#lori todd

[socialmediadesk]

NPR’s social team has moved to Medium

On October 30, 2013, we started the Social Media Desk Tumblr as a place to “talk about the work we do … our projects, our experiments, our brainstorms, our successes and failures.”

Today we’re moving over to Medium and changing the name of our blog to Curios. We’ll keep you up to date there on what we’re doing and thinking, just like we did across 439 posts here on Tumblr.

Speaking of Tumblr, we still love it! We have some great Tumblrs for you to follow, including: the NPR Tumblr for news, Skunkbear for entertaining dives into the world of science and the NPR Illustration Tumblr for another look at how we work here at the mothership.

Wright and Lori

[socialmediadesk]

Facebook Notes as an alternate online publishing tool

What’s your alternate online publishing plan if your site goes down? On Friday, Oct. 21, The New York Times and The Verge faced this issue, as hackers attacked a major Internet infrastructure company. With the audience in mind, NPR’s digital editors turned to Facebook Notes to reach folks who otherwise might have been unable to see the story. With election night right around the corner, this might be something you’d want to consider if you run into technical issues with your own website(s).

A number of Nippers (what we call NPR employees) were confused when they saw this in their Facebook feeds, so we thought we’d explain.

— Lori Todd, social media editor

From Joe Ruiz, weekend digital editor:

That evening, prompted by one of my favorite news organizations (Vox Media), I suggested to our tech reporter, Alina Selyukh, and my fellow engagement team editor, Dana Farrington, that we use Facebook Notes to publish Alina's ongoing story about the day's internet disruption.

The thinking behind The Verge's post of their story on Facebook, it appears, was to reach users where they are, especially if they were affected by the outage and had limited access to news.

On my desk, I keep a printed slide from a presentation created by a close friend and academic studying news. It's of Isaac Lee, chief news officer at Univision, from a speech he gave at the International Symposium of Online Journalism a few years back. It reads: "If we are not prepared to go and search for the audience wherever they live, we will lose."

To me, at the very least, that means we can't expect our audience to seek us where we THINK they want to find us. We need to go to them.

By posting Alina's story on Facebook Notes, we weren't going to drive any traffic to NPR.org, NPR One (our audio listening app that’s tailored for you) , or our news app, but we tell an important story to an audience who likely wanted to know more from our reporter in a place they already were. The engagement we normally measure on Facebook wasn't outstanding, but the audience who did read it were likely served by work we'd done. We simply needed to present it in a place where they already were, and for that, I hand it over to Dana.

From Dana Farrington, NPR engagement editor:

First, I had to be reminded that Facebook Notes even existed. Looking at our page’s archive, we have quite a few Notes from 2008, and exactly zero since then. But last year, Facebook upgraded this feature to make Notes “more beautiful and customizable.” Overall, the presentation was cleaner than a status update and allows for much more flexibility.

For Alina’s story, I copied and pasted directly from our content management system, and only had to make a few style tweaks. The tool allowed for hyperlinks and special formatting for setting off longer quotes. The hard part is manually updating any changes made to the story on NPR.org.

If we were to use this again, we’d want to consider the following things: How do we indicate that a post has been updated? What issues are there with image rights? (You can put an image across the top of the Note, but unlike a Link post, the image is stored on Facebook’s servers.)

Another question: Why not just use Instant Articles? (IAs are also a native presentation, but one that would pull directly from our site without the manual labor.) NPR does not currently use Instant Articles for most of our content, so Facebook Notes seems like a good alternative in a pinch — say if NPR.org went down. Plus, going back to Joe’s point about meeting your audience, there are surely Notes that could be written specifically for Facebook fans that would never appear on NPR.org at all.

