Social networking in the newsroom

Social Networking in the J-Classroom

How to create a social media strategy to use Facebook and

Twitter for journalism

Why social media?

• It’s where your readers are.

• Increases traffic to your site

• Transparency in news gathering

• Immediate feedback to make stories better

• Connects site to people and stories

• Markets your “brand” and keeps readers thinking about the site as a source of information

On your site

• Include a way for readers to share content on your news site on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

• Message boards

• Social networks on news sites

• Twitter live feed

How to use social media to enhance online journalism

• Break news before print deadline

• Keep track of sources (students, teachers, administrators at school to keep up news and events)

• Crowdsourcing: Gather info from many people to make a story better or add information – includes finding out reactions to your stories thru comments, links, etc.

Create a discussion

• While it can be great for drawing readers to your site and getting ideas, social media allows the journalist to make news into a discussion rather than a one-sided conversation.

Transparency

• Share behind-the-scenes stories about the reporting of a certain article

• Share what stories and projects you are working on to give readers a preview

Twitter

• Break news• Communicate with other journalists• #wjchat every Wednesday evening• Live coverage of events• Bring back to website to read stories• Nearbytweets.com to find users in your

area• Breakingtweets.com to see trends

Live Coverage

• Create a hashtag # for the event.

• Give description of what’s happening on the scene.

• Use a human being rather than a feed of all headlines (use twitterfeed.com for that)

• Reply to followers and retweet interesting links• Establish relationships – ask questions and

answer them.• Show some personality• Include links• Be instructive: 5 people on campus you should

know.

• Follow teachers, students, parents, administrators, local news outlets

Facebook

• Better to have a profile rather than a page because you can friend people rather than rely on fans

• Videos

• Photos

• Discussion questions

• Respond to posts to keep conversation going

Location-based social media

• Foursquare

• Gowalla

What’s your strategy?

• Appoint a social media editor to:

• Create a plan: What will you post about?

• Set a schedule for regular posts.

• Set aside time to respond to questions and comments.

Social bookmarking

• Digg- Users collectively decide which stories are newsworthy. Can use for story ideas to see what’s popular. (Caution when digging own stuff.)

• Delicious

How to promote content

How to interact with readers

• Thank tipsters publicly and give credit

Social media ethics

• Individual staff members with twitter accounts should identify themselves as affiliated with newspaper

Getting around the censors

• Text tweets

Sources

• The Digital Journalist’s Handbook by Mark S. Luckie, author of 10000words.net

• Journalism Next by Mark Briggs, author of journalism20.com

• Jeadigitalmedia.org