As it becomes more clear that people are getting their news from social networks, institutions like the Pew Research Center are turning to social networks to gather intelligence on engagement with current events & daily news content.
According to the Pew Research Center, Thirty-five percent of adults that view news on social media are using multiple social networks to keep up with current events. A recent Pew Research infographic shows the crossovers and pathways that users take when engaging with news-related topics on the top social networks.
It turns out that Facebook is the most likely channel of use when gathering news on social networks, since more than fifty percent of adults that get news on Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn and Youtube also get news on Facebook. However, the shared audience reduced tremendously when taking Facebook out of the picture.
The infographic below illustrates the crossover effect between social networks for users that get their news from multiple social networks:
Social media marketers should definitely use Facebook as a primary channel for industry news curation and distribution. In combination with recent announcements from Facebook that news stories will be highlighted in user feeds, Facebook cannot be ignored.