How has Twitter and/or Facebook worked for your sections?

[Bob Cook]

Asking if using Twitter generates significant revenue is kind of like asking if RSS feeds or covering city council meetings generate significant revenue. The way I look at Twitter, or any social media, is this: Twitter alone, or even social media alone, may not generate significant amounts of direct revenue for a news org. However, they are valuable tools for serving your audience. And you use these tools not necessarily because they generate revenue, but because they serve the readers, just as council meetings may not be the thing that make papers fly off the rack, but you still cover them because it serves your readers to do so.

As for what social media gives back to the news org, I don't know how much direct revenue it produces, but I think there are a couple more important things a news org gets, which might indirectly lead to more revenue:

-- Expanded reach/influence/reputation: If you use social media tools well, it'll enhance your reputation as a reliable and useful source of information, a place that's among the first to pop into your audience's mind when they're thinking about where to go to find info on X. I think that's important in an age when news orgs are competing with millions upon millions of information sources for attention.

-- Additional resource for reporters: If you build a big enough social media community (and one that actually interacts with you), whether in the form of Facebook fans or Twitter followers or whatever new app that hasn't been cooked up yet, you get to a point where you can start using that community to help you do your work better. Need to find some sports fans with unique pregame rituals? If you have a few thousand or even just a few hundred followers, chances are a couple of them would know someone who fits the bill. Didn't make it to the site of breaking news in time for pics? See if any of your followers did. Need to compile a report of roads blocked by toppled trees after a storm? Ask your Facebook fans to post what they've seen around the city.

These are good points. My trade pub has used Twitter, and it's worked out very well. Does it give us 1 million new readers? No. Success comes when the dribs and drabs start adding up.

One more point I would add is with Twitter, there is a lot of care and feeding. What's helped us is that we don't just put our stories up there and let them sit. We get the Twitter IDs of every source who has them so we can retweet them. No matter the source, they love the ego boost of being name-checked, and once we retweet them, they will retweet our story and send it out to a lot of eyeballs that would not have seen our own tweet.

We also retweet some of our followers' tweets that look interesting, and we make sure to pump up some names every Friday for Follow Friday. We also pay close attention to hashtags and trending topics so other will stumble upon us.

Finally, we convert every URL to a bit.ly for our Twitter postings so we can track exactly how many readers are coming from our feed, or the feed of anyone else who is retweeting our bit.ly.

It also sounds ridiculous and like a lot of work. But it's worth it, and eventually it all becomes second nature. The best thing is, we now have people who are spreading the word about us, people who are not us, and that continues to expand our reach.

We're just starting Facebook, which is not as much work in the care and feeding. But it's one more place where you can get your stories to people passively, so they can see them and get to your site without having to go on it first. Basically, you might get people who wouldn't view you otherwise, and then have them start making a habit of coming by?

Can this all be monetized? At this point, who knows? But we all know more readers is better than less readers in any case.

 

[mustangj17]

That is the key. Does it help the section, the paper? Or is it just a few hundred more clicks on the Web site, which doesn't come close to paying the freight? I agree more is better, but will it make a real difference?

It works if you cross promote.

@Newspaper site: Check out the Sunday edition for a column on the upcoming NFL season.

Or whatever.

You have to cross-promote.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

I get the concept of cross-promotion. I pushed it for years at my last stop. I argued for Web-only content and print-only content and promotion that sent readers to both, and I was ignored. I argued for putting the first take of a long feature on the printed page and sending people to the Web site if they wanted to read a longer version. I argued for all kinds of cross-promotional ideas.

"We've never done that," was the brilliant reply. What it translated to was: "No."

 

[FuturaBold]

Can someone who does Facebook talk about what they put on there, especially as it relates to sports? Do you come back from a game and immediately post a few things there to promote what's coming in the paper? Or do you have other strategies, like regular updates or breaking news, etc. ... thanks

 

[Bob Cook]

Can someone who does Facebook talk about what they put on there, especially as it relates to sports? Do you come back from a game and immediately post a few things there to promote what's coming in the paper? Or do you have other strategies, like regular updates or breaking news, etc. ... thanks

It would seem like regular updates and breaking news are best suited to Twitter. On Facebook you can repost stories that appear on the site. To me, it seems like people would look for the breaking stuff on Twitter, but the more "that's interesting!" and complete stuff on Facebook.

