Is your station on Twitter yet? And by “on Twitter,” I don’t mean either “you have an account reserved,” or “we feed our news headlines into it automatically.”
Both of those options are a fine baby step, but not enough. Several months ago, we dumped the TwitterFeed from our RSS and went with a human-managed solution. Since that time we’ve seen follower growth skyrocket — and we’re seeing a direct impact on site traffic.
- Assign someone to manage the feed. Send between ten and 20 updates per day – and try to put at little coverage in the evenings and weekends
- Have a personality. All the users on Twitter are being personal and somewhat real. It’s a dialog. Don’t be “just the facts ma’am.” Instead try and engage by being human. Make it obvious that there’s someone behind the tweets.
- Identify yourself. Don’t be just an anonymous “KZZZ” – let people know who you are. I put my name in our bio line. If you have a team of folks, put them all there. Social media is about being social… and the last time I was at a party I wasn’t chatting up the TV set.
- Retweet. A lot. Some of our best Twitter stream info comes from other sources. If you don’t know the retweet concept yet – it’s simple. You start with “RT” then “@username” and repost that user’s original message. It’s OK to make small edits (for instance to shorten it to fit under 140 characters) – just don’t change the meaning. Guidelines for retweeting are simple — repost anything your audience will find interesting, but is also authoritative. I will RT a “non official” source if it makes sense. For instance, if a user says “we just got a major wind gust in SE Boise,” I may repost that. I’ll also repost an average user’s tweet if it has a link to a valid news source.
- Link! The majority of the tweets you send out should link somewhere. I try not to only send links to our site — but anywhere. Whether it’s your competition, a news source out of state or a great website – include a link. Always make sure the link starts with http:// so Twitter.com and Twitter API clients will hyperlink your URL. You can also use a URL shortener, which leads me to…
- Sign up for tr.im. This service allows you to shorten URLs just like tinyurl, snipr, is.gd or others — but also gives you statistical tracking. That’s right — your Omniture reports might show only a few clicks from Twitter.com — but since a TON of Twitter users get their feeds on Tweetdeck, Tweetie, via text or other methods, those stat programs don’t show the true picture. When I started using tr.im, my eyes were opened to how much traffic our tweets were generating. It was more than 30 times what Omniture illustrated.
- Solicit for news. If we have a little morsel of a story, I’ll often toss it out there and see if anyone has more. My favorite example happened earlier this month. A major Idaho resort shut down operations, and we had heard there were some weddings left in the lurch. I sent out a tweet asking if anyone knew of a bride affected – and got a note back within minutes. It led to this great story the next day. This is probably just one of a dozen examples of the power of the crowd.
- Start multiple feeds. My colleague Frank Mungeam at kgw.com has done a great job of getting reporters on the bandwagon. He’s created a feed page on his site that shows them all. We’ve got feeds for sports, weather, our morning anchor, news director and our classifieds site. Our “main” account spreads it all around by retweeting some of the notes from the “sub” accounts.
- Engage. Respond to users who ask questions – and also try to help people who are critical. Usually when we try to work with a user on an issue, they seem to come away being happier. Twitter is partially about brand management, so trying to improve your image can be helpful.
- Want to grow? Follow! We don’t want Twitter to just be a one-way bullhorn from on high. We try to follow everyone who follows us. I also actively seek out followers in our area by following them. The will usually return the favor by following you back. The more people who read your tweets, the more likely they are to click on one or two.
- Keep it simple. Don’t overload with too many details. You only have 140 characters, so this is somewhat obvious – but you want to move people to your site. At the same time, don’t be vague and teasy. So…
- Don’t be teasy. I will sometimes promote a newscast, primetime program or upcoming feature — but it’s never the overbaked “What’s in your water? It may KILL you! Find out tonight on KZZZ at 11!” If you build trust, you can sometimes promote to something in the future — but be careful.
- Create a feed page on your site. We have posted our Twitter feed on our site with a link – labeling it the “live news feed, powered by Twitter.” On the page you’ll find our most recent tweets, as well as a basic explainer, and a list of our other accounts (ala KGW, above).
