Sporting News

Objective

Drive traffic and engagement on the Sporting News site by making it as easy as possible for people to engage with and share content from its website.

Implementation

Sporting News implemented the Like Button and the Recommendations Plugin to provide a quick and easy way to share articles with friends on Facebook. They placed both Social Plugins on all content pages across the site, including news articles, individual team pages and player pages. Sporting News also used traffic data to optimize the implementation and refine their utilization approach.

Results

• Three months after the Facebook Social Plugin integrations, traffic to the Sporting News site doubled.
• Since the integration, Facebook has become one of the top three referrers of traffic to Sporting News – up from #16.
• Facebook referrals to Sporting News increased 63% from October to December 2010.
• Facebook activity on Sporting News increased 49% in total in January and February 2011.