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Journalism & Good Content are Finally Converging

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Remember the London Bombings in 2005? For me, that was the point that distinguished the value in citizens and journalists collaborating to bring stories public.  At the time the best content available was a victim running through the tunnel with a mobile device capturing video.  Every news organization used that video as a lead for the story.  Since then news organizations went full gear into developing areas for citizens to upload rich media they were able to capture.  This started a new era for many reasons.

With the focus on citizen journalists and the ability to create acceptable content on a device that you always carried in your pocket, many began to pontificate on the demise of professional journalism.  Fast forward 6 years and the “art” of journalism is still alive and well however the industry certainly has changed.  While many digital content areas have developed successful business models (iTunes for music; Amazon for books; Netflix for movies), news has struggled to create a true business model online beyond advertising.  As a result, news rooms have had to cut staff and alter the way that news is collected and delivered. 

These circumstances have forced journalists (some very old school) to adapt to the new ways of capturing content, gathering story ideas and reporting news.  Social media has played a large role in redefining the industry and will continue to be a big catalyst in how journalists transform their trade.  Three big areas of transformation happening with social journalism involve Reach, Effectiveness and Innovation. 

  • Reach: Social Operating Systems like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, WordPress, LinkedIn are enabling journalists to reach audiences that were never possible before.  Instead of jockeying for key spots in the printed newspaper, Journalists are learning how to build expansive networks of followers, experts and interest groups.
  • Effectiveness:  Even though journalists no longer have camera crews to follow them around, technology has empowered individuals to capture rich media content with merely a phone/video/audio/image recorder (read iPhone).  Building networks also provides journalists to be more effective in reaching story depths and finding additional resources.
  • Innovation:  The models of effective news reporting and story-telling have been re-invented.  Collaboration plays a big role now and journalist teams are emerging that involve amateurs and professionals alike.

While the world of journalism has been completely over-hauled in the past 5-6 years, the need for quality content still exists.  The same tools that have empowered everyone to create content and re-post it everywhere have overwhlemed most with sheer volume.  This dilution of quality is exactly where professional journalists step back in.  By incorporating network theory, technology and some creative new thinking many journalists have emerged as leaders in a space that did not exist 10 years ago.  For an industry that had not changed much over the past 150 years, that is saying a lot.  To run the conversation around this topic, we have Jeff Cutler.  As a true pioneer himself, Jeff’s insights will provide for a great discussion this week.  The topic and questions are:

Topic: Journalism & Good Content are Finally Converging

 Q1:  What outlets do you use to get your news today?

Q2:  Who creates the best content: Journalists or Citizens? Why?

Q3:  What are the attributes of a good journalist today?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, September 13 at noon ET.  Follow #sm127 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Fear and Loathing in Content Creation

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

Content is moving through a maturity of sorts within the enterprise.  Talking with a few colleagues some noticed that companies were putting out more content, some noticed that some companies placed less of a focus on content and I have yet to notice any sizable advances in companies developing relevant content (content specific to me when I need it and on the device I where I want it).

 On the surface there seems to be a dichotomy in how companies are utilizing content.  It doesn’t seem possible that companies are actually producing less content today than before.  What we found was that companies were blogging less which made it seem like they were de-emphasizing content.  Not the case at all.  Let’s look at what is different today than when companies started to blog.

 Blogging is simply a tool that enables you to self publish content on the web.  A few years ago, blogging was the only way that marketers could actually publish on the web unless they went through IT to have it published using the corporate content management systems.

 Fast forward to today.  Now content takes form in long form through blogging and short form through updates on walls, tweets, Posterous.  Content also takes the shape of video, audio, powerpoints, documents (Scribd), etc.  Content is not only produced by the public relations team or marketing team, content is being distributed by any employee who posts an answer on Quora or LinkedIn or who tweets or updates pictures from the company picnic on their own Facebook page.  Content simply takes so many shapes today that it is impossible for companies to actually control all of it. 