- Download Tweetdeck. This software program allows you to manage the flow better. Since we follow nearly 2,000 people – wading through it all can be hard. With Tweetdeck, you can create columns with different information. I’ve divided ours into three: the “live feed” with all tweets, a “search” for all tweets containing “KTVB,” and a “good stuff” column with about 100 tweeps whose tweets I value. This includes other media, some PR pros, other newsroom members and general community members. Tweetdeck allows you to tweet directly from the application.
- Create a “live” account. I’ve created a “live tweeting” account for times when you want to live tweet an event. When the vice president visited town in February, I live-tweeted some of the happenings on our main account.. but it got to be a bit overwhelming for some users. So I’ve created another account that we can live tweet from. I’ve created a special “live coverage” page that I can link to from our website — which will make it easy to cover a big event, and let folks opt in or out of the fun. Make sure to tweet on your main account letting people know of the other fun
No related posts.
Geez, Don. Where you find the time I dunno. Some good tips there – I’m nervous about any .24 version program like TweetDesk that crashes 1-2 times a day (I hear) – but I don’t really expect the folks who follow us in the news expect us to follow them. (Call me naive.)
Some very good tips in there, and I thank you. But I’ll just be over here splashing in the shallow end of the TwitterPool for a while, if ya don’t mind. At least I’m in the pool!;-) (Presume you do Facebook too? Or?)
Yep – we’re on Facebook too… and it’s starting to show some promise as well. That’s the next LR post
When we send out a tweet and it gets more than 500 clicks (for about 10 seconds of effort), it makes it worth it.
chalk it up to my a.d.d., but i could only read the first 3-4 bullet points then had to go surfing elsewhere.
i did want to agree with the point about updating “evenings and weekends”.
frankly, i feel there is the hugest of huge opportunity here as nearly NO ONE locally is serving the user base online 247365.
ok, i hear all you “di-wreck-tors” of digital with a “proven track wreck-ord” saying to yourself that your “internal numbers” say otherwise, but could it be that way because you are NOT updating on a round-the-clock basis and users have simply written you off over the years in favor of the pureplays who seem to recognize that “shyt happens” at all hours on all dayz???
so, yes, update, update and update.
and if that’s a step too far for today, then use a random sort database so headlines load in a different order every time a user visits (yeah, it’s a con job not unlike posting a sensational out-of-market story without clearly labeling it as such UNTIL the user clicks-thru, (which p.o.’s them), but at least it looks like fresh content.
maybe i’ll be back to comment on other bullet points if my a.d.d. allows.
This post made Twitter actually seem useful, rather than just a desperate grab for relevance from sinking media outlets. It actually convinced me.
Don,
Great article and a must read for media outlets. Twitter, Facebook and other social media has finally given the customer the ability to be a part of the process. The more we interact with our customers, the better we can serve them and earn their loyalty (and business).
Don,
I still think the KTVB Headline / Twitter T-Shirt Generator is a good source of revenue. You should add that to the list.
And this is a great To Do list … definitely worth sharing around the office this morning.
In some ways Twitter has become a free, interactive news wire service that beats the pants of the old school AP. AP is a single source wire service. Twitter features multiple sources including ABC News, BBC, CBC, Jake Tapper, Darth Vader, NYT, WSJ, Seattle Times, Time Magazine and the list goes on.
Case in point: Yesterday one of the sources I follow – Seattle Times – tweeted about Tony Bennett leaving the Cougs and heading to UVA. Nothing was on the Seattle Times yet … they posted breaking news to Twitter first. Then I checked the paper in Charlottesville (which the Times cited as their source) and bam front page news on their site.
We retweeted Seattle Times, had a story up and on our site 15 minutes or before our competition locally, a good 45 minutes before the AP ran an alert and a good hour and a half before Wazzu sent out a statement confirming anything had happened.
AP’s alert ended up being the same content everyone already had and by the time their alert was sent out it was no longer relevant because the people breaking the news in the local markets had beaten AP to the punch by sending their content not to the AP but to Twitter first.
