Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue To Dialogue: Dawn Mcmullan

April 2011
Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Dawn McMullan
Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue By Dawn McMullan

Table of Contents
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Introduction Chapter 1: What Social Media Means to a News Publisher Chapter 2: The Short Social Media Revolution at Newspapers A. The marketing transition B. The social media department C. Huffington Post Chapter 3: Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types A. Your place or mine? B. Engagement C. Three types of news consumers Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media A. Chicago Tribune (United States) B. Financial Review Group (Australia) C. Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil) D. The Guardian (United Kingdom) E. Mediahouse Limburg (Belgium) F. Metro (Canada) G. The Press-Enterprise (United States) H. SOL (Portugal)
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Chapter 5: Structuring Social Media as Revenue or Brand Opportunity Chapter 6: Social Media Optimisation (SMO) for Publishers Chapter 7: Social Medias Next Steps at News Organisations Chapter 8: Conclusion
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Dawn McMullan is a freelance writer and editor living in Dallas. She is the editor of INMAs ideas magazine and former editor of Consumer Trends e-newsletter. Her work has also appeared in The Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, and on National Public Radio.
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Author
Dawn McMullan
Edited by
Andrea Loubier
Layout & Design
INMA Partner in Business
Danna Emde
Cover art includes: The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, SOL

INMA Inc. Copyright 2011 The contents contained within this report are the exclusive domain of INMA Inc. and may not be reproduced without the express written consent of INMA.
About INMA
INMA (International Newsmedia Marketing Association) is the worlds largest and premier newsmedia marketing organisation. This practical network of progressive marketing professionals now totals nearly 5,000 members in 82 countries worldwide. Members exchange ideas through a bi-monthly magazine, multiple web sites, e-mail executive summaries, discussion forums, message boards, conferences, workshops, travel study tours, awards competitions, benchmark surveys, and online directories and databases. The 81-year-old association has offices in Dallas, Antwerp, and New Delhi. To become a member of INMA, please visit www.inma.org.
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Introduction
Newspapers historically have been in the monologue business by broadcasting information to the masses, one size fits all. By contrast, social media is about dialogue, the community, and niche audiences a complement to the new direction of news publishing.
It appears news media and social media cannot thrive without each other. While social media carries its fair share of personal back and forth, the crux of social media content comes from information produced by professionals. The news industry must embrace this phenomenon because it is changing the way people consume news. For mainstream media to survive, if not thrive, it must embrace social media and take on the critical role of curator of the conversation, says Khris Loux, CEO of Echo States, a San Francisco-based real-time commenting engine for publishers. For social media to remain relevant and avoid slipping further into a wall of noise, it must work hand in hand with news organisations to create a symbiotic storytelling relationship. What do social media and the changing consumer habits surrounding it mean for the news industry? INMA interviewed dozens of social media experts to gather insight on: How social media in the newspapers context is defined. Were at a huge transition, Loux says. Internally, we liken it to the transition between the quill and the printing press. Its that significant of a change. There were those that didnt make the jump and those that said, Hey, wait a second, we can now print every day, and completely opened up their markets and transformed themselves. Not having lived through that time, its a bit of a guess, but I imagine the ones that made it were the ones who got into the business of understanding, owning, and operating printing resources. They didnt outsource printing presses. They didnt stay at arms length from it. They bought the What early-adopter newspapers are doing with social media today. Whether social media is a revenue opportunity or a brand opportunity for publishers. What the social media revolution looks like on the ground. Whether news publishers should bring the conversation from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter onto their sites.
If you want to keep or strengthen the relationship you have through your local audiences, you have to understand what these people care about and then you have to supply that kind of information.
KHRIS LOUX CEO, Echo States
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Introduction
machines, brought them in-house, and learned how to use them. In that same way, publishers are standing on the
outside, really facing an existential choice to be orphaned or to really embrace those technologies. Theres no middle ground.