Controls of information within companies have been in step decline for 2-3 years and it’s having profound affects throughout the enterprise.  IT’s perimeter is no longer the walls of the building, the perimeter has become every employee who carries a mobile device or logs into the network in an airport.  Marketers must train employees on tactics once only used on the few people who spoke to the press.  Today everyone can have that voice.  Employees communicate differently today internally.  So what does all this mean?  The only way to find out is to employ the services of Toby Bloomberg for an hour during this week’s chat.  Toby returns to host another chat this time focused on the maturing nature of content within companies and what it means.  The topic this week and questions will be:

Topic: Fear and Loathing in Content Creation

Q1:  Where is the sweet spot these days, in content creation or distribution?

Q2:  How is blogging/content development changing or maturing for companies?

Q3:  How do companies need to adapt around content?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 30 at noon ET.  Follow #sm125 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Using Video and YouTube To Reach and Influence Audiences

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
All companies have a content team and most have what they would refer to as a content strategy.  Typically that strategy includes text and images for the website, some brochure ware and then there is a by-line for Social Media.  Mostly that by-line is there to re-purpose other content (blog) or simply to promote (Twitter).  While it is still a very small percentage, many are beginning to find value in the use of video in their social media efforts.

While some content is OK for text, there are many opportunities to greatly expand the value of content through the use of video.  While there are thousands of applications, here are a few:

  • Product Demonstrations
  • Express Passion – Leaders can draw out their passion better with video than with text
  • Showcase Talent
  • Provide a Day in the Life Of – especially for recruiting
  • Funny or Entertainment Videos – with the hope of them going viral
  • Training

The residual value of the videos are significant as well.  Videos can be an untapped source for organic search engine optimization and can also create more backlinks to your site and they can be shared easily with others to create a large network effect.  Whether using video for traditional marketing purposes, training, recruiting or as a way to increase product use, video is a great way to engender trust, show passion and grow your culture.  On the other side, consumers are also using video to make their point.  Companies cannot afford to not have this skill available to them.

Technology is increasingly taking away many of the barriers that once existed with the ability to create and distribute videos.  Mobile devices enable a much different product or shopping experience especially when tied to QR codes, Apps or mobile websites.  Flip cameras and the like create an easy way to capture, edit and distribute videos in a way that simply was not possible even 5-6 years ago.  New web enabled technologies will create new ways of engaging with videos as well whether through the desktop of even now on your television.

To explore the many ways that video can add a new element of sophisication to your corporate efforts we decided to devote an entire chat to it.  This week’s chat will be hosted the respected Andrew Mueller.  Andrew’s perspectives on video and it’s impact through social media are impressive and he will lead us to better understand how to make an impact in our orgainizations by using video.  Join us in the discussion this Tuesday 12/14 at noon eastern time.  The topic and questions are:

Topic:  Using Video and YouTube to reach and influence audiences.

Q1:  What types of video work to reach and affect audiences?

Q2:  Is YouTube being used effectively by brands? Examples.

Q3:  How do Google TV, Apple TV and others change the game?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, December 14 at noon ET.  Follow #sm90 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Social Influence: Meaningful?

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

We know that being popular does not equate to being influential.  On the other side, being influential does not equal popularity either (consider Florida’s new Governor elect Rick Scott is now very influential, yet he is the first such governor since 1916 to win without the popular vote (<50%)).  So is this conversation is circular, another chicken and egg discussion?  There are a couple of ways to approach this topic. 

  1. the much covered approach of popularity vs influence and
  2. the more scientific approach of the forms of social influence. 

The difference of these two topics, especially across the enterprise, is that one conversation can add value and the other typically does not.  So to not bypass a good SEO opportunity, let’s cover both of them.

Influence vs Popularity: you can talk ad nausea about this topic but consider that having a lot of Friends, Likes or Followers online does not mean that you are either popular or influential.  It simply means that you paid a service to use bots to increase your presence.  for companies looking to find industry influencers, they typically rely on tools that mechanize a formula that compares the amount of post with the amount of people who see the posts against the number of people who act (like, share, retweet) on the post.   The point I’ll make here is that scheduling your message to be published at a time when everyone is online and looking for your message does not mean that your message will be popular or influential…only optimized.

