How social media boosts The Economist subscription growth

The Economist has centered its social media strategy on driving people back to its site to subscribe, and its efforts are bearing fruit, reports Lucinda Southern of Digiday.

Southern writes, “Since changing its social media strategy to drive traffic from social media back to its own pages where people can register and, ultimately, subscribe, the publisher has grown monthly referral traffic from social media platforms by 180%. Now, about a third of its site traffic comes from social platforms, said Kevin Young, head of social at The Economist, although he was unwilling to share specific figures on how many subscribers this is driving.

“The change in focus comes as more publishers favor the regularity of direct reader revenue to the volatility of a digital ad market in flux, battered by disappearing third-party site-tracking cookies, tightening privacy regulations and threats from Google and Facebook’s abundance of logged-in audiences. Now, publishers are pulling every lever to reach core strategic goals. For the Economist, which has always charged for content and so has long ago converted its core cohort, the challenge is sustaining growth and retention.”

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