marketing

How News Brands Should Set Up Google+ Pages

On April 5, 2012

Google made Brand Pages available last fall. Much like Facebook Pages, this allowed for companies, organizations, causes and the like to have a customized G+ presence that’s separate from a personal profile.

A properly set-up Page will help your news organization not only connect with users on Google+, but also help your stories and profiles get found more easily in Google searches.

To sign up for a Page, you first need a personal Google+ account to serve as an administrator. You’ll need to be logged in to that account in order to follow the directions to set up a Page. Mashable has a very helpful slideshow walking through the Google+ Brand Page signup steps, if you feel like you need that level of detail. Otherwise…

Setting Up Your Profile

1. Sign up for your Page (only after making sure no one else has set one up for your site already)

2. Choose your category. It is suggested that media sign up as “Products or Brands”, but you might also opt to be a local business. The local business Pages differ in that they tie your G+ page to your newsroom’s location, which could be a bonus if you have public space (like a community media lab at Digital First newspapers).

Note: If you sign up as a local business, you have a few more hoops to jump through. If it gets to be too burdensome, you could always be sure to put your physical address and contact info on your About page.

3. Set up your name and website. You’ll also be asked to pick a sub-category of your main category (above) here. If you signed up as a Brand, you can pick Media, if you signed up as a Local Business, you’ll likely want to pick “Other”.

4. Set up your photo and tagline. The tagline is only 10 words – so be informative and search engine-friendly (i.e. “Local news source for XX, XX and XX” is eight words). The name and tagline shows up in Google searches for your paper’s name and, if you use good keywords, would show up in searches for “‘city name’ news”.

How the Denver Post shows up in search

Remember your account photo will show up as a small rectangle apart from your page to your Circles and in Google searches. So, it should be immediately noticeable as a news brand account – so maybe it should be your logo or something similar.

5. Set up your Introduction: Check out the Google search example for the Denver Post (above). The next line of text that shows up after the tagline is from the beginning of the Introduction, which also appears under the About tab when people go to your Google+ Page. Write the beginning with this in mind.

Some examples:

New York Times: “Welcome to NYTG+, The New York Times’s hub on Google+ for news, conversation and community.”

Boston Globe: “The Boston Globe is Boston’s leading newspaper. Our new website is subscription-only, but links from Google+ (as well as other social networks and search engines) provide free access to the article. ”

San Jose Mercury News: “The San Jose Mercury News provides the latest business, sports, entertainment and breaking news in Silicon Valley and beyond.”

In this space, you might also want to add the address and contact info for your news outlet, what you intend to do with the Page, how you’ll moderate comments and ask for feedback on how to use Google+.

6. Add Recommended Links: Here’s where you’ll want to highlight your other social media accounts and some particular work from your staff on your site. Link to your site’s Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest or whatever other social accounts you use here. Feel free to also add links to your most popular site sections, notable staff blogs, big stories or series you’ve published and links to your mobile alert and/or newsletter subscription sign ups.

For a good example, see how the New York Times set up their Intro and Recommended Links.

And with that, you’re all set. Now, let’s get to posting updates and creating Circles.

There’s a whole Internet outside of Twitter, so don’t forget it

By Mandy

On December 9, 2010

In Twitter

Pew released a new study on Twitter demographics today that found only 8 percent of Americans on the web use Twitter. Of that 8 percent, only 2 percent use Twitter on a typical day. Keep in mind that about 74 percent of American adults are internet users, meaning that the Twitter users make up about 6 percent of the entire adult population.

This news shouldn’t be surprising, but maybe it is to those who live in the Twitter echo chamber.

When all of your friends, your coworkers, your spouse and the media you consume are on Twitter, it may seem logical to believe a great deal of America is as well. This is a dangerous assumption for journalists and media organizations to make – and I know I’ve been guilty of it from time to time.

