The chart below, compiled and created by Inside Facebook, shows Monthly Active Users for a number of news sites. However, one should note that there are many things affecting social reader usage, from Facebook’s continually changing algorithm, which alters when and how user activity on another site is shared, to coding bugs within one publication’s social reader.

© Inside Facebook

Clearly, social readers can be a great way to get referral traffic to your site, especially if you have a metered (not hard) paywall that lets new visitors sample your content. But be aware that user experience is a big determinant of how much referral traffic you’ll get. Many consumers dislike social reader applications that require referred users to authorize the app and share their activity in order to read an article read and shared by their friend.

Smart subscription sites know that social readers are traffic drivers, not conversion mechanisms. They’re also wary of Facebook, which essentially controls your content’s distribution through its social reader and has a penchant for changing terms of use on the fly.

But that’s no longer true for our digital world. Online, the more niche-appeal a site has, the more readers and the more likely they are to elicit paying subscribers.

Education Week, a national B2B publication, has wisely adopted this philosophy for their audience of educational policy makers in different states and regions across the country.

The site has chosen to tailor its newsletters and RSS feeds by publication, state, topic, and other niche areas. For example, you can get a newsletter called “Curriculum Matters” (the site smartly lets readers preview a sample at sign-up). Or you can get RSS feeds for educational topics related to your state, budget & finance, or bullying. Or perhaps you just want all the content from one blog — there’s an RSS feed for that.

Of course, one should be careful about how fine one splices content. Education Week is a national publication with 30 years of archived content, so 100+ RSS feeds was do-able, even reasonable, for them. Other subscription sites may want to start off on a smaller scale, with three to five different offerings.

You may have seen our recent in-depth How-to on LinkedIn Today, which is a great way to drive high-value traffic to your site, particularly if you’re a B2B site.

But once you’re optimized for LinkedIn Today, you’re going to want to reach out to bloggers, journalists, key decision-makers or influencers in your industry who can increase your LinkedIn Today standing by sharing your content and endorsing your brand.

To find those influential voices, go to the News tab on your member homepage and click on “Signal.” This will lead you to a new page with a search box at the top left. Enter a few words from a recent content piece, or even the name of your publication. LinkedIn will then display all the other LinkedIn members who have shared or commented on content that contains your search terms.

After you figure out who these people are, you’re going to want to either add them to your network (especially if they’re key decision-makers within your target audience) and, if they are bloggers or journalists covering your niche, keep track of their names and contact information to pitch them with future story ideas. You may also want to join any groups that are particularly popular among your top sharers.

Lastly, this option is a great way to get a real-world assessment of the results of your editorial and marketing strategies; if you find your content is being shared a lot by people outside your target market and not too many within your niche, it’s time to rethink what you’re doing.

But before you consider giving your comments section the axe, you may want to look at your referral traffic numbers. In this week’s How-to on our sister site, Subscription Site Insider, we explain how “comments” sections allow users to cross-post their comments to social media feeds, which then increases the amount of referral traffic they get.

For sites like LinkedIn, these cross-posts not only let LinkedIn members share your content, but also determine your ranking on LinkedIn Today — LinkedIn’s aggregating service of online content and an incredibly powerful platform for driving high-quality traffic to your site for free.

There are two ways to let people cross-post their comments from your site to social media sites. The traditional way has been to allow users to login with a social media account. Here’s a screenshot of that option from Forbes.com:

But we prefer what the Huffington Post is doing. Instead of forcing users to link their site with one social media account, HuffPo is letting users post any particular comment to a variety of social media sites:

This is a great option, since it lets people share your content over multiple platforms as well as reduces visitor resistance to sharing by not forcing them to link one of their social media accounts to your site. Bravo, HuffPo!

To learn how comments can then get you listed as a “top headline” on LinkedIn Today, read Subscription Site Insider‘s most recent How-To. It’s explains the secret behind LinkedIn Today’s complex algorithm and has 9 practical tips to help you drive more referral traffic to your site.

Brian Hunt, Publisher of The Recorder

When speaking to Brian Hunt about his upcoming talk at Subscription Site Insider’s April Summit in San Francisco, he mentioned that his publication, The Recorder — which provides California attorneys with daily industry updates — has done a better than average job of targeting an old-fashioned marketplace that loves paper to subscribe to their online content.

