How to craft a social first news strategy

HOW TO CRAFT A SOCIAL-FIRST NEWS STRATEGY

VERSION 1.0MAR 2015 1SWN &IWPR

HOW TO CRAFT A SOCIAL FIRST NEWS STRATEGY

SOCIAL-FIRST REPORTING



This work is published under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

You are free: to Share copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format to Remix remix, transform, and build upon the material

The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Under the following conditions:Attribution You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.NonCommercial You may not use the material for commercial purposes.Share Alike If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distrib-ute your contributions under the same license as the original.

No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological mea-sures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

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 neces-sary 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

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode



Social platforms today enable news organizations to reach an interna-tional 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 world-wide 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 audi-ence 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.

Introduction



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 1Establish a clear editorial proposition



You want to create social-first stories. Engagement should be a core feature of storytelling and reporting. Engaging your audience and leverage new so-cial platforms should define your editorial strategy. You want to craft your voice and your individual social strategy. In order to ensure you are leading the strategy, and not chasing after it, you must establish an editorial focus. To do this, make a clear decision about your intended audience.

The audience should provide to your content.Stories must move the audience to inspire action.Initial Stories entice and engage the audience, to prepare them to wait for upcoming longer features.

In a social environment you often begin your coverage as a simple headline and short dispatch as news breaks. Push it out quickly on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others that have traction with your audience. Invite the audience to contribute while you develop your own reporting. Combine staff reporting with primary and secondary source material provided by your audience.



Understanding your audience is essential to defining a successful editorial focus. Whether the audience is national, international, or regional can dramatically change your focus. Include your audience when researching / planning the story calendar. Reach out to your audience via Facebook and Twitter can provide essential insight and improve ` increasing your total audience.

The interests of your audience should drive your strategy. If your publication is focused on general news, you have a broader potential audience but must also take a more general approach to content production and news gathering. If your publication is primarily about a specific ethnic group or a narrow topic, such as a specific type of agriculture or business, your strategy is easier to define, but it may be more difficult to reach sustainability.

Step 2Determine your target audience



The latest demographics reveal the rapidly increasing potential of so-cial-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 popu-lation 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.



Engaging with your audience and involving them in the reporting process is key to success in a social-first news strategy. Verification is an important part of the process. Your social media editor and reporters should verify material as it arrives. It helps to have some core contribu-tors among you audience. The track record of new contributors should be cross checked against their social profile and the contributions of others. While youre doing this, you should be looking for news content you never know what contributors will dig up.

In 2011, as part of the Alive in Libya project, Small World News started a hashtag #AskaLibyan to promote engagement between the international community and Libyan citizens. At the time internet connectivity was virtually nonexistent in Libya. Livestreaming would have been prohib-itively expensive if not impossible. However Twitter worked well, and provided a low bandwidth opportunity to create a relationship between individuals inside Libya and those abroad.

Step 3Understand What Makes Social-First Stories



Visuals are essential. Publish raw short video clips or photos with captions as soon as you can. Sharing additional content to deepen the narrative keeps the audience involved and coming back. Your headlines will only go so far without compelling visual content. Invite your audience to share and tag similar material, to help you craft an accurate narrative. Retweet and republish authentic, relevant content, as verified.

As the story cycle progresses build on real-time work as background to build an in-depth, well rounded feature. Remember to engage your most active and reliable audience to seek out new stories. Follow-up on breaking news stories over time. Rinse, and repeat.

SUCCEEDING ON FACEBOOKUse 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.

CHARACTERISTICS OF A SOCIAL STORYEngages audience in research/development of primary material.Evolves as new information becomes available over time.Encourages collaboration, discussion.Inspires action.



Whether covering breaking news or planning a feature, remember the social-first model of reporting:

Announce upcoming stories early and often, excite your audience to assist in reporting.Publish raw short video clips or photos -- with captions -- as soon as available.Share additional content over the life of the story, to deepen the narrative, and keep the audience involved and coming back.