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1
What Social Media Means to a News Publisher
The first known use of the phrase social media came in 2004, which Merriam-Webster defines as forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).
Seven years later, its impossible to get through a day without a social media reference. We fan groups we like. We friend people we live next door to, some we went to high school with, others we have never met. We like everything from clever responses by strangers to funny video clips and tsunami rescues. We can summarise any event, feeling, or request in a 140-word tweet. Like any other marketing initiative, the fundamental TNS Globals Digital Life survey of worldwide Internet users in 2010 found consumers spent more time on social Web sites than on e-mail 4.6 hours weekly on the former, 4.4 hours on the latter (and 2.7 weekly hours reading the news). New York-based media agency Universal McCanns Social Media Tracker found that 61% of worldwide Internet users between the ages of 16 and 54 have a social media profile compared to 51% in 2009 and 45% in 2008. The same study found that social media users worldwide keep up with an average of 52 friends through social media, up from nearly 39 in 2009. Social media has infiltrated the world much the way the Internet, e-mail, mobile phones, and smartphones have. What sort of behavioural change are you going to try and elicit? What is the most suitable platform to achieve these objectives? What is the objective of your social media platform? Questions such as: priority in entering the social media space is to have a clear set of objectives, says Simon Wake, group marketing director of Financial Review Group in Australia. That lack of clarity, experts say, needs to change. And much like they did with the Internet, smartphones, and more recently tablets, news publishers feel the need to be there. The how and the why, though, still may seem unclear.
What theyre not doing is recognising the opportunity thats before them: that social media represents a human network, individuals who are connected around relationships and information and interests. Thats whats so important right now.
BRIAN SOLIS Author, Principal, Altimeter Group, Founder, Social Media Club
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Chapter 1: What Social Media Means to a News Publisher
Some wonder if the Groupon phenomenon should be included in the social media discussion. Sure, it takes a group to make such group deals work; and they often are spread through social media. But group deals are basically a coupon app. They are not a conversation. They are not information. They are not social media. That being said, group deals are a good way to build audience. Ward Andrews, the owner of Drawbackwards, a Phoenix, Arizona-based strategic design, Internet marketing, and business consulting agency, sees newspapers that dont understand who on staff should be using social media and how to speak with people on social media. So Twitter is the best news-breaking medium of all time, Andrews says. But in certain news organisations, they dont have their reporters on Twitter. They have some director of digital running a Twitter account in their spare time. Whats happening naturally is the younger generation of reporters, who are already on Twitter, are now using Twitter to break news or to use it for research for their article. As an example of doing it well, Andrews mentions a Phoenix news anchor who asks viewers via Twitter what they would like to hear about on that nights broadcast. She comments directly to those tweets during the broadcast. Sports departments also often are using it as it should be used. Some do live tweets from the coach
Time spent on online activities

% of internet users
% doing activity daily E-mail News Social Interest Knowledge Multimedia Gaming Browsing Admin Organize Shopping 76% 55% 46% 46% 39% 37% 27% 24% 21% 19% 12% Hours per week spent on activity 4.4 2.7 4.6 3.9 3.1 3.7 2.9 2.3 1.7 1.6 1.8
Note: n=48,804 Sources: TNS, Digital Life, October 10, 2010
during a press conference instead of waiting to release it in their article. As a fan, you just want the coach quotes, Andrews says. People are going to follow that Twitter nonstop.
Internet users who manage social network profile

% of respondents
33.1%
U.S.
