Engaging the audience

Social Media is a Universe A way to talk with supporters and key stakeholders So, be a connector. Reciprocate. Empower your audience, don't just market to them

Use Social Media to listen, not only to broadcast Find new story ideas, trends and sources Connect with audience(s) Bring attention and traffic

Cultural norms Be part of the conversation you start Thank people for compliments Address civil complaints Answer questions Provide more information as a breaking story unfolds Give credit and attribution Trust is easily gained and easily lost

Add value Make sure what you are sharing is either: Helpful Useful Informative Entertaining Interesting Funny

What about ME? You can also share links to your own work, but don't only post your own material.

Curate the best You add value by finding and sharing content that your readers may also care about. Especially if that content is specific. For example within a specialty or topic area You gain trust when you show you can filter out the noise

Key benefits for managers Social-media engaged workers are more likely to work collaboratively. They know how to harness the work of a range of people. From colleagues to experts in the field, trusted citizen journalists and special segments of the audience.

Best practices for Twitter Tweet content related to your expertise and live-tweet from events you cover Use #hashtags for context and cite your sources tags Share what you're reading Share links

Retweet The retweet button allows you to share a post with your followers. The original sender’s name still appears. When you see the letter RT at the beginning of post, it signifies that it is a retweet and not an original post.

@mention tags the post with a person (or company’s) Twitter username. It is also a live link to the profile page for that Twitter identity. That user can see that you mentioned them in your Tweet.

Web link A direct Web link to something posted on the Internet. Use bit.ly or other link shortener service to reduce the number of characters used.

#Hashtag A hashtag is a way of adding your tweet to a conversation. Commonly this feature is used during major events like #RoyalWedding, #HurricaneSandy and #Election2012.

@mentionRetweetLinkHashtag

How to get better at Twitter Find the influencers and follow them Follow people on the lists they follow Talk about your stuff one-third of the time Engage in their posts two-thirds of the time Become a resource of useful information and links Join Tweetups, Twestivals and hashtag events like #FollowFriday

Monitoring the buzz Creating and managing a social media dashboard lets you quickly build and manage streams of filtered content. This can can save you time, inform you sooner and give you a single destination for staying updated. Get more out of your dashboard and spend less time on Twitter and Facebook

Use a dashboard

Monitor streams

Add discrete streams

Benefits Catch stories in their infancy See what topics are angering or pleasing your community Find opportunities to engage Discover common interests Find out about events

Methods Follow sources on Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else you can find them Use Twitter lists to discover new sources of people to follow Follow community-associated #hashtags

Facebook - Best practices Post photos, not updates Start a conversation Ask a question Crowdsource Newscast Real-time updates

Updates on reporting

Photo Albums

Post photo updates

Invite questions

Ask for help

Post videos

Polls

Newscasts and live streams

Start a conversation

Peak Facebook traffic -- 13:00 -15:00 local time Facebook use goes up in evening What’s the best time to share?

Gain insight