Forms of Social Influence – when you begin to apply science to influence there is a chance you will be able to repeat success. First, when we use the term Social Influence, let’s make sure that we are not talking about how influential people are on social networks.  That’s the soft discussion.  We will use the term social influence to mean the study of influence in the context of a group (or social influence) overlaps quite a bit with the research on attitudes and persuasion. Social influence is also closely related to the study of group dynamics, as most of the principles of influence are strongest when they take place in social groups.  As an enterprise, if you are able to understand the science of how people affect the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of others (influence) you could begin to shape your engagements much differently that pushing a press release to a group of industry bloggers and calling it a day.  According to Wikipedia, the 3 main forms of social influence come from conformity, compliance and obedience.

  1. Conformity – a tendency to conform in order to receive social acceptance – is generally defined as the tendency to act or think like other members of a group. Group size,unanimity, cohesion, status, and prior commitment all help to determine the level of conformity in an individual.  While conformity is generally disdained in American culture, there are many cultures in the Middle East and Asia that rely on conformity for social influence.
  2. Compliance – refers to any change in behavior that is due to a request or suggestion from another person.  Word of mouth marketing relies heavily on compliance behaviors with foot-in-the-door or bait-and-switch techniques. 
  3. Obedience – This is a change in behavior that is the result of a direct order or command from another person.  Special interest groups find this method popular.  When there is a chemical spill, toxins in a river, a new national healthcare plan…it is easy for people to follow a distractor based on socially accepted beliefs regardless of truths.

The default for companies trying to figure out who is influencing their “voice” in the market is a tricky one.  The only approach right now is the crop of online tools that have emerged from Klout, Edelman and Hubspot that formulate from forms of popularity that assume influence.  For some companies right now showing movement for the sake of motion is better than nothing.  What this does is provides a false sense of security though as there are no algorithms that measure passion.  Passion can drive tremendous influence if you think about the Bills that pass through congress with a child’s name attached to them.  They are driven by wildly passionate parents who do not want the same thing to happen to any other children.  These parents would never show up as influencers in the traditional sense though.

Where I like the discussion around the science of influence is it opens up broader discussions for enterprises who are looking to become influencers and not just rely on those who seem influential.  After looking at the forms of social influence, companies can uncover new meaning behind their approach in an effort to continuously make them better.  Think about recommendations.  If you understood that your site visitors were simply looking for conformity as a way to influence a purchase decision, you would employ product ratings and feedback.  To take it further, compliance is more than a simple “share this” button, it’s the Groupon model.  I’ve made a decision to purchase this product but I need you to also buy it in order to get the discount.

Sorting out social influence as a science will lead to a much better result than simply looking at people who have large followings or simply talk the loudest in the room.  To help us sort out our discussion this week is Shelly Kramer.  Shelly Kramer is the Founder and Chief Imagination Officer of V3 Integrated Marketing and Kramer & Co who has been written up in Forbes, American Express and the Wall Street Journal to name a few.  Our topic and questions this week will be:

Topic:  Social Influence: Meaningful?

Q1:  How do you find influencers?

Q2:  Can you create influencers?

Q3:  Is Social Influence a meaningful goal for companies?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, December 7 at noon ET.  Follow #sm89 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

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Transform Your Marketing Department into a Publishing Department

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

One thing is clear, the function of marketing is rapidly transforming.  There are many things driving this change like technology, data / analytics and 100′s of new channels to market through.  Those are all very tactical and when something is new, everyone goes to the tactical solutions first.  Let’s get a blog up, install new analytics engine and buy some space in as many websites as we can.  That does not address the larger opportunity nor does it address the fundamental changes that need to happen.  The same skill sets of old are not the same skill sets that are needed today.  There’s training, new hiring rules, new organizational charts and new management techniques.  Technology and new digital advertising buys do not address the fundamental changes that are truly needed to transform your marketing department.

