Facebook - 10,000 Words

Facebook’s Best Practices for Journos: Optimize Graph Tags, and Your Editorial Staff

Karen Fratti — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:30:14 +0000

When Facebook released their Best Practices guide for media last week, I admit I thought it was cute. In my world, I consider Facebook sort of my ‘private life,’ a space I reserve to share thoughts and internet things with people I actually know, whereas I consider Twitter my more public persona, where I follow strangers’ opinions. Facebook’s advice seemed like they were pointing out the obvious (‘have your content creators use the ‘Follow’ button’) in a last ditch attempt to make the social network as relevant as Twitter, especially in the wake of the all the ‘social media as wire service’ talk since the Boston marathon bombings and manhunt.

But that’s sort of a fallacy. In fact, one billion people still use Facebook, all the time. When I’m honest with myself, my newsfeed is just as full of wedding photos and lunch break musings from my real-life acquaintances as it is new posts and headlines from my favorite media outlets, just like Twitter. And Facebook is starting to get savvy about helping those publishers garner traffic and reader engagement. It’s not a bad product.

Slate is the best example of a using Facebook to successfully engage their readers; it’s even the case study in the handbook. They’ve doubled their Facebook referrals between the second quarter of 2012 and the first of 2013. continued…

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Facebook: The New Rolodex for Journalists

Mona Zhang — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:24:27 +0000

Our sister site SocialTimes recently spoke to Vadim Lavrusik, manager of Facebook’s journalism program. Lavrusik talked about why Facebook is the Rolodex of today’s journalists and how they can use the social network to report. Some of the takeaways:

Finding Sources
For finding people, journalists can type in phrases like ”College students in New York, NY” and “People who work at Facebook and like the New York Times“ to target a group of people if they don’t have a specific person in mind. From there, examining a person’s profile information such as a friends list or relationship status can be a starting point for verifying his or her identity…

Discovering Content
Facebook is also a good source of eye-witness videos and photos that journalists can discover and request to use in their stories, said Lavrusik. For example, a search for “photos taken in Breezy Point” conjures more 1,000 images of the New York City neighborhood that was devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012… continued…

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Why Instagram’s Web Profiles Could Benefit News Organizations

Ryan Lytle — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:00:07 +0000

Earlier this week, Instagram announced that it would be bringing its profile pages to the Web. Currently, Instagram has been a mobile-only entity, where users could upload images only through their mobile devices and browse friends’ and brands’ pages only through mobile devices.

Now, this is going to change, according to an Instagram blog post announcing the move:

“Your web profile features a selection of your recently shared photographs just above your profile photo and bio, giving others a snapshot of the photos you share on Instagram. In addition, you can follow users, comment & like photos and edit your profile easily and directly from the web.”

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3 Reasons the Updated Google Trends Tool Will Benefit Journalists

Ryan Lytle — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 10:00:31 +0000

This week, Google announced that it is merging its Google Trends and Insights for Search into one Google Trends tool.

From Google’s blog post announcing the move:

Now we are merging Insights for Search into Google Trends, wrapping it all up in a clean new interface to give you a clearer view of what’s on the world’s mind. The new Google Trends now includes features from both products and makes it easier and more intuitive to dig into the data.

Both Google Trends and Insights for Search have been useful tools in the industry for years, offering journalists a way to see popular search terms and compare keywords, respectively.

While each tool has separate and distinct functions, there are benefits to packaging them into one super tool. Here are three reasons journalists will benefit from this update:

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Early Bird Rates for Mediabistro’s Social Media Marketing Boot Camp End Tomorrow

Guest — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:30:41 +0000

On October 18, Mediabistro brings you Social Media Marketing Boot Camp, an interactive online event and workshop. The event includes keynote speakers, practical how-to sessions, and strategic assignments to provide a dynamic training on social media. By the end of eight weeks, you will create an integrated strategic plan using various social media platforms to build an engaged audience and convert traffic into sales.

Early bird rates are available today. Save $100 when you sign up before they end tomorrow, September 20.

Our speakers include:

Michael Bepko, Global Online Community Manager, Whole Foods

Brian Carter, Author, LinkedIn For Business

Keidra Chaney, Digital Content Strategist, The Web Farm

Lauren Cucinotta, Branding + Editorial Manager, TEDx

Jennifer Dubrow, Global Social Business Transformation Leader, Inside Sales, IBM

Frank Eliason, Senior Vice President of Social Media, Citibank

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Pew Study Looks At Photo, Video Sharing Habits

Meranda Watling — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:00:11 +0000

There’s a lot of pressure on journalists and news organizations to be everywhere, not just when it comes to feet on the ground reporting but also when it comes to tweets, pins, posts, etc. on all form of social media.