48.3% 58.1% 45.1%
2008 2009 2010
Worldwide
51.4% 61.4%
Note: ages 16-54; daily or every other day Internet access; in the past six months Sources: UM, The Socialisation of Brands: Social Media Tracker 2010, October 1, 2010
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Chapter 1: What Social Media Means to a News Publisher
Andrews points to the rule of three on Twitter as far as how newsmedia organisations should interact with customers: 1. One-third of tweets should be giving the newspapers insight. 2. One-third should have a conversation with others. 3. One-third should be used for general conversation (subscription sales, special announcements). Newspapers are thinking of social media as another broadcast channel to syndicate content, which is, to be
fair, how every business is approaching social media. What newspapers are not doing, however, is worth noting. What theyre not doing is recognising the opportunity thats before them: that social media represents a human network, individuals who are connected around relationships and information and interests, says Brian Solis, author of Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Business to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, principal at the Altimeter Group, and founder of the Social Media Club. Thats whats so important right now.
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The Short Social Media Revolution at Newspapers
Social media may be the next Internet, with a multitude of news companies still unsure as to how or why or where they need to be.
And thats OK, says Meg Pickard, head of digital engagement at The Guardian in the United Kingdom. A lot of these individuals who are very prominent in the Anybody who goes into social media, or any new and emergent technology, and says, I know exactly how we should use this is probably lying, Pickard says with a laugh. The whole point of emergent technology or things changing is the uses havent necessarily been established yet. The change in Twitter in the last five years has been remarkable. Whats it going to be like in another five? Facebook, when it launched, was really about your friends. In a meeting yesterday, someone said they friended somebody they didnt know. Thats the kind of sentence that if youd said it to me five years ago, I wouldve looked at you like you were crazy. That said, newsmedia companies need to understand why they need to be engaging with social media even if theyre not perfectly clear on how. When they dont know why, it shows, Pickard says. What theyre trying to do, Solis heard from a higher-up at a major U.S. newspaper, is figure out how to humanize all this. I think what every business, not just media, is not getting is that were in a marketing transition. Online was pretty important. It gave people access to information in a different place. But in and of Consider the work of Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at The City University of New Yorks graduate school of journalism, and new media columnist for The Guardian. Jarvis entrepreneurial journalism movement is all about the idea of building bridges between people and information something People arent going to look for you anymore. You have itself, thats not the same thing as whats happening. This is nothing short of a revolution. The empowerment in not just consumption, but creation of content. I can create information. I can be a reporter. I can be a content editor. Thats the foundation of this revolution. Tech writers at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, for example, have created their own personal brands and built community. Yet Solis wonders: why arent all newspapers doing this? tech blogging world have had sort of a tech blogging face-off against traditional media, Solis says. They have done so because they have made an incredible killing writing incredible content shorter, faster, better, and allowing their writers to develop personal brands and network that content, developing micro-audiences that collectively create a greater audience for the publication they represent. all news companies should be doing.
A. The marketing transition
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Chapter 2: The Short Social Media Revolution at Newspapers
Anybody who goes into social media, or any new and emergent technology, and says, I know exactly how we should use this is probably lying.
MEG PICKARD Head of Digital Engagement, The Guardian
to come to them. The reason its a marketing transition is because it doesnt negate the other reality that you still need your dot-com, you still need something in somebodys hands, whether thats print, the iPad, another tablet. And transition, as we all know, is difficult for newspapers. This transition is no different, says The Guardians Pickard. Most of the time it ends up being fairly clumsy, Pickard says. Its more about broadcast than it is about engagement. Theyre using it as a headline service or as a way to tell us what you think, share this with your friends. Look at the language they use to address their audience; even the fact that they think of them as an audience instead of a community. Tameka Kee, lead researcher and analyst for Social Times Pro, agrees. But she sees newspapers trying. Its so complex, Kee says. I also think that the organisational structures of newspapers dont lend themselves to social media well. Theyve just figured out how to do the Internet right, and now this other thing comes along.
