The brand new SND Analytics Library includes the Top 10 Facebook Post widget which, as you might imagine, displays the top ten posts by post actions (Likes + Comments + Shares) for ANY public Facebook Pages you want to compare. While most Social News Desk clients quickly load the widget with competitors – this tool isn’t just for the obvious horserace; there are many other ways to put it to good use.
The Obvious
Yes, you can use it to plug in your Facebook page and your competition’s pages to see whose posts are “winning” the engagement race. Are your stories beating the guys across the street today? Or this week? This month? What is the competition covering that maybe you should cover too? Or cover better? Are you surprised by what you don’t see? You can, on the fly, change the display of the widget so you can see just yourself in the list, or just your competition, or any combination thereof, for quick and dirty leads on what your audience wants to see.
The Big Picture
In many of our newscasts we include the top national news. But when you only have an eight-minute news hole to fill after weather and sports, choosing the best national stories is important. So how about setting up a Top 10 widget that displays all the top national television and print news sources that Facebook has to offer? Sure, the election is a hot topic right now, but what angle is getting the most attention? What are people sharing with each other? A Top 10 set up to monitor the national picture is eye-opening.
Family Tree
Many of us are part of larger corporate groups with sister stations across the country. From time-to-time it isn’t uncommon to share or “borrow” (read: steal) content from our siblings when the content is really compelling. So try keeping a Top 10 populated with your sister stations’ feeds so you can literally see when a friendly station has hot content that they might be kind enough to send down the fiber.
How do you use our Top 10 widgets? What’s your favorite SND Analytics tool? Let me know @rmorrisSND. Want to know more about Social News Desk? Drop a line.