After all who do you want to connect with … two editors at the AP Bureau in Topeka or the thousand or so followers of your Twitter feed who will in turn re-tweet your message to their friends who will in turn go to your site for more information?
ok, back again … “brand management”???
you sure you wanna go down that road?
not to single out belo, but it’s in the $1 bin with the rest. you don’t think that every time ANOTHER bk filing is made, or, in the case of king5, more layoffs are announced, that you’d actually benefit by running AWAY FROM that legacy brand?
yup, here we go again!
idearc just filed 11 within the last hour, chicago sun-times before sunrise,meg is fileting the ranks, and it’s not even NOON!
I understand using Facebook and Twitter as news/brand distribution platforms, but I fail to see where local media will benefit financially. Are you helping these companies create powerful targeted databases and sell against our local sales people? What are you going to do when Facebook/Twitter charge media companies a license fee to participate on their platforms?
If you look at social media solely through the prism of “how do I make a buck,” you’re missing the point. Both of these platforms are most useful for moving visitors to our “legacy” website platform. We saw tens of thousands of clicks from users of Twitter and Facebook this month. These folks are hungry consumers of information, and the goal of any news agency should be to help feed that hunger.
Could Twitter and FB say “give us money or we cut you off at the knees?” Sure. So we have two choices… pay a license fee… or stop. Look, we pay for web hosting and a million other things – so the idea that we may have to one day pay for a Facebook profile doesn’t scare me.
Social media helps us drive traffic, boost engagement, is useful as a story and lead generator, and also helps our image with an influential group.
I’m far more scared of yellow page publishers and Google and things like Weddings.com then I am of FB or Twitter where we can at least pay in their sandbox.
(For anyone wondering, Tony used to be my boss… so if this conversation seems “comfortable” it is
)
Don, I see your point, but I also have to agree with Tony. As a content manager, our content must be relevant, interesting, and accessible — and Twitter can help fulfill those goals, but we also feed the bottom line. We can’t sit by and let the sales department think of ways to monetize our efforts. We have to be actively looking for ways to profit make money. So far, I haven’t read about a local station that has even come close to using Twitter to generate revenue. Really, is anyone?
Don, I truly miss our Internet debates and philosophy sessions!
I understand the distribution and reputation benefits of social media. I also understand the increasing expense of paying license fees, affiliate fees, service fees and advertising fees for access to others’ audiences and technology sandboxes.
What I do not understand is how local media will fund additional content distribution efforts as expenses increase and revenue continues to shrink?
We’ve seen this business model disruption before…Google and Craigslist supply the technology, build the audience platform, create ad networks, reap huge rewards and eviscerate an entire industry.
I predict Facebook and others will deliver the same outcome. They will supply the technology, compete for the audience, create a database driven ad network and wipe out the competition.
Legacy websites will try to remain relevant and attempt to pick up the pieces by wrapping their stories with mere display ads that will continue to lose value and impact.
If you look at social media solely through the prism of “drive traffic, boost engagement,….lead generator, and also helps our image with an influential group,” you’re missing the point. We still need to follow business fundamentals. Our industry is hungry for a solution. Our people are hungry to keep their jobs.
NAA, NAB or the Zidaho crew should have developed Twitter. We saw it coming, man.
glad we focused on the “legacy” part of the brand here
nothing wrong with keeping the “equine” alive, but even if you were successful in converting your entire audience into your online audience, i hardly think the dimes to dollars will add up to keep both out of the glue factory.
i’ll go one step further here since there’s this overarching belief that EVERYONE will be the last man standing in their own market (right!)– there’s an oversupply of local news outlets all covering the same car crashes and house fires (and the occasional motorized barstool!). going back to my previous paragraph, even if you were successful in converting your entire audience AND THAT OF THE OTHER 2-3 stations (and newspapers) in (add your city here), i STILL doubt the dimes will add up.
first, by running your online channel(s) as your legacy brand there will be a certain number of folks who wrote you off years ago. and second, short of the top 5-10 markets in the country there simply are not enough eyeballs, your basic costs of ops. are pretty much the same as any major market adjusting for scale.
i constantly (and will continue to many’s dismay) point to share prices as a fairly accurate barometer of how YOU’RE doing. every company i “follow” except for scripps is valueing the WEB properties right in there with the station… most summing up to ~$1-3, INCLUSIVE.
that’s your “currency” to build an online future for christ sake!
yes, figure out facebook, myspace, craigslist, twitter, google, skype, iphone/touch, crackberry and the slew of other “fads” coming down the pike…FAST.
good luck.