 

[BigOleSportsFan]

Need to compile a report of roads blocked by toppled trees after a storm? Ask your Facebook fans to post what they've seen around the city.

Isn't that exactly what good reporters are NOT supposed to do, accept second-hand information that they can't personally verify and print it as fact? Don't get me wrong, it would be very entertaining to read a story along the lines of, "Mike Smith from Bloomfield reported that he has no electricity in his house and there is flooding in his basement. He does have internet access though, so it's all good. Pamela Johnson reported that a tree crushed her Grandma's Lincoln, and Nick Anderson informed us that a tidal wave busted up some store fronts on Beach Street. 'Busted up' is, of course, Nick's description. Actual damage may vary."

Seriously, though, if someone reports something like "trees were totally blocking Main Street," maybe they're a Jeff Spicoli type and exaggerate the heck out of everything. Maybe one, little tree fell and blocked one lane out of three. You have no way of knowing, but you're going to encourage reporters to use this information?

 

[mustangj17]

Can someone who does Facebook talk about what they put on there, especially as it relates to sports? Do you come back from a game and immediately post a few things there to promote what's coming in the paper? Or do you have other strategies, like regular updates or breaking news, etc. ... thanks

It would seem like regular updates and breaking news are best suited to Twitter. On Facebook you can repost stories that appear on the site. To me, it seems like people would look for the breaking stuff on Twitter, but the more "that's interesting!" and complete stuff on Facebook.

We post all of our stories every morning to our facebook page. They link back to our page.

 

[FuturaBold]

Need to compile a report of roads blocked by toppled trees after a storm? Ask your Facebook fans to post what they've seen around the city.

Isn't that exactly what good reporters are NOT supposed to do, accept second-hand information that they can't personally verify and print it as fact? Don't get me wrong, it would be very entertaining to read a story along the lines of, "Mike Smith from Bloomfield reported that he has no electricity in his house and there is flooding in his basement. He does have internet access though, so it's all good. Pamela Johnson reported that a tree crushed her Grandma's Lincoln, and Nick Anderson informed us that a tidal wave busted up some store fronts on Beach Street. 'Busted up' is, of course, Nick's description. Actual damage may vary."

Seriously, though, if someone reports something like "trees were totally blocking Main Street," maybe they're a Jeff Spicoli type and exaggerate the heck out of everything. Maybe one, little tree fell and blocked one lane out of three. You have no way of knowing, but you're going to encourage reporters to use this information?

maybe not use it verbatim in a story but those facebook folks may help you concentrate where your reporters spend their time. I.e. if several posters report that downtown was hit hard by the storm, you'll be tipped off to concentrate on that ... i think it's a great idea, then our job to verify everything and put things in perspective ... we can always use more eyes and ears out there ... and more people who like that they are connected to us ....

 

[TheMethod]

I look at Facebook and Twitter as branding mechanisms.

Here's an example of what I mean:

I have a personal Facebook page that has nothing to do with my job except that it says what I do in the "about me" section. I have about 300 Facebook "friends." I also have a personal blog that has nothing to do with my beat or even sports. I post the links on my Facebook page, and it gets a fair amount of attention from people who would never go to our newspaper's Web site and read my sports stories.

But because they're "friends" with me and read my blog posts, they will also read links to stories, blogs and columns from our newspaper when I post them. I don't post very many of them, just the ones that I think have broad appeal, but I think it brings new people in, not so much because of the specific content, but because of the brand, if you can call it that.

Perhaps that sounds self-serving. It probably is. But Facebook and Twitter are social media, and I don't think you can ignore the social part. People don't log on looking for news and columns. They log on looking to see what their friends are up to.

