American City Business Journals (ACBJ), the nation’s largest publisher of local business news, handles the considerable task of distributing targeted news for 43 business journals across the United States–and managing that content across social media platforms.

LinkedIn serves as an effective social platform for ACBJ to share content and expand engagement of its weekly audience of 3.6 million readers because the business-focused platform caters to a niche audience.

“We definitely understand that this is specifically where our readers are,” said Social Media Manager Fabiana Fanfani. “We know it’s where executives and recruiters are looking for information. The content we publish is exactly what users on LinkedIn are looking for.”

ACBJ’s presence on LinkedIn has grown significantly over the past two years, with a 25% jump in engagement in the last year alone.

Each of ACBJ’s 43 business journals oversees its own LinkedIn account, which is typically co-managed by an editor and a marketer. This gives about 88 ACBJ employees across the country access to business journal-branded LinkedIn accounts. Strategic direction is guided from the corporate level.

 We publish marketing posts from our corporate office, so we’re able to post for all of our markets using Sprout, as opposed to going into 43 different LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter accounts.
Fabiana Fanfani
Social Media Manager

ACBJ’s social approach takes advantage of Sprout’s Tag Report. Each marketing team makes sure to tag every LinkedIn post identically across markets, tracking them through the Tag Report to measure what types of posts perform best.

“We discovered recently through the Sprout Tag Report that we’ve been doing really well with education-related content across social media,” Fanfani said. “We’ve switched up our strategy so that if we see that a topic like education gets the most clicks or engagement, we try and focus on more posts like that.”

While Sprout’s Tag Report helps drive strategy across markets, Sprout’s scheduling and management features help drive efficiency in publishing.

“Sprout as a management tool is very helpful for us,” Fanfani said. “We publish marketing posts from our corporate office, so we’re able to post for all of our markets using Sprout, as opposed to going into 43 different LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter accounts.”

Business Journals compose graphic

ACBJ has placed a strong emphasis on engagement, with the broader goal of increasing traffic from social media. Between April 2016 and April 2017, the company observed a 21% hike in follower growth on LinkedIn and a 7% increase in overall engagement.

To track this, each ACBJ market aims to run each Sprout report at least once a month to measure impressions, link clicks and to pay closer attention to what content resonates with its audience.

“When it comes specifically to LinkedIn, it’s such an important platform for us,” Fanfani said. “Having Sprout to be able to manage each market and see what they’re doing–how often they’re posting or not posting at all–it’s a big deal in our corporate office.”

Sprout’s platform provides ACBJ with social media management tools to smoothly manage and monitor its social media pages across the country. The brand is able to showcase its hyper-local news in a strategic and engaging way without compromising efficiency and organization.

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