I look at it like a free Google ad… I post a tweet… got 800 clicks… and it cost me about 30 seconds. If any of those display ads on our sites got 800 clicks in a few minutes we’d be jumping for joy.
i’d bet that post by nick sarkozy over at huffington renders a few clicks.
what a f’in get!
almost as good as “skeeter” (the guy who builds the motorized barstools) who i’m hearing appeared “live” on rachel maddow’s show last night.
Great post! I love the recommendations you give that are aimed at a Twitter newbie, all very well and clearly explained
Don, you are correct it is a great way to promote your brand and content. But, what is the long-term expense?
The problem is your 800 clicks may generate approximately $8 at best in CPM revenue for your site. Facebook on the other hand owns the database of 800 registered users and will sell the lifetime value of their geographic, demographic, lifestyle and behavior data against your local ad staff. Advertisers want efficiency and accountability – which model do you think will survive?
I have a tough time cuddling-up with these guys as intimately as you suggest. After all at the end of the day in this game, he who has the largest and most accurate database wins.
They already have the DB. This argument sounds like big media circa 1996 about the Web. “Why would we want to put our content therrrrre?”
Look, I didn’t invent this social media deal – but I’m going to do everything I can to ride the wave and be the best in my market at it.
We BROKE the stroy of a prominent developer being shot several times today. How? A tip from Twitter. That alone makes it worth the small time investment.
Good stuff. We’re doing some “Tweet-up” events in both Seattle and Anchorage. It’s fun to meet the “face behind the avatar” and it helps networking. Twitter is great–and it’s enhanced IRL (in real life). Last tweet-up I met @bmw who has a show w/KGW, I think. s
hey #23,
if you’re old enuff to remember the news juggernaut known as cklw, then (and forgive me if you already are aware of its existence) click my id above.
i “highly” recommend the red rose tea commercial!
Ahh yes similarites to 1996 abound. We were not running around saying follow us on Air Mosaic’s or Al Gore’s World Wide Web. However many early adopters mistakenly ran around and said “find us on Compuserve and/or Prodigy.” Are FB and Twitter more similar to the Www as a platform or the online services offered by a company? How much differently would you treat FB and Twitter if they were owned by Google, Microsoft or Apple? Would you continue to promote their services for free over your air and on your site?
I actually remember having a very similar conversation with my publisher back in those days. I asled then why do we want to build up Prodigy’s business when we can do it ourselves on the web.
” …twitter if they were owned by google…” prescient by a few hours, #25. you’re good!
let’s recap, shall we?
GOOGLE: buyer of “fads” (blogger, youtube, now twitter)
U.S. GOV’T: buyer of “hads” (aig, gm, citi and (give it a few weeks) several traditional media cos.)
I hope it is just a fad – these are the things that keep awake at night. ;0)
“so?”
yeah, that’s such a tough position to be in. i share your pain.
not to shift it back to tony, but i simply commented on his thought of google, microsoft or yahoo being behind twittah rather than venture $.
the ‘denial’ of a pending buyout offer by twitter’s co-founder, on a friday no less, sounds very similar to the storyline preceeding the youtube purchase… which we all know by now is a total failure destined to be scrapped.
twiggle?
who knows, maybe nothing comes of these discussions and twitter, facebook, etc. continue to crush nuts on their own. but answer me this “anonymous 28″– what the hell is your organization doing these days to build a future?
laying off in droves?
asking for tax-exempt status?
twiggle.
faceboogle.
Twitter definitely has strong potential to track interest with. You could see which tweets drove most traffic to your site, then continue authoring tweets of that nature.
