The document provides tips for engaging online communities and empowering them. It discusses listening to the community, sharing skills and tools to empower them, and motivating them to take action. The key takeaways are to get personal, listen to the community, share skills and tools to empower them, and motivate them to action. The goal is to build a highly engaged community that collaborates to enrich journalism.

1. Engaging and empowering
communities online
Hannah Waldram
Birmingham | September 2013
Photos: Helen Ogbourn/Flickr

2. ● Listen
● Get personal
● Share skills & tools
● Show bigger picture
Cardiff lessons: how to build a highly engaged community
who are empowered and motivated to action

3. "Having a direct, dedicated following—a
readership invested in you, not just the
publication you're primarily associated
with—is like a career insurance policy. "
- Ann Friedman

4. Listening to the
community
Be tireless in
campaigning

5. Empowering
through skills
sharing

6. Empowering
through tools

7. Takeaways from Guardian Local
● Get personal
● Listen
● Share skills and tools to empower
● Motivate to action

8. From beatblogging in Cardiff to:
coordinating UK communities & beyond

9. Community coordinators - what do we do?
LISTEN | ENGAGE | REWARD | SHARE | COLLABORATE | TRAIN
- Encourage discussion and engage with communities around our
news stories - enrich our journalism through collaboration

11. WHY? Open journalism
"Open journalism is journalism which
is fully knitted into the web of
information that exists in the world
today. It links to it; sifts and filters it;
collaborates with it and generally uses
the ability of anyone to publish and
share material to give a better account
of the world."
- Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief
“We believe that journalism gets stronger when
these worlds collaborate.”
- Joanna Geary, communities & social editor

13. ● Online allows further reach for case studies
(using the right language), sources & data
● Deepening engagement can reap long term
rewards (follow ups, new leads and lines of
investigation)
● Readers can add knowledge and value to your
work and be your story advocates
Some examples which show:

14. Social: Reach out

16. On site:
Deepen
relationships

18. + @guardianfilm: We’re looking to speak to Cineworld
employees for a Guardian project. Get in touch: adam
[dot] boult [at] guardian.co.uk
x16

26. Crowdsource: Involve

32. ● Be specific
● Do it yourself
● Share the bigger picture
Crowdsourcing tips

34. Takeaways
● Listen (again!)
● Plan
● Think about long term, outside life of an individual
● Identify key influencers early & reach out to them
● Consider your user journey - from newbie to loyalist
● What are your KPIs - for each project and longer term?
● Don’t worry about platforms - think about the best place
for the outcome you desire
● Create a number of opportunities for engagement (don’t
forget importance of offline!)

35. Some tools to help

40. Links
● Slideshare:
http://slideshare.net/hrwaldram
● Delicious 'community' tag:
http://delicious.
com/HRWaldram/community