April 8, 2009 at 12:29How do media use twitter? (A review of Western media practices.)
Western media have already felt the beauty of using Twitter . However, many of them are limited to simply broadcasting their content. This is done very simply. Created feed with titles no more than 140 characters in Roman letters (if there will be more, Twitter will break it into pieces), and then create an account on Tvitterfid , give him our feed and password on our account on Twitter. Further, Twitter on our behalf publishes on Twitter all the new headlines of our media. New material appears - our reader receives a message about this. Excellent! But what else would you do?
To start, diversify.That is, use not one Twitter account, but many. Let each of your journalists and a section on the site (broadcast, podcast) have their own tweet. The reader should be able to choose what he likes, and not get a bunch of all the headlines per day. After you start a detachment of individual tweets, make a page on your website that contains their complete list and description so that users can easily navigate them. So already done: Austin American-Statesman , Cincinnati Enquirer , Grand Island Independent , and Des Moines Register .
Use not only official content.Your readers or viewers are interested in not only what your media produces, but also other aspects of your life. For example, your internal disputes in the editorial office, the materials that your editors use, the life of the leading shows and columnists. So it makes sense to get these tweets and bring them to the site along with the rest. So did the NBC4 Columbus .
Use Twitter as a source of information. A huge number of people use Twitter, the amount of information that they post is huge. In order not to get lost in this stream, use Twitter. This service allows you to filter everything that gets on Twitter by keywords and limit the coverage radius geographically. The results you see on the screen in real time. For example, you are a small regional online newspaper. Filter by the name of the center of your region and get all the tweets that mention it. It would be nice to display it directly on the newsroom, as the British newspaper Telegraph did .
Use Twitter for polls.Pushing your content through Twitter is good, but not enough. It will be more useful if you ask your readers through it with a question. And they will answer you using the same Twitter. Just have time to collect votes! How can this opportunity be turned in favor? You can clarify the information - if you have information, but do not check it in any way, please contact the readers through your tweet, maybe someone owns it more. But what if you need to interview a person who is on a regular trip? Ask him questions via Twitter. He has no time to write an e-mail, and he will scribble a short answer on the go. Doubt it? And Westerners are already practicing this. Who does not believe, read here , and here you can see a far from complete list of American newspapers that will twitter.
Use Twitter as a news agency. Here you do not even need to filter, here already prepared news are submitted in tweet format. Just subscribe, for example, to @BreakingNewsOn . True, this is a western source in English, but what prevents you yourself from becoming such a source? A? Yes, even in Russian? The idea for a million bucks. :)
Use Twitter to promote the mobile version of your site.It is no secret that the majority of online media have their main website as their main window, and its mobile version is not so popular. So, if you use Twitter and send people links, then let these links lead to your mobile version of the site. After all, a person receives sms from you, it is not convenient for him to open a link to the main site with a lot of graphics. And wap or pda versions will load much faster.
Use Twitter for live reporting.Since journalists constantly travel to places of events or participate in various events, it makes no sense to wait until they drop information by phone or turn on a live broadcast. Just tweet about what's going on. After all, readers do not always have the opportunity to watch TV, listen to the radio, read the site. They will be grateful to you for sms with the latest information.
There are several other sites that will help to better understand and use Twitter in the work of the media. Tweetbeep will send you an e-mail as soon as it detects a tweet containing your keyword. TwitterLocal is an application that can narrow the geographic reach of Twitter. Breaking tweets- An interesting mixture of world news and tweet reactions to them. Tweets are manually selected by the editor. Together they make up an interesting product. In Ecuador, a newspaper uses Twitter to train inexperienced journalists, and through Twitter, the editor-in-chief corrects their activities and gives advice. All this then falls into a special section on the site.
Good luck!
To start, diversify.That is, use not one Twitter account, but many. Let each of your journalists and a section on the site (broadcast, podcast) have their own tweet. The reader should be able to choose what he likes, and not get a bunch of all the headlines per day. After you start a detachment of individual tweets, make a page on your website that contains their complete list and description so that users can easily navigate them. So already done: Austin American-Statesman , Cincinnati Enquirer , Grand Island Independent , and Des Moines Register .
Use not only official content.Your readers or viewers are interested in not only what your media produces, but also other aspects of your life. For example, your internal disputes in the editorial office, the materials that your editors use, the life of the leading shows and columnists. So it makes sense to get these tweets and bring them to the site along with the rest. So did the NBC4 Columbus .
Use Twitter as a source of information. A huge number of people use Twitter, the amount of information that they post is huge. In order not to get lost in this stream, use Twitter. This service allows you to filter everything that gets on Twitter by keywords and limit the coverage radius geographically. The results you see on the screen in real time. For example, you are a small regional online newspaper. Filter by the name of the center of your region and get all the tweets that mention it. It would be nice to display it directly on the newsroom, as the British newspaper Telegraph did .
Use Twitter for polls.Pushing your content through Twitter is good, but not enough. It will be more useful if you ask your readers through it with a question. And they will answer you using the same Twitter. Just have time to collect votes! How can this opportunity be turned in favor? You can clarify the information - if you have information, but do not check it in any way, please contact the readers through your tweet, maybe someone owns it more. But what if you need to interview a person who is on a regular trip? Ask him questions via Twitter. He has no time to write an e-mail, and he will scribble a short answer on the go. Doubt it? And Westerners are already practicing this. Who does not believe, read here , and here you can see a far from complete list of American newspapers that will twitter.
Use Twitter as a news agency. Here you do not even need to filter, here already prepared news are submitted in tweet format. Just subscribe, for example, to @BreakingNewsOn . True, this is a western source in English, but what prevents you yourself from becoming such a source? A? Yes, even in Russian? The idea for a million bucks. :)
Use Twitter to promote the mobile version of your site.It is no secret that the majority of online media have their main website as their main window, and its mobile version is not so popular. So, if you use Twitter and send people links, then let these links lead to your mobile version of the site. After all, a person receives sms from you, it is not convenient for him to open a link to the main site with a lot of graphics. And wap or pda versions will load much faster.
Use Twitter for live reporting.Since journalists constantly travel to places of events or participate in various events, it makes no sense to wait until they drop information by phone or turn on a live broadcast. Just tweet about what's going on. After all, readers do not always have the opportunity to watch TV, listen to the radio, read the site. They will be grateful to you for sms with the latest information.
There are several other sites that will help to better understand and use Twitter in the work of the media. Tweetbeep will send you an e-mail as soon as it detects a tweet containing your keyword. TwitterLocal is an application that can narrow the geographic reach of Twitter. Breaking tweets- An interesting mixture of world news and tweet reactions to them. Tweets are manually selected by the editor. Together they make up an interesting product. In Ecuador, a newspaper uses Twitter to train inexperienced journalists, and through Twitter, the editor-in-chief corrects their activities and gives advice. All this then falls into a special section on the site.
Good luck!