Engaging and empowering communities online

Hannah WaldramBirmingham | September 2013

Photos: Helen Ogbourn/Flickr

● Listen● Get personal● Share skills & tools● Show bigger picture

Cardiff lessons: how to build a highly engaged community who are empowered and motivated to action

"Having a direct, dedicated following—a readership invested in you, not just the publication you're primarily associated with—is like a career insurance policy. "

- Ann Friedman

Listening to the community Be tireless in campaigning

Empowering through skills sharing

Empowering through tools

Takeaways from Guardian Local

● Get personal

● Listen

● Share skills and tools to empower

● Motivate to action

From beatblogging in Cardiff to: coordinating UK communities & beyond

Community coordinators - what do we do?LISTEN | ENGAGE | REWARD | SHARE | COLLABORATE | TRAIN

- Encourage discussion and engage with communities around our news stories - enrich our journalism through collaboration

WHY? Open journalism

"Open journalism is journalism which is fully knitted into the web of information that exists in the world today. It links to it; sifts and filters it; collaborates with it and generally uses the ability of anyone to publish and share material to give a better account of the world."

- Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief

“We believe that journalism gets stronger when these worlds collaborate.”- Joanna Geary, communities & social editor

● Online allows further reach for case studies (using the right language), sources & data

● Deepening engagement can reap long term rewards (follow ups, new leads and lines of investigation)

● Readers can add knowledge and value to your work and be your story advocates

Some examples which show:

Social: Reach out

On site: Deepen relationships

+ @guardianfilm: We’re looking to speak to Cineworld employees for a Guardian project. Get in touch: adam [dot] boult [at] guardian.co.uk

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Crowdsource: Involve

● Be specific● Do it yourself● Share the bigger picture

Crowdsourcing tips

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EsKBTo8RfY

Takeaways

● Listen (again!)

● Plan

● Think about long term, outside life of an individual

● Identify key influencers early & reach out to them

● Consider your user journey - from newbie to loyalist

● What are your KPIs - for each project and longer term?

● Don’t worry about platforms - think about the best place for the outcome you desire

● Create a number of opportunities for engagement (don’t forget importance of offline!)

Some tools to help

Links● Slideshare:

http://slideshare.net/hrwaldram

● Delicious 'community' tag: http://delicious.com/HRWaldram/community