In 2009, Brian Solis wrote an article titled “Is Twitter the new CNN?”, which took note of a news-consumption trend that has since become even more wide-spread. Instead of watching the news, people often turned to Twitter–and they were doing so not only to get real-time coverage of important stories, but also to express their opinions and share information. Suddenly, traditional media no longer seemed fast enough, leaving room for tools that managed to keep pace with the global, real-time unfolding of events.
Over the next few years, the increasing use of social media networks by both individuals and organizations has democratized content distribution to the point where anyone can publish and share his view on nearly any topic. You don’t have to be a major news organization to get heard anymore, because any institution has the tools to become a media entity. Take the case of Elon Musk, who dismissed The New York Times’ review of Tesla’s Superchargers by publishing a blog post to refute the author’s assertions, and took to Twitter to increase the distribution of the message–proving that every company is now a media company.
While giving more power to smaller players, social networks have also changed the way traditional news outlets do their work. Almost every newspaper or news channel maintains a social presence in 2013–they listen to online chatter and have adapted to the new ways that news is consumed by communicating with readers through Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ in real-time. Reuters, for example, has turned its century-plus old news service into a modern newswire by employing a team of social media editors to factcheck tweets in real time, but also allowing its reporters to tweet first file a story second. (Josh Sternberg, Digiday)
Journalists and media organizations have to work hand in hand with social media, because modern technology can help them get better results and increased exposure. To achieve these goals, they have to understand social channels as tools, and use them to create powerful personal brands.
Social Media as a Modern Journalism Tool
While social media gives everyone the ability to publish and state her opinion, quality news reporting is hard to achieve with Twitter alone. The speed in curating news that social channels allow has to be counter-balanced by adding context, verifying the accuracy of every piece of information, making sure you use trusted sources and, most importantly, INTERPRETING news–making it useful, not just broadcasting it. In this way, journalism can work hand in hand with social media.
Social listening tools that help with monitoring mentions of any topic are a great asset in a journalist’s daily work.
Dialogue scanning: When you’re following a story using a social listening tool, you get an overview of everything people are saying (tweets, posts, comments, questions) in the same dashboard. However, sometimes going manually through everything people are saying might turn out to be time consuming. To see only what’s important and surface stories before they “happen”, you can use analytics to see what topics are discussed in conjunction with a certain conversation, and social intelligence mechanisms to see what’s “hot” on Twitter.
Collecting social conversations and custom insights is the next step of listening–it allows you to extract meaning from all the chatter. Take this uberVU stream tracking stories about Bitcoin: as soon as a spike in mentions is registered in Signals, you are prompted to check the river of news for the exact period of time when the extra buzz started to happen. Not only are you notified that something happened, but you’re directed to the point in time where it all started.
Content distribution: Some tools allow you to post and smart-schedule content using a widget, eliminating the need to use each social network separately. But there’s more to digital platforms: you can use social data and insights to understand how content is performing, whether a story would work better if reposted at peak hours, connected to another topic or just by changing its headline. Most popular stories and the discussions surrounding them are often a good indicator of what readers are looking for, not to mentions the sharing patterns of a story (who is the most trusted source in an influence graph, how news travel from one circle to another).
The Journalist as a Social Brand
With more newspapers turning to paywalls as a way of monetizing journalists’ work (and even developing apps that allow readers to only subscribe to specific content producers), the focus on brand persona and quality content is increasing. Social media can help at all stages of news-making: in gathering and selecting the news, in producing content, as well as in distributing it to readers. But it can do more than that: it can help journalists and media outlets get closer to their audience and build a solid reputation.
Make your content known through social media
You can use social media to promote your articles, your newspaper’s and other related stories, to send out personal reflections on a friendly tone and network with people in your area of interest. Another great use is to follow sources and thought leaders, perform live posting sessions, as well as getting feedback on the quality of your writing from people you respect.
Narrow down your target audience
Through real-time marketing, you can engage readers who have an opinion about your stories by responding to questions, requesting supporting information from followers, making fast corrections when necessary, and even addressing criticism to stop issues from escalating. You’re not only responsible for your own personal brand, but also for your news organization’s reputation, so use tools that allow social identities management on the go.
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