Report: News organizations don’t get much out of Twitter

If you’re a news organization, you’ve probably noticed that Twitter isn’t doing much in terms of bringing you lots of traffic. A report from Parse.ly, a social analytics company, determined that the typical news organization sees very little traffic from Twitter. (The report is accessible to all, but you’ll need to provide your email address to gain access to the report in its entirety.)

Looking at data for 200 of Parse.ly’s own clients across a two-week period in January, the analytics company saw a median of eight tweets per post, three clicks per tweet, and 0.7 retweets for each original tweet. That’s a tiny amount for a typical news organization; in fact, it translates to roughly 1.5 percent of all traffic. Parse.ly, which represents publishers like Upworthy, Slate, Business Insider and The Daily Beast, saw that its top five percent of publishers would get a better lift of 11 percent total traffic coming from Twitter, with a median of 180 tweets per post, 18 clicks per tweet, and four retweets per original tweets.

The best way to perform well on Twitter, the report states, is to share content that is relevant and interesting to the demographic of a “large number of people.” Among shared content, Parse.ly sees conversational content (about a specific topic) and breaking news stories getting the bulk of the engagement, with links to breaking news driving a lot of traffic.

However, as seen in the image above, Facebook and Google are the best traffic referrers to news websites, with Yahoo trailing behind, followed by Twitter. Traffic is primarily social in nature for news organizations, but search traffic also captures a big chunk of the pie.

Parse.ly concludes that Twitter still remains a breaking news platform, but it appears that after news breaks, Facebook and Google capture the most traffic.