By MARTA FERNÁNDEZ MARINAS.
Axios is a growth-stage startup dedicated to providing trustworthy, award-winning news content in an audience-first format. We are going to analyze their social networks and their use of them.
Axios shares content on two different platforms, instagram, and twitter. As a startup focused on information, reliable data dissemination and news, its social media presence is purely for information purposes.
This news outlet is a very recent publication, founded in 2016, but the growth and attention it has received since then is striking. This, in large part, is due to how, when and why they use social media. It is a publication that has understood the importance of being on networks and being active on them. We therefore analyzed the content and form of axios on digital platforms.
The social network twitter is the most followed by axios readers, with more than 628 thousand followers. From the account, they follow 992 users, most of whom are axios reporters, founders and staff. If there's one thing this publication is good at, it's saying in a few good words what they need you to hear, like their twitter bio, which reads: "Smart Brevity worthy of people's time, attention and trust".
As for their twitter content, they post a brief summary of news of general interest, accompanied by a link to a photo of the article. The photos chosen for each news item are strikingly good, are attractive to the reader and make their twitter feed look very good.
For many news items, they use data maps and graphs, in these cases they are interactive and colorful to compare data/years so that the reader understands and has context. A brief explanation and a link to the story is also included.
Finally, on many occasions they use twitter threads to explain in detail a complicated news story or conflict, again, accompanying the information with images. They often interact with other users by retweeting them, these tweets are of course informative.
The official axios profile on instagram has more than 170,000 followers, a figure that is far below that of twitter. On this platform axios follows only 168 people, including official news
accounts such as @applenews. Its Instagram biography, in addition to the link to the newspaper's website, has the following slogan: "the news that matters, with visuals you won't forget".
In their profile, they usually share publications with a small image, where text is the main feature. In headline and subtitle format. In the description of the photo, a brief description of the news item and a link lead to the website, which is open and offers the possibility of having a paid pro user. The instagram wall of the account is balanced and harmonious in terms of the range of colors chosen for the publications, and the typography used in all the photographs. It is not overwhelming, nor does it overexpose you to the news. The posts chosen tell relevant stories, in a clear, concrete, concise and complete way.
In their reels section, short videos, they have a wide variety of testimonials and news stories explained with text or subtitles. This is a much more attractive and innovative way of communicating, these reels have a range of views that oscillate between 30,000 and 130,000 views.
The account has a large section of featured stories, sorted by topic (Ukrainian war, coronavirus...etc). In their stories, they don't explain the news in detail, but they do include headlines and pictures that catch your attention so that you go to the link. These stories are more interactive than the posts, they are eye-catching, colorful and innovative.
Knowing the importance acquired by social media platforms in terms of information, the instagram platform considered paying Axios to produce trustworthy information for its social media network.
As an interesting initiative, Axios has local instagram accounts for some states of the US, in which they inform about the local issues that matter to each state. This way they demonstrate that local news is also important and being next to the reader is of real value.