In the rapidly evolving landscape of media consumption, digital channels have become pivotal battlegrounds for capturing audience attention. “The Top Performing News House Leveraging Digital Channels” delves into the digital dominance of four leading news outlets, each boasting a robust presence in both print and digital realms. We will look at Trinidad Express, Loopnews TT, T&T Newsday and Trinidad Guardian.

This case study focuses on analyzing the digital and social media performance of these media houses, which are known for commanding substantial web traffic and engaging vast social media audiences. As these platforms increasingly influence advertising revenue streams, understanding which media houses excel online is crucial for businesses aiming to optimize their advertising investments.

By scrutinizing the web traffic and social media metrics, we offer insights into where the digital eyeballs are concentrated, who is engaging with these outlets, and where potential advertising dollars could be most effectively allocated. This analysis provides a strategic lens through which businesses can view and assess the digital prowess of media houses, guiding decisions in a landscape where digital engagement translates directly to commercial opportunity. This also serves as a pulse check to who John Public goes to for their information.

*All data used in this case study is from April 2024.

Website Traffic Performance

This screenshot from a market analysis tool provides an overview of the digital performance of news outlets in Trinidad and Tobago as of April 2024. It shows a moderately-low level of market consolidation, indicating that the market isn’t dominated by a single entity but has a competitive spread among key players. The three primary news houses, guardian.co.tt, newsday.co.tt, and trinidadexpress.com, hold market shares of 32.93%, 29.76%, and 26.34% respectively, highlighting a fairly even distribution of digital influence.

The total traffic for all market domains combined stands at 3.9 million visits (from Trinidad and Tobago ONLY…Global Traffic for the group sits at 6.4m), which represents a significant decrease of 22.78% from previous figures. Despite this decline in traffic, the market traffic cost has increased by 46.65% to $14.7K, suggesting that the cost of acquiring traffic has become more expensive, possibly due to increased competition or higher costs per click in digital advertising. This scenario presents a dynamic digital landscape where market shares are relatively balanced among the top players, each vying for a substantial digital footprint in a competitive environment. The data points to a total addressable market (TAM) of 18.7 million and a serviceable available market (SAM) of 2 million, which is about 10.52% of TAM, indicating the portion of the market that is reachable through current digital channels.

Share of Website Traffic

The graphic presents the distribution of web visits among four major news outlets in Trinidad and Tobago. Guardian.co.tt leads the market with a 32.93% share of the visits (1.3m site visits for April), closely followed by newsday.co.tt with 29.76% (1.1m site visits for April), and trinidadexpress.com with 26.34% (1m site visits for April). Loopnews.com holds a smaller portion, accounting for 10.97% of the visits (423k site visits for April).

This distribution illustrates a relatively competitive digital landscape where the top three news outlets dominate but do not overshadow the smaller players, indicating a diverse market where no single entity completely controls the digital news space. Such a scenario underscores the importance of strategic digital marketing and content delivery to capture and maintain audience interest in a competitive environment.

The Website Traffic Distribution

Here are the traffic distribution numbers:

• Direct: 57.45%
• Referral: 29.14%
• Organic Search: 8.08%
• Organic Social: 5.3%
• Email: 0.02%
• Display Ads: 0.01%

This data visualization reveals the traffic distribution for a media outlet, indicating a dominant reliance on direct visits, which comprise 57.45% of total traffic. This suggests strong brand awareness and loyalty, as the majority of users actively seek out the website by directly entering its URL or using bookmarks. The second largest traffic source is referrals, accounting for 29.14%, highlighting the effectiveness of links from other websites in driving visitors.

Organic search is responsible for 8.08% of the traffic, reflecting a moderate impact of search engine optimization efforts. Organic social channels contribute 5.3%, showing some engagement through social media platforms, albeit less significant compared to direct and referral sources. Minimal contributions from email and display ads, at 0.02% and 0.01% respectively, suggest that these channels are either underutilized or less effective in attracting visitors to the site.

Overall, the data underscores a multi-channel digital presence, heavily weighted towards direct and referral traffic.

Suggestion: We often complain that many of the people on social media don’t read or only read the headlines, with only 5.3% of the website traffic coming from social media, I would recommend creating more condensed stories suitable for social media to give people the gist of what your key stories are about, keeping them on the social media platform. You can still post the link to the story in the post for more information but this may be a way to combat people only stopping at reading the headline on social media.

Audience Demographics: Age and Gender

The image provides an analysis of the age and gender demographics for the audience of four media houses. The age distribution indicates a steady engagement across different age groups, with the highest percentage of the audience falling within the 25-34 and 35-44 age brackets, both hovering around 20%. This suggests a strong presence of young to middle-aged adults in the audience base. The 45-54 age group also shows substantial engagement but begins to taper off in the older demographics, with the 55-64 and 65+ age groups progressively representing smaller portions of the audience, most likely due to them preferring the physical copy of the newspapers as opposed to reading it digitally.