[socialmediadesk]

SXSW Interactive + The Future of Media

Every year, tens of thousands of technology, film and music junkies convene in Austin for 10 days of mayhem, attending panels by day, and consuming free drinks, food and music by night. Over the years, the Interactive portion of SXSW has grown to include a large selection of digital media panels and discussions. This is how I chose to spend most of my days in Austin, between 🌮 tacos🌮  and meeting Grumpy Cat.  For digital editors and publishers, the headlines weren’t too surprising and many of them reinforce our current thinking:

VR Everywhere: NYT, Washington Post were both showing off their VR experiences. Many of those panels were standing-room only. It was also great to see a focus on storytelling and VR - not just by journalists, but also by the film industry. VR is finally reaching the masses, first through Google Cardboard, and now through early consumer-ready headsets. The widest-reaching examples are Samsung’s Gear VR (powered by Oculus, $150), Playstation VR ($399, available in October), Oculus Rift (starting at $599) and HTC Vive (starting at $799, available April 5).

There’s No Way Around Distributed Content. Being on a platform (social or search) is not enough. Our entire organization has to embrace this new reality, not just the outer corners of newsrooms. Let’s ask ourselves: Is it time to breakup with the homepage? Are we taking full advantage of Instant Articles?

Page Views No Longer King. Lots of talk about metrics beyond page views. Engagement metrics on each platform are much more valuable, though still a struggle to monetize. Have you defined what your platform-specific KPIs are?

Digital Staffing is Key. Many national publishers (digital-only and traditional media) have robust teams working on social platforms (not just distribution, but also discovery and reporting/storytelling on these platforms.) Additionally, publishers adding more devs/engineers. 

Let’s Stop Writing About Millennials. You probably saw NYT’s “What Happens When Millennials Run the Workplace?” over the weekend, and the huge reaction to it. Refinery29’s CEO/Founder had some great advice on how to engage future audiences and the power of niches. 

Feel free to dig into my unabridged notes for more great stuff:

Creating the Modern Media Company w/ Vox CEO Jim Banff

Lerer’s Theory of Media Evolution w/ Ben Lerer of Thrillist

Let’s Drop the Term Millennial w/ Refinery29 CEO Phillipe Von Borries

Making Distributed Content Work in News

Newsapalypse: Can Digital Really Sustain Media?

Project Loxodo: Can Tech Drive Reader Engagement? w/ Washington Post’s Marty Baron and Shaliesh Prakash

Why GIFs? w/ GIPHY CEO Alex Chung

Future of Entertainment: Ira Glass

The 170 Year Old Startup: The AP

- Lori

[socialmediadesk]

Social Media Callouts Guide

So, you want to do a social media callout. GREAT! Now what? Here’s a helpful guide to help you craft a callout, including tips on making a social callout a success. 

5 Steps for Social Media Callouts

"Every callout essentially has five steps," writes Serri Graslie:

Hone the question and pick your platforms.

Write the pitch

Share it

Review the responses; contact and vet participants

Write the story; think about how to maximize responses on air and online

If you’ve never done a callout before, be sure to read Serri’s post as it explains the five steps and includes six ways you could use callouts (finding a source, crowdsourcing images, finding story ideas, gather personal stories or ideas, starting a discussion and having fun).

Tips for Successful Callouts

Communicate with the social media team early. Every newsroom has it’s own workflow for handling social media. Because each social platform has it's own advantages and limitations, a social media editor can advise you if your callout needs to be tweaked or if there’s a better-suited option. Turn-around time on callouts can vary depending on whether the callout resonates with the audience and what you’re asking the audience to do.

Results may vary. The success of a callout will depend on whether or not the audience finds it interesting and worth sharing or commenting on. A successful callout will be focused and direct, but should be written in a way that entices the audience to respond. Be prepared in case your callout underperforms.

Facebook and Twitter are not the only options.  There are other social networks like Reddit and Snapchat that you may be able to tap.

Verification is important. In the case of callouts, you should verify a source’s identity and information as you would when reporting in traditional manners

Don’t forget to follow up with the audience. Social media is a two-way conversation between us and the audience. If we are asking them to do something for us, whether that’s commenting on a post, emailing us, or (especially) recording audio, we must make an effort to acknowledge their participation. 

Related posts about callouts and crowdsourcing

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

- Lori

[socialmediadesk]

Member Stations: Pitch Us Your Snapchat Stories

When Vesta asked the audience what they wanted to see from NPR on Snapchat, the response could be summed up as:

Seriously, though, Vesta wrote a very informative piece about the responses we got. While we were chatting, Vesta mentioned some users wanted to hear from their local Member stations, too. This wasn’t the first time we heard this, but it was indeed serendipitous when, that same day, we got a pitch from WLRN in Miami about doing a Snapchat takeover. 