Additionally, since the human mind still works by association and repetition, some of the wordings from the effective tweets can be reused. Have your local salespeople call use such working words in their pitches to new and existing clients. Have your ad agencies borrow those too.
Ah, Tony, my friend: Who said Facebook/Twitter are ‘the answer’? But to ignore that many eyeballs isn’t all that smart either, is it?
At the very least, it’s a great place to take the pulse of folks, see what they’re talking about/interested in.
As desperate as we are to monetize, and survive, there are simply places expect to find us. We could disappoint them, but why? It costs relatively little to have a presence there.
I never said ignore the audience. I cautioned giving a competitor free access to our audience. I have no issue using their platform to reach their users with our newslinks. My issue is slapping their logos all over our websites, promoting them in our newscasts and asking our talent to produce content on their platforms. It doesn’t make business since when they(facebook) are competing for the same dollars we need to operate our businesses.
Someone mentioned Elephant Jokes in a disparaging way!
You can bash Twitter and Facebook all you want… But leave the helpless Elephant Jokes out of this!
Sorry for the rant. I just have a interest in elephants; particularly white elephants.
There will be no need to tune in to any traditional newscasts. The revolution will not be televised!
People are already on Facebook and Twitter anyway — just like they are going to use a cell phone and a computer. As someone else here stated well — the goal should be to be everywhere — to provide information everywhere people are. Putting a little content on those platforms — less than 140 characters at a time — only serves to improve our standing.
in the event you didn’t click-thru to #37 bruce above, he has a great elephant joke there.
Q: what do you do with an elephant with three balls?
A: walk him and pitch to the rhino.
Don one more time and hopefully in more simple terms:
Good= place 140 characters on competitors platform to drive people to your site.
Bad = placing competitors’ (Twitter and Facebook) logos/links on your site and in your on-air news encouraging your audience to sign-up.
At least make Twitter and FB pay for the exposure- You are helping build their business for FREE.
Don’t think they are competitors? FB is taking local dollars out of your market that underwrites your newsroom.
I hesitated to jump into this. But while I understand not wanting to tie your station too much to Facebook or any other social media platform, I think seeing them as competitors is missing the point.
In today’s market, everyone is a competitor. The answer isn’t to limit your readers choices and hope they aren’t smart enough to notice. It’s to make sure your product is strong enough to be their choice no matter what the options available. And that’s an idea that works for advertisers, as well.
Rick, I agree – everyone is a competitor and we should strengthen our products.
I see two dynamics in this discussion:
1) Push your audience to someone else to be “social” for FREE …Somebody please tell me how this is good for your business. I guess I am missing the point!
2) Pull viewers from social platforms – I understand this completely and I’m on board!
There is a difference.
I’m not helping build their business any more than by putting “share” links for Google or Yahoo or my RSS feed. Our viewers are going to be there anyway, and I want to reach them in every nook and cranny.
It’s really simple: These guys are steamrollers — we can either jump on or just stand there and get run over. They’re coming whether we like it or not.
I could pretend that millions of people a day are NOT signing up for theses services… but they are.
Being agressive with Twitter and FB is smart and makes sure that we don’t turn into one of those newspapers that saw a new technology (craiglist) and went “hear no evil see no evil” until it was too late.
It may be a bandwagon — but I think every smart TV station should be jumping on it pronto.
Don, you know me pretty well and you should know I’m as aggressive as they come – I like a good street fight! That is why I have an issue giving up any ground to these new platforms.
Your RSS feed comparison makes some sense, but have you ever told your TV audience to add KTVB to iGoogle or MyMSN? Probably not – you’ve probably just placed a convenient link in a utility box with other tools instead.
I believe we must completely think through what we are trying to accomplish before local sites promote Twitter/FB. Too often sites give these competing brands an unnecessary boost at the local property’s expense .
For example, the homepage of KTVB advertises “Live News Feed Updates From Twitter.” Why not just say Live News Feed – why reference the Twitter brand? Better yet why not create your own Live News Feed from KTVB?
Is it too late for a local media friendly company to develop a Twitter-like platform for us all to rally around? Why aren’t we taking these new platforms to our audiences instead of telling them to follow us after the fact?