Another fundamental change is how you perceive yourself.  Companies have long been defined by their products.  That was it!  The new digital landscape and the consumer shift from mass needs to custom fit have created opportunities for those companies who can think differently.  Companies have an unprecedented opportunity to re-define themselves beyond their products.  For the first time, companies are becoming entertainers (youtube video channels), educators (blogs, wikis), and friends (social networking).  They are re-imagining the roles they are able to play with the broader market (who would have ever thought blenders would be cool?)

 To re-define your company, you must first re-define your marketing department.  Marketers have been built to reach audiences and influence purchase decisions.  In order to play in the digital space, content becomes the core of the activities.  Marketers need to re-organize their staff to meet the heavy content demands of this new approach.  One way to do it is to take a page from publishers.  Publishers have always relied on developing and distributing quality content.  Their approach to market is to connect with their audience rather than coerce them.  Marketers can learn a lot from what publishers have already figured out and the marketers who jump on this early will gain a significant advantage of the majority of companies who will continue to do things the way they have always done them.

To help marketers begin to work through this, we invited Joe Pulizzi , founder of Junta42 to moderate this week’s chat.  Joe is internationally known evangalist of content marketing and has been a long time advocate of how the effective use of content can re-define marketers.  To help us through this topic, Joe will use the following questions: 

Topic: Transform Your Marketing Department into a Publishing Department

Q1:  How does media and publishing relate to marketing and branding?

Q2:  What’s the difference between what a real publisher or media company does versus a brand?

Q3:  What’s the setup look like in a non-media company brand? 

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, November 23 at noon ET.  Follow #sm87 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live

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Bootstrapping Your Social Programs

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

So many companies today are paralyzed by indecision when it comes to social media planning and execution.  With all the scary things that could happen, companies who have an aversion to risk find it especially difficult to “try” anything out when the stakes of the trial are, potentially, so large.

One interesting note here is that the employees of these same companies are already doing social media trials every day.  With such promise, crafty employees are beginning to re-imagine their work in the social realm and are beginning to truly innovate with the results.  These actions typically are not sanctioned by IT or the marketing dept.  These actions are usually being enacted by representatives from the brand or people who feel they are simply not getting the support they need to perform their work.

Companies have a couple of choices.  They can fight the fight at every employee move or they can learn to embrace and enable these trials by providing a safer sandbox by which to test and learn.  To help us better understand these options, we have brought in Mack Collier to moderate this week’s chat.  One of our original #socialmedia chat moderators, we are excited to team up once again with Mack.  The topic and questions this week are:

Topic:  Bootstrapping Your Social Programs

Q1:  What are some methods that can be used?

Q2:  What are some tools that can be used?

Q3:  Provide some case studies in both large and small companies.

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, November 9 at noon ET.  Follow #sm85 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live

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Social Media Content Strategy

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

Lot’s has been written in the social sphere (here, here, here to name a few) about developing and maintaining a content management strategy in the new digital age.  Most of the advice follows the same lines of think like a publisher, write for SEO value, content is king / frequent content is the pharaoh, create an editorial calendar, an so on.  All of those thing are right.  Yet still there is something missing.

When I go to companies (fortune 100 at least) and talk about content strategies, we can go through the list above, they shake their heads like they understand and go off and create the first version of the plan.  When they come back, they have an editorial calendar, SEO strategy that ties into the calendar and is the basis for the content development, a framework (style guide) for the channels (tweets, releases, blogs, etc) and a list of every piece of communique that is to be released in the next two months, already pre-approved by legal.  Time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our collective work, right?

This type of approach is provides the same one-way push mentality and does not set the tone for the type of change that has to take place within a company in order to truly adopt a pervasive content strategy suitable for today’s Social Business.  Here’s what I mean:

Pre-approved content, style guides and a the PR team misses the point of today’s connected enterprise.  Before developing a “traditional” content strategy (like the one listed above), develop an employee training schedule.  If any employee expresses an interest in communicating digitally, take them through the type of PR training that you would give to your senior executives.  Have an ongoing training curriculum on key SEO terms to be included, strategies for each person (thought leader, helper, insider’s view to company, etc) and ideas for participation. 