Facebook or Twitter. They get together to discuss what theyre doing and how. Its all in fun, but the idea behind it is a good one. Everybody has skills. Those skills need to be used and shared throughout the organisation. At one time, that was best done with a dedicated social media team. But thats no longer the case at news companies that have made social media a part of their DNA. The Chicago Tribune had a true social media department a few years ago. Along the way, even the title of social media manager went away, as Bill Adee, vice president/ digital at the Chicago Tribune Media Group, felt it should be a part of everyones job. Recently, the Tribune put someone in place to focus on social media and coordinate social media events. If somebody has an event, they plan out what the social media game plan is. They share best practices among all of our departments, Adee says. That made sense as we got so big and everybodys doing it. It became something I felt like we needed to coordinate. Now, almost every publication has somebody who is expected to focus on social media. The Tribune has one person doing a 90-day sprint of Twitter training, teaching everybody in the building how to use it. The goal is to have 1,000 people at the Chicago Tribune using Twitter effectively. As of this writing, they are halfway there. Like so many in the industry, Adee thinks the synergy
B. The social media department

The Chicago Tribune has a Social Media Justice League, based on the American comics that started in the 1960s with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Green Lantern. Everybody in the Tribunes tongue-in-check Justice League has a certain social media superpower: viral video, superior training skills, or strong profiles on
between Twitter and newspapers is obvious. Says Adee: I think people thought it was sort of a nice thing to do, but now thats how people get their news.
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Although most people in the newsroom were already on Twitter, the Tribune training shows how those in the marketing and advertising department can use it. The official Chicago Tribune Twitter posts are done by one of the newspapers Web site producers, while the Colonel Tribune account is tweeted by a reporter, with help from others every now and then. The Guardian started out with a communities team embedded into every department. The company is now experimenting with having one community coordinator who acts as a conduit between the community and editorial. The New York Times did the same thing, hiring Jennifer Preston to be head of social media, then moving her to a different role this year, Kee points out. They realised social needs to be embedded in every department, Kee says. Newspapers would do well to have a champion of social in their organisation. Somebody needs to own it and understand the metrics. But it needs to be filtered holistically as well.
same article from HuffPo versus a cleaner, leaner news site and use the same social tools to drive traffic, which traffic would be more valuable to an advertiser? HuffPo definitely has figured out one of the ways to harness social and to drive massive amounts of traffic. But, No. 1, how quality is that traffic? And No. 2, most news organisations arent structured in the way that HuffPo is. HuffPo wouldnt have sold for US$315 million if it wasnt valuable, but I think whats less valuable is the content and whats more valuable is the model. And newspapers should look at the Huffington Posts model. There is much to emulate about it. All content, Kee says, should be socialised. The easier you make it for people to share your content, the more youre going to be able to monetise it, she says. Im not going to read the Des Moines Register, but if my friend whose mom lives in Des Moines sees that her mom liked an article on Facebook, and my friend likes it, and I see it, then I click over to that. Thats a page view that they wouldnt have had. So socialize. But do so in your newspapers own voice. Certainly, your average newspaper cant get away with sounding like the Huffington Post and probably wouldnt want to. Remember, Kee says, everyone isnt a HuffPo reader. Gawker, for example, is a New York-based news blog that focuses on celebrity news. The Web site features a caption of the day, inviting readers to write the best caption, which will run with the photo. Thats fine and totally tongue-in-cheek, Kee says. But if The Atlantic started sending all of its headlines and
C. Huffington Post
Most everyone mentions the Huffington Post as the pice de rsistance of newsmedia organisations doing social media, the epitome of the social media revolution. Sure. But as Kee points out, the HuffPo, as those in the know call it, isnt a newspaper. Its a digital news company and one that could learn a lot from newspapers, Kee thinks. It has an atrocious Web design, she says. The Huffington Post monetises its traffic ridiculously and attributes social media to a big part of that. I wonder if there was any way to drill down into the quality of impressions from HuffPo. The content is so aggregated, I wondered if we put the
They realised social needs to be embedded in every department. Newspapers would do well to have a champion of social in their organisation. Somebody needs to own it and understand the metrics. But it needs to be filtered holistically as well.