In terms of gender, the audience is predominantly male, accounting for 54.07% of the total demographic, compared to 45.93% female. This male skew could influence the type of content and advertising strategies deployed by these media houses. Overall, the data depicts a diverse audience with a significant representation from younger and middle-aged adults, and a slightly higher engagement from males, providing valuable insights for targeted content creation and marketing campaigns.

Audience Geographical Distribution

The image presents the geographical distribution of website traffic for four media houses in Trinidad and Tobago, highlighting the audience reach both locally and internationally. Trinidad and Tobago, as the primary market, captures the highest share of traffic at 60.26%, totaling 3.9 million visits, although this represents a significant decrease of 22.78% from the previous month. The United States follows with 16.32% market share but has seen a drastic reduction in traffic by 69.97%, amounting to 1 million visits. Canada and Jamaica also show significant declines in traffic, with reductions of 37.73% and 58.56% respectively, contributing 556K and 354.5K visits. Notably, India stands out with a remarkable increase in traffic, showing a 205.43% rise to 268.4K visits.

This data indicates shifting patterns in audience engagement, suggesting various impacts on international reach and highlighting areas of growth and decline in global interest. The total amount of Global Website Traffic for the month of April sits at 6.4m.

Social Media Platforms Visited By Audience

This image represents the social media platforms visited most often by the market audience…But what can be done with this information you ask? Let me break it down:

With the information provided in the image about the social media platforms most often visited by their market audience, brands can optimize their digital marketing strategies in several ways:

1. Content Tailoring: Understanding which platforms are most popular among their audience allows brands to tailor their content strategies accordingly. For example, with high engagement on YouTube, brands might focus on creating compelling video content that could include tutorials, behind-the-scenes footage, or product showcases.
2. Ad Spend Allocation: Brands can more effectively allocate their advertising budgets to the platforms where they are most likely to reach a larger portion of their target audience. Given the high usage of YouTube and Facebook, allocating more resources to these platforms could yield better ROI.
3. Platform-Specific Features: Each social media platform offers unique features that can be leveraged to engage with users. For instance, Instagram’s Stories and Reels are great for short, engaging clips that drive interactions, while LinkedIn is ideal for B2B communications and professional content.
4. Engagement Strategies: By knowing where their audience is most active, brands can develop specific engagement strategies such as interactive posts, live sessions, and community-building activities tailored to each platform’s strengths and audience preferences.
5. Cross-Promotion Tactics: Brands can utilize cross-promotion tactics to guide their followers from one platform to another, enhancing their overall social media presence. For example, they could use their high-performing YouTube channel to drive traffic to their Instagram or Facebook pages.
6. Analyzing Trends and Preferences: The popularity of different platforms can indicate audience preferences and trends. For example, the high engagement on YouTube suggests a preference for video content, guiding brands to perhaps adopt a more video-centric approach in their marketing strategies across other platforms as well.
7. Demographic Alignments: Different platforms may attract different demographic segments. Brands can use this information to tailor messages that resonate with specific age groups, genders, or interests predominant in each platform’s user base.

Overall, understanding which social media platforms are most frequented by their audience provides brands with critical insights to refine their marketing strategies, ensuring they engage their audience effectively and efficiently.

The Social Media Performance Of Our 4 News Outlets

Total Follower Count Across All Social Media Channels

The image provides a detailed comparison of the social media audience size across several platforms for four major media houses, showcasing the total follower count and highlighting their presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.

Trinidad Express leads with a total of 670,246 followers, distributed as follows: 359,203 on Facebook, 128,849 on Instagram, 164,742 on Twitter, 3,200 on YouTube, and 14,252 on TikTok. This profile suggests a robust strategy leveraging traditional platforms like Facebook and Twitter, with emerging platforms gradually being incorporated into their outreach.

The Guardian has a total of 404,308 followers, with an increase of 0.069%. The distribution includes 224,867 followers on Facebook, 56,561 on Instagram, 122,781 on Twitter, and a notably smaller presence on YouTube with only 99 followers. This indicates a strong focus on mainstream social media channels, with minimal engagement on video-centric platforms.

Loopnews TT showcases a balanced approach with a total of 296,847 followers: 150,109 on Facebook, 100,210 on Instagram, 45,528 on Twitter, and 1,000 on YouTube.

Newsday has 256,723 followers with a recent growth of 0.47%, spread across 138,700 on Facebook, 83,627 on Instagram, 32,786 on Twitter, and 1,610 on YouTube. This distribution points to a growing engagement on visual platforms, complementing their traditional social media presence.

