Over the past two weeks, we’ve shared some interesting insights into the relationship between key earned media attributes and consumer behavior, based on Onclusive’s recent research on global PR measurement data from over 100,000 articles.
Publishing authority was found to be a strong driver of consumer activity at the top of the marketing funnel, including pages viewed and actions taken on branded websites as a result of reading media articles. The articles are not very relevant to the brand.
Today, we’re looking at article brand engagement and sentiment as predictors of website traffic and actions.
And since these findings are more surprising than anything else, let’s take a closer look!
Social media engagement and consumer behavior
Social Media Engagement represents the number of likes, shares, comments, retweets, repins, and other social media interactions a media article receives on social networks.
Drumroll please!
Of all the media traits we analyzed, social media engagement levels were found to be the greatest predictor of website traffic. Articles with high engagement drove 113% more website visitors than articles with low engagement.
When it comes to website actions, the correlation is even more pronounced, with high-engagement articles driving 280% more website activity than low-engagement articles.
How you can use this in your PR strategy:
- To leverage social media engagement as an extraordinary driver of website traffic and action, subscribe to our comprehensive media monitoring or social listening service.
- This technology allows us to consistently track the content our audiences engage with the most and create more such content to drive desirable consumer behavior.
Brand Sentiment and Consumer Behavior
Brand sentiment is the tone and sentiment of an article towards the company or brand being mentioned. It can be either positive, negative, or neutral.
In our study, this was the most unexpected finding.
As you might expect, we found that sentiment was negatively correlated with both website traffic and actions.
Positive sentiment articles get 50% less traffic than negative sentiment articles, and neutral sentiment articles get 49% less traffic than negative sentiment articles. Also, articles with positive sentiment get 3% less traffic than articles with neutral sentiment.
Similarly, positive sentiment articles received 31% less website action than negative sentiment articles, while positive sentiment articles received more (41%) than neutral sentiment articles (41 %) triggers a website action.
Website actions, including pages viewed, as well as sign-ups and purchases, are powerful indicators of brand awareness and audience engagement.
Therefore, website content quality is equally important in both good times and crisis times. However, proper crisis management can also make a big difference to the level of sentiment in an article.
How you can use this in your PR strategy:
- The adage “all press is good press” may not always apply to brand reputation, but negative media coverage seems to drive website activity. Perhaps people want to know more about negative media companies than positive reporting.
- All in all, always maintain a solid contingency plan while ensuring a consistent flow of positive content and ways to actively distribute this content to the media.
- Even in times of crisis, you can bring great interest to your brand and positively influence consumer behavior. Be prepared to be available when these events occur.
Presence of Backlinks and Consumer Behavior
We define a “backlink” as a link to a brand’s website embedded in a media article mentioning that brand.
This insight is not surprising. The presence of backlinks is highly correlated with website traffic, with an 87% increase in traffic when articles have backlinks.
And while backlinks don’t predict the website actions these website visitors take, they can still drive 45% more actions:
How you can use this in your PR strategy:
- In fact, there’s not much you can do to influence whether backlinks are included in published articles about your brand.
- The data above suggests that you should definitely request it, but the existence of backlinks in earned media content is under the control of creators and publishers.
- That said, if your website is relevant, up-to-date and has useful information, other websites (including media outlets) are more likely to link to it.
A word about our research methodology
Analyzed over 100,000 media articles published worldwide between January 1 and December 31, 2021, representing business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) brands across a wide range of industries A sample was analyzed. Articles in this study included only earned media content published via digital media (excluding social media).
Zack Jenkins is the US General Manager of Onclusive.
For more information, see the rest of the articles on Earned Media Attributes That Drive Consumer Action. A three-part series. Publishers and consumer behavior, Articles Brand Relevance and Consumer Behavior.