TAMEKA KEE Lead Researcher, Analyst, Social Times Pro
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allowing people to write the caption, that wouldnt work. If youre a serious newspaper, you dont want to do that. A newspaper needs to find its voice and then figure out how that voice is social. Maybe thats just giving two of your local reporters a blog and having them do social. Maybe once a week you do a Web case from a reporters
desk, summing up the stories and posting it to a YouTube page. Thats social. Its also learning how to use Twitter to break news and then drive traffic back to the Web site or back to your print publication. Marshall Sponder saw the Huffington Posts data last year. A New York-based specialist in Web analytics and SEO/SEM, as well as the author of Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building Interpreting, and Using Metrics, Sponder works and consults in market research, social media, networking, and public relations for companies like IBM, Monster, The New York Times, and US Magazine. Huffington identifies its top influencers based on the number of comments and engagement. Sometimes, they offer them blogs or connect them to each other. This is the latest move by news organisations using social media, ranking the level one, level two, or level three influencers among those commenting, offering them ways to interact with each other, looking at their social graph, looking at the algorithms. What were looking at is the intelligent application of technology to improve the readers experience and better categorise and figure out who these people are, Sponder says. The Huffington Post, because theyre only five years old and not The New York Times or Forbes, can afford to be a little bit more innovative in ways the older publications, simply because of their mass and because of their structure, have not yet been able to be. Those publications may be more stable in some ways but may not have the wherewithal to make the shifts that are needed.
Huffington Post
Many social media and newspaper experts point to the Huffington Post as an example of how newsmedia companies should be doing social media.
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3
Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types
There currently are two camps of newsmedia companies in the social media arena, according to Khris Loux of Echo States, the commenting engine for publishers:
Those that are outsourcing their relationship with their visitors to the social networks. These newspapers have set up a Facebook fan page and are driving traffic to that page. Says Loux: Thats all well and good, but its an economic calculation that doesnt work. The newspaper invests in the content, they have a reporter, editors, distribution, building all this stuff to produce a story. If you push that content into Facebook, then they control monetisation of that page. Now youre doing a revenue share on your core asset. Thats really nice for Facebook, because they have not invested in the content. The heroine of it is when you do place your content in there, do you get a referral to your site? Theres this candy, bit of goodness, this rush if you will. But it does come with a hangover that now youve given up registration, the ability to engage visitors. Those who are building the relationship on their Web site. When the cost of distribution goes to zero, all thats left are profits around the experience itself. Why would I go to the L.A. Times to read a story on Qaddafi. I can get 1,000 stories in 0.025 Many newspaper executives find it frustrating that their content is being discussed on social media like Facebook and Twitter instead of on their own Web sites. Our business relies on driving a premium audience to our site so that they understand the extent of value presented there to drive trial and subscriptions, Simon Wake says of the Financial Review Group, one of the few subscription Web sites in Australia. We have fully seconds. Why the L.A. Times? Theyd better come up with an experience that drives me back to their Web sites. Its content, but not just content. Its because my friends go there, because there are top-rated photos there, cool user-generated content, comments, I can get badges and rewards, discounts at local restaurants, because I follow smart people there. All of those social experiences, if you outsource every one of those, youre gone and become weak, ineffective, disaggregated. Your content is a seed, and the experience is the fruit around that.
A. Your place or mine?
If your audience is having a conversation about a topic, and youre successful at having your story picked up as part of that conversation, then content is coming back to you. And if youre not in the conversation and your competitor is, then you lose that engagement with the audience.
MURRAY NEWLANDS Social Media Consultant, Blogger
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Chapter 3: Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types
embraced Twitter from an editorial perspective. It is less resource-intense than other social media but clearly acts to drive traffic to the Financial Review Web site. Others in the news industry are concerned less with having conversations on their Web site and more with having conversations that are tied back to their brand.
