by Ron Callari
In my previous blog, “Is USA Today’s ‘Social Media Lounge’ A Little Late To The Party?” I talked about how some legacy newspapers like USA Today were in somewhat stalled position as to how best to work with social media. With USA Today’s launch of their Social Media Lounge, I questioned if they were simply ‘testing the waters’ or jumping in with both feet. In a subsequent interview with Alexandra Nicholson, manager and social media strategist for the paper, she clarified some of these points and confirmed the paper’s commitment to social media.
1- Some businesses shy away from social media because they don’t se the ROI. What is USA Today’s position on social media (similar to public relations) in not having a direct correlation to ROI?
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Nicholson: We also understand the value of other forms of ROI – return on interaction and influence. For example, through the interactions by our journalists in the Twitter community, this form of engagement leads to higher interaction and influence within those micro-communities which in turn leads to higher traditional ROI on the back-end as these users visit our site whether in the short-run or long-run.
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2- What types of analytical tools will you be using to determine the effectiveness of your department’s social media initiatives?
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Nicholson: We currently use Omniture and ComScore to measure traffic and are analyzing further monitoring tools specific to social media.
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We also use Hitwise to take a close look at the per cent of traffic from social media sites to both USA TODAY and our competitors. Additionally, this past Monday it was announced that we are one of a handful of early partners with Awareness Networks to test their new Social Marketing Hub, which will allow us to further manage and measure our social media efforts,
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3- What is the current percentage of online vs print readership? What was it in 2007?
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Nicholson: According to MRI, our network readership number in November 2009 was 6.1 million people daily, in print and online. In 2007 that number was 5.4 million.
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4- Will you be conducting any social media promotions? What goals, results, benchmarks, etc. would you be tracking to determine the success of these promotions?
 To read more, visit: http://inventorspot.com/articles/usa_todays_commitment_social_media_39222