Zombie Journalism

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: strategy

Channeling the news brand on Twitter and Facebook

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On March 24, 2011

In Social Media

The other day, I mentioned that I’ve been transitioning TBD’s social media channels to a new team and doing some basic training in how to communicate as a news brand. I got into how news brands need to have a planned persona and strategy in place to effectively manage a presence in social media. Today, I’ll pass on the tips I’ve been giving to the new brand managers for you to try out in your newsroom.

These tips assume that you don’t want a stiff headline feed for your news accounts and you will be devoting some manpower – either a set staffer or a group sharing duties – to maintaining a personalized social media presence.

Tweeting as the News Brand

1. Think curation instead of broadcasting. Your goal is to find the most immediate, informative, interesting, re-tweetable news in as conversational a manner as is possible/appropriate.

2. Use your best news judgment when you decide to tweet. Some stories that come across your desk may not be ideal for the brand’s Twitter account. If you have a set strategy for your coverage area and topics (and you’d better, son), things like link roundups, uber-niche coverage, out-of-coverage-area stories or, frankly, old news, won’t be very useful to your followers.

2.5 If you do want/need to tweet a roundup post, highlighting an individual segment works well for Twitter interest.It’s way better than saying “Today’s news in X” or, god forbid, “link roundup on X”.

3. Timing is everything. I found over time that the best times for TBD to tweet are generally in the morning, over lunchtime and in the late evening. It may be different for your brand. You can find this out by checking the incoming traffic to your site from Twitter – or by tracking how often you get replies at certain times of the day (many analytics tools do this). You may also opt to schedule some tweets to hit spike times that are not staffed.

3.5 Space non-breaking tweets out to avoid flooding people’s streams too much. And remember, silence is OK. You don’t have to tweet for the sake of tweeting.

4. Tweeting something more than once is OK. Besides, rewording an old tweet makes it sound new.

5. Sometimes the headline on the story just isn’t right as a tweet. Turn on your best inner copyeditor to write a tweet that’s informative, descriptive and short enough to be re-tweeted.

6. Be selective when re-tweeting. Re-tweet good information, breaking news alerts, news tips, reactions, but be sure to stay relevant. Also, make sure it’s easily understood if the information is verified or not.

7. Stick to your strategy. Remember the mission, intended audience, scope and topic area for your Twitter account. You DO have a strategy, right?

 

Special notes for breaking news

  • If news is breaking fast, don’t wait for a link to tweet.
  • BUT Linking is a priority: If you have info to send a lengthy tweet, we have info to quickly copy and paste into a very short post to update later. Missing a link is missing page view opportunities as the news is retweeted. Perhaps more importantly, it also makes it harder for the follower to get more information on the story if they see it on a re-tweet later in the tweetcycle.
  • Updates: When a breaking news post is updated with notable info, tweet about it again with the new info and include the same link.
  • Exclusive news and scoops: If information is exclusive to your site, you may want to save the information for a quick blog post so a link can be tweeted with the breaking news. Why rush it to Twitter if you can have more information out there from the get-go?

 

Facebook is not the same as Twitter

Facebook should generally be updated far less frequently and with a different kind of story than Twitter. You don’t want your brand to be the friend that updates too often.

Story choice: Think about which kind of stories you’d share with friends on Facebook. Consider if this is something that could start a conversation.

Timing: For TBD, Facebook activity is heaviest in the morning, around and just after lunch and in the evening after 7 pm. Check the analytics on your Facebook page to see when your busy times are. You might want to start out by sharing a link in the morning, one or two over the course of the day and one or two in the evenings. Think about when people actually use Facebook, and post when they’re on. (Don’t forget weekends!)

Cross-posting with Twitter: If you do want to share updates between Twitter and Facebook, do not set it up to function automatically from one to the other. They aren’t built similarly and it shows when news orgs try to do both at once. Facebook users shouldn’t be seeing Twitter names and hashtags – and Twitter readers shouldn’t be seeing tweets that are too long coming from a Facebook stream. Use a service like Tweetdeck, Seesmic or Hootsuite to cross-post to make it easier and faster.

 

Coming soon: News brand guidelines for audience interaction

Channeling the news brand: Persona and strategy

By

On March 22, 2011

In Social Media

In preparing for my exit from TBD (more on that later), I’ve been training those who will be taking over my duties in communicating as the brand. I thought it might be useful to those who are learning this at their own news organizations to include my training documentation and thoughts on the blog over the next few days.

Note: I’m no social media guru or anything (they don’t exist anyway), but I have quite a bit of experience at setting social media strategy, establishing a brand identity and  communicating as a news brand from my time at the Cincinnati Enquirer and TBD.