The reality is we want to be part of the Flipboards and all the aggregators for news, and you just have to get your head around all that. You dont have to monetise your audience on your site or your newspaper for it to be important. Its about the brand. Eventually, this all leads to a stronger business. Luke Brynley-Jones, founder of Our Social Times, a
Our brand is our brand everywhere, says Jodi Brown, marketing and interactive director at Metro Canada, based in Toronto. Twitter and Facebook are fantastic places for conversations. I dont feel like dragging them back to our conversation. We use Facebook Connect so you can see conversations on Facebook about the site that theyre on, making it feel like more of a community. I dont see it as a major threat.
United Kingdom-based media consultancy, agrees. You shouldnt get so hung up about your Web property, says Brynley-Jones, who co-founded the United Kingdoms first social media consultancy in 2001. The key thing is to have a presence on the Web. That no longer applies to just one place. He, like other social media experts, recommends newspapers have a community manager to conduct outreach through various types of social media blogs, competitors blogs, Twitter, and more. You have to go where your audience is and where your audience is having conversation, says Murray Newlands, a social media consultant and blogger based in the United Kingdom. If your audience is having a conversation about a topic, and youre successful at having your story picked up as part of that conversation, then content is coming back to you. And if youre not in the conversation and your competitor is, then you lose that engagement with the audience. California-based Enterprise Media has spent much of
Facebook Comments
Newsmedia companies are struggling to determine how much value Facebook discussions about their content bring to the newspaper and how to bring that conversation back to their own Web site.
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the past 18 months working on that engagement. Enterprise Media knew that A.H. Belo-owned PressEnterprise generated buzz on Facebook and that it was missing out. In the last quarter of 2009, staff reviewed how their community was using social media to share and react to news. The Press-Enterprise, like most other local newspapers, plays a central role in what is talked about in its community in Riverside, California. Historically, the conversations have taken place in person or on the newspapers Web site. Unfortunately, the emergence of social networks disrupted the feedback mechanism. Offline conversations were occurring online on Facebook instead of PE.com, and articles were being shared and spread using Twitter, instead of the newspapers sharing tools. Starting in December 2009, the newspaper moved from its original commenting tool to the Echo real-time conversation platform. There were several reasons for this move, the most important being the trend showing that Facebook and Twitter were becoming the community platforms for discussing local stories and events. News companies benefit from using Facebook as a good advertising service for local businesses, but they lose out from a content standpoint if the conversation is taking place on Facebook instead of on the newspapers Web site. Echo changes this equation for the newspaper by bringing the conversation back to its site. All comments, tweets, re-tweets, and shares across the Web show up in real time aggregated in the comment stream on their own Web site. The best place to see reactions to their articles is now on the PE.com story page and not on a social network. In a short time, comments on the site
increased from about 2,000 per month to well over 25,000 per month. Social media sites are not typical distribution channels for newspapers, says Andrew McFadden, manager, innovation and business development at Enterprise Media. They are Web sites that we do not own or control and that have changed (and will continue to change) their terms of service, restrictions, and features. Even if the sites are driving traffic to your Web site now, the traffic to a local media companys Facebook page is usually being monetised only by Facebook. This needs to change. Having the conversation on your Web page is the best-case scenario. And Facebook recently made it easier by creating a comments plug-in upgrade that allows a Facebook-like chat to occur on your page (Facebook profile picture, name and all) while simultaneously on Facebook. You dont have to log in to a new Web site. Comments are not made anonymously which cuts down on inappropriate posts. Facebook has said it isnt trying to steal traffic from newspapers, says Tameka Kee of Social Times Pro. It wants to help media companies. What newspapers need to do is work on bringing that conversation back to their site, and there are plenty of tools out there that make that easy. Of course, Facebook has that data, and thats one of the cons. The bigger thing is you want to do as much as you can to make that interaction happen on your site. That said, conversations on [Facebook], as long as they have a link, have a value. I would liken that to me bringing a copy of The New York Times to someones house. That person didnt buy that copy of The New York
Social media sites are not typical distribution channels for newspapers. They are Web sites that we do not own or control and that have changed (and will continue to change) their terms of service, restrictions, and features. Even if the sites are driving traffic to your Web site now, the traffic to a local media companys Facebook page is usually being monetised only by Facebook. This needs to change.