While I still think it is very important for journalists to use Twitter, the following facts must be emblazoned on the brains of media Twitterati:

Twitter represents a very small group of people in your area.
Being popular on Twitter doesn’t necessarily make one popular or important in real life.
Re-tweets, replies and Twitter referrals do not adequately represent the larger interest in or importance of your work as a journalist.
Most people that use Twitter don’t use it to get news.

Now, the study. The Pew study did find some interesting demographic tidbits that should be making us rethink how we approach the tool.

There are more American women using Twitter as opposed to men (10% to 7%)
Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults.
African-Americans and Latinos web users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are their white counterparts.
Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers.

So what does all of this mean?

Four who influenced my approach to social media

By Mandy

On October 4, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

As part of their 35th anniversary, Poynter is crowdsourcing a list of the 35 most influential people in social media. They ask people to write Facebook notes or tweets recommending people for the list, with votes to come via re-tweets and likes.

This kind of voting system makes it very likely that we’ll see the 35 usual suspects on the list when it’s all said and done: Vadim Lavrusik, Robert Quigley, Andy Carvin, Craig Kanalley and my boss, Steve Buttry, I’m sure, will be shoo-ins. It’s with this in mind I want to recognize people many voters in this group probably won’t know, but who’ve influenced my approach to social media more than just about anyone else.

#1 & #2 (tie): Kevin Dugan & Daniel Lally

I put these two guys together because their influence is interconnected in so many ways. I got into social media as we know it in mid-to-late 2007. In January of 2008, I joined the budding Cincinnati chapter of the Social Media Breakfast, founded by Kevin Dugan & Dan Lally – it expanded my world.

It’s a rare occasion for a journalist to admit to learning from the world of marketing and PR, but at that time, that’s who dominated Twitter and Facebook – and these two were pros. Not only did they personally teach me so much about how to engage audiences with measurable (and immeasurable) results thanks to their experiences in brand marketing, but through Cincy SMB, they introduced me to many others who were experimenting with social media as well. I know for a fact I would have never grown past tweeting about my lunch if not for these two and the learning experiences I had through Cincinnati Social Media.

#3 Paul Bradshaw

Paul’s Online Journalism Blog is probably linked more than any other from this site – and for good reason. He’s always talking about issues in new media that reflect not only his experiences as a journalist in the UK (which is fascinating in and of itself), but also what’s affecting new media across the world. OJB’s explanatory posts on social media projects, tool how-tos, new policies and those who seek to shut such things down have been a constant source of ideas and inspiration for me. Also, in 2009, Paul founded Help Me Investigate, a platform for crowdsourcing investigative journalism. Hard to top that.

#4: Jack Greiner

Jack’s not a journalist, a marketer or even a social media acolyte – he’s a media lawyer for Graydon Head & Ritchey in Cincinnati, OH. He’d frequently hold sessions for the Cincinnati Enquirer staff on potential legal issues in regards to social media. Unlike other presentations I’d seen on the subject, he didn’t seek to scare journos away from social media altogether (no matter how much they would have rather he did). He made us think about what we were doing as being no different than any other facet of journalism – and in doing so, he inspired me to pursue more research in the area. He gets a bonus vote for always being kind enough to take my incessant questions on points of case law.

—

Also, I have to give a shout out to Sarah Fidelibus, who named ME, of all people, as one of her picks for most influential people in social media. She said some nice things about ZJ, which is great to hear. I hope it’s been a helpful/interesting/funny read for the rest of you, too.

How we did it: Securing an occupied Twitter handle

By Mandy

On August 5, 2010

In Social Media, TBD, Twitter

It can be tough to be a new brand these days. Locking down namespace online is a huge part of a brand build – but much like potential mates, all the good ones seem to be taken.

We ran into that when we started building the brand for the soon-to-launch TBD. It’s a popular acronym, as everyone knows, so securing that namespace in social media was quite challenging. Though we’ve been tweeting for nearly two months as @TBDDC, this week we finally acquired @TBD. This is how it went down.

