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The story about Univen's Tondani Rolivhuwa Sikhwari, who was crowned Miss South Africa Plus World, reached 114 709 users.

When a story goes viral the results surprise

 

The reach of social media is often surprising, not so much in terms of volumes of people, but the type of news story that triggers responses.

The Limpopo Mirror makes extensive use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to reach readers and to channel traffic to its own websites. One of the big advantages of using social media platforms is that it provides additional statistics that could be used in discussions in the newsroom to guide the editors and journalists.

The reality is also that the results are often very unexpected, and a seemingly “soft” story can go viral. This is exactly what had happened the past few weeks.

The Limpopo Mirror’s Facebook page boasts just over 43 000 “likes”. In theory this means that, once a new story is posted, it should reach the biggest part of these unique users. In practice this does not happen, because the social media platforms use complicated algorithms in trying to calculate what each user finds interesting.

The Limpopo Mirror prioritizes the printed product, which means that the news in general first gets published on a Friday morning. The main articles are then released in batches on digital platforms, spreading the process out over a five-day period. If a story is breaking, it will directly go onto the website, even if it is just a shorter version of the article.

As a rule of thumb a posting reaches between 2 000 and 8 000 Facebook users. When a prominent news story “breaks”, you expect the count to increase. This was the case when the Supreme Court of Appeal announced its ruling in the Vhavenda kingship case. The news broke on a Friday morning and a brief report was posted. This posting reached 49 661 Facebook users. The more comprehensive story, linking to the website, reached 43 113 users.

The story about the kingship battle was, however, not the top story of the week. Two other postings attracted much more attention. The tribute by Tshifhiwa Mukwevho after the death of prominent musician Paul Mulaudzi reached 75 258 people. No fewer than 196 people commented on the story.

The biggest “crowd puller” was the story about a student of the University of Venda, Tondani Rolivhuwa Sikhwari, who was crowned Miss South Africa Plus World. The posting reached 114 709 users. It had 10 865 “engagements”, meaning more than 10 000 people responded to the posting by actively “liking”, sharing or clicking on the link.

The figures once again prove that content is king. If the story is newsworthy, it reaches thousands of people, and once it gets shared, the multiplication factor kicks in.

 

News - Date: 25 April 2019

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Anton van Zyl

Anton van Zyl has been with the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror since 1990. He graduated from the Rand Afrikaans University (now University of Johannesburg) and obtained a BA Communications degree. He is a founder member of the Association of Independent Publishers.

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