Publisher Results: Better on Facebook or Twitter?

When we set out to market our newest published work online, does Facebook or Twitter really deliver? Which of these deliver the most exposure, internet buzz and actual sales?

Vadim Lavrusik, of Mashable.Com, has made a study on how these two internet venues delivered results for Mashable...And, although the study had to make certain assumptions...the methodology, parameters and calculations involved are explained in some detail.

By Vadim Lavrusik in Mashable.Com:

Is Sharing More Valuable for Publishers on Facebook or Twitter? [STATS]

In the age of micropublishing, how many people are actually reading what you tweet or share on Facebook? And more importantly, how does the click-per-share ratio compare between the two very different social platforms that are utilized by millions of users every day for consuming and sharing content?

These are questions that keep social media strategists awake at night (or maybe just me). So at Mashable, we decided to take a look at our own data and see how user behavior compares between Facebook and Twitter, the two social media sites that generate the most referral traffic to Mashable.com.

After pulling three months worth of our social data and calculating the click-per-share (CPS), it appears that users on Twitter are more likely to share an article rather than read it, whereas users on Facebook click on more articles than they share. According to our social data, Twitter received roughly 0.38 clicks per tweet, whereas Facebook received 3.31 clicks per engagement (the number of times people posted a Mashable link to Facebook through an action on a social plugin or through a Wall post). This would mean that a Facebook action gets roughly 8.7x more clicks than a tweet.

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Twitter Twists for Authors and Publishers

Twitter is a great tool to launch a book campaign. A foundation that can support the walls of the more detailed, strategic marketing effort to follow.

For example, a short blurb giving the title, author's name, etc., gets your book's and your credentials in the minds eye of the readers AND in the search engines (SEO)...PLUS, you can add a link to a more detailed marketing venue such as Facebook, a review page, your website or point of purchase page, etc.!

This is heavy artillery for a little blurb!

More detailed author/publisher Twitter strategy is spelled out by Cindy Ratzlaff in the Business Insider:

5 Twitter Tips for Authors and Publishers Maximum Visibility Playbook Tips


The book is written and ready to publish. So how do you and your publisher spread the word, create excitement and ultimately drive people to take the action of purchasing and reading the book? These days a well-rounded social media strategy must include Twitter. Twitter is a nimble, real-time megaphone ready to create both ambient awareness (“Oh, yeah, I heard about that book…) and advertorial awareness (I read a great review of that book).

Twitter is to a social media campaign what PR is to a book marketing campaign.

Twitter, however, is not a marketing campaign. Twitter is part of a full strategic campaign and acts as a megaphone to blast your message to millions of people and invites them to your website, Facebook page or other venue for a deeper conversation. A book marketing campaign needs distribution, point of purchase display, publicity, an advertising concept and a highly motivated author. With those things in place, Twitter can:

Share the author’s excitement with followers in real time.
Direct people to a link to buy the book.
Blast out late breaking news such as media appearances & live events.
Share excerpts from the book either in short snippets or via a link to a longer passage.
Encourage others to spread the word.

Here are 5 quick tips and techniques that any author or publisher can use right now to enhance a book marketing campaign.

1. Move content. Use Twitter to move content from your Blog and your Facebook posts to your Twitter fan base by installing the Twitter app on your Facebook fan page. This will auto-tweet everything you post on Facebook, with a link back to your Facebook fan page to read any post longer than 140 characters. If you are auto-importing your blog to your Facebook fan page, it will also be tweeted out to your followers automatically, again with a link to continue reading. This serves a couple of purposes. First, it shares content on three different sites, increasing the number of potential readers for every post. Second, it invites Twitter users back to Facebook to become fans whenever they click on the shorten Twitter link. Third, Facebook will have a live link to the post on your blog through Networked blogs. So one post introduces your Twitter fans to two additional

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Where the Hell is the Publishing Industry?

News media publishing...Why are they still "pushing" things at us from old business models (lengthy diatribes with one or two nuggets hidden within and paywalls nonetheless!) instead of designing platforms that allow us to "pull" short, packed, relevant content that applies to our most fervent interests (also probably with paywalls...If only we could do something about those paywalls).

The only danger with chopped news pieces is the possibility of misinterpretation... The "rest of the story" or hidden "reason why" is sometimes missed. But, at least those in a hurry will get the headlines. The writing has to be superior.

Paul Armstrong, the creator of @themediaisdying, writing for paidcontent.org, has some interesting thoughts on this subject in the following referenced article. He champions brevity, but does so in a rather lengthy, rambling (but very interesting) article.

Sometimes, Paul, it takes wordiness to be concise! (Figure that one out)...

Anyway, I enjoyed Paul's sharp mind and views on this issue:

@Themediaisdying: The Brutal Truth From Two Years In The Twitterverse

The facts for the publishing industry are clear – the vast majority of media outlets are declining in one or more ways.

Two years ago, I registered @themediaisdying - a Twitter account through which I tweet links illustrating the industry’s challenges to nearly 25,000 followers. Now, as it enters its third year, some things clearly have changed - and others still desperately need to…

Running @themediaisdying network remains straightforward - evidence for its eponymous premise, tragically, pours in. Despite new technologies and bursts of advertising confidence, the velocity of publishing outlets going under, online-only or changing publishing schedules gives only temporary relief to those in an industry that is now, in my view, fundamentally doomed unless a mindset is changed.

Here’s what I’ve learned…

The brutal truth
“What is the brutal truth?” is a demi-mantra I have started applying to all my communications and strategies, when working with clients and thinking about big issues.

For example, when I sat down to write this, I mind-mapped the topics I could cover, left it for a day, went back and underlined the words ‘chore’ and ‘commitment’ with a battered Sharpie. Boom.

The brutal truth, rightly or wrongly is this: consuming news remains laborious and a significant time/space commitment, whatever your age or situation. Obvious? Perhaps. But then, why do outlets continue to bang away with long-form content that deploys minimal information-imparting mechanics? Is it all they know?

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Does Twitter Have a Publishing Problem or Opportunity?

I just recently discovered John Battelle, author and publisher of John Battelle's Searchblog and a founder and Executive Producer of the Web 2.0 conference.

He wrote an interesting viewpoint RE Twitter publishing and what he thinks makes the social site tick and what possibly would/could solve it's existing scaling problems (keeping provided service balanced with demand and growing and branching out that service?).

This from his Searchblog through Business Insider:

Twitter's Major Publishing Dilemma

One of the many reasons I find Twitter fascinating is that the company seems endlessly at an inflection point. Eighteen months ago I was tracking its inflection point in usage (holy shit, look how it's growing! Then, holy shit, has it stopped?!), then its inflection in business model (hey, it doesn't have one! Wait, yes it does, but can it scale?!), and more recently, its inflection point in terms of employees (as in growing from 80+ staff to 350+ in one year - necessitating a shift in management structure....).

Twitter now faces yet another inflection point - one I've been tracking for some time, and one that seems to be coming to a head. To me, that inflection has to do with usefulness - can the service corral all the goodness that exists in its network and figure out a way to make it useful to its hundreds of millions of users?

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