A Journalist's Guide to Doing Social Media

It's April, I haven't posted to the blog in 10 days, and you can probably guess why. That's right ....

In between begging for money and trying to do some reporting, I did manage to grab an hour to talk with members of the Southern Education Desk (SED) reporting team about doing social media. 

Many of us are on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc ... but are we using these properties to their greatest potential when it comes our journalism?  SED Managing Editor Duncan Moon asked me to talk to his team about how we use social media at WBHM, and  thought I'd share that with you as well.

I've broken it down into some simple strategies:

1.  Kevin Costner may believe that if you "build it, they will come" ... but that ain't true! I watched a major public media initiative launch its Facebook and Twitter accounts, then sit and wait for people to show up. Six months into the project they had just a couple dozen followers. And this was for a project that included public media collaborators across many states, focused on one the biggest news stories of our decade.  You have to go out and find followers!

• Search Facebook and Twitter using keywords that apply to your beat/geography/etc, then friend/like/follow those people. Most them will return the favor.  And make sure you're looking for individuals, too, not just organizations. 
• Add your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, Tumblr (insert other social media site) URL onto your email signature line. 
• Back-announce stories with social media handles.  Here at WBHM you might hear an announcement like this after a story from SED reporter Dan Carsen:  “You can find all of Dan’s stories archived at www.wbhm.org and you can follow Dan on twitter at AT-W-B-H-M-ED-Desk."
• And remember, when people follow you thank them publicly.

2. Once folks know you're on a social platform, keep them coming back for quality content.  For every story our WBHM news team produces we not only post it to our website (with copy, audio and photos), but we also promote it heavily through social media. 

• Facebook -- We'll post the story to the WBHM Facebook page, as well as our personal Facebook pages. We make sure to use the "@" function to get as much linkage out as possible. This includes "@" cc'ing people who might have been quoted on the story.  This helps stories spread virally.  We also try to include a listener prompt to encourage conversation, something like this (get out your glasses, the print's kinda small)...

• Twitter – Similar to Facebok, we tweet from the WBHM accounts, then RT from the personal accounts using the "@" replay function as much as possible, but keeping the character count to 115 characters so there's still plenty of space for followers to RT us.  
• Pinterest is driven by photos, so make sure you've got a great image to anchor your post and make sure you add enough information in the caption to capture attention. Much like forward promoting on air, you don't want to give away the whole story in the caption.  It should be a tease that will make people want to click the photo to link through to the full story. 

3. Don't just post promotional stuff. There are plenty of other ways to engage people, including

• Calls for story ideas. We do this weekly with a quick FB post or Tweet that says "WBHM has a news editorial meeting this morning. What stories should we be telling about our community?"
• Reminders that you can find archives of your stories online ("Been looking for a way to find all of our stories on Alabama's toughest-in-the-nation immigration law? Here ya go!") 
• Fun Stuff. Post pictures of your reporters in the field.... 

WBHM's Southern Education Desk reporter Dan Carsen

WBHM News team & friends at GPB's PubMedia Camp

4. The takeaway from all of this?   Engage... Engage... Engage!  Social media is all about two-way communication, not just promoting your news stories/programs.   The more you look and act like a "real person" online the more your listeners and readers will want to get to know you. 


What tips do you have for creating community around your news coverage? What are your biggest challenges? Your fears?  Share them here and let's get the conversation started.