The AiTO Effect: These Publishers Increased Social Media Engagement by More Than 70%

Knowing which article to post where and when is crucial for publishers. News is increasingly being consumed through social media. Ever larger volumes of content are being published online. At the same time readers are not consuming more content. We see publishers facing decreasing revenues due to increasing sessions on mobile, programmatic advertising, native publishing and the use of ad blockers.

As a result, publishers seek more reach and traffic per article. By distributing the right content in the right place at the right time, AiTO helps optimizing social distribution based on engagement. Engagement generates more reach, reach leads to more traffic, fans and followers, which leads to increasing future traffic.

The predictive technology determines exactly what content will perform best on their social media channels like Twitter and Facebook. Not only that, it is also capable of showing you, in real time, what content your competitors are sharing and how it is performing.

AiTO predicts engagement

This case study introduces our social media prediction technology AiTO. By collecting actual data and comparing this with historical data, the self learning artificial brain is able to recognize patterns and can predict the level of engagement an article will receive over the next hour.

We take a look at two companies who use AiTO and focus on content posted to Twitter. The first one is the largest Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf (Telegraaf Media Group). The second is the news website from Russian media conglomerate RBC. Both publishers were looking for ways to increase engagement and audience for online content. In both cases Twitter posts were fully automated and updated via AiTO.

De Telegraaf: a better selection of articles on Twitter

De Telegraaf produces four hundred articles per day. Tweeting all of them is not an option, neither is tweeting them manually, because being topical is extremely important. De Telegraaf had their own script that automatically tweeted particular articles from the CMS, but their social media manager was not satisfied with this solution. De Telegraaf asked Nine Connections to tweet breaking and important articles immediately, and to make a selection of all other articles based on their expected engagement.

71% more clicks from tweeted content to telegraaf.nl

In the graph below you can see the effect AiTO had on the amount of clicks De Telegraaf received for articles tweeted by their own script (green), 50/50 their own script and AiTO (yellow), and fully automated AiTO (blue). Compared to their own script updating social media, the AiTO tool received 71% more clicks to telegraaf.nl.

Normal account: 100%. AiTO account: 171%.

RBC

RBC is a multi-channel publisher, their media platform includes a daily business newspaper, monthly business magazine, tv station and a news website. They were looking for a way to increase online engagement and drive up the amount of clicks to their website. They enlisted Nine Connections’ AiTO to reach this goal.

73% more clicks from tweeted content to RBC.ru.
In the case of RBC we see the following effect on URL clicks from using AiTO. The graph shows the situation before (green) and after (blue) implementing AiTO:

Normal account: 100%. AiTO account: 173%.

After starting to share with AiTO on Twitter RBC saw a 73% increase in the amount of URL clicks on content they shared on Twitter.

The importance of social distribution

By using AiTO to optimize distribution, publishers can focus on what they do best: producing the right content. When content is unique, indispensable and reflecting a publisher’s brand values, it will attract more direct traffic, which can easily be converted into other business models than advertising alone.

The battle between publishers for attention is fierce, so it is of paramount importance to share the right content at the right time to gather large communities of followers and increase reach and engagement. Nine Connections’ AiTO app is thé tool to make this happen.

@nineconnections; info@nineconnections.com; www.nineconnections.com

Written by: Anthony Gadsdon