Sending NPR’s Snapchat to Miami

WLRN’s digital editor Maria Murriel, who I worked with previously at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, reached out to see if NPR would be open to the idea. “WLRN doesn’t have a Snapchat, but some of us use Snapchat frequently,” she wrote. “Would NPR be interested in snaps from Art Basel?” Knowing what a huge international art event Basel is, my response was literally, “Uhm, yes! We love this idea!”

Over the past 13 years, Art Basel Miami Beach has grown from a high-end modern and contemporary art show into a week of parties, music, satellite art fairs and pop-up events that span all of South Florida. 

After a quick call with Maria, we had a plan: WLRN would takeover the NPR Snapchat account this Thursday and Saturday, comparing the formal Art Basel Miami Beach art fair (Thursday) with the larger Basel-mania that takes over the rest of South Florida (Saturday). 

Be sure to follow “NPRnews” on Snapchat to see WLRN’s takeover. We’d love to hear your feedback. 

Introducing Snapchat Takeovers

We’re hoping that this takeover of NPR’s Snapchat account can be a model for future collaborations with more Member stations. For Member stations, could be an opportunity to reach a broader audience on a social platform where many of us are struggling for visibility. For NPR, the takeover allows us to share with our audience content they wouldn’t get otherwise - a chance to see a different part of America and to get to know the stations and people that make the NPR network strong. 

Over the past few months, NPR’s Snapchat has been some interesting places around the world, including:   

An art show in Jerusalem with Emily Harris

BBC World Headquarters in London with Ari Shaprio and Rich Preston

The actual Bridge of Spies (in Berlin) with Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson 

We hope that by welcoming more Snapchat takeovers, we’ll be able to send our account to a handful of different spots across the U.S. 

How to Pitch Us

Member stations wishing to do an NPR Snapchat takeover should prepare a short pitch. What’s the scene? Who are the characters? What will you teach the audience? We see Snapchat as a storytelling platform, so lead with the story you want to tell. If there’s a time element for your story, please be sure to include that. The longer lead-time we have, the better.

We’re looking for stories that have some sort of national relevance or angle, even if it’s a local story. Additionally, for this to be successful, pitches should come from people who have already tried out Snapchat and have a good sense of how to use it. (Need some help there? Here’s an introduction.)  

Please send pitches to us at the usual place: socialmediateam [at] npr.org. Please use “Snapchat Takeover” in the subject line. 

A little disclaimer ... 

By putting this out there, we’re not really sure what to expect. We don’t currently have a dedicated Snapchat editor. But, we’d love to be doing more work on this platform and experimenting. We believe in the Snapchat’s potential to connect us with a younger audience (comparative to our listening audience) in a highly-engaging way. And right now, Snapchat offers the greatest growth potential, too. While this isn’t a formal, full initiative, it’s a step forward in developing NPR’s presence on Snapchat and strengthening our relationships with Member stations.

[socialmediadesk]

In early 2013, New York Times health reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote a story on the Times' Well blog about the challenges of getting a quote for how much a hip replacement surgery would cost. In the sidebar of the story, the Times asked its readers: "Have you had a hip replacement or ot…

Today, NiemanLab shared a new report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism: Guide to Crowdsourcing, by Mimi Onuoha, Jeanne Pinder and Jan Schaffer.  Included in the report is a breakdown of six ways to crowdsource:

- Voting — prioritizing which stories reporters should tackle. - Witnessing — sharing what you saw during a news event. - Sharing personal experiences — telling what you know about your life experience. - Tapping specialized expertise — contributing data or unique knowledge. - Completing a task — volunteering time or skills to help create a news - Engaging audiences — joining in call-outs that can range from informative to playful.

Over the years at NPR, we’ve experimented with many of these methods, to varying degrees of success. Next week, I’ll share an on-going experiment we launched a few weeks back that uses at least four of these techniques. 

If you’re interested in crowdsourcing, the report is a great resource. I plan to dig deeper into it this weekend. 

