Find sources, cover stories and
reach audiences using Twitter

What’s Twitter?
• Twitter is a social network focused on interests rather
than on friends, where users create brief posts of
140 characters or less. Twitter users can follow and
view updates from other users (similar to subscribing
to a site’s RSS feed), send public or semi-private
replies or have private conversations with other
users. Users can also search the entire network in
real-time for interesting topics or breaking news,
organize their streams with “hash tags” and lists, and
even add photos or video to their posts.

Why Journalists Need It
• As an instant way to break news, Twitter has
changed the journalistic landscape.
• Reporters are using the social media platform
to find sources & story ideas, enhance their
regular coverage, engage readers, build their
audience & more.
• Here are a few key best practices that can help
you…

Why it’s better than Facebook
• Info on Twitter is much more public than info
on Facebook. Since people don’t have to
follow or friend you just so you can see the
content they post, journalists find Twitter a
much better way to track down sources, dig
up more information on stories, crowdsource
content, get questions answered, push out
quick news blasts, and to take the pulse of a
community or topic.

1. Find News
• More and more newsmakers are forgoing
press conferences and media interviews and,
instead, using social media like Twitter to
make important announcements.
• Journalists will often report on newsworthy
tweets.

• Twitter can be a powerful tool for finding story
ideas and keeping up with news about your
beat. If you’re a food critic, follow food
bloggers and restaurants in your area. If you’re
a sports reporter, follow local coaches and
athletes — who have been known to break
news on Twitter.
• Doing so can help you stay updated on what
your sources are saying, while increasing your
chances of finding story ideas

For example,
this just in…

Discover Breaking News
• Twitter often breaks news before mainstream media
can report it. Therefore, journalists must follow
Twitter in much the same way crime reporters follow
the police scanner.
• Significant recent news events that were first
announced on Twitter include:
1. The Boston Marathon Bombings
2. The Royal Wedding Announcement
3. Whitney Houston’s Death
4. The Hudson River Plane Crash
5. The 2008 China Earthquake

2. Find sources
• Find & capture reaction. Twitter is a great tool
for seeing how people are reacting to news.
Sometimes, reporters will capture people’s
reactions in my stories.

• Find experts and local sources. Twitter’s basic
search tool is good for searching key words,
but let’s say you want to find out what people
in your local community are tweeting. You can
refine your search by using Twitter’s advanced
search page, which lets you search by
location. By typing in your location and a key
word, you can find related tweets anywhere
between 1 mile and 1,000 miles of that
location. (There’s an option for choosing the
radius.)

• If you find local people you want to interview,
follow up with them on Twitter and ask them
to send you a Direct Message with their
contact information.
• Twitter is a solid starting point. It doesn’t
replace traditional shoe-leather reporting; it
just helps you find sources you may not have
otherwise come across. It’s up to you to follow
up with the sources you find and, when
appropriate, interview them.

• Research through crowdsourcing. Twitter is
great for soliciting help with projects,
especially when you’re strapped for time.
• For example, investigative reporter Wendy
Norris used Twitter to seek help with an
investigation in response to anecdotal reports
that pharmacies across Colorado were locking
up condoms and therefore making them less
accessible.

• Instead of doing all the reporting on her own, she
tweeted: “Heading to the grocery/drug store this
week? Join fun, stealth crowdsourcing project. No
disguise needed. DM me if you’re in Colorado.”
• This tweet, a Facebook post and an email led
Norris to recruit 17 volunteers. The volunteers
went to 64 stores in one week to find out
whether condoms were locked up. They found
that 63 of the stores sold condoms, and most
made them readily available. With the
volunteers’ help, Norris disproved the rumors in
the community.

3. Enhance your regular coverage
• Tweet your beat. Live-tweeting or posting
updates about a news event happening on
your beat is a great way to increase
engagement and follower growth. For
journalists who post a concentrated number
of Tweets in a short time span, follower
growth is 50% more than expected.

For example, CBS WBZ journalist Jim Armstrong
(@JimArmstrongWBZ), reporting from the trial of
Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, posted regular updates
from the courtroom, right up to the dramatic ruling. He
saw his follower count go up by more than 1,000 during
the trial, with a 14% bump on the last day.

4. Build your audience
As a journalist, it’s your job to spread the word.
So be sure to use links in your posts. Twitter
found that journalists get 100% more active
engagement when a URL is included.

