lecture 3 writing news for social media

Week 3: WRITING NEWS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

Today’s Agenda

1. Producing news for social media

2. Review of basic good journalism

3. SEO

4. Practice

Producing news for social media:

Digital technology has changed everystage of the news production cycle:

1. Gathering

2. Reporting

3. Distributing

GATHERING NEWS

• access of journalists to sources

• access of the public to journalists

GATHERING NEWS

Crowd-sourcing! • topics

• trends

• information

• more sources

GATHERING NEWS

• news gathering becoming more “communal”, more conversational

• conversations are often public (ex: politicians and reporters, companies and reporters, when a search becomes an exchange, when an exchange becomes forum)

More transparency?

More accountability?

GATHERING NEWS: summary

• access of journalists to sources

• access of the public to journalists

• Crowd-sourcing: information, topics, trends

• news gathering becoming more “communal”, more conversational

• conversations are often public

• The conversation may become part of the story

SOCIAL MEDIA RISKS

Accuracy risks: • Breaking news too quickly

• Fact-checking happens when?

REPORTING NEWS

MULTI-MEDIA:

It’s no longer enough just to

produce text (or sound or video)

REPORTING NEWS

Expectation of enriched content and background information

Ex:• Video from the field. Ex: WSJ World Stream

• UGC. Ex: now acceptable for TV news broadcasts to use shaky cell phone video footage

• twitter feeds integrated into a story

• Photo slide show with text/sound instead of just stills

• Comments and replies between journalist and consumers

HIGHER IMPACT:

Much more clear measure of the impact of a story because of the possibility for

people to react (and interact) via comments, retweets, linking

HIGHER IMPACT

Direct link with consumers of news potentially gives journalists a new

possibility to make change, influence events

Ex: Nick Kristof of NYT mentions charity and leads

to $700,000 of donations.

But is this the journalist’s role? Should it be?

REPORTING NEWS: summary

• multi media

• expectation of enriched content and background information

• more involvement from readers/viewers/consumers/amateurs and even participants in the news

• higher impact

new responsibility for journalists?

DISTRIBUTION

News is no longer distributed at a fixed time in a fixed place

Bye bye to…– Evening TV broadcast after work

– Morning paper at the news stand

– Radio news bulletins at top of the hour

DISTRIBUTION

• news alerts (SMS and email)

• one story/multiple platforms (broadcast + mobile + internet)

• on-demand (users getting their news wherever they are)

• accelerated delivery

• redistribution through networks (personal and public)

Conclusions:

• Gathering: Being able to use the wisdom of crowds about what is interesting, what to write about, what questions to ask: it explodes the limits of the journalist’s sources, of accessibility, of distance

• Reporting: Like everything else in convergent media universe, it is less of a broadcast/monologue and more of a conversation

• Distribution: Broadened distribution potentially broadens the impact of a story too, suddenly a lot more people are able to tune in, read it, watch it, consume it

Basics of Good Journalism

Basics of Good Journalism

• Be accurate• Avoid biases• Present multiple viewpoints or perspectives • Pursue the truth• Use factual data, but develop people skills• Maintain community ties• Be open and transparent • Evoke emotion, tell a compelling story • Have vision

Basics of Good Journalism

Accuracy is more than just getting the facts right – it is getting the right

facts, and backing up ourinterpretation of the facts with

authoritative and unimpeachablesourcing. We need to let the readerknow how we know what we know.

Source: Reuters Handbook of Journalism, 2011.

WRITING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

What’s most different about writing for social media fromwriting classic news stories?

YOU’RE NOT JUST WRITING TO REPORT, YOU’RE WRITING TO

CONNECT

What are some of the ways to connect that we have already

talked about?

Using Social Media: Tips

The cost of using social media as reporting toolsis time!

Use social media to build an audience and establish rapport with your social media followers so they will be more inclined to share information and tips with you.

Know your audience. Where and how do theymost frequently access information?

Good hygiene

When you ask for data or quotes from social media audiences, make sure they know whoyou are and understand what you intend to do with what they tell you.

When you use quotes and other attributedinformation from social media, tell youraudience that the information came via social media.

WRITE FOR YOUR MEDIUM

Write for your medium as well as for youraudience.

• think about the way it will be consumed

• think about structuring the information for optimal consumption/sharing

– Ex: Write Facebook posts as ledes or blurbs. Writetweets as headlines.

• tell the same stories in many different ways

WRITE FOR YOUR MEDIUM

• what doesn’t change isaccuracy

• what does change is form and speed and frequency

SEO tips (1)

1. Headlines are extremely important. Use specifickeywords.

2. Find the keywords that readers use to search for content. (Check out trending topics on Twitter or test out Google Trends)

3. The inverted pyramid is a very search engine-friendly style of writing.

4. DO use specific terms. DON'T use jargon.5. Google is crawling Twitter, images and video as

well as text, so think about SEO for this content, too.

SEO tips (2)

1. Use words that people would use in search in order to find the information being provided

2. Put the most searchable elements at the front3. Proper names and locations are often used in

search, so names should be included in the headline and if appropriate at the front.

4. Scatter key words throughout the text. Link them.5. Make content shareable. Search engines are

paying attention.

SEO-friendly headline

Template:

KeyWord KeyWord: More InformationSomething witty, clever, and why not searchable too?

you can automate the tweeting of your posts, but if you do itmanually you can put hashtages in your headline and use commonly searched terms on twitter

its a good idea to customize for the platform

What does this mean concretely for SEO?

• Headlines and subheds

• Trending words (key words)

• Links, lists, bullet points

• Tags

• Location

• The more recent it is the more optimizable itis. That means posting often!