Episode 28

The truth about news site traffic

with Andrew Smith

About this episode

Understanding how people interact with media sites is essential in PR planning and measurement. 

It has been an on-going challenge in Public Relations to understand the true volume of people arriving on news sites due to publishers’ secrecy on traffic figures. There was further focus on this topic recently, when UK news site, The Guardian reported that The Telegraph online is planning to link journalists’ pay to traffic and popularity of their articles.

So, in this episode, I interview digital communications consultant Andrew Smith on his research into publisher traffic. 

We discuss: 

  • How readers arrive at news stories
  • Where the traffic comes from and how they interact on-site
  • Publisher traffic growth strategies 
  • How the ‘pay for views’ model could work and the problems that could come with this
  • Traffic and data tools available to journalists and PR people 

No matter what country or industry you practise PR in, this episode is relevant to you.