ANDREW MCFADDEN Manager, Innovation and Business Development, Enterprise Media
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Times, but they are reading it. Is there value in that or not? If you can harvest the content from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and have it all aggregate on your Web site, the publishers site becomes the conical view of the story. Says Khris Loux of Echo States: The publisher has all of it. If you simply want to move the conversation to your Web site because its more profitable and convenient for you, thats not good enough, says The Guardians Meg Pickard. You must add benefit to bring the conversation to your Web site. The Guardian offers the benefit of the author to discussions on its Web site.
Something staff at The Guardian has been discussing is who readers want to follow through social media. Asks Pickard: Do I want to know the stories that my friends are reading or stories that other people I respect in the field are reading? Who knows everything there is to know about classical music or nuclear physics? Should I be following them or the people I went to high school with? Moderating is another discussion. Facebook and other social media sites monitor their own content. You monitor yours. Should you be monitoring their sites about your posts? If someone says something inappropriate, is it your
Feel entirely free to take the conversation anywhere, but this is where the record is, Pickard says. If you want to engage in debate with the authors, thats on our Web site. You can talk about it on Twitter. Rather than getting upset, we have to say thats fine. But if we want them to come to our site, how do we incentivize them? You have to provide something else. The something else we have is talent, resource, and attention. We reward participation with attention.
space or their space? Pickard asks. That is not our space. Its the corner of somebody elses buy. The table weve commandeered, but it belongs to somebody else. Its like me going to a party and saying, I really dont think you should wear those shoes. Its potentially appropriate at my own party, but if people are being inappropriate with each other or about a particular subject, we sort of sit on our hands. This is a community space, governed by the community. We think others will call them out. Back at The Guardians Web site, a team of moderators controls the conversation, keeping things reigned in yet not being heavy-handed. Readers often ask how the Chicago Tribune monitors its Web site. Vice president/digital Bill Adee gets more complaints about censoring comments than about the comments themselves. He feels the best way to monitor such discussions is by giving people choices. Do they only want to see comments by their friends? Only see comments that rank an article two thumbs up or higher? This isnt possible on the Tribunes site now, but Adee would like to build toward that. In the bigger picture, publishers need to be building experiences around their content.
B. Engagement
Nobody wants thousands of tweets, which is where the news staff comes in. Consumers dont want to see every piece of art in the world, so they go to a museum to see the art that has been curated by the experts. Grouping content in a way that has meaning and can be absorbed is the newspapers job. There is value in editorial content, Koux says. The masses can tweet, but the masses also need rallying points and editorial follow-up and due diligence and curation. The beauty of social media is that you get so much global reaction. The downside of that is the same thing you get so much. How consumers would like to engage is what news companies and consumers are still trying to determine.
Their intellectual property needs to be those
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The social media players

Facebook: Launched in 2004 as a social media platform for college students, Facebook
now has more than 600 million active users. Members friend other members, fan pages of businesses like newspapers, share content, and comment on and/or like posts from other people. Today at least, Facebook seems to set the tone for how consumers want to converse with each other, read, and share news via social media.
Twitter: Launched in 2006, Twitter is now famous for its 140-character posts. Twitter has
more than 200 million active users and generates more than 65 million tweets a day. Members follow other members and organizations. Content is easily shared among followers by retweeting. Format is more pushed than interactive among members.
foursquare: A location-based social networking Web site designed for GPS-enabled

mobile devices that rewards users with badges for using their account and checking in on the site to let friends know their physical location. Launched in 2009, foursquare has 7 million registered users and targets metropolitan areas. As of last year, foursquare now interacts with users about their location and whats around them, rather than just sharing that information with friends.