We wanted @TBD from the start, but it was occupied by a private, dormant account with zeroes across the board – no followers, no follows and no tweets.

Obviously, the first step in this scenario is to try to contact the handle owner. From my own account, I requested to follow this user to see if they were checking their notifications. Either they weren’t checking or I was rejected, because I never heard back.

I also sent the user a couple of @ replies to see if they were even checking those. No response.

It was time to turn to Twitter.

When you want to take this next step, it’s important to note Twitter’s policies in relation to your situation.

The policies are different depending on whether or not the account is active, whether the user is actively impersonating your brand and whether or not you have a registered trademark on your name.

If someone is actively using the handle you want in accordance with the rules, there’s little Twitter can do, even if you have a trademark on the name.

From Twitter:

Where there is a clear intent to mislead others through the unauthorized use of a trademark, Twitter will suspend the account and notify the account holder.

When an account appears to be confusing users, but is not purposefully passing itself off as the brand/company/product, the account holder will be notified and given an opportunity to clear up any potential confusion, per the guidelines listed below.

Contacting the user directly is really your only hope to getting the name in this instance.

If you want to acquire the handle of an inactive account, as we did, it really helps to have a registered trademark on the name. We did not have our trademark registration info right away, but I still submitted a ticket request to have the name released.

Once we got our trademark registration information, I filed another ticket, this time under the trademark policy. This time I filled out the required trademark info. To do this, our Twitter account had to be linked to an email address from our domain (an important thing to note if you have a business or blog without a URL yet). This was the final thing that pushed it over the top and got us @TBD.

If you don’t have a trademark registration, you may still have a chance, though note this important point in Twitter’s inactive username policy:

We are currently working to release all inactive usernames in bulk, but we do not have a set time frame for when this will take place. If a username you would like has been claimed by an account that seems inactive, you should consider selecting an available variation for your use on Twitter.

Even so, it wouldn’t hurt to submit a ticket request from your account to report the inactive name.

When and if you get a username opened up, you can easily change your Twitter handle to the new one without affecting your followers, lists or settings. You can do this from the Account tab of your account Settings. In our case, Twitter rolled @TBDDC over to @TBD for us.

When you change your Twitter handle, you have to be vocal about the change. If you can do it before the changeover, tell your followers what’s coming. After the change, they’ll receive your tweets at the new handle, but they may not realize the difference and may send replies and DMs to your old handle. Tweet about the change and encourage retweets. It might not hurt to briefly re-secure your old handle and put up a message there about the new account.

Note: If you get a second handle for this purpose, be good citizen and don’t name-squat. After a couple of weeks or so, if you aren’t going to use this account for something else, delete it and re-open the name.

But even if you don’t get the handle you want, you shouldn’t let it stop you from jumping into social media. It wasn’t a deterrent for TBD – we were able to build a lot of buzz on @TBDDC before we got the new name (and we were prepared to have that name be permanent).

If you can’t get the username of your brand, think of a way to make your own version. Shorten it, add an adjective or adverb, tack on a location or do something entirely out-of-the-box. It really isn’t all in a name. It all depends on how you use the medium and how well you can promote it elsewhere.

The Enquirer’s print-only news experiment

By Mandy

On February 24, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Online Revenue Models

Publishers all over the country are currently trying to figure out how to make money from online content or, at the very least, how to make more money off their still-profitable print products.

Recently, The Cincinnati Enquirer (my employer) has been experimenting with ideas to boost the value of the printed newspaper. As an online employee my entire career, it’s been a bit out of my wheelhouse to focus on print, especially since the Enquirer’s previous claims to fame have been more in the digital side. Whether we like it or not, print still pays the bills, so our paper – and many papers – are willing to experiment if it means keeping the lights on.

The experiment started Feb. 7 when the Enquirer editors opted to hold the publication of our big Sunday showcase story until 5 p.m. on Sunday in order to to boost single-copy sales of the Sunday print edition. Prior to this, we had been posting the weekend blowouts online on Friday mornings or afternoons to give a “sneak peek” of sorts to our online readers.