This is a new way to think about PR.  Instead of outward focus, PR should think of themselves as content enablers not creators.  Enable an army of employees to communicate effectively, in unison, on purpose, with trust.  Enable them with the industry influencers they should connect with, the blogs they should comment on, the though leadership pieces that are timely.  Maybe an effective content strategy for the enterprise is made up of dozens of individual strategies that all feed into the same corporate goals that includes the proper training.  Is this the new look of content management strategy?

Content management is usually an afterthought.  Companies decide to become social, set up their tools then wonder why it looks so bare.  It’s that point when someone thinks to adopt a new content strategy that includes social.  To help us re-consider our approach to content management for social, we are happy to have the CEO of Social Media Delivered, Eve Mayer Orsburn.  Eve is a recognized figure in social media circles and has a new book being released in just a few days entitled: Social Media for the CEO: The Why & ROI of Social Media for the CEO of Today and Tomorrow.  Our topic and questions this week are:

Topic:  Social Media Content Strategy

Q1:  Why is a SM content strategy important?

Q2:  How can you make content really work for your business?

Q3:  What are the key components of a good content marketing strategy?

Please join us Tuesday October 26, at 12 noon ET.  You can follow along using #sm83 from your favorite Twitter client or simply use our home page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

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Are We at the End of the Social Side of Networking?

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

As I consult with enterprise companies there is always a question of participation.  It starts when I land and managers tell me (some proudly, some ashamed) how many people participate in their current efforts.  I don’t give this much weight because usually the initiative was set up once and never touched again.  This is hard to draw any conclusions from.  Then as we begin deploying or re-deploying an initiative, everyone wants to know (magically) what to expect. 

That’s when I pull out the old 1% rule, make some calculations, and come back (magically) with some numbers.  Funny thing is that no one ever asks how I got the numbers or where they came from, they are just happy to have a goal.  Interestingly enough, the projects that have matured a bit are always very close overall to those numbers.  One caveat that I have seen is that the broader the audience, the closer the rule is.  The more focused the audience, the more that rule turns up-side-down.

The 1% rule (1/9/90) as defined by Wikipedia: 

The 1% rule states that the number of people who create content on the internet represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content (e.g., For every one person who posts on a forum, there are at least ninety-nine other people viewing that forum but not posting). The term was coined by authors and bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba[2] although there are earlier references to the same concept[3] that did not use this name.

The “90-9-1″ version of this rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.

The actual percentage is likely to vary depending upon the subject matter. For example, if a forum requires content submissions as a condition of entry, the percentage of people who participate will probably be significantly higher than one percent but the content producers will still be a minority of users. This is validated in a study conducted by Michael Wu, who uses economics techniques to analyze the participation inequality across hundreds of communities segmented by industry, audience type, and community focus.[4]

This can be compared with the similar rules known to information science, such as the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto principle, that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the activity, however the activity may be defined.

A case in point:  I have a sample of data from a Fortune 50 company who set up an external Yammer network.  A look at X Company Yammer participation bears this out. Currently there are over 2,050 members of the XYZ Yammer network. Of that number, 1.29% of those, or 27 people, are responsible for 57% of the total posts. And 1972 people, 94% of the member population, are responsible for only 26% of all posts – each of those people have posted less than 25 times. This data was from January of 2010.  I looked at the recent numbers (1 month ago) and while the number of participants has increased significantly to over 7k members, the number of active participants have risen ever so slightly to 38 people that are responsible for 57% of the overall posts.

So what’s happening to the network?  Employees are reporting higher amounts of value from the network and IT dept is taking notice at the, (now) statistically relevant, number of people migrating onto the network.  Yet, the number of power users as a percent is down.  One behaviour that I noticed was that the network has transformed in use.  In the “new shiny toy” phase, employees were posting everything from musings, to rants, to accomplishments, etc.  Now the network is being used more as a shortcut to get things done, get access to the “right” people and generally as a utility to collaborate more efficiently.

