Introduction to social media in journalism

1. Introduction to social media in journalism

2. Top social-media sites (by Alexa rank) • Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Google + • Pinterest • Flickr • LiveJournal • Badoo.com • StumbleUpon • Fiverr.com

3. Why is social media important? • Sites like Facebook, Twitter and even message boards allow reporters, bloggers, companies and others to interact with readers on a more personal level than ever before. • People tend to trust recommendations from their friends and family more than advertisements. • It’s user-friendly and portable. • Social media has enjoyed a surge in popularity over the last few years. • People now expect journalists to be plugged into social media in some way.

4. How does social media for personal use differ from using it professionally? • Whereas most personal social media updates go out to a person’s family and friends, the audience is presumably already interested in what that person has to say. In the competitive environment of news media, you have to make a case for why people should care. • You have to be more cautious about what you say. Off-the-cuff remarks, even on an account you primarily use for personal updates, can affect your professional standing on social media.

5. What are the benefits of using social media? • You can get news out quickly to multiple readers. • By monitoring social media, you can get tips on stories, and be notified of events that you might not otherwise be aware of. • Can appeal to users to send contributions to you (like weather photos during a storm) and package that with your existing coverage. This is called crowdsourcing.

6. Basics of using Twitter • Limited to 140 characters in a single tweet. • Character limit means URL shorteners like bit.ly should be used when including links in your tweets. • Including hashtags (#) along with a keyword (#asujmc305, for example) allows you to categorize your tweet, and when people search for that word, your tweet will come back in results. You don’t want to overload your tweets, however, and should generally use no more than two keywords. • The reply symbol (@) comes into play when you reply directly to a tweet, or you mention a specific Twitter user in the tweet you send out (@asujmc305 when talking about our class, for example). Tweets that include this also appear in the user’s feed, so they can see it. You want to include @asujmc305 in all of the tweets you use to promote your assignments in this class.

7. Example of Twitter live coverage

8. Situations in which live Twitter updates are valuable • Major weather events • On the scene of big breaking news events (mass shootings, airplane disasters, etc.) • Major court cases (if devices are allowed) • Getting immediate reaction during or after a news event (election results, politicians’ controversial statements, etc.) • During planned events of interest, such as big concerts and guest speakers • In the midst of events where there’s not enough information or time to write a complete story, like impromptu rallies (like the ones downtown during the immigration law debate)

9. Basics of using Facebook • Create a fan page for your business or blog (if you have one) • If it’s yourself you’re marketing, be careful what you post and what pictures you put on your site. Compromising photos can also compromise your professional integrity. • Be somewhat judicious about the posts you craft. They go out to everybody that likes your page, so you don’t want to make people feel like they’re being spammed. • When you’re writing pitches for an external site, like your blog, you want to entice readers into clicking on the link to your page. Don’t give too much information away in your posts, otherwise people will simply read that summary and not visit your site.