Each media house displays unique strengths and strategies across different social media platforms. This data provides valuable insights into their digital marketing approaches, indicating where they are successfully engaging with their audience and suggesting potential areas for further development to enhance their social media footprint.

The Amount Posts in the last 30 days

The image details the volume of social media posts made by four Trinidadian media houses across multiple platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. The Guardian leads significantly in terms of activity, with 3.69 thousand posts, although this represents a 5.48% decrease from a previous period. Newsday, while having fewer posts at 1.85 thousand, shows a robust increase of 7.94% in its posting activity, indicating a growing focus on social media engagement. Loopnews TT follows closely with 1.72 thousand posts but has experienced a 5.86% decline in activity. Trinidad Express has the lowest number of posts at 737, but it shows a slight uptick in activity with an increase of 0.82%.

Knowing how much each brand is posting is good because it will set the stage to see if its resulting in engagement or if they are just posting to check a box and not worried about whether or not, their audience is engaging with their content.

Total Engagement

The image shows the total cross-channel engagement for four media houses across social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. Trinidad Express leads in engagement with 116,000 interactions, although this represents a substantial decrease of 37.9% compared to a previous measurement period. Loopnews TT, on the other hand, shows remarkable growth, with its engagement soaring by 118% to 90.7k interactions, likely reflecting effective content strategies or campaigns that resonated well with their audience.

Newsday and the Guardian both experienced significant declines in engagement, with decreases of 21.3% and 23.2% respectively, resulting in total engagements of 87.4k and 74.3k. These figures suggest that both outlets may be facing challenges in maintaining their audience’s interest or effectiveness in their social media activities compared to past performance.

The competitor average stands at 98k interactions, positioning Trinidad Express and Loopnews TT above the average, while Newsday and the Guardian fall below. This variance indicates differing levels of success in engaging users across these platforms, highlighting the importance of adapting and innovating in content and engagement strategies to meet shifting audience preferences and behaviors.

The Correlation Between Volume of Posts & Total Engagement on The Content

Analyzing the relationship between the number of posts and the total engagement interactions for each brand reveals several insights:

1. High Volume, Lower Engagement Drop: The Guardian, despite having the highest number of posts at 3.69k, they received the lowest amount of total engagement in the group with only 74.3k interactions. This suggest that although they are the most active in terms of content production, the content may not be resonating as effectively with the audience causing engagement to decline.
2. Moderate Posting, Significant Engagement Growth: Newsday, with a moderate number of posts at 1.85k, generated 87.4k total interactions on their content. This indicates a more effective content strategy where the posts are likely more aligned with audience preferences or are of higher quality, leading to greater interaction per post compared to its competitors.
3. Lowest Posting, Variable Engagement Performance: Trinidad Express, which has the lowest number of posts at 737, generated the most amount of interactions at 116k. This suggests that even with fewer posts, their audience is aligned and highly engaged with the content they do post, which could be indicative of a focused, quality-over-quantity approach that resonates well with their audience.

These points highlight that the number of posts does not necessarily correlate directly with engagement levels. Effectiveness of content, relevance to the audience, and perhaps the timing and nature of the posts play critical roles in how audiences interact with the content shared by these media houses.

Engagement Per Post

The image depicts the total engagement per post for each media house, highlighting their efficiency in generating interaction through their social media content. Trinidad Express, despite a significant decline of 38.4%, leads with an average of 157 interactions per post, which is nearly double the competitor average of 85.7. This indicates that their content, though less frequent, has a strong impact per post.

Loopnews TT shows a remarkable increase of 131% in engagement per post from the previous month, reaching an average of 52.7 interactions. This substantial growth suggests a significant improvement in content quality or relevancy, resonating well with their audience. Newsday, however, experiences a decline of 27.1%, averaging 47.3 interactions per post.

The Guardian has the lowest engagement per post at 20.1, down 18.7%, which is considerably below the competitor average. This suggests that while they post more frequently than others, the content might not be as engaging or well-targeted, highlighting a possible area for strategic review and enhancement in their social media practices. This overall data provides critical insights into the effectiveness of each media house’s content strategy in fostering audience interaction.

Total Number of Likes or Reactions By Social Media Channel

This image shows the total amount of Facebook Reactions and Likes across all social media channels tracked. This is deemed as the lowest metric for engagement.

Total Number of Comments Across Social Media

This is the total amount of comments made across all social media channels. Comments are a great metric to track because they have more weight in the social media algorithms than likes but they also give you context of how your audience feels about your content. It’s also a great way to measure whether or not you communicated your message correctly.

