Troy Young on how Hearst digital is breaking traffic records

What’s more, eight brands celebrated their best months in brand history:

  • Elle.com and GoodHousekeeping.com welcomed 69 per cent and 46 per cent more uniques respectively, and both reached 15m visitors.
  • CountryLiving.com hit 13m uniques (+93 per cent) and Delish.com also nearly doubled its audience with 6.2m (+96 per cent) unique visitors.
  • Esquire.com grew 61 per cent, reaching 12m unique visitors.
  • HarpersBazaar.com was up 69 per cent, with 9.7m unique visitors
  • PopularMechanics.com’s 7.8m unique visitors was 48 per cent more than last year.
  • MarieClaire.com grew the most at 132 per cent, which totaled 7.4m unique visitors.

Here, min checks in with Troy Young, Hearst Magazines Digital Media president, to find out where all this growth came from and how he plans to keep breaking records across the portfolio. 

Most obvious question, what do you attribute all this growth to?

Our MediaOS platform and collaboration between brands allows us to more effectively tell amazing stories with specific points-of-view that resonate with very specific audiences. In the past couple of years, we have also gotten increasingly proficient in adjusting the mix of content on our sites to meet the needs of the Internet, in real-time. We focus on content that mixes of-the-moment news stories with original, thoughtful service and features. We are also better listeners. 

Can you give some examples of what content is driving high engagement from brand-to-brand, and break it down by platform?

On Facebook, a mix of news and service content is driving engagement across all brands. To break it down further, it’s more news with Esquire but “man service” also does well. For Good Housekeeping, Country Living and Delish, service stories drive the most traffic and not surprisingly, Thanksgiving was huge. For Cosmo, relationships, celebrity and viral stories perform well. And on Pinterest, it’s service, service, service.

How much of this traffic is coming in through social? And how much of that social traffic is coming in through Facebook alone? 

A little more than 35 per cent of our traffic comes from social and Facebook has the majority percentage of that number. 

Read the full article here

Source: Min

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