The next week, Feb. 14, the experiment widened as the editors opted against publishing the Sunday centerpiece online at all. The print-only designation grew further this past weekend, Feb. 20, as one Sunday feature in every section of the newspaper was designated to be “print only”, with an icon denoting it as such in the paper.

On the Fridays before these experiments, we put a promo on the front of our site telling our online readers what they’d be missing online over the weekend and urging them to buy a newspaper. I don’t know what kind of reaction bubbled up to those on the print side, but I know I fielded a few reactions from readers looking for those stories online after the fact.

It could take awhile to determine the experiment’s success – or even figure out what success really means. My editor, Tom Callinan, said he expects the experimentation to become more focused and strategic over time. It could possibly accelerate toward a pay wall or premium model of some sort in the future. I guess we’ll see what develops.

I realize this kind of print-only content plan is hardly unheard-of, as many papers (see this in the Minneapolis Star Tribune) have been holding some or all publication from the web – and it’s pretty much the norm in the magazine publishing world.

I’m putting this out there because I’d like some feedback.

If you’re a Cincinnati-area reader: Did you notice this? What did you think? If you saw a story promoted only that was print-only that interested you, would it prompt you to seek out a Sunday paper?

If you’re an industry wonk (or wannabe wonk like me): What’s your reaction to this kind of experimentation? Do you know of other news sites that usually have everything online withholding their best stories from the web? More importantly, is this working to boost print sales?

If you don’t want to leave a comment, shoot me an email.

Editor’s Note: I opted against editorializing on this experiment because (as you might imagine) I like getting a paycheck. While I have a lot of thoughts on this, I’ll save them for internal discussions where they might actually be useful. You can probably figure out where I stand if you’ve ever read this blog before.

How the National Enquirer is using social media to campaign for a Pulitzer

By Mandy

On January 13, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Social Media

If you are one of the few that didn’t fall into Monday’s link bait trap put on by Politics Daily, you might not know about Emily Miller’s piece in which she argues that the National Enquirer should be considered for a Pulitzer for breaking the story of John Edwards’ extramarital affair and love child.

Ignoring the basis of her argument, let’s examine the excellent social media marketing at play here.

The entire tone of the piece is aimed at stoking the fires behind a largely-imagined competition between the National Enquirer and “mainstream media” that is widely-believed and argued by a certain corner of the political spectrum. Never mind that a vast majority of the Enquirer‘s stories – think weight gains/losses, celeb rehab, who’s sleeping with who – are not of any interest to most “mainstream” news outlets anyway (but that’s besides the point).

Note the only quoted source in the story. Note the author in the comments of the story stoking that political fire. See her later the same day actively campaigning for the Enquirer getting the Pulitzer on Twitter. Note the National Enquirer, the same day, writing its own story about Miller’s story, praising her campaigning. Watch the Twitter stream reaction from said media competition theorists. Then see the link bait everywhere (you too, Mr. Romenesko).

The entire Issue-with-a-capital-I has been re-framed as Biased/Mainstream Media is preventing the Upstart/Misunderstood National Enquirer from getting a Pulitzer instead of asking if the story is worth journalism’s highest honor in the first place. Miller and the National Enquirer fed the beast in just the right ways to both get huge gains from their regular bases and a whole new crowd of big media haters who bit the competition bait.

It’s brilliant marketing and more media outlets should take note.

See, the National Enquirer has been using social media to change its brand’s reputation ever since the Edwards story started rolling out in 2007 and 2008. I don’t know how it started, but somehow they have managed to market themselves as a certain-kind-of-conservative’s go-to brand, along with Fox News, of news that is perceived by fans as non-mainstream and unbiased in a world of mainstream and Left-leaning news outlets.

Every day I keep a cursory eye on a Twitter search for the word “enquirer” (to keep an eye out for mentions of my own newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer). At least a half-dozen times during my work day that stream will feature someone saying the National Enquirer is a more reliable source for news than “mainstream” news. You can’t really buy that kind of word-of-mouth love, especially after decades of having such a negative brand reputation.

