1. Geotargeting Content on Facebook NPR's Experiment in Local Engagement
Keith Hopper
Director of Product Strategy and Development
@khopper

2. NPR Programming reaches 26.4 million listeners every week
Stations
NPR has 271 independent member stations providing national and local news to individual communities
About 93 percent of the U.S. population is within the broadcast listening area of one or more member stations
NPR Programming reaches 26.4 million listeners every week
Independent stations have local newsrooms – we think this is pretty powerful
My division serves those regional markets – strictly in the digital space

3. Geotargeting: What we did

4. Geotargeting content on Facebook

5. Geotargeting content on Facebook
npr.org
Allows us to have posts that only show up on the wall of npr fans who live in a geographic region
Done through NPR’s facebook page, which as 2.3 million followers or “likers” if you will
Worked with one market (Seattle) – jake ellison, online managing editor at KPLU
They pitched stories to one of our editors at NPR - Eric Athas – my partner on this project. He coached, edited and approved up to one story a day.
It’s been running for 6 months
kplu.org

6. Core Objectives
Experiment around what drives local engagement and clicks on Facebook
Encourage digital behavior change at a local level
Explore ways to deepen our digital partnership with stations
Why do this?

7. Editorial Strategy NPR’s sweetspot Local flavor geotargeted
What makes a good geotargeted NPR Facebook story?
NPR’s
sweetspot
Local
flavor
geotargeted
Initial pitches were radio stories
This idea of doing local facebook postings inside a national account was a new concept
Coffee shop test

8. Measurement Measure campaign traffic
Determine method for engagement performance between Global NPR Facebook posts and geotargeted posts
Engagement Rates =
Likes/impressions
Shares/impressions
Comments/impressions
Google Analytics Campaign tracking

9. Geotargeting: Results

10. Engagement Measurement – First Pass
Per thousand impressions
GLOBAL
Per thousand impressions
First month, six top stories
GEOTARGETED

11. Engagement measurement – 2nd Pass
Used Facebook Insights data, focused on three metrics:
Engagement: The number of Shares, Likes and Comments on a post
Reach: The number of unique people exposed to a post
Engagement Rate = Engagement total / Reach total

12. Engagement performance measurement
Total Engagement Rate (Oct – Dec 2011)
0.02
Geotargeted
Why? Comes back to the coffee shop test = both locally-relevant and imminently sharable
Global
0.003

13. Other highlights First 50 posts drove 50k+ visits
More than doubled social media traffic in first month
Geotargeted posts responsible for site’s largest traffic day and three highest traffic months
Seattle now largest growth region for overall NPR account “likers”
NPR National desk is now promoting local pieces globally
Engagement success is driving editorial changes in local newsrooms

14. Community-driven conversations

15. Community-driven conversations

16. Community-driven conversations

17. Community-driven conversations

18. Some Outstanding Questions
Is this repeatable?
Will it fade over time?
Does it scale?
How much can this drive global NPR follower growth?
How valuable is this to stations and users?
What other ways can this be done?
What’s next?
Validating results, expanding experiment
Asked for funding from knight to build a tool to help us scale this
Npr.org localization effort

19. Geotargeting: Takeaways

20. Takeaways Experiments! Geotargeting! Start small and stealthy
Know what you need to measure, set up early
Be prepared to learn and pivot
Geotargeting!
Select content that works on Facebook
Encourage content that engages your local market
Use your large potential audience as a carrot
Can you scale?