Most of the individuals I’ve been training for this are fairly experienced Twitter and Facebook users, but they have no experience in using social media as entities other than themselves. It makes quite a difference. When communicating as The Voice of the Organization (cue dramatic music), one has to essentially channel the persona of the brand and speak in its voice.

While it really isn’t possible to keep the exact same voice when several people are communicating as the brand, a steady brand persona can be maintained if you have a plan in place. So let’s get into all that first.

#1: Know Who You Are

The key to communicating as a news brand – especially when many people are behind the curtain – is to have a set persona in mind. If the brand were a person, who would they be? What are their interests? How would they talk? What would their priorities be?

For TBD, for instance, the brand persona is that of a conversational, young, urban-dweller who is in the know but isn’t a know-it-all. The tone is casual, straight-forward, occasionally snarky or sarcastic, but only in the context of funny or feature news. He/she is sort of geeky, curious and enthusiastic to receive and share info.

Some brand managers will establish full identities for the brand, specifying how old he/she would be, where they’d live, economic status, etc. In the case of Colonel Tribune, for instance, a whole identity and background was set up to serve as the account persona. While you don’t have to go into nearly as much detail, it’s good to have answers in mind for the following:

  • How conversational should the tone be?
  • Who is my audience and what tone will they expect?
  • What sort of tone is right for my content?
  • Am I a friend, a voice of authority or somewhere in-between?
  • How much two-way communication am I doing?

 

#2: Set a strategy

There’s nothing worse that following the Twitter feed of a news organization without a strategy. It’s plainly obvious to anyone thats following (especially if they happen to be the competition) if you’re flying blind: Tweeting local news on a national account, sending out misleading links to stories that are out of your area (or off your website), re-tweeting whoever and whatever strikes your fancy, etc.

A strategy for communicating as the brand can be as detailed or simple as you need it to be, but consider these questions when laying it all out:

  • Is this intended to be general interest or niche?
  • Is this for breaking news, or more finished stories?
  • What is the expected coverage area for this account?
  • If you have multiple branded accounts: How do they work together? Does the same info go out on both at any time?
  • Who is my audience? What do they want? (You know, a survey never hurts….)
  • When is my audience online and most able to use this information? (see analytics)
  • Who is my competition? What do I like or dislike about their brand presence?
  • Do I re-tweet? Who do I re-tweet – and why?

Once you’ve stablished the kind of news and reader the account is for, set a strategy for what you’ll send out and stick to it.

 

Other brand managers, what would you suggest to help set a tone or strategy?

 

More info: Tips for Tweeting/Facebooking as the Brand, Guidelines for Audience Interaction as the Brand

The new kid in the downpour of fresh ideas

By

On May 13, 2010

In TBD, Twitter

When you’ve spent your entire professional career in a newspaper’s newsroom, it’s pretty easily to get your mind blown at a startup. I can attest to that firsthand in my first few days on the job at TBD.

Instead of shoehorning some new media approach into a centuries-old tradition, we’re building something so new, it’s still somewhat intangible – and that’s the fun part. It’s also sort of terrifying.

Because we haven’t launched yet, there are no deadlines, per se (which is a tough adjustment from my last few years working in breaking news). Our deadline for now is launch – and then infinite thereafter as we continue to add new features and tweak tools.

Right now, there are no rules, but I wouldn’t call it lawless, either. All of us currently involved with TBD have extensive experience in news and/or the social sphere. We know the framework of what we’re working toward, the rest is totally up for grabs.

In the past few days, I’ve been in several meetings with the rest of the community engagement staff where we have been brainstorming TBD’s processes for reader participation, community newsgathering and the all-important continuous breaking news. There are only five of us in a room, but it’s a hurricane of what-ifs and how-about-wes.

Not once has anyone said, “We can’t do that” or “That isn’t possible”. That’s a great feeling.

I know those times are coming. Some ideas will make it and others won’t. For now, though, I’m just trying to get a word in edgewise in a newsroom full of energy and rapid-fire ideas.

In addition to these sessions, we’re crowdsourcing our TBD plans, so if you have ideas you’d like to share, please do.

The community hosts are already miles ahead of me, working hard to recruit good bloggers for our network. I, on the other hand, am desperately trying to catch up.

I’ve found being the social media producer for a website that doesn’t exist in a city that doesn’t know you is a pretty tall order. All that community I built around myself in Cincinnati is now far, far away – so now the new task is cracking the Twitter code of this area.

In preparation to launch the TBD Twitter account(s) in the near future, I’m currently working on building up my own DC base on Twitter, figuring out who to follow for breaking news, community tips, laughs and tips about cheap beer. I’m working on finding the “nodes” (as my former editor was fond of calling them), that is, the Kevin Bacons on the metro DC social media sphere who are followed by and follow everyone important.

