NN: Successful social media stories inform, inspire and educate

[Logo]( When testing headlines, try to be current and educational, and experiment with word count Hi there, Last summer, we looked at the [characteristics of successful headlines on Facebook](, parsing the numbers in the NewsWhip database to pick commonalities in the titles of stories that attracted a lot of engagement on the platform. Our findings at the time pointed to great headlines being conversational, vivid, and crucially, not misleading the reader. All of these principles remain the same, and now we’ve identified [a few new factors of note for successful headlines on social media](, based on the data we’ve seen in NewsWhip Analytics. This week, we took another look at the stories and headlines that are getting attention in social feeds. Here’s what we recommended: - Try to make your headlines timely: When we look at the most popular stories on social media in the last month, many had to do with current events. Our data has seen a large growth in engagement with political and news content this year. Non news sites can try and make their headlines a bit more timely, too. Even if your story is evergreen (such as an explainer, or a how-to guide), repurposing the headline and description text to explain why it’s relevant to current events gives it new currency for people browsing their social news feeds. - Educate, inspire and uplift: Stories that offer to give readers additional information about a current event can see enthusiastic engagement. Headlines using constructions such as ‘what you need to know’ and ‘how to’ are a way of putting an educational angle on your stories. As usual in social publishing, there isn’t a one-size fits all for platforms and publishers however. - Word count? Best to vary it: Of course, it’s usually a good idea to make things as succinct as possible. If you can get the message across in less characters, the headline will fit better in link previews, and avoid being cut off automatically. However, the word count heavily engaged headlines do vary from site to site, so it can be difficult to prescribe a hard number to target. The above findings are some solid principles to keep in mind for any social media team tasked with selling the story on different platforms but imposing very strict headline word or character counts could lead to missed opportunities for sites. Better to have a general headline style and tone policy, recommended lengths for different platforms, and then leave it to the various editors to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Looking for the perfect Instagram video length We recently saw how [engagement with video on Instagram has increased for publishers]( over the last year or so. With this growth happening at a fast pace, and more videos being posted in response, publishers will be looking for best practices for their social media teams to emulate. We analysed the data to see [what the average length of Instagram videos]( looks like for 20 top publisher pages on the platform in June, including National Geographic, Vogue, Time and more. The average length of clips from the top pages varied somewhat. BuzzFeed News had the longest average length of all pages surveyed, with each of their five most engaged clips in June at a max of 60 seconds. The average length for the 20 pages together came to 30 seconds. What many of the clips from all pages had in common were action-packed visuals. Human interest or animal-focused videos, focused on invoking empathy, joy, or other heartwarming sentiments were also popular. [Read the full findings on our blog](. [Photo]( Report: The Top Sports Publishers on Social Media Data-driven insights around sports trends and sites on social media, and tips on how to reach your fans and build an audience online. [Photo]( What Publishers Should Expect from Social In 2017 Midway through 2017, this report remains essential reading for anyone looking to understand social publishing. [Photo]( What We've Learnt from Three Years of Social Data Learn how social distribution has changed for publishers since 2014 with our data report. Noted - A new Snapchat update is bringing links to the platform for regular users. [According to the Verge](: "Snapchat’s latest update on iOS and Android now lets users do what brands can already do: link a website to your snap. Now your friends just have to swipe up to view whatever you link in Snapchat’s internal browser." - Facebook looks like it may be removing the ability to edit link previews when sharing in the news feed. Currently, social media editors commonly use this feature to adapt copy and tone for their social audiences. On Digiday, Max Willens [runs through the possible implications](, with varying reaction from publishers. That's all for this week If you find this newsletter useful, please [recommend to a friend](. Don't hesitate to reach out if we can help with anything, or you'd like to know how NewsWhip can help your social media strategy. Have a great weekend, Liam and the NewsWhip team. Useful Links Products Resources Blog Contact www.newswhip.com About Us Millions of stories, videos, and social posts are published each day, sparking billions of interactions. NewsWhip transforms this ocean of social data into actionable insights to inform your content strategy. NewsWhip products show you what audiences are engaging with in real time and what has performed best historically – in every vertical. This email was sent to {EMAIL}. 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