Capturing Social Momentum

Equip The Journal News with the right tools to examine its content’s referring traffic sources as a means of generating and perpetuating audience engagement.

In October 2012, a Journal News human interest story resurfaced in the “Top Pages” section of their Chartbeat dashboard — several days after its original publication. Mystified by the article’s resurgence, editors used Chartbeat Publishing to dig into referring traffic sources, and found that the article had gained serious traction on Facebook. So, editors moved the story back to their homepage and wrote several follow-up stories.

And they dominated. The follow-up stories would king their top stories day after day. Because The Journal News was monitoring Chartbeat, staffers were able to pick up on traffic signals calling them to action. Not only did they use these insights to inform their decision-making process, but they were also able to quickly validate their decisions.