All bar one of Trinity Mirror’s regional news websites saw a year-on-year increase in traffic, according to the latest ABC figures.
The group’s main regional titles continued to see year-on-year growth in web browsers compared to September 2015 – except the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, which recorded a 4.29pc decrease.
The Birmingham Mail recorded the largest growth in that metric, at 41.04pc.
An earlier version of this story stated that the number of Facebook likes the Hull Daily Mail received had doubled, while its number of Twitter followers halved.
Trinity Mirror have since confirmed to us that this was due to the Mail’s Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter ‘followers’ being published the wrong way round in ABC’s report.
The full figures for each newsbrand are as follows:
| Product | Metric | Sep-16 | MoM% | YoY% |
| Birmingham Mail | Daily web browsers | 260,451 | -9.11 | 41.04 |
| FB likes | 236,072 | 2.19 | 79.88 | |
| Twitter followers | 183,220 | 5.81 | 68.56 | |
| Chronicle Live (Newcastle) | Daily web browsers | 259,514 | -3.52 | 25.93 |
| FB likes | 206,480 | 3.69 | 69.74 | |
| Twitter followers | 119,472 | 4.28 | 54.77 | |
| Coventry Telegraph | Daily web browsers | 65,459 | 4.43 | 13.04 |
| FB likes | 35,594 | 4.18 | 58.88 | |
| Twitter followers | 57,003 | 4.8 | 56.01 | |
| Daily Post (Wales) | Daily web browsers | 88,031 | -4.83 | 17.51 |
| FB likes | 148,557 | 14.26 | 169.2 | |
| Twitter followers | 68,047 | 3.98 | 41.63 | |
| Get Reading | Daily web browsers | 54,378 | -14.55 | |
| Get Surrey | Daily web browsers | 52,568 | 3.82 | |
| Huddersfield Daily Examiner | Daily web browsers | 59,471 | -7.84 | -4.29 |
| FB likes | 77,735 | 3.43 | 68.14 | |
| Twitter followers | 45,801 | 3.06 | 35.29 | |
| Hull Daily Mail | Daily web browsers | 103,984 | -5.84 | |
| FB likes | 56,870 | 4.99 | ||
| Twitter followers | 119,183 | 3,16 | ||
| Leicester Mercury | Daily web browsers | 68,573 | -8.43 | |
| FB likes | 46,074 | 2.31 | ||
| Twitter followers | 75,643 | 4.92 | ||
| Liverpool Echo | Daily web browsers | 526,691 | -11.95 | 33.25 |
| FB likes | 1,131,694 | 0.44 | 12.81 | |
| Twitter followers | 308,169 | 2.22 | 33.46 | |
| Manchester Evening News | Daily web browsers | 782,492 | -6.08 | 34.29 |
| FB likes | 1,181,275 | 4.56 | 58.88 | |
| Twitter followers | 374,035 | 3.55 | 42.16 | |
| Teesside Evening Gazette/Gazette Live | Daily web browsers | 111,509 | 2.47 | 14.08 |
| FB likes | 101,977 | 2.97 | 38.44 | |
| Twitter followers | 55,939 | 3.9 | 45.73 | |
| The Sentinel, Stoke | Daily web browsers | 73,461 | -4.69 | |
| FB likes | 77,940 | 6.03 | ||
| Twitter followers | 50,752 | 6.28 | ||
| TM Regional Network | Daily web browsers | 3,721,519 | -4.52 | 81.46 |
| Visiter (Southport) | Daily web browsers | 13,533 | 7.17 | 26.65 |
| FB likes | 12,200 | 14.26 | 226.7 | |
| Twitter followers | 8,534 | 1.6 | 20.72 | |
| Wales Online | Daily web browsers | 349,014 | 9.45 | 8 |
| FB likes | 311,517 | 3.55 | 116.2 | |
| Twitter followers | 137,018 | 5.09 | 64.3 |
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More meaningless tosh. Until Facebook like are a hard currency (preferably tied to the value of the Euro) these figures are worthless. As for the fickle Twitterati; who cares.
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I’m not going to ask the same old question that no doubt majority of people are thinking with regards to popularity not equating to revenues but tell me someone, with social media likes up but other social media followers down what use is this and what does it tell the papers concerned?
All that matters in business terms are bottom line revenues and only copy sales and advertisers equate to hard cold revenue, popularity or otherwise is pointless vanity
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The reality is that website clicks, Facebook likes, Twitter follows and ‘engagement metrics’ have expanded exponentially. To impressive levels in many cases. Revenue attached to it has not. It isn’t even close.
At some point, someone is going to have to concede that it isn’t ever going to happen, not without some radical thinking that doesn’t simply involve pushing journalists to get ‘more web hits’.
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These figures will shock everyone, good informative post keep it up..
http://www.injectfollowers.com
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I can’t quite believe these figures. For the Local World papers, I’m sure the TM axe hasn’t quite started demolishing readerships as much as those that have suffered longer.
But, are these individual browing trips counted each time someone clicks onto a website, or per user?
Because having read the offering from some of TM’s titles, I can only presume it’s the sport offering, not the news, that is keeping these figures afloat in terms of online readership.
Or maybe the rise in clickbait?
I’m sure the breakdowns are available.
Who was it said ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’?
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Not me, Saddened J. I just stick with lies – you know where you are with them.
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Here’s a question … when these regional publishers quote to advertisers the mindbending figures (which in some cases seem to have more viewers than the population), I’ll bet they don’t assess the vast numbers who use Adblocker, without which the Trinity Mirror sites are unusable.
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TM’s websites don’t make enough money to keep the present structure afloat, so the company cuts costs by closing newspapers and savaging staff numbers at newspapers, which still make up the majority of their income.
As Jeff Jones is fond of saying: wibble.
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Revenue generation isn’t a popularity contest. If it were, TM wouldn’t be shutting another four papers.
How long until the first ‘big’ regional goes digital only with just a handful of reporters? I’m guessing five years. Well, my heart hopes for five but my brain says I’m a sentimental fool and it’ll be three years (or less).
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Regional: I’m probably just as big a sentimentalist as you – perhaps more so – but as a print junkie, I would estimate my remaining time in the business as being no longer than two years. And I’ll be glad of that.
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Same old tedious comments on here.
More Facebook likes = more web traffic
More web traffic = more digital ad revenue
Print revenue continues to fall. One day it will reach a point at which it won’t be cost-effective to print newspapers. At that point only the websites will be left. It’s not rocket science.
Well done TM for helping to keep local news relevant in the digital age.
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” …. At that point only the websites will be left” says zenithar
Only if money continues to be pumped into them from other parts of the business to top them up as they will have shrivelled and died in that time having failed to capture an audience of both readers and business advertisers to fund the sites through advertising .
then what?
” sponsored content” is farcical and the last scrapings of the content barrel and puts more vistors off than it attracts so If people are happy to get a wide range of quality local and national content for free from credible sites which are seeing high volumes of web traffic they certainly won’t be seeking out regional newspaper sites either free or with a paywall.
Popularity via likes and followers just underlines how far removed from a business world those running the regional press has become if this is deemed currency of value,it isn’t.
Too many big specialist news providers are serving up high quality content for parochial sites ever to become financially viable or of worth,
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