How did The Recorder do it? Brian will give the full answer at the Summit, but we suspect their highly effective site tour video had something to do with it. With lovely blue highlighting, the video has a professional quality while explaining the basics of navigating the site, including the multiple ways one can search for a particular topic or article. While this may seem rudimentary for digital publishers, it’s imperative that these easy messages are conveyed to paper-friendly audiences in clear, concise language with visual displays. If the video’s well done (i.e., a calming narrative voice, clear visuals, and smooth transitions), even an advanced user will sit through it– and leave with a better impression of your publication.

The Recorder also does some other interesting things — like providing both a free 30-day trial of full content (with credit card) and a 90-day trial of limited content. Come see Brian speak at our April Summit to find out which trial has better conversion rates!

But subscription site execs might not have as much to fear as you think. True, Google’s constantly changing platform makes it more difficult for businesses to, well, do business — especially when the rules to get to the goal post change as you’re running down the field. And search traffic is important. But not as important as conversion.

As Avinash Kaushik mentioned in a recent speech at the SES conference in New York, online businesses need to get past “the 2%” of measuring clicks and page visits and focus on the value of the interaction. This is done by measuring both micro and macro conversions, he said. By getting a more 3-dimensional picture of members, subscription sites will have the recurring revenues to withstand the  bottom-line fluctuations caused by Google’s mercurial business practices.

If you’re looking to get bloggers to link to your subscription or membership site, follow these easy steps:

1. Use Google Analytics (or whatever comparative program you have set up) to find out who’s linking to your site.
2. Search your direct competitors and find out what blogs are linking to them
3. Many blogs are supported through Google AdSense. Use your account to find out which blogs are getting your ads and reach out to them
4. Make sure the marketing department is compiling a list of these people and updating them frequently.

If you’re looking for more tips to drive traffic to your subscription or membership site through online press release distribution, including which distribution service  might be best for you, make sure to check out Subscription Site Insider‘s on-demand video of Jarboe’s talk. It’s chock full of tips!

One of the tips she gave was to buy the .tv URL for your site as soon as possible. This will allow you to create a dedicated video channel which will have multiple benefits. One, you’ll get lots of free media training by making videos. Two, you’ll create an online video portfolio that will increase your chances to be selected by media outlets for TV appearances. And three, video gets ranked high in search results when done right, so you’ll be driving more traffic to your site.

If you’re interested in more of Lorie’s tips, check out the on-demand video of her Webinar on our sister site, Subscription Site Insider. And if you think video production is just too complicated or expensive, you’ll want to buy a ticket for our April Summit in San Francisco where Brenda Power of Choice Literacy will be giving a talk on how to make video segments on a budget.

We don’t get to say thank-you enough for your loyalty. But today, I was trolling the Web and came across the most charming animated Google Doodle, which not only has a guileless expression of love, but also exemplifies how to harness new media tools to create memorable content.

What makes this great is it’s apparent simplicity. No doubt, there was some complex technical skills required. But the artists aren’t trying to draw attention to their virtuosity — they’re trying to remind you of a very simple emotion — love without consumerism. It’s the best type of marketing.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to combine message and media, consider attending Subscription Site Insider’s April Summit in San Francisco, where I’ll be speaking on content evolution online. Or just keep reading Paywall Times!

Your Funny Valentine,

PT
PS- Don’t forget your subscribers today. Take a cue from Formstack, a SaaS site that took a break from acquiring new subscribers to appreciate their current ones with this cute login page.

Send some love to current subscribers this Valentine's Day

At the same time, 55% like contacting brands through social media to give them feedback. They also like it when a brand has a page or site, especially if the page has coupons and discounts.

What’s the takeaway? Let your social media be a lighthouse, steadily attracting traffic but not wading in the waters to collect people. Wait for them to engage, but then make sure to follow-up, even if the request falls more squarely in customer service than sales.

Unfortunately Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” feature may have dimmed your lighthouse’s beacon, highlighting Google + profiles over all other social media. However, the clever engineers at Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are not going quietly into the night. They just released a browser bookmarklet, or small piece of code, that can run in Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari (sorry IE users) and pulls up relevant social media profiles across platforms for any search you do.

Perhaps you want to tweet/post about it on your social media profile to let your fans/followers/friends know?