We as an industry are generally awful about marketing ourselves and managing our brands. I’m not saying you need to actively wage a campaign like this to get noticed, but baby steps help a lot. Somewhere along the line, journalists got the notion that you can’t be good in this business unless everyone thinks your newspaper sucks and to hell with them if they don’t like it. I don’t think this works anymore.

Right now, when bloggers and users in social media denigrate our reporters or brands, the strategy is to keep quiet and don’t let them see you sweat. At worst, some outlets and media companies go further than that to actively alienate and discredit the detractors as a defensive maneuver, which never seems to go over well in the long run.

What we should be doing is contacting the writers, leaving comments and answering questions. We should defend our work and people when necessary and apologize when it’s warranted. We should go on record for interviews, return phone calls and emails – you know, do all those things that companies do when they want to be liked. Even when you don’t have to respond to criticism, we should be out there putting our best foot forward. Start by talking up your work and your paper’s efforts to local bloggers, your competition and your Twitter and Facebook friends. Involve the community in upcoming changes (eve the bad ones) and seek feedback whenever you can.

At the very least, take a cue from the Enquirer on this – you need to have fans somewhere. Find them, court them and keep them in the loop…then you can say to hell with everyone else.

Facebook friends: Please stop spamming me

By Mandy

On October 26, 2009

In Facebook, Rants, Social Media

Whatever happened to Facebook friends actually being friends?

At one point not all that long ago, my Facebook friends were all people who I may not have considered “friends” in real life, but they at least knew me in some fashion. Whether we worked together at a past paper or went on the same school at some point, we had some binding life experience that brought us together on the social network. At the very least, we’ve met at least once – or maybe we follow one another on Twitter.

Lately, my Facebook friends are making me feel like just another number – even the ones who I consider real friends in the “real life network”.

A great deal of them are marketers – by profession, hobby or as a transitional job following a journalism layoff. Somehow, this means our Facebook friendship is little more than that of a spammer to spamee these days.

Every single day a Facebook friend of mine suggests I fan some client or employer of theirs. It used to be, I’d get fan suggestions about bands we both loved in school or groups based around inside jokes from “Arrested Development”.

Now, those same friends are asking me to fan companies I would have no obvious interest in (like Mommy sites), that are way out of my geographic area and aren’t even meant for people in my field (like political groups).

These former friends likely got their jobs based on their number of Facebook friends – and they spam each and every one of us with these stupid invites. I must have missed the marketing conference where they instructed everyone to sell their high school classmates, college friends and family members to anyone who shows them the money.

Social networking is supposed to be about connecting with old friends and making new ones. It can involve marketing products, but it takes individualized recommendations to be anything but spam.

I tolerate a lot from my Facebook friends – borderline-pornographic pregnancy photos, updates from parties I wasn’t invited to and constantly-shifting relationship statuses – but I won’t tolerate spam anymore. I’m going to start unfriending anyone who uses me to spam for their employers and clients. That’s not why I joined Facebook.

Marketing friends, I offer you an easy solution: Take ten minutes to set up friends groups in Facebook.

Go to Friends in the top menu of your Facebook home page and click on All Friends. On that page, click Create New List. Why don’t you be honest and name it the spam list? Look over your friends and select those to whom you actually want to market your product or business. Make sure your mom, your friend who now lives across the country and I are not on it.

Now when you send messages or invites, you can type in the name of that list and send it just to those people.

And finally, if you can’t make this decision about who to spam and who not to spam, maybe you shouldn’t be on Facebook at all. At the very least, you should do your real friends and family a favor and remove all of them from your lists. You aren’t a real friend, anyway.

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: marketing

The Enquirer’s print-only news experiment

Recommended reading for June 10th-12th

Recommended reading for May 26-27

Recommended reading for April 14th through April 17th

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