Don’t get me wrong – we need to be on Twitter and Facebook to pull in their users. Let’s just not make it easy for Twit/FB to take our audience’s time and money with free and prime real estate on our websites and during our newscasts.
So let’s see, it’s OK to BE on Twitter/Facebook, just not to promote it?
That’s an odd straddling-the-fence spot to be in, Tony. When the services are as ubiquitous and universal as these two are – with100s of millions of eyeballs – I say we shout to the ROOFTOPS, ‘Follow US HERE.” (I mean, THERE.)
Where’s the harm? We also make Micro$oft and Apple money, one could argue, as well as Google etc., by being on their platforms – but how would WE make any money on the Web if we WEREN’T?
Of course I’d love a bigger slice of the pie. But to leave ourselves off the pie while we demand a bigger share simply means folks won’t eat our product. (Hmm, there’s an ‘Eat or be eaten’ joke in their somewhere;-)
missing words in last graf of prior post: “But to leave ourselves off the pie – OR NOT PROMOTE THAT WE’RE AVAILABLE ON THE PIE” – while we…”
I say either we do something AND promote it… or we don’t do it at all. In the middle is like shouting at the top of your lungs with duct tape over your mouth. You’ll miss the goal of being seen/heard and just aggravate yourself (as opposed to aggregate yourself;-)
Right – but where does that link go? Our own site. I just fundamentally disagree on this one.
And yes.. it’s too late for a media company to create a Twitter. As with most things… big media is slow and clumsy when it comes to these types of deals.
We’re not giving any ground – and getting more benefit from them then we are giving out.
you guys are still harping on “getting your audience to your property”.
?
first, people are not YOUR audience anymore… they are THE audience. click my id and tell me how a little city like fargo (pop. <100k) served something flowing well north of 17,000,000 pages in march… THE audience goes where THE news is happening. sorry.
instead of focusing on getting THE audience to YOUR property, why not focus on getting YOUR advertisers in front the local audience… not matter where they venture online.
that’s something that inforum (like most everyone else) hasn’t figured out, but will happen eventually.
btw- am i mistaken in thinking that every doubleclick ad YOU serve to YOUR audience puts further $$$ in google’s purse?
and by the btw- anyone looking to “build their own twitter” must not know of or recall jaiku.
wikipedia it.
oh, and btw, again…
how did THE audience ever find a property called “inforum” when it was the fargo flood they were in search of?
good seo?
google loves making their $$$ there too.
get it yet?
Well, obviously this lowly sales guy is not making winning on this front. Don and Barney – I’ve enjoyed the banter! You are pros and I respect your wisdom and savvy. I continue to learn from both of you.
If I happen to be right, I hope we’ll still be around to carry on our passionate debates as Google/FB/Twitter affiliates.
I’m off to make a buck…
ok, i tried 3 or 4 times to link via the usual method and it’s gotten eaten each time. normally i’d say phuck it and move on, but this timely (satirical) video from one of “your own” breed is worth the extra effort (yours and mine)…
theindychannel(dot)com/video/19114605/index.html
darn gremlins.
That is a great ad for Facebook! Was it produced by a highly paid NY or LA agency? How much was the media buy to run a long-form commercial like that?
What? You mean the local station produced and aired it for FREE? Wow, how can I get that for my local business? What? They reserve that privelege only for their advertising competitors? Really?
darn geniuses.
dude, i really like your take on things, i mean that.
and i wish you nothing but success going forward.
IM 23…probably just getting on Don’s nerves about something. I haven’t seen any news today as I’ve been repairing and building some new storage shelving and redoing the living room for the first time in 3 years. I DID note that GOOGLE 1Q revenues finally were lower and that means all the kids who want them to buy Facebook, buy Twitter…it’s not gonna work today. I have no rant or even sarcasm here. Still an alleged 16 year held a site hostage although it can happen whether Rails is done well or not.
I’ve been other places for a few days and Web folks left me floored about how little they know about finance and how much naivete abounded. That bothered me a lot.