Robin J. Phillips presents "Social Media 202," a business journalism Webinar hosted by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.
For more information, please visit businessjournalism.org.
1. Social media 202 Reynolds Center for Business Journalism Twitter: @BizJournalism Facebook: facebook.com/BizJournalism Robin J. Phillips @RobinJP Social Media as a journalistic tool
3. What you will learn No turning back. Doing nothing is not an option. Why other business journalists like using social media. You have more control than you think. What social media can do for you – personally, professionally. Ways to dig into the data and use social media tools as research tools.
4. Twitter July 2006 190 million Facebook February 2004 500+ million LinkedIn December 2002 80 million Three main social media networks for journalists
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7. Each has its own strength Twitter People you don’t know but who have common interests. Real-time search engine; platform for listening, promoting work; crowdsourcing. Facebook People you know or who know someone you know. Excellent source for finding sources; listening, sharing work; crowdsourcing. LinkedIn Colleagues, former colleagues, professionals. Online Rolodex you don’t have to update; good database of employees; good for crowdsourcing. SM tool Community Journalistic advantage
11. Linking to articles, distributing content “ Twitter and LinkedIn are terrific for crowdsourcing . … after the tax bill passed, I sent out a tweet asking for tax experts to comment. Thanks to the viral nature of Twitter along with LinkedIn groups, I had a bunch of sources in no time.”
12. Linking, sharing, being a resource … including your work, your sources’ info, competitors’ stories.
23. Self-promotion, taking it with you “ Used in the best way, reporters are liberated from the ivory tower of newsroom judgments and can directly interact with readers … the reporter becomes a recognizable contact point for his stories and his beat.”
37. Where to go from here Be an early tester but a late adopter. Find out what works for you and ignore the rest. Understand the landscape. Learn the pros and cons of the biggest social media sites so you can use them better. Stay informed. Twitter feed. Google reader. Create lists. Both Twitter and Facebook make this easy. Don’t flood the zone. Use a tool like HootSuite that lets you save drafts and schedule updates on multiple networks and from multiple profiles, all at once. Lose the guilt. There’s no reason whatsoever to worry about what you miss on Twitter or Facebook.
Editor's Notes
Tracy Swartz Chicago’s RedEye uses Facebook to keep in touch with bus drivers.
Reporters can hold their own ‘listening’ campaigns.
What's even more unique about Twitter is the way competitors share and comment on each other's work. I constantly RT links from my rivals. There's a real conversational nature to Twitter, too. Just today, in fact, Ron Lieber at the New York Times spotted a fact error in one of our retirement articles and DM'd me, suggesting that we double check a data point. Linked In is also valuable, although not as useful as Twitter, for generating clicks. Also, the comment function on Linked In is clunky. But, that said, both Twitter and Linked In are terrific for crowdsourcing. For example, after the tax bill passed, I sent out a tweet asking for tax experts to comment. Thanks to the viral nature of Twitter along with Linked In groups, I had a bunch of sources in no time.
Look up “search Facebook” Ask Facebook.
Use social media .. In this case Facebook .. For a story.
Mary Beth Faller looking for class of 82 college graduates.
Three of about a dozen sources she found by searching keywords ‘class of 82’, graduate 1982, etc.
The best thing about having a Twitter or Facebook account is that, used in the best way, reporters are liberated from the ivory tower of newsroom judgments and can directly interact with readers. That not only gives a face to the readers - who were previously an ink-stained, invisible mass - it also gives a face to the reporter, who becomes a recognizable contact point for his stories and his beat. That is an advantage to any journalist who really wants to know what's going on in their world.
More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook