Donald Trump has rewritten the presidential playbook, forever changing the way a president talks, acts and even tweets. Bloomberg Politics' social accounts followed him every step of the way.
We provided readers with smart, fast and comprehensive coverage of Trump's rollercoaster first year in office across platforms. Bloomberg relied on the one thing that tests all politicians, Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives: facts.
To separate facts from fiction, the global social media team leveraged our deep bench of experts and mountains of financial data to go beyond flashy headlines and soundbites. This allowed us to explain Trump's full impact on legislation, U.S. national policy and, ultimately, the world. We explored the Trump effect by posting content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Periscope as well as emerging platforms like Flipboard, Apple News and mobile alerts, reaching hundreds of thousands of users.
Covering this administration is a 24/7 job, which starts before the president wakes up and begins tweeting. Bloomberg Politics mobilized social editors around the world, from Hong Kong and Singapore to London and Washington, to keep readers informed in real time.
Scoops gave us an edge, with social media emerging as the top traffic driver back to Bloomberg.com. Readers could look to our accounts for accurate, fast-breaking news updates around the clock.
Bloomberg was the first to report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating Trump's personal business dealings, a major expansion of his probe. Bloomberg also produced sophisticated reporting on the Kushners' financial worries, poring laboriously through property and mortgage records to show the extent of Kushner Cos. debt on a signature property, 666 Fifth Ave. We also broke the news when Steve Bannon was fired from the National Security Council – one of the most-read stories on Bloomberg.com last year, with more than 1.5 million web hits of which 40% were driven by Facebook.
Our made-for-social video explainers disseminated information on key political issues for our audience on topics that dominated the larger social conversation. These digests helped users quickly understand the stories blowing up their news feeds. Video profiles of top figures also helped readers get to know the new White House power brokers.
Data visualizations tracked many topics ranging from Trump's travel ban and how it overlapped with his business ties around the world to whether he's really making the U.S. economy great again.
Throughout the year, we livestreamed speeches, press conferences and other live events to both Periscope and Facebook. For political junkies, this has become must-see viewing. Among the highlights, we partnered with Twitter to bring former FBI Director James Comey's testimony live from Capitol Hill, reaching nearly 2.7 million people worldwide. Even Russia President Vladimir Putin weighed in on Trump during a Bloomberg-moderated live panel in Russia. In doing so, we brought the conversation directly to platforms where the public gets its news.
As part of our Trump coverage, social editors also accompanied the global government team abroad for the G-20 summit in Hamburg and APEC. We covered protests outside the venues on Instagram, Periscope and Facebook Live, which generated huge engagement, and used reporters' footage to create behind-the-scenes Instagram Stories. We worked with the newsroom to encourage digital-first stories around the events. One example includes Ivanka Trump taking the president's seat in a G-20 meeting – the story generated 715,000 views in just a day.
Our team also explored new ways of storytelling. A Trump tracker chatbot that we created delivered the biggest headlines to subscribers on Facebook Messenger. The use of Twitter Moments helped us capture a snapshot of trip's first trip abroad.
We drove the political conversation on many platforms and reached millions of users with our wide array of content.
Bloomberg Politics now holds the title of most-clicked on vertical by unique visitors on Bloomberg.com for 13 months in a row, coinciding with the re-launch of the site in January 2017. Social was the top traffic referral source last year, driving approximately 25% of UVs back to the site on average.
Our Twitter audience increased by 57% since the beginning of 2017. On Facebook, we grew the amount of page likes by 35% in the past year.
This increase in engagement and the consistent visitors across our Bloomberg Politics vertical confirms that we are cutting through the noise and delivering content people want and have come to rely on.