That’ll take some time, I know. I’m just not very patient. Have ideas/suggestions? You know the drill.

Because we haven’t launched yet, there are no deadlines, per se (which is a tough adjustment from my last few years working in breaking news). Our deadline for now is launch – and then infinite thereafter as we continue to add new features and tweak tools.

Twitter is the perfect place to break news (but don’t tell Reuters)

By

On March 18, 2010

In Industry News & Notes, Twitter

When Reuters released its new social media policy last week, their competition had to be salivating. The wire service appears to be digging its own grave by stipulating in no uncertain terms that its reporters are not to use social media to break news. All news is to be broken on the Reuters wire, no exceptions.

The idea of spurning social media for breaking news in order to protect your wire service would be a little like an early 90s  telephone service provider spurning the notion of developing an Internet service, instead allowing competitors to use its lines to serve up dial-up service to its customers.

Truth is, Twitter is the perfect medium for breaking news. I think of it as the latest incarnation of the “this just in!” radio bulletin.  As a tool, it is immediate, mobile, searchable by keyword and location, you can easily see who has passed on your news (via RTs), link traffic is easily tracked and, best of all, it has your brand attached so you can get credit for the scoop.

There is absolutely nothing more satisfying to this newshound than a series of re-tweets on my item from readers – and even better when it includes a begrudging re-tweet from my competitors.

If a news outlets that uses the Reuters wire is the first to post an item to a social media, it will look as if they broke that news. Their link to the same Reuters content will be the one passed around from retweet to retweet. One would think they might want to get their name on it first – but  guess not.

I see this play out every day on my Tweetdeck, as the local TV stations battle to tweet out the latest kooky AP news item from 200 miles away first. I always can’t help but think, “Gee, why isn’t the AP trying to get this into this market’s Twittersphere before local news outlets even get the chance?”

In the end, it won’t matter if they broke the news on the wires first. Most readers don’t read the wires, they read either their preferred media site or social media to get their news. As more and more news organizations take advantage of using Twitter to break news (or in the case of the BBC, mandating it), news providers who are late to the party on every story will eventually render themselves pretty useless as breaking news resources.

It’s downright shameful that an industry leader in breaking news (including some of the biggest breaking news events of the 20th century), would just let that go in favor of protecting a corner of the market that doesn’t benefit its readers or its reporters.

I have to say, the rest of the policy is rather helpful. It largely focuses on explaining how journalists can manage professional and personal brands on Twitter, including guidelines for making corrections in the social media sphere and avoiding accusations of bias with a thorough look at one’s social media profiles. All good info to know.

Journalism and the Interwebs: A Reading Guide

By

On December 11, 2009

In Recommended Links, Surviving

I read a lot of industry blogs and they generally all boil down to two topics: complaining about the Internet (or complaining about people complaining about the Internet) and lamenting the future of news.  It makes it all a little tough to keep up with what actual issues we’ve settled this year and what’s still out there to be figured out.

Thankfully, the Nieman Lab Blog took the time to assemble what dominated discussion regarding the future of news this year and takes a look at what will likely be hot topics next year as the industry continues to reel and (hopefully) evolve.  Most notably, next year seems to be heading in a direction of looking beyond the industry itself to what the affects the changes in the industry will (or should) have on journalism education, politics and public policy.

And in the second camp of journalism industry blog posts, Paul Bradshaw reviews all of the complaints news folks have had against The Internets over the years in one fell swoop. From hating on Google to opposing blogs and user-provided news, he offers something of a summation of just how depressing some news execs can be when it comes to that which they don’t understand.

Making enterprise journalism “web reader” friendly

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On November 10, 2009

In Industry News & Notes

If there’s one thing Gawker knows, it’s how to hook in online audiences. If you aren’t a regular reader, you may not have noticed something nifty they do with long stories. In addition to publishing a longer narrative story about the ‘balloon boy’ stunt recently, they also published a bulleted “Cliffs Notes” version of the story for the scanning reader.

The Nieman Lab took a favorable look at the practice, and I can’t help but agree it’s something we should be taking a lesson on.

Newspaper and magazine reporters who want online audiences to appreciate the fruits of their labor poured into lengthy watchdog pieces and enterprise journalism should consider writing a shorter, bulleted synopsis version to run online, with a link to the full-length piece.

I know, you’d love it if your prize-worthy story were appreciated by all readers, but you and I know that just isn’t going to happen. If you write a “web friendly” version, those facts you gathered, at least, can get some traction, even if your prose has been trimmed out.

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