How the Economist has 35 million followers on social media

Dominic Ponsford of The Press Gazette writes about how The Economist has 35 million followers on various social media.

Ponsford writes, “Standage said that social media is driving traffic and subscriptions. The Economist claims total magazine sales in print, and digitally, of 1.5m a week worldwide.

“He said: ‘Users who come to us from social are more likely to come back to us than, say, users who come from search. They are more loyal in that sense. And users who come back to us are more likely to subscribe.

“‘The first step is to read our journalism and to understand what we are doing.’

“In terms of the future of social media, Standage said messaging apps are going to be big and he singled out Line – a messaging and phone calls app which is popular in Asia.

“Standage said: ‘It looks like Instagram, but you can send links and push-notifications to followers.

“‘It’s startling how effective that is and there is no [search] algorithm.'”

Read more here.