We’ve even encouraged the trend with tips to maximize your presence on everything from Google+ to Pinterest. Which is why this Pew Internet & American Life Project’s study about how photos and videos are shared socially caught my eye.

Their findings shed some interesting light on how many (or few) people are actually using these various networks. (This wasn’t the focus of the study but looked interesting, so I created this graph.)

Primarily, their questions were about how many adults post photos/videos online and how many share them, and whether the media they post/share was their original creation or that of someone else. Nearly half — 46 percent — of the online adult population surveyed indicated they post original photos, while 41 percent share photos they’ve found online on social networks. Overall, their study found that 56 percent of Internet users do at least one of those activities, posting their creations or sharing someone else’s. News organizations rely on both: The eye-witness videos from the scene of the event and the “curators” who share the organization’s videos and photos so other online users can find it.
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Sharing Visually on Facebook: How Can It Get Readers to Your Site, Too?

Kevin Loker — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:52:48 +0000

I like photos. I tend to “Like” them, too. But despite my “clicks of approval” (read: we never really know what Likes mean), I don’t always click through to content when a news org shares an image.

Maybe everyone is more systematic than I am, but my Likes are pretty arbitrary. I’m calculated about a lot of things, but my commenting is pretty arbitrary, too.

Two things to healthily recognize here: “Liking” isn’t unvaluable to a news org, and neither is commenting. We can measure some value with those statistics and participate in a “Like science.” At the same time, measurement of engagement on something like Facebook may be inexact when you’re looking at all kinds of journalistic impact. (See good discussion on better measuring journalism’s impact here.)

Putting some of that conversation aside, if your journalistic meat doesn’t lay in Facebook’s garden, my gut is you want your audience to stay awhile on the content on your site. For whatever reason or combination of reasons—financial or philosophical.

If that’s you, here’s a good question worth considering: How do you share visually on Facebook and additionally draw in website traffic?

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How Should Newspapers Respond To Criticism On Their Facebook Page?

Meranda Watling — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 06:00:45 +0000

What would you do if someone came to your Facebook wall and started writing mean things about you or your work? You’d probably de-friend them, or at least delete the comments. But is that the way a news organization should respond? Does it matter that the industry is built on the very foundation of giving everyone a voice and space to share their opinions?

This question came up this week when the editor of the Hanford Sentinel posted this on the organization’s Facebook wall:

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5 Olympics Examples of Unique Digital Storytelling

Kevin Loker — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 19:10:18 +0000

Media attention is heavily focused on London 2012, and so is media experimentation.

With so many eyes looking for every kind of athletic news tidbit (or the opposite, avoiding spoilers), now’s a natural time for trying a new approach and seeing what works.

(Note: Lauren Rabaino also has a nice round-up of neat news projects.)

Here are a few Olympics items that caught my eye, along with some obvious pros, and then, additionally, questions to consider. continued…

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Upworthy Shares Memes That Make You Think, Not Just Laugh

Meranda Watling — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:03:58 +0000

There’s more to the Internet than LOLcats and dating sites. Sometimes surfing the Internet feels like swimming in an ocean of viral videos and vitriol. I’d like to say news sites are a tropical island in the middle, but too often they promote or fuel the storms. That’s why, Upworthy, seems refreshing and, well, worthy of sharing.

It’s premise? Find the things worth sharing and make those viral. The site, which David Carr of the New York Times profiled this week (Two Guys Made a Web Site, and This Is What They Got), makes no bones that it has an agenda — so while you may not lean as left as the founders appear to — the idea of making things worth knowing as shareable and visual as an Oatmeal comic, animated GIF or LOL cat is nice.

From Carr’s piece, because he explains it better than I can:

“Upworthy, a news aggregation site that began publishing on March 26, is serious news built for a spreadable age, with super clicky headlines and a visually oriented user interface. Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn.org, and Peter Koechley, a former managing editor of The Onion who also worked at MoveOn, noticed that much of the media that gets shared online is built on cute animals and dumb humans that are good for a laugh, but not much else.”

