweet and post content to their newsfeed is an excellent strategy, and one I have encouraged in the past. But most sites stop there, failing to unlock the full potential of the social graph.
Instead of simply placing icons on their website in the hopes that readers will distribute their content, publishers should actively push content and messaging to their readers and their readers’ social graph, both on their web sites and throughout social media. Using Twitter and Facebook Connect, publishers can share with readers what their friends are reading and what they are saying about the content.