Social media at omr oce

Social Media and Media Relations at NCI
Brooke Hardison
OCE Retreat
December 2, 2010

Journalism 2.0
70% of journalists use social networks to assist in reporting
Newspaper and online journalists more likely to use than magazine reporters
56% said social media was important or somewhat important
92% believe that social media is enhancing journalism
Sources: Middleberg Communications and the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), "Survey of Media in the Wired World.“ & George Washington University and Cison’s “2009 Social Media & Online Usage Study”

Top Information Sources
100% of journalists use searches like Google or Yahoo! to get news information (up from 91% in 2008)
Search types journalists used:
Google Search (100%)
Corporate websites (96%)
Blog Search (89%)
Social Search (65%)
Wikipedia (61%)
Photo/Video Search (58%)
Forums (42%)
Social Media Tools used (sharing):
Blogs (64%)
Social Networks (60%)
Micro-blogging (57%)
Sources: TopRank Online Marketing Survey on Journalists Use of Search & George Washington University/Cison “2009 Social Media & Online Usage Study”

Once upon a time, there was an outdated website…
Since 2001, the NCI media relations team has been publishing articles for reporters about research at NCI
Volumes and issues
Paired articles
Text-only article pages
Internally hosted videos (small)
Separate pages for multimedia files
Keyword-based and date range search options
Average hits/month: 800

Time for Change
The webzine concept was antiquated and needed a fresh look
NCI, NIH and HHS as a whole were moving toward incorporating web 2.0 technologies, and we wanted to make sure that the new design could adapt
Separately, we were beginning to see an increasing need for more blog-friendly content
Journalists were increasingly becoming active on social media sites & we needed to make content available in the blogosphere

A new format
In 2009, in an effort to modernize the site and serve a broader audience, the Office of Media Relations redesigned the site, inspired by news blogs and social media
http://benchmarks.cancer.gov
Multiple images per article
Embedded videos (now discoverable on Youtube.com)
Twitter, YouTube and Flickr integration
Easier search (text-based), utilizing categories, a tag cloud, and archive
Hits in November 2010: 10,622

YouTube Channel
Branded YouTube Channel
B-roll discoverable through YouTube & Google video search
~ 2,300 views per month
Posting on YouTube saves on server space & allows for full-length views

Corporate + Personal Branded Twitter Accounts
Formal notices
Only follows HHS accounts
More authoritative for retweeting by other organizations
Professional w/ personal touch – real person
Mostly science writers
Allows for 1-on-1 interaction
On average, Tweeted press releases get 25-60 hits in the first hour

Corporate + Personal Branded Facebook Pages
Provides a real person for connections
Can post non-official posts that are useful to reporters
Lets science writers connect without “friend requests”
Facebook is driving traffic to Benchmarks and cancer.gov

Keys to Success (gleaned from others)
Facebook
Integrate with other platforms
Create a resource (offer information, serve as a place to connect)
Create reasons for fans to participate
Target YOUR audience
Twitter
Be useful
Provide links to information (short URLs)
Respond to questions
Remember that it’s public

What NOT to do(gleaned from other’s mistakes)
Focus on fan/follower counts
Are your fans engaged?
Do you have the right fans?
Are you serving YOUR audience?
Ignore the specific platform’s etiquette
Attribute when appropriate (tag, retweet)
Avoid being “spammy” – post in appropriate places
Allow page to be overrun with ads & scams
Check in regularly, even with the spam filter
Overreact and/or respond to everything
Sometimes, people just need to rant

Overreaction 1: Lockdown
DKNY was letterbombed by PETA protesters on Monday. Rather than ignore it, they deleted the posts, locked down their page, and disallowed posts.
Now every DKNY post has hundreds of comments related to fur and bunnies (can’t disable comments)
And their current news mentions are dominated by this issue

Overreaction 2: Defensive
Greenpeace staged a protest on Nestlé's page, regarding deforestation and palm oil. People changed their profile image and posted comments on their page.
The representative got very defensive, and things spun out of control.
This story was in the news for months
Nestlé had to create a “zero deforestation” policy in response to the backlash

Social media at omr oce

by Brooke Hardison on Dec 06, 2010

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