Use #hashtags
• Hashtags can increase engagement with other
Twitter users by almost 100% for journalists
and 50% for news organizations. Using
hashtags is also a great way to report or follow
breaking news. When you include hashtags in
your Tweets, your Tweets become more
visible and you have a better chance of
attracting followers.

For example, Fox News (@FoxNews) uses hashtags to
identify the subject of its tweets and to join the wider
conversation on Twitter about that person, place, thing
or event.

@cite your sources
Including Twitter handles of the reporter who
authored a story and the sources mentioned in
the story can also help increase engagement.

The Internet is the #1 news source. But there’s
great competition for eyeballs and web traffic.
These days, even journalists need to be their own
entrepreneurs and promote themselves – and
their work – online. Student journalists and their
media advisors should adapt, as well. Almost all
students are online, but most don’t know if their
school media has an online presence, studies
show. In order to share their news, school media
must report news where their readers are.

There are many and varied ways to promote
your or other’s articles, blog, newspaper
website or online magazine to share news and
increase traffic. The 10 ways listed in this
presentation are among the easiest and most
efficient ways. Plus, they're all free! All you need
is a computer and Internet connection.

For Google, visit http://www.google.com/addurl .
For Yahoo, visit
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html .
Bing is at http://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url/.
Follow the instructions on each page. This will ensure
your site or blog is included in indexes for search engines
and shows up when people do searches. Studies show
that Google drives 70 percent of traffic to most websites.

This is done by attaching a link to your URL at
the end of your emails. Many email programs,
including Gmail and most college email services,
allow users to change their settings to
automatically include a signature every time
they send an email. For example: “Get the latest
Scarsdale High news at
http://www.shsmaroon.org”.

For example: Sample
email signature plugging
a student’s blog

The idea is that people you email will see the
link, be curious and check it out. Think of all the
people you email every month; those are all
potential visitors to your website or blog. To set
up a signature, try clicking on and editing the
“Options” or “Settings” tab or link in your email
program.

One-third of Americans get their news from
Facebook. Attract more readers to your website
or blog by posting a link to your latest content
on your or your organization’s Facebook or
Google+ page. If you don’t have a profile or page
on these networks, you’ll need to create one.
Social network referrals account for a significant
portion of traffic to websites, especially those of
news organizations.

For example: Link on
student newspaper’s
Facebook page to its
latest articles 

People are often interested in content that their
Facebook friends recommend or post links to.
Having social media referrals will also ensure
your website or blog is one of the top results
when people do searches on Google. That’s
because Google announced in 2012 that social
media referrals will be an important factor in
their search engine algorithm.

When you post a video to YouTube or a photo to
Instagram, put a link to your blog or website in the
description i.e. “find more useful information at
mywebsite.com.” If people enjoyed watching the
video you posted or found your photo interesting,
they’ll probably be curious to see what else you
have to offer on your website. Before you can post
content on these sharing sites, you’ll need to
register as a user.

For example: Referral link to school newspaper on Instagram 

Social bookmarking is a way for people to store and
rank online content, including websites, blogs,
articles and videos. and other types of website
content. StumbleUpon, Reddit and Digg are a few of
the most popular bookmarking sites available.
Different bookmarking sites have different types of
users. Find the one that works the best for your
content and post a link to your content. This is a
great way to attract visitors to your URL who
otherwise may never know about it.

For example: Link on Reddit to story in school newspaper 

Twitter is becoming an increasingly popular way
for people – especially young people – to get
their news. There are a couple ways to utilize it
for your blog or website. First, you can manually
tweet about your content using Twitter. You can
post your own personal tweets with links to your
blog posts or articles, link to other people’s
content, ask readers questions, etc.

For example:
Penn High School’s
newspaper staff
uses Twitter to link
to content, post
breaking news
updates, engage
readers, connect
with sources and
more…. 

Second, you can set up a content syndication
tool, such as Twitterfeed. This is free and will do
all the work for you. Basically, anytime you make
a new blog post, a tweet will also appear on
Twitter. You could also do a combination of the
two: utilize Twitterfeed and also make your own
custom tweets. See http://twitterfeed.com. For
both services, you’ll need to register as a user.