 This coincides with a recent research report from Forrester onGlobal Update of Social Technographics that found a slowing of the Creative class while the Joiner class was in an upward climb.  Interesting, I know!

Which leads us to the topic for this week’s chat.  With this topic of the decline of the “Social” in Social Networking, we went right to the horse’s (nothing meant by that) mouth.  One of Forrester’s most prolific Senior Analysts, Augie Ray, has agreed to moderate this insightful topic.  This issue has many implications that we will cover including the decline of participation and what that means to communities and also if communities decline what does that mean to the digital marketing arms of companies who are transitioning entire departments to better manage social.  This week’s topic and questions are:

Topic:  Are We at the End of the Social Side of Networking?

Q1:  Is there too much content being created?

Q2:  What will marketers do if fewer are willing to generate new content?

Q3:  How will social networks change with more joiners and less creators?

 Join us this week on Tuesday 10/5/10 at noon eastern for this lively discussion.  Follow along with #sm80 from your favorite Twitter client or check out the new features in our recently updated LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live

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The Lifespan of a Social Community

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Are social communities getting old all ready?  Companies who jumped into the social fray a couple of years ago and built out their social communities are beginning to re-evaluate their benefits.  Other companies are looking to these early adopters for signs of value and best practices as they consider building out their own.

So by now, we have all figured out the magic beans for developing and sustaining brand or service based social communities.  Right?  Product research communities?  Unfortunately, those magic beans have yet to sprout.  Even within the same industries, companies struggle to replicate the success of their competitors.  Yet we know some of the ingredients that are needed.

  • solid platform
  • community manager
  • brand fans to join
  • some cute marketing to drive traffic
  • then, like fishing, we sit back and wait while listening all the while.

We rely on the community manager to create new, clever ideas every day for content and conversations to keep the candle lit and if that fails, we can always bribe them to stay (chatchkies!).   Seems a bit rudamentary even after 2-3 years of experience, yet we have a hard time trying to come up with that one killer idea that will revive our community and keep it engaged for another few months.  That may be one of the problems.  There’s not one idea but rather the execution of many smaller ideas together that keep the community going.  But it’s certainly hard to create the ideas when you are so vested in the middle of the community. 

Another issue may be the old hammer and nail analogy.  Most community managers and social media directors come out of the public relations or communications fields so it makes sense that content would be at the top of the list when it comes to brainstorming.  I have a bit of a problem with that though.  Almost by definition, it’s not sustainable and certainly it’s expensive.  So knowing that, let’s come up with new ways to increase the relevance of your community (for both participant and company), make it sustainable and most importantly add value.  We have to look beyond content as the strategy and consider what else is out there.  Here are some ideas:

  • Collect names in CRM not just the community.  Track users inside and out of your community (yes they have other interests).  See where else they go and incorporate those topics into your community.
  • Research how your users live, not just demographic and geo info, but the cultures they represent.
  • Incorporate Open Graph (facebook, Google, LinkedIn) tie-ins and recruit new participants from your existing user’s social graph
  • Use analytics to identify gaps in your community experience.

To build on the idea of sustaining you social community, we wanted to tap a professional resource and there is no one better than Connie Bensen.  Connie is a community strategist with Alterian (better know by their social monitoring solution Techrigy) and known throughout the industry as a go-to resource.  Connie will lead us in discovering advanced ways to create value from your communities and make them more sustainable.  Join us this Tuesday 8/10 at noon EDT for this topic and questions:

Topic: The Lifespan of a Social Community

1.  How do you plan resources for the lifespan of a social media engagement?

2.  Do the communities you create need a community manager or can they be self-sustaining?

3.  What do you do with a community when the budget is exhausted or resources are no longer available?

4.  Can a community continue indefinitely and how?

Follow along on Twitter or your favorite Twitter client by following #sm72 or simply visit our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

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How News Brands Use Social Media and Social Gadgets To Connect With Audience

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Photo: www.oweb.com

While everyone depicts the demise of newspapers, the art of news gathering has never been stronger. 

