It’s been an interesting month for the news media who have been feasting on the sound bites from the Anglo tapes. The Independent uncovered the tapes and gave over a lot, of warranted, space to the tapes. They also showcased their ‘digital first strategy’ – online and then supported via in-depth analysis in the print version/ online version.
According to the paper, their website video (a/v) views went from 30,000 in a normal day to an average of 130,000 that week – peaking at 156,000 for the now infamous ‘Deutschland Uber Alles” rendition.
All very good and we all have a nice warm feeling that it’s a job well done. So, we’ll have to wait until late august until we can reveal how many more papers the tapes managed to sell when the ABC for the first six months are published. Similarly, I can’t tell you if the video numbers were good/bad/indifferent as there hasn’t been a digital cert from the Indo since March 2012 and it didn’t cover a/v anyway.
So, all the quantifiable metrics to see how successful the Anglo tapes were are safely behind an information firewall. And it should be stressed that IN&M are under absolutely no obligation to feed any information about the editorial promotion into the public domain. Let’s just hope they are feeding it back to some of the parties that keep the business going – like the advertisers.
In the absence of anything concrete statistically, let’s look at some social metrics to see if the paper felt the love elsewhere. Over the past few months I’ve kept an eye on the Facebook pages of The Irish Times, Irish Independent and Examiner (reviewing the stats I have to question why!). I wouldn’t for a moment advocate that Facebook statistics are the lynchpin of the success or failure of a editorial promotion – it’s simply a medium that can give me a moment in time glimpse.
In terms of numbers you can see that the IT has over 58,000 Facebook fans which is two and a half times the fan base of the independent and close to five times the base of the Examiner.
The 30 days to 3rd July the Independent added just over 7% to their Facebook fan base. A big chunk of that came on the 26th July when they added 272 fans that day alone (17%) – the second day for the tapes.
| Name | Fans | 30 D +/- | 30 D +/-% | |
| The Irish Times | 58,202 | 2,184 | 4% | |
| Independent.ie | 22,988 | 1,689 | 7% | |
| Irish Examiner | 11,842 | 503 | 4% | |
| Name | Posts | Likes | Comm | Shares |
| The Irish Times | 225 | 6,697 | 1,703 | 1,264 |
| Independent.ie | 169 | 1,967 | 527 | 365 |
| Irish Examiner | 124 | 1,274 | 247 | 140 |
But the Times were still much busier posters over the 30 days and, strangely, had nearly three times the likes. Having said that, it’s hard to stick a ‘like’ beside some reprehensible taped conversation between two bankers.
The Times also still had more comments and shares over the Independent in what should have been, digitally, a busy month for the paper.
Again, two points without detracting from a great scoop by the paper. The Facebook cohort may have very little interest in Anglo and the tapes in general. Secondly these are simply social metrics and may have little or no influence on the success or failure of a promotion.
Daily likes June 3rd tp July 3rd
