Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
HOW TO CRAFT A
SOCIAL FIRST NEWS
STRATEGY
SWN & HOW TO CRAFT A SOCIAL-FIRST VERSION 1.0
IWPR NEWS STRATEGY
MAR 2015
Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public
domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or
moral rights may limit how you use the material.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this
work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Legal Code can be found here:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode
Introduction
Social platforms today enable news organizations to reach an international audience of unprecedented scale. significant stories often appear
first on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and then on television outlets
such as Al Jazeera, CNN or the BBC. The one-two punch of a viral story
online followed by television coverage can quickly give an issue worldwide attention.
Small World News recommends news organizations, especially start-up
organizations, adapt to this changing landscape by implementing a
social-first news strategy. Deliver the news where the audience already
is. Recognize social platforms can help drive the news cycle. Tap the
audience to contribute research, fact-checking, and sourcing. Each of
these are requirements for the newsrooms of the future.
A social-first strategy will enable a small staff to leverage a large audience and the no-cost content it creates. In addition, this model allows
you to quickly and affordably produce content for distribution to larger
outlets such as CNN or Al Jazeera. Small organizations that cover large
or remote geographic regions can use a social-first approach to quickly
source material from previously unreachable areas.
A news story is never truly complete. Though coverage often begins
as real-time breaking news, the most important stories are often only
understood over time. Comprehensive coverage of important issues
over the long haul is a process, a cycle, that news organizations need to
understand and control. The real-time, social web makes this more true
than ever before.
This guide will help you tell great stories that are meant to be shared by
walking you through the process to create a social-first strategy.
Step 1
Establish a clear
editorial proposition
Every great news strategy is built on engaging the public and building
an audience by offering something inspiring, something they cant get
anywhere else. A social-first news strategy leverages evolving platforms
and technology to maximize your reach and engage your audience as
primary and secondary sources.
What kind of stories will your organization tell? This is the crux of
your editorial proposition. Before you can determine the size of your
target audience, you must decide what stories you want to tell. Will your
organization focus on a specific topic niche, such as politics, economics,
or sports? Or, will you produce a more general product, covering a broad
overview of daily or weekly events? You may decide to take a general
approach to stories, but focus on appealing to a specific demographic.
Step 2
The latest demographics reveal the rapidly increasing potential of social-first news strategies in the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2013,
more than 125 million citizens in MENA access the Internet and 53 million
actively participate on social media. 80 percent of Internet users in MENA
spend more than an hour updating social networks. This indicates a population with a high likelihood of being receptive to a social-first approach.
Converse and engage on Twitter, dont simply broadcast.
Direct the conversation by creating clear hashtags but be
flexible. Adapt others hashtags if they are trending higher.
A photo plus a caption is doable by anyone with a mobile phone.
Ask questions, poll your audience, experts are everywhere.
An easy way to begin a conversation with your audience by attaching a
hashtag to your question, title, or status update. In 2009, in an effort to
coordinate reporting on the Presidential election via Twitter, Small World
News co-founder Brian Conley(@Baghdadbrian) made a concerted effort
to push the #afghan09 tag. According to the WebEcology research project,
Out of the 483 different hashtags used at least three times, #Afghan09
was most prominent, first adopted by @aliveinafghan, @smallworldnews,
and @BaghdadBrian. #Afghanistan (a non-unique hashtag) had the next
highest frequency, followed by #AfghanElection, originally adopted by
@pajhwok.
Step 3
SUCCEEDING ON FACEBOOK
Use a short, intriguing title.
Include an eye catching image with every post.
Provide a short intro to the piece, rather than posting the entire item.
Add a text summary even if the content being shared is a video.
10
Step 4
Staff a Social-First Newsroom
Now that you have defined an editorial focus, your audience, and
learned to engage them effectively, its time to staff for a social-first strategy. If you are adapting from a traditional newsroom, you may need to
make structural changes for a social first plan to work. Remember that
as the platform changes, the content, workflow and even job descriptions within your news organization must change too.
EDITOR IN CHIEF
DEFINES AGENDA
SOCIAL MEDIA
MANAGER
Social Media
AUDIENCE
11
12
Social Editor
Someone must take primary responsibility for defining the social strategy and assessing its success. The Social Editor reviews the activity of
individual reporters and defines an overall strategy for social media. The
Social Editor is responsible for tracking trends, evaluating new tools and
innovating on your social-first strategy.
Business and Marketing Director
Working closely with the EiC, this individual oversees budgetary and
marketing decisions. Its important to keep this individuals department
separate from the newsroom to protect the independence and credibility of
the newsroom.