Think about which organizations and people with
influence may be interested in your content,
service or cause and send them a short email. For
example, alumni of your school, the Parents-
Teachers Association, local civic organizations and
local government officials may all be interested in
what your school newspaper is covering. In
addition to visiting your website or blog, they
might spread the word to others.

For example: If
you can procure
an alumni email
list from school
officials, you
might send an
email like this to
alumni 

It is important to get other, relevant websites to
link to your URL. Traditionally, most search
engines have based their rankings heavily on the
number of credible websites that link to a
website. The best way to do this is to manually
search for websites and blogs related to your
site and contact them for a link exchange. Use
http://blogsearch.google.com

For example: If
your school’s
Parent-Teacher
Association has its
own website, as
many do, you
might email them
and ask them to
add a link to your
student newspaper


When soliciting links, remember, flattery will get
you everywhere. When you pay someone a
compliment, it piques their curiosity in who you
are. “Who is this person with impeccable taste?”
Be honest and sincere in your flattery, but it
shouldn’t be hard to come up with a
compliment. Something like, “Hey, I liked your
post about [insert topic] because [insert
compliment]. I also have a blog that I thought
you might be interested in because [insert why
it’s relevant]. My blog’s URL is [insert Web
address].”

Sometimes, the person you contact may ask you
to return the favor and link to his/her website.
Only agree to trade links if you believe the other
website’s content is relevant to your audience
and are comfortable endorsing it by linking to it
on your site.

Regardless of what your content is about, there
are likely Internet discussion boards and
numerous blogs related to the general topic. If
you’ve got a article that you think relates
strongly to something that another blogger has
written about or that is the topic of discussion
on a forum – leave a link to your own article.

The key to pulling this off without being labeled
a spammer is to leave a genuinely useful
comment on the blog or forum. The comment
itself should add value, be right on topic and
contribute to the conversation. Then if you
include a link introduce it with a ‘I’ve written
more about this at….’ type comment rather than
just a spammy call to action.

Relatedly, many newspapers have likely, at some
point, written a story related to your blog topic
or one of your blog posts. And many newspaper
websites these days allow readers to post
comments about stories. You can do a search
using Google News at http://news.google.com .

For example: If a local newspaper
writes a story about your high school
football team, you might comment on
how you have a blog or school
newspaper website that covers the
same topic. Readers who read the
newspaper story – along with the
reporter who wrote it – may also be
interested in your content since it’s
related.

Some blog posts and online articles will have mainstream
media appeal. Shoot a reporter at a newspaper, magazine,
TV or radio station an email – you might get lucky. For
example, if you write or blog about your school’s theater
club, you might email the theater critic or arts writer at
local newspapers. If you cover your high school’s sports
teams, you might email the high school sports reporter at
the local newspaper. Sometimes, just launching a website
for your school’s media outlet can be news, too. Many
media outlets’ websites have a “Contact” page that
explains how to contact the newsroom electronically.
Hyper local news media, such as Patch.com, may be
particularly interested.

For example:
This high school
newspaper got
mainstream media
news coverage
about its move
online 

Another example 

Alternatively, you could write a press release
about your website or blog and post it in
cyberspace. Some online press release services
don’t cost anything and they can be surprisingly
effective with a little luck. For example, see
www.i-newswire.com , www.free-press-
release.com and www.prlog.org . Journalists
sometimes cull these sites for story ideas.

In this Tweet, The
Guardian
(@guardian) includes
the Twitter handles
of journalist Emma
Brockes
(@emmabrockes)
and Julia Kozerski
(@juliakozerski), the
subject of the article.

For example:
Sample press
release by
school
newspaper 

Facing information overload, Internet users are
counting more and more on sources they trust:
their friends, followers, contacts. Everyone has
probably clicked on a link that someone they
know posted on one of the social media sites
they use. But most people probably haven’t
given much thought to why their Facebook
newsfeed has replaced the evening news or
morning newspaper.

There’s been a recent paradigm shift in the way
people get news – and these 10 tips will help
you take advantage of it. Web analytics now
allows businesses to track what’s working online
and what’s not. As a result, journalists are
increasingly being evaluated by how much Web
traffic they attract. So, journalists need to know
how to utilize the internet and all its tools to
market their content, whether it’s an article, a
blog or a news website. Student journalists and
media advisors should learn to adapt, as well.