ABC News reaches 1 million likes on Facebook
Our journey to 1 million Facebook fans began in March 2009, and it's been hard graft pretty much every step of the way.
Our strategy has evolved but the underlying philosophy has remained the same: to provide a useful, entertaining source of news on Facebook, without feeling the need to drive people back to the ABC News website.
In late 2013 we noticed a bump in follower numbers. This continued throughout 2014, tapering towards the end of the year.
In the past 12 months, the ABC News Facebook page has grown by a staggering 882 per cent.
There was speculation recently that ABC News was buying likes. Buying likes has never been a strategy we've pursued. There's no point having fans if they're not engaging with your content.
So where did all these fans come from?
Towards the end of 2013 Facebook announced it was going to focus on delivering more "high-quality content" to users' news feeds.
"High quality" as in timely and relevant, from a source you trust, that you'd be likely to share with friends or recommend to others.
ABC News has been one of the beneficiaries of that focus, with page recommendations accounting for the bulk of our recent growth.
According to the Online Circle's Australian Facebook Performance Report for 2014, the news and magazines sector has experienced the biggest growth in fans, adding 5.5 million in the past 12 months.
(The next biggest is travel and tourism, which added 4.1 million fans in 2014.)
That growth has bumped news and magazines from the 17th biggest Facebook sector in Australia in 2013 to seventh in 2014.
The Courier-Mail notched 408 per cent fan growth in 2014, SBS News 986 per cent. InStyle magazine recorded a whopping 1,148 per cent!
So what's next for ABC News on Facebook?
Our goal is to turn a large potential audience into a large, engaged audience. I say "potential" audience because, on average, each post is only seen by 6 per cent of fans.
By posting content that encourages likes, comments and shares, we can reach people who aren't currently fans.
The other, more important, part of the equation has nothing to do with the ABC News Facebook page.
And that is to create compelling digital content on the ABC News website that people want to share - whether that's via Facebook, Twitter, a chat app or email.