We’ll get this out of the way first, the newspaper industry as a distribution model is in a downward spiral.  Newspaper printing and physical distribution is an expensive proposition and with circulation in decline, the money (advertisers) are moving to greener pastures.   Advertisers are going online where they get broader exposure for cheaper rates with more access to return on investment numbers (analytics, click-throughs, etc).  That puts the traditional newsprint model in serious jeopardy.

News gathering on the other hand, has exploded.  If you consider the amount of content being created across blogging sites, video site (YouTube), podcasts, social networking sites and micro-blogging sites the numbers are astounding.  What’s subject, you might argue, is the quality of the content.  Therein lies the problem, with so much noise (content) out there, it is much harder for traditional content creators to match the velocity (speed and distribution) that news has taken on.  Journalists must fight fire with fire, not a garden hose.  Interestingly enough, journalists had the exposure, the resources and the networks to be able to do exactly what bloggers and other new-age news gatherers are doing today, just not the necessity.  As the early bloggers received much fanfare for regurgitating news found on the web, professional journalists resorted to this as well as a way to get the news out faster, not better.

Now the tides are turning.  Journalists who understand story-telling and fact-finding are now beginning to get necessity.  They are exploring new ways of developing news and planting seeds to better understand news as it happens.  There are some good examples already that I got from Vadim Lavrusik, who writes for Mashable, like the living stories project between Google and NYT’s and the invent of news streams, or news as it happens from sources like Twitter that break news sometimes hours before traditional media taps in.

What’s missing though is the transformation.  Journalists and newspapers are still doing the same things just with shinier toys and fancier widgets.  That’s motion not transformation.  Let’s stretch a bit and see what we could come up with.  How about if….

  • Journalists became masters of their networks. Use Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to manage a network of experts around any topic that might come up.  Have a local chemical spill?  Might help to know that there are 17 local chemical engineers and 7 local retired hazmat experts from the government within 10 miles of the accident.  With all the social networking, no one is connecting the dots locally.  The one who does, will become the modern day tribal leader.
  • News organizations teamed with Gov2.0.  Every government agency is falling over themselves to get up-to-speed in the digital world.  Think of the mashups you could create with the resources of the newspaper and the data of the local government.  If something happens, look who’s sitting on the data streams and information already.
  • Local advertising.  Newspaper sales used to be the only ones in town with access to every local business.  Why they did not offer every local business an enhanced listing on a Yelp type site is beyond me.  There was an opportunity to take over the yellow pages and I believe there still is.  Newspapers will never out Fox, FOX News, however no-one should ever out- St. Louis the St. Louis Post for instance.
  • Location based services – that leads here.  If newspapers were cross matching their data, they would already know what business locations were closest to me and make offers accordingly.  At the same time with just a little effort, they could greatly enhance my profile by simply offering me a profile and providing me a compelling reason to say which types of food, activities and shopping that I enjoy.

 These are just a few ideas that I came up with and I know when enough is enough.  From here, we’ll let the expert take over.  Brian Dresher will be this week’s moderator for the HashtagSocialMedia event.  Brian brings years of managing content distribution and customer acquisition for a news brand and certainly understands necessity as the Manager of Social Media and Digital Partnerships for USAToday.  Brian will help us open up the possibilities of an industry under-siege so you can take these lessons and apply them to your own industry where digital is changing the landscape.  This week’s questions will be:

Topic: How news brands use social media and social gadgets to connect with audience

1.       What role should Twitter and Facebook play in journalists engaging with users?

2.       How do devices like iPad and iPhone influence news consumption?

3.       How will location-based services impact future of news gathering?

Join us for this event Tuesday June 29th at noon eastern.  Follow along using #sm66 from your favorite Twitter client or simply goto our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.

Updated post 7/2 to accurately reflect Brian’s role. Thanks again to Brian for leading a great discussion.

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