Article: Marshable/ Social Media Contributed by: Wan Adilah Posted: Munirah
Now more than ever, traditional media outlets are embracing social media as a way to generate story ledes, increase site traffic and create conversations with readers.
At Social Media Brasil, the largest social media conference in Brazil, there are six social media tips for traditional media outlets looking to either initiate or evaluate their social media strategy. Each tip is general enough to apply to any news organization, but can be tailored to fit a particular company as well. Check out the embedded presentation below for an overview and read on for a more thorough look at each tip.
1. Share Content
The first step to using social media effectively is sharing your content. Begin by taking an inventory of the type of content your company produces. It is important to be as efficient as possible in repurposing content. The idea is to promote the articles, videos and photos that you currently produce, instead of creating new content specifically for your social media presence.
If you are an online news site, you will have an endless feed of articles and blog posts, but you may also have an array of video and photo offerings. Once you have a grasp of all of the various types of media that your site produces, you’re ready to take a look into which social media platforms may be best for you.Most brands should start with Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook (Facebook) at a minimum.
2. Curate Conversations
Some brands look at social media as a way to simply promote their content. While it’s a great way to promote media, it’s so much more. When evaluating the effectiveness of your social media strategy, you should be able to at least answer one question: What value are we bringing to our audience?
3. Engage Audiences
It’s important that traditional media outlets continue to push the envelope and strive for true audience engagement by asking and answering questions. It is human nature to answer a question when it is posed, so start asking questions with each of your posts and see what type of feedback you get. Most likely, users will be intrigued to answer your questions and add their opinion, especially if they feel that you truly care. A few media outlets have realized that questions lead to responses. On Facebook, CNN seems to make it a point to ask a question with posts that may elicit widespread response. With nearly a million fans, they seem to be doing something right.
4. Promote Your Presence
Just like all brand initiatives, social media campaigns and strategies need to be promoted. Often times, brands entering the social media space have the Field of Dreams misconception, “If you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately, social media doesn’t work that way. You have to put time and effort into building an audience.
5. Customize the Experience
Every social site comes with a set of defaults — make it your practice to know the options and customize as necessary. Deviating from the defaults makes your profiles appear to be more professional and allows you to create a cohesive look and feel across social platforms.
6. Track Everything
No matter where you are in implementing a social media strategy, tracking should be a priority. Without analytics, you cannot make informed decisions. With proper tracking though, you’ll be able to decide what type of content does best on certain social platforms. Furthermore, if you’re incredibly motivated, you even have the opportunity to monitor optimal conditions down to the smallest details, such as time of day, day of week, length of post, type of post, and even the topic of the post.
