Archive for January, 2012

Making Your 2012 Social Media Resolutions Count

19 Jan

January isn’t just for weight loss. Use this time to refresh your social media strategies and set new goals for 2012.  Here are a few things you might want to consider:

1. Get a Grip on Best Practices

Identify 4 or 5 best practices as key goals for 2012. Perhaps you want to set a frequency goal to improve the referral traffic to your website. Or maybe you want to include more links with posts. Another great best practice goal would be to write better social media teases so that more Fans/Followers watch your broadcast.

2. Take Inventory

Do you have a list of everyone with administrative and password access to your station’s social media accounts? Is there a list of all the accounts and how they’re being used? Would you be able to track down the source of an unsavory post by keeping track of who is posting what and when? If someone left your organization, are there systems in place to immediately remove their access to the newsroom’s social accounts? If not, it’s time to take stock before disaster strikes!  

3. Get Smart About Contesting

Contesting is the most popular way to get new Fans fast. But consider what else you could be getting by giving away a prize. Think of ways to turn your contest into a traffic referral source for your website or to generate enthusiasm about your newscast. Stop gathering Fans for fans-sake…and start gathering them with purpose.

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How Often Should I Post to Twitter and Facebook?

13 Jan

It’s still the number one question I get asked. And for good reason. Setting and keeping goals for frequency of posts can have a major impact on your fan count, your web-traffic referrals and your engagement levels. For journalists, the answer to this question is different than for other brands because journalists have more valuable content to share. Here are some basic parameters:

Facebook: The most current data from Facebook suggests that optimum frequency for newsroom posts depend on the goals of that newsroom:
5-10 Posts per day yeild the highest feedback (likes and comments)
11-15 Posts per day yeild the highest referral traffic

Twitter: I have yet to find a study related to Twitter frequency specifically for Journalists. However, several studieshave shown that 1-4 Tweets per day yeild the highest referral traffic. These studies focus on brands and individuals. My general thought is that newsrooms can get away with a much higher frequency rate so long as they’re putting out valuable content.

Of course the real key is enforcement. It’s not practical in a busy newsroom to run around with a stopwatch, keeping track of when the next Tweet is due. This was the inspiration for one of SocialNewsDesk’s most popular features: the Frequency Manager. It’s worth mentioning since we are on the topic and since SND is the ONLY social media manager with this feature. Inside SocialNewsDesk, newsroom managers set an individual frequency goal for each of the accounts attached to the system. Then, SocialNewsDesk monitors how often posts are made and displays information about when the next post is due. Here’s a snapshot:

Facebook posting frequency rules for journalists. 

If you’re interested to see how it works in a live demo, reach out to me anytime. kwilson [at] socialnewsdesk.com.

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