What We Learned About Social Media Journalism in 2015
Today, we’re taking a look back at 2015 to revisit the best things we learned about social media journalism. You won’t find all of our 2015 posts here, however. Instead, I’ve listed the meatier analyses and original writing we’ve authored. Similar to Mel Kramer’s mega recap from January 2015, I’ve sorted the list by topic, to help you find things quicker.
General Social Media
The Foundation of Social Media Journalism
Creating Effective Social Media Graphics for Journalism: What are social media graphics? When should you use them? Six styles. Best practices and considerations.
Why You Need a Digital Plan For Success: Case study from NPR’s Goats & Soda. Includes best practices.
Exploring quizzes with Qzzr: Quizzes aren’t dead. How to use them to boost engagement.
Social Media Meetups: Taking Online Conversations Offline: Lessons from hosting the Hidden Brain meetup
The best engagement happens in person: How publishers are using live events to build relationships with the audience.
Inside The New Social Platform ‘The List App’: Sharing lists is more fun than you’d think.
Periscope Tips for Reporters from Ari Shapiro and Rich Preston.
What We Learned From NPR’s First Periscope Experiment
Using Reddit For A Social Campaign
Analyzing Facebook Lead-In Text Length: How long is too long? We found that the sweet spot (for click-throughs) is ~120 characters or less.
How Our Facebook Audience Helped Us Find Courage: Underscores the importance of reading comments and interacting with the audience.
NPR’s Facebook Puppet Newscast: What’s Up With That? An experiment in creating native Facebook video
Ari Shapiro: Social media as an extension of journalism itself: An important message for all journalists.
10 Things I Learned From Managing NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest Social Media Campaign: A deep-dive into a multi-platform contest and tips on hosting a community.
Deciding which social platform/tools to use: We get this question a lot.
Thoughts on Facebook’s Q&A Feature
Twitter Basics for Journalists, Part 1: What should I tweet? How often should I tweet? When should I tweet? Can I schedule tweets? How to perform a self audit.
Twitter Basics for Journalists, Part 2: All about hashtags
There’s more than one way to tweet a story: Headline plus link is not the best way to share your story.
Quoted tweets: The other retweet
Lessons from #PubRadioVoice: NPR’s Code Switch lead blogger Gene Demby dishes on how the team’s Twitter chat unexpectedly became a trending topic.
Snapchat
Calling All Snapchatters: Lessons we learned from our Snapchat followers.
A Tale Told in 36 Snaps: Showing how a radio story comes together, plus a Snapchat hack to get more followers.
Quick, practical Snapchat tips, from NPR’s Jerusalem correspondent Emily Harris
Engaging an audience on Snapchat: Six story types to try.
This Much I Know (About Snapchat): A great primer
[Early] Thoughts On Snapchat For News
Tumblr
The Deal With Tumblr: An analysis of NPR’s tumblr and recommendations
NPR’s Tumblr Guidelines
Crowdsourcing / Callouts
Six ways to crowdsource: Tow Center’s Guide to Crowdsourcing
How to Crowdsource for Ambient Sounds
How to successfully solicit and use audio callouts
6 Ways To Use Social Callouts
Others posts worth noting
Notes from Poynter’s Mobile News Summit
#RaceOnTech: Real-time public media storytelling around race, technology, and innovation
Why you should ditch iMessage for a day (and dip your thumbs into another messaging app): Serri Graslie gives WeChat a try.
5 Things I Learned About Podcast Culture In The U.K.
7 Strategies For Engaging Your Podcast’s Audience
Note: I’ve edited some of the original headlines so they make more sense in this format.
- Lori
