We’re trying something new this month and taking a birds-eye view at each country that SoMe Index monitors. We look at the top players and the top stories that dominated social media rankings this October in Finland, Sweden, Norway, France and the Netherlands.
Finland 🇫🇮
Iltalehti ranked #1 in Finland until the last week of October when they were overtaken by Ilta-Sanomat, who’ve been steadily growing engagements throughout the month. Ilta-Sanomat started October with 770,600 total weekly engagements, and ended it with 1,165,913 – that’s an increase of almost 400,000 engagements – reaching #1 place in Finland by social media engagements.
Interestingly, 400,000 weekly engagements is almost exactly as much as Iltasanomat has lost within one week – at the every end of October, descending to the second place in the ranking. When comparing that last week of October in terms of stories, Ilta-Sanomat has clearly been the winner – with their top stories reaping 74,000-52,000 total engagements, whereas Iltalehti’s top three stories for that week only averaged 29,000-20,000 total engagements.
The 3rd to 5th places varied week-on-week among YLE, MTV3, Helsingin Sanomat and Arvostettu this October.
The most popular news topic of the month? Killer clowns – and a general call for them to stop scaring us and our children, please. This one story from Iltalehti brought them 92,511 total engagements.
Sweden 🇸🇪
In Sweden, the biggest winner among publishers this October was definitely Newsner. Their engagement numbers fluctuated throughout the month, but they ended up overtaking the Swedish ranking table and becoming #1 publisher by social media engagements at the end of October.
Given that their total weekly engagements almost doubled that month – from 553,466 at the end of September to 985,871 at the end of October – that’s a big accomplishment!
Newsner is followed by Expressen and Aftonbladet, who were occupying the first and second place throughout the month but descended to second and third at the end of October. SVT, ViralKing.se, and TV 4 competed for 4th and 5th places throughout October.
Videos bring a lot of engagement on Facebook, so it’s no surprise that the most popular story in Sweden for the whole month of October is ViralKing’s teaser promoting a TV show about Swedish Hollywood wives (Svenska Hollywoodfruar). That short clip amassed 90,801 total engagements.
Killer clowns get an honorary mention – since they made it to the top 3 most popular stories in Sweden in October as well.
Norway 🇳🇴
Things have remained fairly stable throughout October as far as the ranking is concerned. TV2 and NRK retained their first and second places respectively, though the gap between the two publishers narrowed significantly by the end of the month.
TV2 ended October with more total weekly engagements than in the previous month, though overall October has seen them with much lower engagement numbers than September. Case in point: best two weeks in September (weeks 37 & 38) TV2 got 865,241 and 763,316 total engagements, whereas the best week in October (week 41) only brought them 631,548 total engagements.
NRK has also seen highs and lows throughout October, but similarly ended up with more weekly total engagements at the end of the month compared to the end of September, though not by much. For them, just like for TV2, the weeks in September show higher numbers than the October weeks.
Dagbladet.no and VG alternate between 3rd and 4th places with very small margins, while Aftenposten and Nettavisen battle over the 5th place in the ranking.
Cecilia Brækhus dominated the headlines in Norway this October – with top 2 most popular stories rejoicing over her 29th consecutive boxing victory, knocking out her opponent after two rounds only!
VG’s story garnered 60,799 total engagements:
NRK Sports got a total of 57,513 engagements on their coverage of the event:
France 🇫🇷
In France, 20 Minutes’s engagement numbers have slightly declined over the four weeks, but they maintain a clear first in the overall country ranking. The real battle is being waged between BFMTV and L’EQUIPE who alternate between second and third places week-on-week – something they’ve been doing throughout September too.
Football.fr retained an almost stable fourth place throughout the month, and France 24 displaced TF1 in the 5th place at the end of the month.
The most shared and talked about story in October in France comes from the satirical publisher La Gorafi who poked fun at the politician Jean-François Copé after his remarks that grossly underestimated the cost of the french pastry pain au chocolat. The story attracted a staggering 244,551 total engagements.
The Netherlands 🇳🇱
In the Netherlands, the race is much closer. Every week, top 3 places are battled between RTL Nieuws, AD.nl, and dumpert.nl. And the 4th and 5th places are battled between Ongelooflijk, De Telegraaf, and Metro Holland, with NOS briefly appearing on the 4th place in October thanks in large part to one popular post about a TV award. With 96,598 total engagements, that post ended up being the 3rd most popular story of the month in the Netherlands.
When looking at the most popular October story in the Netherlands, it again becomes clear how powerful native video posts are on Facebook. The most popular story was shared by DWDD. It’s a satirical take on the first 2016 US Presidential debate, which got a whopping 130,297 total engagements.
For a more detailed look at the rankings in each country, make sure to check SoMe Index – we release fresh numbers every Tuesday.
In November, we’ll be launching SoMe Index in Denmark – you can already read about it in MediaWatch.dk.
The data described in this blog post is available at SoMe Index.
SoMe Index is powered by EzyInsights, the leading content discovery tool used by publishers. EzyInsights tracks engagement on hundreds of thousands of stories daily, helping newsrooms use data to increase their traffic. SoMe Index uses EzyInsights data to give a clear, accurate view of publisher performance in Finland, Sweden, Norway, France and the Netherlands.