Total Number of Shares

This image shows us the total number of shares for the content across all tracked social media channels. Shares are an extremely important metric to track as they have major weight in the social media algorithms but also let’s you know that your content ultimately resonates with your audience to the point where they want to share it with their communities.

Trinidad Express is the undisputed leader in engagement, holding the top spot for Likes, Comments and Shares.

The Top Performing Posts in the last 30 Days

The image displays a snapshot of the top-performing social media posts from our media outlets, showing a variety of content types and the engagement they have received. Trinidadexpress.com has two significant posts with very high engagement rates. The first, concerning a San Fernando businesswoman robbed at gunpoint, garnered a massive 12.7k engagements, indicating a very high interest likely due to the shocking nature of the incident. The engagement rate for this post is extremely high at 92.8%, suggesting that almost all who saw the post interacted with it in some way.

Another post from Trinidadexpress.com about a visit by the Delaware National Guard’s Army Aviation units to the Cedros Recreation ground received 5.14k engagements, with a lower engagement rate of 37.2%, both of the top 2 performing posts also happened on TikTok! Loopnews TT’s post about a Florida-based pilot moving passengers to tears when he shared his dream of flying his parents, achieved 7.54k engagements, but with a much lower engagement rate of 7.57%, indicating broader reach but less intense engagement.

Finally, another post from Trinidadexpress.com about four men killed in St Augustine has the lowest number of engagements at 957, with an engagement rate of 6.78%.

These insights highlight the variance in audience engagement dependent on content type, immediacy of the news, and possibly the emotional or sensational nature of the content. They underscore the importance of content strategy in driving engagement on social media platforms. The brands must also monitor every month which social media channels are they receiving the most engagement from, so they know where to double down on.

Engagement Rate By Social Media Channel

Facebook emerges as the most active platform with an average of 29.1 posts per day per company, though it has a relatively low engagement rate of 0.031%. Twitter also shows high activity with 21.6 posts per day but an even lower engagement rate of 0.003%, indicating that while content is frequently shared, it does not necessarily resonate deeply with followers.

Instagram, with 15.5 posts per day, demonstrates a higher engagement rate of 0.088%, suggesting a more effective balance between post volume and audience interaction. YouTube, while only hosting 0.40 posts per day, has a minimal engagement rate of 0.30%, reflecting the platform’s nature of less frequent, but potentially more substantial, content uploads.

TikTok stands out with the highest engagement rate of 16.4%, although the posting frequency is the lowest at only 0.07 posts per day. This indicates that even minimal content on TikTok can generate significant audience interaction, highlighting its efficacy in engaging viewers compared to more traditional platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This data underscores the importance of tailoring content and engagement strategies to the specific dynamics of each platform to maximize audience engagement.

Landscape Activity and Engagement Rate By Post Type

The image provides a breakdown of posting frequencies and engagement rates by post type across various media companies. Photos are the most frequently posted content type with an average of 30.6 posts per day per company, closely followed by links, which are posted at a rate of 27.3 per day. Despite their high posting frequency, both photos and links have relatively low engagement rates at 0.030%.

Videos, which are posted nearly 5 times per day, have a slightly higher engagement rate of 0.048%, indicating that while less frequent, they may provide more value or interest to followers. Reels are posted about 3 times per day and have a somewhat higher engagement rate of 0.11%, suggesting that this newer form of content is engaging viewers effectively.

Carousels, which appear less frequently at 0.64 posts per day, have the highest engagement rate of all the content types at 0.13%. This indicates that while they are used sparingly, they are highly effective at engaging followers. On the other end, status updates and GIFs are used very minimally, almost negligible per day, and correspondingly have extremely low engagement rates.

This data illustrates a clear trend where more dynamic and visually engaging content types like carousels and reels tend to have higher engagement rates, even though they are used less frequently than more traditional content types like photos and links.

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Let’s Recap

• Most Followers – Trinidad Express
• Highest Total Overall Engagement – Trinidad Express
• Top Performing Singular Post in The Last 30 Days – Trinidad Express
• Most Website Traffic – Trinidad Guardian

As we conclude this case study on the digital performance of top news houses, it’s evident that the strategic interplay between content type, platform choice, and audience engagement is crucial in today’s digital-first media landscape. By navigating through the complexities of social media engagement and website traffic, media houses can uncover valuable insights that guide their content strategies across different platforms. This approach not only enhances viewer engagement but also ensures that each piece of content is crafted to meet the unique preferences and interests of diverse audience segments.

We invite you to reflect on these findings and share your thoughts. Which aspects of this case study resonated with you or stood out the most? Your insights and perspectives are invaluable as we continue to explore and understand the evolving dynamics of digital media.

Please comment below and join the conversation.

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