For years, many content creators have built formidable news portals around the concept of the traditional website. While blogs may also prove to be useful in the world of niche news, most news and aggregation sites have been successful due to a traditional platform combined with key elements of community and social interaction. As social media becomes a larger influence in our day-to-day lives, more and more people are beginning to obtain their news and information from a variety of different sources. As the audiences and markets for current news and events shift, is your content strategy ready to adapt? Below, we will discuss some of the trends and expectations for content distributors and aggregates in the coming years.

Social Media Writers

If you currently have multiple people writing on your behalf, then what methods do they use as individuals to propagate the content they create that is featured on your site? As social media becomes a larger presence in our lives and search engines give them more deference, it is vital that your writers are pinging URLs to their articles on various social media networks. Established social media writers appear to be the future for key news distribution via search engine – Google Plus writers with a large portfolio and great writing skills already enjoy the privilege of being featured in select search results.

The Social Web

This trend is particularly evident in the United States, where more than a quarter of all social media users report obtaining daily information about current events via at least one social media network. Of those who do, more than two-thirds report that they have shared at least one news article with a friend over the past week. Being positioned so that your content can find its way into the hands of avid social media sharers is crucial to maintaining a lead in the news business in the coming years. Even if these trends were less pronounced, virtually every form of content creation now benefits from the act of pinging URLs to social media – there are simply too many people using social media for it to be ignored.

Know the International Differences

Different markets are likely to respond to your news in different ways. While you are probably already aware of this in regards to a traditional website and how your traffic is divided by country, social media provides both an opportunity to reduce these barriers and some built-in differences of its own. One of the biggest examples is the level of sharing and news gathering via social media from country to country. In Australia, for instance, only 10% of social media users report sharing a story with a friend – less than half of the sharing rate in the US – so it is vital that you understand these differences when monitoring metrics and realize that key differences based on audience will make a difference.

As social media continues to increase its clout on our daily lives, those who make a living in the news industry will need to adapt to its techniques. By having a team of social media-savvy writers, understanding the dynamics of sharing and how news content flows between users and the differences in this phenomenon between various audiences, you can be prepared to successfully transition from the world of traditional news into one where social media drives the distribution.