Manchester online publisher Manchester’s Finest Group has announced that its Proper Manchester site is the UK’s most engaged, and fastest-growing, local news publisher on Facebook.
Ranked by Facebook’s monitoring platform CrowdTangle, Lifestyle and news site Proper Manchester claims it had the most interactions (18.81 million) all UK local news publishers for the whole of 2022, and the biggest percentage growth in followers when compared to all global media.
The reported growth of 24.24 per cent is double that of nearest UK competitor Wales Online, who ranked second with 12.62 per cent, and ahead of the average 7.21 per cent growth across all UK local media.
Proper Manchester also made the top 10, based on Facebook interactions, for all UK media, ranking 8th just behind Sky News.
Part of Proper Manchester’s recent growth strategy has to increase its video content, recruiting LADbible Group’s Eleanor Ingleby as Social Video Manager in mid-2022. The resulting increased views culminated in the site reaching 112 million people on Facebook in December.
Jamie Roberts, head of content for Proper Manchester, said: “I’m absolutely buzzing that we’ve achieved this, especially with such a small but dedicated team, managing to compete with and overtake the big, established local publishers, like M.E.N and Wales Online.”
Sophia Crilly, business development director for Manchester’s Finest Group, added: “We’re so proud of what Jamie and the team on Proper have achieved in the past year – it’s a fantastic result for a small team creating a fraction of the output of the established media platforms, so the quality of content speaks for itself.”
The Facebook figures round off a successful 2022 for the wider Manchester’s Finest Group. The company moved into a new office in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, grew its team to 22, and pushed its combined social following to over 2 million over the course of the year.