Or from UpWorthy’s site a, what else, graphical representation of what they’re trying to do:

By applying the same sorts of visual pow, social media acrobatics and SEO-friendly tactics news sites, and every site worth its salt online, tries to employ, the site attempts to make things that matter easy and fun to share. That gives you venn diagrams like the one above and headlines that beg to be clicked through, such as What Does Congress Spend Half Of Its Time On? (an infographic look at the fundraising necessary to run for office these days); Yes, Facebook Will Be On The Final Exam (another infographic, but about a new study on how time on Facebook doesn’t necessarily cause less study time); and Smoking Does WHAT To Your Breasts? 5 More Reasons Not To Smoke (a video describing reasons beyond the whole lung cancer thing not to light up).

It will be interesting to see how the site grows and what other innovative ways they find to promote causes or need-to-know information. Already it’s gaining followers, and judging from its Facebook wall, plenty of likes/shares. As a journalist trying to produce serious work (but with a soft spot for animal memes), I appreciate the attempt to raise the profile of stories, videos and graphics that make me think, not just laugh.

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Panel of Techno-Optimists: The Shift to Social and Who’s Doing it Right

Mona Zhang — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:23:11 +0000

(L to R) David Carr of The New York Times, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, WaPoLabs Chief Strategist and Editor-at-Large Rob Malda, and Flipboard Editorial Director Josh Quittner.

In an event hosted by New York University’s Center for Publishing and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies last night, social media experts discussed the shift to social content and what that means for the media industry. Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, Rob Malda, chief strategist and editor-at-large of the WaPo Labs, and Josh Quittner, editorial director of Flipboard, opined under the moderation of the New York Times’ David Carr. The mood was decidedly optimistic—as Quittner said at one point, “I think we’re all techno-optimists on this panel.”

The Social Epiphany
The conversation started on the shift to social. “I don’t really surf anymore,” said Carr, “most of my content… comes from somewhere and it’s like this vast, human enabled RSS that is pushing things towards me.” According to Smith, there was a dramatic change between 2010 and 2011 in terms of BuzzFeed’s traffic. Within a year, their biggest referrer went from Google to Facebook. As people change their media habits from seeking content to more passively getting content in the form of their Facebook or Twitter feeds, will they be able to stay well-informed? continued…

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How The Wall Street Journal Is Using Facebook to Cover Facebook

Elana Zak — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:16:58 +0000

In March, around the time Facebook launched its Timeline format, Poynter published a piece declaring “Facebook Timeline not yet a friend to news organizations.” The post’s author, Jeff Sonderman, wrote “the flashy visual template adds too little style while removing too much substance.”

The social media team at The Wall Street Journal might beg to disagree. In an innovative piece of social journalism, WSJ reporters and editors are using Facebook’s Timeline tool to cover Facebook’s initial public offering.

The news org has created a new Facebook page, www.facebook.com/GoesPublic, using Timeline to not only chronicle its IPO roadshow but to also tell the history of Facebook.

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Social Media Roundup: Reaching New Audiences, Creating Social Content and More

Ben LaMothe — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:42:30 +0000

Every Friday I post links to a few of the blog posts that I read during the week that I found interesting and insightful.

Included in this week’s round-up is discussion about researching how to reach new audiences; why Per Active Member is an important metric; and best practice for socially-created content.

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Does Your Newsroom Need a Facebook Ad Budget?

Ben LaMothe — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:31:11 +0000

For news organizations that have taken the plunge into Facebook and have made Facebook a part of their daily communications, there is something else that they should consider.

Like businesses, news organizations can use Facebook advertising as a way to attract new readers and listeners.

If the news organization posts stories and photos to its page, there’s a significant opportunity to get traction out of those posts, in the form of Facebook advertising. Facebook enables advertisers to create ads out of photos and text that they’ve posted to their wall.

Every story is going to have a different target demographic likely to be interested in it.

By having the organizational flexibility to run ads based on varying demographic targeting, news organizations have an opportunity to get exposure with different audiences every day.

Many news organizations are fighting for the budget they can get, often with little or nothing left over. So finding money for advertising will be challenging. But for those who are able to do some experimenting, it could yield positive outcomes.

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Social Media Roundup: Advocacy, Corporate Social Strategists, and Social Media Campaigns

Ben LaMothe — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:39:30 +0000

Every Friday I post links to a few of the blog posts that I read during the week that I found interesting and insightful.

Included in this week’s round-up is discussion about the shift from influence to advocacy in the development of online communities; the changing future of today’s corporate social media strategists; and best practice for growing an online community through a series of campaigns.

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