I finally had a chance to join in #journchat on Twitter last night. It is a conversation among journalists that takes place from 8 to 11 p.m. EST on Mondays in which @journchat, the moderator, introduces questions (some of which come from other chatters) for journalists of all concentrations to discuss.
The fourth question was this: When is social media NOT the answer for your industry?
Like many of the #journchat questions, this one got me thinking. Despite the obstacles a news organization faces in terms of creating a social networking policy, there are very few disadvantages to social media in the journalism industry. It’s yet another way to reach out the Web, connect with readers and aggregate your content.
But there’s still a strategy involved. In my mind, one of the bigger disadvantages for news organizations using social media is when they abuse it – that is, when they post content recklessly without thinking about how to get more people to click and read.
Hence, my response:
“When news orgs spout 20 tweets to news stories at a time, thinking people will actually click on all of them.”
See the example on the right (the best I had at the time of writing this). While I greatly respect the staff at The Bay City Times from visiting its newsroom several times, its Twitter usage could use some work. It tends to roll off between 5-10 tweets at a time to its news stories throughout the day, particularly in the morning. Not a good strategy when you’re trying to connect people with your content.
You should aim for people constantly clicking and retweeting what you link to rather than simply hooking your account up with, say, Twitterfeed and plastering the site with consecutive links. As a Twitter user with a short attention span, the more consecutive links I see, the less value I see in each. They’re just Web updates.
Back to the #journchat. Fellow journchatter Sue Anne Reed brought up a point in response, when I said the “Twitter abuse” is a problem: “If ppl are annoyed, they will unfollow. It’s a great barometer on whether you’re doing something right or not.”
That is true — to an extent. I haven’t unfollowed @BayCityTimes. Therefore, I raise this question: If I’m following @BayCityTimes but not clicking any of its links, how much value is there in me being a follower?
This is why, I think, follower counts are overrated. Following on Twitter is a click of the button. That’s it. It is easy, particularly for new users, to start following people and not interact at all with them, whether it is through replying to their tweets, retweeting or clicking on their links. Unfollowing somebody takes more legwork, and most people don’t care enough to do it.
Want to truly gauge how effective your Twitter account is? Track your bit.ly links, for example, and see how many retweets you’re getting on your stories.
Furthermore… while I see a place for news organizations having Twitter accounts and centralizing content on the Twittersphere, I still don’t think it’s the most effective way to connect readers with your content (see my earlier post on giving Twitter “the human touch”). You have to put a face behind the tweet. It comes right back to personal branding and putting yourself on ground level with your community.
During a staff meeting last night at Central Michigan Life, I asked every reporter and editor to begin using Twitter, if they haven’t already. The benefits of using Twitter as a journalist is a topic beaten to death. But another benefit is to put extra faces behind retweets of @CMLIFE work. Every click counts.
Posted by Brian Manzullo at November 3, 2009
Journalism, Social Media