Social media engagement does not stop with the social editors. Reporters
must be engaged constantly with their social networks too. Not only to stay
ahead of stories but to constantly groom sources, enlist contributors and
fact-check in the social sphere. Social must be integrated into the fundamental workflow of your news organization at every level.
13
Step 5
Plan your Social-First Strategy
A smart strategy for daily coverage is as important as staffing. Every day
should start with an editorial meeting. The Editor-in-Chief leads story
meetings to define your organizations content priorities. It is then up
to the social editor and reporters to take these priorities to the social
web, research via Twitter, Facebook, etc. the reporter's primary job is to
fact-check rumors and updates from the social web, creating accurate,
fact-based updates.
The meeting should be quick and cover the stories of the day. Sometimes
a bit of pre-planning for upcoming events should be included. Daily
meetings and a clear coverage plan are essential to a clear staff focus on
the news as it happens. Daily meeting are also essential to identifying
and following the most interesting stories as they develop into in-depth
features.
14
BREAKING
NEWS
HEADLINE
QUICKLY PUBLISH
TO SOCIAL MEDIA
PUBLISH IMPORTANT
DETAILS TO SOCIAL MEDIA
AS THEY ARE VERIFIED
PUBLISH TO
SOCIAL MEDIA
Not all stories are planned. Some news breaks during the day. Consider a
multi-step publication process:
1. When news breaks, staff must first send a text message or call
their editor.
2. Once approved, publish an initial headline-style update.
3. Follow breaking news and headlines with more detailed text stories
and a photo or short video clip as soon as possible.
4. Add more carefully edited videos, additional photos and follow-up
coverage as new information -- and connectivity -- permit.
5. Once youve provided breaking coverage, you can delay adding additional information until you are at a location with good connectivity.
For more on this topic, see the Planning your Coverage module.
15
Step 6
To run an effective social-first news agency, you need a solid understanding of your technology and available connectivity. Your staff
should have mobile connection whenever possible, the lowest bandwidth
social story still needs a voice or SMS connection. If data connectivity is
too weak to publish multimedia immediately, take this as an opportunity and not a limitation.
Engage your audience in the process, provide them updates as you have
them. Smart devices, and digital cameras are capable of recording all
elements of multimedia in one device. When connectivity permits, youll
be able to publish content as soon as you have it.
16
The production power of smart devices is the key promise of mobile technology. They offer not just connectivity, but multimedia production power
in a small package. Smart devices enable your team to create, assemble,
and publish from the field. You may not want your staff to publish complete
features without editorial oversight, but the ability to publish the story
over time will engage your audience and increase your value. Release
initial clips as soon as possible, updating as the story evolves and further
contextualizing the story as more information becomes available.
Multimedia is not an ends in itself. Social stories are crafted to have a
narrative. The manner of publishing and releasing the material should
complement the story. A brief tweet or text-only status update sets the
stage and lets the audience know what news is coming. Publishing a single
photo or video clip with a caption ahead of a more in-depth story piques
interest and intrigues the audience. As you report your story, think
through how this narrative will develop. It will help you present better
material and avoid producing content you will never use.
17
Step 7
Be Competitive in the Market
18
When starting a media business you likely will lack the data -- often
called metrics -- needed to identify your audience and its interests and
behaviors. Social networking tools have the idea of metrics at their core,
its what their business is built on. Analytics tools examine the path of
your users while consuming content, as well as the contents path on the
internet. What is being shared, by whom, and how often?
Tracking and examining this analytics will enable you to create a pool of
audience data. When audience data start coming in, you will begin to see
the actual profile of your audience. Based on this, you can decide whether
it is possible to broaden the commercial target group or, perhaps, start
selling packages for more than one target group. Whatever your ultimate
strategy for creating revenue, having a clear pool of audience data is the
first step.
Be sure to evaluate your competitors and current market, as well as
potential audience.
19
Step 8
20
21
Step 9
Make Social-First News
If youve read through all the steps above, youre ready to get started. Gather
your staff together, consider each of the steps and develop a roadmap for
implementation. You may not adapt every step outlined, but each step has
something to offer. Each step is also an ingredient necessary for most
organizations to craft a successful Social-First Strategy.
Review this list of the elements present in a Social-First strategy, and
check that your plan provides each of them the proper weight needed by your
specific organization.
Editorial Focus
Target Audience
Social-First Stories
Social-First Staffing
Social-First Editorial Plan
Familiarity with Technology
Competitive Marketing Plan
Understand Additional Challenges
22
23