Your headlines will only go so far without the support of multimedia content. Invite your audience to share and tag similar material, to help you craft an accurate narrative. Retweet and republish authentic, relevant content as it is verified. Use this real-time work to build an in-depth, well rounded feature. Remember to engage your most active and reliable audi-ence to seek out new stories.

1.

2.

3.

In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction, or art Journalism alone is focused first on getting what happened down right.

- The Elements of Journalism

As you refine your reporting process, reporters must build relationships with key contributors from the audience. Enabling your audience to create a track record that proves their reliability and credibility will increase the speed and efficiency of reporting over time. Remember that engaging your audience in the process does not mean providing all sources or audience content equal weight. Seek out subject matter experts and contributors with a keen eye for effective, efficient research.



Now that you have defined an editorial focus, your audience, and learned to engage them effectively, its time to staff for a social-first strat-egy. 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 descrip-tions within your news organization must change too.

Step 4Staff a Social-First Newsroom

Daily Story Meetings

EDITOR IN CHIEF

REPORTER REPORTER REPORTER

Social Media

AUDIENCE

DAILY ENGAGEMENT | Research, Discuss, Publish, Review.

SOCIAL MEDIAMANAGER

DEFINES AGENDA



Your staff plan must be designed to produce content in a multimedia, social-first environment. Assemble a team familiar with the tools and audience. This team will need to understand how to shoot video and take photos with an assortment of mobile devices as well as report. It is likely that your team will have specialists the reporter who is especially good at video or who is interested in childrens issues. That is fine. A good team has a mix of skills that complement each other. In the social-first newsroom the denominator is an understanding of the social environment and a love for reporting in this space.

Your staff needs will most certainly change over time. You should gear up slowly; staff to produce only slightly more material than your current level of demand. Do not fall into the old newsroom trap of too many employees and bloat. At all levels rely on your audience for content. To ensure youre staying on top of good news stories you need a clear newsroom structures with defined responsibilities. Specific job titles and the total number of employees will depend on the scope of your editorial plan and the size and interests of your audience. In addition to traditional newsroom job titles, one staff requirement in a social-first newsroom is sure: the Social Editor.

Newsroom Job Descriptions

Editor-In-ChiefThe editor-in-chief is ultimately responsible for overseeing the direction and editorial values of the organization. However, the editor-in-chief must trust editors and staff reporters to make good decisions. Initially the EiC will be in charge of the managing staff and business, but eventually the organization should grow and hire individuals in each of these positions.

Managing EditorInitially the managing editor may be the EiCs right hand or star reporter. As your organization grows, establish a Managing Editor to run the news-room. While the EiC must manage the business and direct the values of the company, the Managing Editor sets the daily news agenda.



Social EditorSomeone must take primary responsibility for defining the social strat-egy 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 DirectorWorking 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 funda-mental workflow of your news organization at every level.



Plan your Social-First StrategyA 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.

Step 5



Not all stories are planned. Some news breaks during the day. Consider a multi-step publication process:

When news breaks, staff must first send a text message or call their editor.Once approved, publish an initial headline-style update.Follow breaking news and headlines with more detailed text stories and a photo or short video clip as soon as possible.Add more carefully edited videos, additional photos and follow-up coverage as new information -- and connectivity -- permit.Once youve provided breaking coverage, you can delay adding addi-tional information until you are at a location with good connectivity.

For more on this topic, see the Planning your Coverage module.

1.

2.3.

4.

5.

BREAKINGNEWS

HEADLINE

GATHER KNOWN FACTS

QUICKLY PUBLISHTO SOCIAL MEDIA

PUBLISH IMPORTANTDETAILS TO SOCIAL MEDIA

AS THEY ARE VERIFIED

RESEARCH & INVESTIGATE STORY

ADD UNIQUE COVERAGEAND PHOTOS / VIDEOS

WHERE POSSIBLE.

