By Glenford Scott – GSCOTTY.COM
In this Blog post we measure up two of Jamaica’s top newspapers on social media platforms to see who’s doing the best job.
Facebook: 28,583 likes, 10,992 TAT (Gleaner) vs 13,080 likes, 1597 TAT (Observer)
The Gleaner updates has a very active Facebook page making updates almost every other hour on trending news stories and keeping their fans in the know of what’s happening locally and worldwide. They do make use of Facebook’s new hashtag feature but not as much as they should, content is mostly visuals which resonates best with fans, funny cartoons about our current issues keep fans engaged as well.
The Observer’s Facebook page has updates on a regular basis but they aren’t appealing to fans as virtually no likes / comments or shares are seen on most posts, this could be due to the fact that they seem to be simply copying and pasting links from their website to the Facebook page instead of attaching an engaging photo and short caption to a story to gage feedback from fans, most posts are made with no caption, they are just placed there.
Twitter: 75,889 followers (Gleaner) vs 71,213 (Observer)
Both The Gleaner and Observer have virtually the same strategy for twitter; post links to news articles 24/7. With an average of one retweet every few days I wouldn’t say they are the most “social” brands on twitter but they fulfill their respective roles as news mediums keeping followers up to date on current affairs. I’d recommend that every once in awhile they ask followers their opinion on certain breaking stories and retweet the various opinions of the general public, and also have a day dedicated to these discussions and assign a hashtag to keep track of the conversations. #LetsTalkJa?
YouTube: 7,628 subscribers, 8,443,022 views (Gleaner) vs 4,535 subscribers, 7,112,946 views (Observer)
On YouTube The Gleaner is the clear leader here with almost double the amount of subscribers and over 1 million more views than the observer. Both brands use the medium to give subscribers and viewers short snippet of current news stories, with the observer doing something a bit different with it’s “Making Moguls” series going on. Overall both brands again have virtually the same strategy towards YouTube. A dedicated web series for YouTube may make things a bit more interesting.
Instagram: 292 followers (Gleaner) vs 28 Followers (Observer)
On Instagram The Gleaner has more followers but is less active on the mobile photo sharing site with their last update being 5 weeks ago on the other hand The Observer seems to have just begun using the app with their first pic being posted 1 week ago. A great way for both to gain more followers and boost engagement would be to run a photo contest. August is coming up maybe a #JamaicanPride photo contest would do the trick?
In the end I’d give The Gleaner the edge up here with them having a larger following on all social networks and more engagement on both Facebook and YouTube than the Observer.
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