- Lori

[nprinterns]

Today, 4 generations of social media @nprinterns​ convened and it was cute. Wright Bryan & Lori Todd, you raised them well. 

P.S. Their job isn’t all just fun & games, it can be serious too.

– Vesta, Social Media

[socialmediadesk]

+50% Mobile Traffic ... So what?

Eyder Peralta’s notes from Poynter’s Mobile News Summit

2015 is the tipping point for the mobile Internet. After years of accelerated growth, mobile traffic is overtaking stagnant desktop traffic for many publishers. We’re seeing this on NPR.org, too, where for the past three full months (June, July and August), 54% of NPR.org sessions have come from smartphones and tablets. (You can get the daily numbers via the Audience Intelligence dashboard.)

To drive home this point, the New York Times temporarily disabled their desktop homepage within their headquarters so the importance of mobile would be fully realized by their staff.

During last week’s Mobile News Summit in NYC, Poynter’s Tim Franklin summed up the situation, stating that the desktop Internet is, today, where print was five years ago.

NPR’s Eyder Peralta attended the summit and shared his notes with us:

This is the first year in human history that most of all Internet traffic is coming from mobile, says Emily Bell, of Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

What the metrics make clear is what he had thought of as the second screen has become the primary screen, says Allen Klosowski of SpotX, which studies Internet traffic trends. Basically, he says, Desktop has been relegated to offices and many people don’t touch a desktop computer for the rest of the day.

The problem with mobile? Ad dollars have not followed its huge growth.

Another problem specifically for news organizations? That this year was the year that social platforms decided they would also become publishers. Not a single news app is among the most used. Facebook, Twitter and Google dominate and now that they are releasing publishing platforms, “These guys control the audience and the distribution.”

Stacy-Marie Ishmael of Buzzfeed made two big points: 

Mobile is such an intimate medium that it’s hard to tell where product ends and editorial begins. In other words, developers and editorial folks need to be in the same room. 

You should not be publishing without seeing a mobile preview. More than 70 percent of Buzzfeed’s traffic comes from mobile … Big, beautiful Apple monitors skew how you think people are consuming your stories.

Damon Kiesow put it in a more philosophical frame: We have to have empathy for users. One way to do that is to put the metrics in front of editorial folks. Remind them, over and over, that more than 50 percent of their traffic comes from mobile. 

Kinsey Wilson, of the New York Times, is worried that the pace of change has accelerated so much that it’s very hard to keep up. “Mobile,” he says, “has changed everything profoundly.” The way to innovate is to create cross-divisional teams, give them deadlines and autonomy. One thing that mobile made possible is he says is dayparting. 

Kinsey digs a bit more into that audience/distribution problem: 80 percent of the time spent on the Internet on mobile is spent on a tiny number of apps. The overwhelming opinion at the summit was that news apps are simply for your hardcore users. So news orgs may not have a choice but to play on social platforms. It may no longer be a choice. [Lori chiming in here: News orgs DO NOT have a choice! Social is a must for all publishers.] 

David Cohn of AJ+ makes the obvious but rarely followed point: Platform dictates story form. Facebook, he says, is short, silent form. Raney Aronson-Rath, of Frontline, says YouTube is turning out to be long form. 

For the most part, with video, you have two seconds to capture people. Also, as Facebook has pointed out, you have three seconds for your stuff to load. If it doesn’t, you’ve lost your user for that session. As an industry, we are losing eyeballs in droves because of that problem. 

Dave makes a really interesting point about Facebook. That we shouldn’t treat it as a way to reach our core audience. Instead it should be used as a way to reach out to your audience’s friends. “On Facebook,” he says, “you’re not writing for your audience. You’re writing for your audience’s friends.” 

Michael Owen, who edits the Times’ NYT Now App, says mobile demands that newspeople be human. One of the best, free tools we have on mobile he says is “a voice that people can relate to.” Clarity and fluid writing is key on mobile. “If your words are tangled, they are going to be more tangled on a mobile screen,” he says. 

Whoa. Eyder just dropped a TON of knowledge on you. (Thanks, dude!) Check out #mobilenews15 for more insights from the Mobile News Summit.

— Lori