PUBLISH FINAL STORY

FOLLOW UP & CONTINUE COVERAGE

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 12th, 2013PUBLISH TO

SOCIAL MEDIA



Understand Your TechnologyTo run an effective social-first news agency, you need a solid under-standing 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 opportuni-ty 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.

Step 6



The production power of smart devices is the key promise of mobile tech-nology. 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.



Be Competitive in the MarketYour social-first news strategy must be built with an understanding of the market in which your agency operates. Refer back to your target audience and ask yourselves some questions about the market and the broader media and regulatory environment with your audience in mind.

Step 7

How will I attract and build audience?What is the role advertisements or sponsorships play currently?Who is selling to my audience already?Which advertising/sponsorship packages do I want to sell?Which other related services do I want to sell (competitor surveillance, content, production)?

There are no one-size-fits-all answers to these questions because each are affected by local regulations, market standards, technical skills and your own editorial focus.



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.



Understand the additional challenges to your successBe sure you know the regulatory landscape and the laws governing journalists and the media in the country or region you work. Just because laws to protect journalists exist does not mean that government, local leadership and security forces will obey the law, but understanding the law can be a first step toward improving it.

Assess the telecommunications infrastructure your organization will depend on. Contracting with the wrong mobile or internet service provider will put a serious restriction on your potential for success. Understanding the limitations of available providers can help you plan your publishing cycle. It is also important to understand the connectivity available to your audience. If your reporters rely on high-speed connections not available to much of your audience, its important to ensure they dont produce content equally inaccessible.

Often in emerging media environments or repressive states, the media law is not well established or changes frequently. It is important to be aware of these issues and work to protect your staff when possible.

Ensure your staff adhere to professional codes of conduct. Even in countries where media laws are very restrictive, observing the principles outlined may help you avoid accusations of libel or treason.

Step 8



What does the competition look like?Who else serves your audience?What are you offering that is different and will attract viewers?

Whether your audience is national, international, or regional will make a big difference. If your organization intends to generate revenue by resell-ing content to news buyers, this must be represented in your planning.

Include your intended audience when researching and planning your story calendar. Outreach to the audience via Facebook and Twitter can provide essential insight and improve coverage as well as increasing the total audience.

Stories must have broad appeal to consumers and differentiate the agency from content offered by competitors. Without this you will be unable to compete for limited ad dollars and sponsors. Engage the audience and har-ness their collective power to research and report the news. This will grow your audience and deepen your understanding of individual audience groups, improving your value to advertisers.

Understand who your audience is and what they want. If your publication is focused on general news, you have a broader potential audience but must also take a more general approach to content production and news gathering.

If your publication is primarily about a specific ethnic group or a narrow topic, such as a specific type of agriculture or business, your strategy is easier to define, but it may be more difficult to reach sustainability. What are the additional challenges to your success?



Make Social-First NewsIf 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.

Step 9

Editorial FocusTarget AudienceSocial-First StoriesSocial-First StaffingSocial-First Editorial PlanFamiliarity with TechnologyCompetitive Marketing PlanUnderstand Additional Challenges



It is up to you to decide how to implement each element of your plan. Tell great social-first stories and your organizations future will be bright. Increasing numbers of news consumers are getting their news from mobile, more than 75% of mobile news consumers access the news several times per day. In 2013, Reuters Digital News Report found those who use smartphones and tablets are more likely to go straight to a known news brand. You need to become that known brand for your target audience

The social-first news strategy will enable you to tell stories faster and with greater depth. Enlisting your audience to not only fact-check, but act as primary and secondary sources will encourage loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing. Publishing your content in social-first formats will place you where the audience already is, keeping you at the front of their mind each time they return to social media. News consumers between 18-34 all prefer social media as a gateway to news consumption. This demographic is leading the trend. Follow the social-first strategy to get your news organization out ahead of the curve.

How to craft a social first news strategy

Documents

Transcript of How to craft a social first news strategy