Social Media for Small Newsroom
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The document provides tips for small newsrooms on using social media effectively with limited resources. It recommends developing skills in areas like planning workflows, documenting processes, testing tutorials, and tracking metrics. Metrics are emphasized as important for determining which projects are worthwhile and comparing engagement over time. The tips are aimed at helping small newsrooms and individual journalists maximize their social media efforts while working with constrained budgets and staffing.
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Social Media for Small Newsroom
- 1. Social Media for Small Newsrooms http://bit.ly/ona-shoestring http://bit.ly/onashoestring-notes @emmacarew @jessicaplautz #shoestringsocial
- 2. Or: how to be a one-(wo)man band
- 3. Skills
- 4. <html> <body> <h1>Plan for this evening</h1> <p>There will be so. much. fun.</p> <ul> <li><a href=”http://heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa.com/”>Dancing</a></li> <li><a href=”http://rabbit.org/”>Friends</a></li> <li><a href=”http://momofuku.com/”>Snacks</a></li> </ul> </body> </html>
- 8. Tools
- 24. Workflow
- 25. Have one.
- 27. Tip of the day
- 28. Store resources in a central location
- 32. Have a solid Plan B
- 33. Write down your goals
- 34. “Can you show me?” vs. “Will you do it for me?”
- 35. Metrics
- 37. Create a metrics “key”
- 39. Metrics need to compare “apples” to “apples” over time
- 40. Clicks + growth
- 41. Analytics out of context are worthless data points
- 42. Metrics will tell you which projects are no longer a good use of your time
Editor's Notes
- Intros Why this session? How are you supposed to do the work of an entire social media team when you’re one-man-banding it? This session will help you to: train your colleagues to manage their own social media presence; learn efficient workflows and tools to get the most bang for your buck; and accurately report useful metrics.
- J: Lucky enough to not be a one-woman band; at Mashable we have an amazing team that works on community and social I do think that understanding the work they’re doing helps me work with them.
- J: Now maybe this seems a little weird to start a social media talk with html. But basic web languages should not be scary if you have to problem solve on the web -- and that’s what managing social for an entire organization is. Understanding what clean HTML should look like and knowing how to write CSS to style a newsletter, will save you so much more time in the future than it will cost you in the beginning to learn. My opinion is HTML, CSS and Markdown are pretty standard -- javascript, python, ruby are good to get the gist of. It’s not that you need to program, it’s that you need to understand on some level what the internet is doing. To learn, there are a lot of online tutorials -- w3schools and code academy are good ones. And really, find a reason to HAVE TO learn it. Stop using the WYSIWIG on Wordpress. Look at the source of the website of your organization.
- J: POP QUIZ What is this person doing with their hand?
- They’re saving for web! Image skills are important; and you should understand when you need a jpg, when you need a GIF, when you need a png. And you should understand dimensions, both for what minimums you need and what to scale an image down to so that it loads faster. Skills like cropping, image composition, color correction, etc help for making sure you have images for social platforms. Tweets with images tend to get more engagement; so coming up with a great image for a tweet is important.
- J: Another thing the one-woman band cannot be afraid of is a spreadsheet. This is an example that’s mostly text, but knowing how to sort by a column -- and by a secondary column -- and add up numbers, and create charts; these are not optional. You should never be afraid of what an analytics export contains. Spreadsheets/analytics/and really basic numbers. J: And going a bit more abstract: How to focus, which is both a skill I think doesn’t get discussed enough, and one that is vital when you have varying responsibilities. That means knowing which social platforms your organization should focus on; how much time to spend digging into analytics, etc. And we’ll talk about this more in a bit.
- E&J Buffer: Great for multiple accounts; great for two-click scheduling. Use the browser plugin. (Also use Chrome.)
- Can also right click on an image to share it.
- J: Pocket’s tagging system lets me save articles and resources related to stories I’m working on …. or poetry I’m reading … or cakes I want to make.
- E: Chartbeat’s BigBoard + $35 Chromecast = instant analytics dashboard; People don’t have to ask you how a story’s doing, because they can see it.
- E: Sync Dropbox and/or Google Drive to your computer so you can access your files. Also: Box
- Pixlr editor - in-browser for quick photo editing
- J: Facebook URL debugger; helps if you changed an image or a description but the preview on Facebook is still showing the old version.
- Existing guides on how to optimize presentation on different networks.
- J: I use Tweetbot and a copious amount of lists; Also, for trending stories you may miss, say, while you’re sleeping and being oh-so-unproductive, there’s Nuzzel and Digg Private twitter lists are core to keeping up with conversations happening on my beat as a travel editor.
- E: Feedly J: RSS feeds are basic to how I keep track of about 200 different news sources Feed notifier is also a great tool on Macs for notifications from specific feeds. So, for example, I get an alert in the corner of the screen when a new Mashable story publishes.
- J: Mashable Velocity is a tool that we have that shows how things are trending, if they’re getting more or less popular, and it’s something that really helps with following news. Really great for seeing a topic pop again, and finding related archive content to repromote
- shoutkey.com/hi -- how to easily share links
- Scrape similar - Chrome browser extension
- bitly extension for easy sharing, and customization
- SocialBro dashboard - use the free version
- J: If you have a long to-do list, the worst thing you can do is let the tasks themselves determine what you work on and when you work on it. One process I use for prioritization is bullet journaling -- if you’ve never heard of it there’s an explanation at bulletjournal.com
- Or of the week; If you have a team of reporters who you’re trying to get more involved in social; a weekly update on social metrics along with a quick tip at the top of the email is a way to keep the momentum alive. And you should be over-communicative. Just because someone didn’t respond to your tip on the best times to tweet doesn’t mean they didn’t read it.
- Dropbox, Box, Google Drive -- doesn’t matter where just be consistent.
- What happens if you’re hit by a bus? How do people figure out what they need to do to keep the business running? (Is mentioning being hit by a bus too morbid?)
- You documented. Great. Is it understandable?
- And avoid spaces.
- Keep that file central -- like on Dropbox with your other documents -- and be concise. Questions: What percentage growth or improvement are you looking for? When will you check your progress? How will you adjust course to keep improving? How will you celebrate?
- E: J: But don’t overdo them. Google Analytics (or Omniture) has a lot more information than you really need to make a decision.
- E:
- Weekly? Monthly? Could even go super transparent and blog about them.
- E: J: Thought Pinterest was a great idea but not seeing any traction? Refocus. Did you see a great return on a project’s Tumblr that just dropped off after a month? These are questions that metrics should be answering.
- And finally: Vote for Jessica for ONA board!