 

[captzulu]

Need to compile a report of roads blocked by toppled trees after a storm? Ask your Facebook fans to post what they've seen around the city.

Isn't that exactly what good reporters are NOT supposed to do, accept second-hand information that they can't personally verify and print it as fact? Don't get me wrong, it would be very entertaining to read a story along the lines of, "Mike Smith from Bloomfield reported that he has no electricity in his house and there is flooding in his basement. He does have internet access though, so it's all good. Pamela Johnson reported that a tree crushed her Grandma's Lincoln, and Nick Anderson informed us that a tidal wave busted up some store fronts on Beach Street. 'Busted up' is, of course, Nick's description. Actual damage may vary."

Seriously, though, if someone reports something like "trees were totally blocking Main Street," maybe they're a Jeff Spicoli type and exaggerate the heck out of everything. Maybe one, little tree fell and blocked one lane out of three. You have no way of knowing, but you're going to encourage reporters to use this information?

maybe not use it verbatim in a story but those facebook folks may help you concentrate where your reporters spend their time. I.e. if several posters report that downtown was hit hard by the storm, you'll be tipped off to concentrate on that ... i think it's a great idea, then our job to verify everything and put things in perspective ... we can always use more eyes and ears out there ... and more people who like that they are connected to us ....

Exactly. Don't think of the user contribution on Facebook or Twitter as necessarily content to go directly into the story you're going to write. Think of it as part of your information-gathering process. Also, let's draw a parallel. Let's say something happens on the other side of town. You get there after it's all over. You didn't witness it yourself. So what do you do? You find eye witnesses and say, "Tell me what you saw." That's essentially what you're doing in this example too.

A couple points to add to what FuturaBold said:

-- Don't think of it as merely "getting stuff for my story". Think of it as a public service -- getting useful info out to your readers ASAP. What good is your blocked roads story in next morning's paper or on your site an hour from now when people going to work need that info now? However much your reporter busts ass, that's still just one person trying to track down all the blocked roads around the city. But if some of your readers see blocked roads on their way to work and post "downed tree at corner of 5th and Possum Creek" (and even a picture) to your Facebook page (or to Twitter that you then retweet through your feed), that's like having eyes and ears all around the city, all working at the same time. This is no different than radio stations asking people to phone in reports about traffic jams. And people who need that info can get it on Facebook or Twitter on their cellphones while they're in the car.

-- And if somebody exaggerates or misreports? Remember that this is on Facebook and Twitter. It doesn't have the permanence or time lag of print, and that changes how the audience reacts to it. People seeing it understand that this is all raw info coming in on the fly, so they know and accept that not everything has an "Authentic" seal of approval, and that's fine. They can wrap their heads around that. That's part of online transmission of breaking news -- people see the story as it's developing, as info is pouring in and being verified. If you find that a user post was not accurate, just add a post correcting it. It's part of the flow, part of the development. Besides, on Facebook, people can see that these posts are from other users, not you. In these cases, don't think of your Facebook page so much as your turf, where everything that appears on it must have your stamp of approval. Think of it as a central location where people can come to help each other out by sharing what they know (and you are a participant in that as you share what you find out during your reporting). Sure, they can do that elsewhere online, but as a news org, don't you want them to think of your online presence as the place to do that, the place to go for the info they need, when they need it most, where they are -- in other words, thinking of your news org as relevant to their lives.

-- In situations like this, if you've put in the work to groom your social media presence and audience, then the quality of the user contribution you get will likely be higher. If people know that there is a quality-control check on the other side, the likelihood of them intentionally misreporting info will go down. And if they've had interactions with you on Facebook or Twitter, there's a connection there, and they're less likely to abuse the open forum your social media presence offers.

 

[mustangj17]

Has anyone started using Facebook Connect to help their newspaper? I wanted to do it at mine but Gannett won't let us. Essentially, it is EXTREME Facebook. People can use their real names to comment on your site. It's insane amounts of awesome. A bunch of huge web sites are using them, but I have not seen any newspapers doing this yet.