Digg: Released to the public in 2004, Digg is a way to share and discuss news items with
other members. Like Twitter, Digg members can follow each other. Its primary niche is connecting people to content (voted on and shared by those in the Digg community, who hit the digg button, much like Facebookers click like button) and encouraging them to share it.
Flickr: Hosting more than four billion images, Flickr intertwines image hosting with
social media. Launched in 2004, Flickr allows members to share their photos, talk through comments and notes, and pick favourites.
Tumblr: Launched in 2007 as a microblogging site, Tumblr touts how easy it is to use.
The home page asks you for your email address, password, URL, and start posting! Tumblr hosts more than 16 million blogs, many of which are photo heavy.
YouTube: Chances are, if someone views or shares a video these days, its on YouTube.
Launched in 2005, YouTube allows anyone to view videos and registered members to upload and share them. The largest worldwide video-sharing community, as it says on its home page, YouTube plays host to more than two billion videos viewed daily. Thirty-five hours of video are uploaded every minute and more video is uploaded to YouTube in two months than the three major networks in the United States created in 60 years.
LinkedIn: This social media site with a definite professional twist launched in 2003 and
has 100 million users. Users connect with people they know or have some professional or social connection with, endorse people they know and/or have worked with, become members of interest groups (most based on profession, specific companies, or university alumni), and have group discussions.
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experiences, Koux says. Those building and learning will be strong through this cycle. Its a fascinating time to be in the space. Were providing a suite of tools that allows publishers to experiment. Thats our role in it. Were sitting in the middle of this, trying to help people jump over the experience gap into this new land. We see some people who are afraid to jump. Some dont jump far enough and fall in the gap. And some jump and make it to the other side.
Solis believes news companies are trying to innovate their way around this revolution putting content on an iPad, for example. Why would that be, for some consumers, preferable to having their human network curate their information for them? Hes not impressed with newspaper Facebook pages, either. If you could somehow build a relationship with me through reporters that I enjoy, that I follow, then weve got something different, Solis says. But its just a start.
C. Three types of news consumers

The New York Times is doing this. Columnist Nicholas As Brian Solis of Altimeter Group breaks it down, news companies have three types of consumers they are competing for: The traditional consumer: Loves the print newspaper. The digital customer: Goes to your Web site every day. The connected customer: Goes to the browser only seeking Facebook or Twitter and finds information there if your content makes its way to her feed. Solis himself is a hybrid because he has to keep up with a lot of current information. Generally, he lets information come to him, having built hubs that aggregate content for him. He does not start his day clicking on Web sites, nor does he download mobile or tablet apps. Why? Because theyre still monologue. He is, for the most part, the connected consumer. This revolution is not just content or not just channel or not just syndication, Solis says. The revolution is that information has to be hand-delivered like a baton to individuals. The intermediary between content and a consumer is a human being, a reporter. You can see the whole cultural shift that has to take place within the organisation. You first have to say that how were doing it today is not going to work in these channels. And I dont know that anybody is willing to say that. Solis asks the question. His answer is that such a model can be built around scalability not unlike concept marketing. The smart publications, he says, are already looking to search engine optimisation (SEO) to boost visibility of content around topics. The same can be done for social media. That is as necessary and innovative as it is not a complete solution, Solis says. It helps, right? But the question is how you get someone there. The online consumer and the traditional consumer are no problem. Keep doing what youre doing to reach them. But how do you get the social consumer to get there and use those buttons. The thing is that no one has really great answers. But theyre not asking the questions either. So what if, Solis theorises, NYT.com starts spending more time and money in social media, restructuring its Web site to allow people to comment, to like, to retweet right from the page? Done, done, and done. That is social media that will reach the connected consumer. Kristof, one of the newspapers most popular columnists, posts his own Facebook posts and Twitter tweets. It sounds like him. He asks questions. You know when hes landed in Kigali or Tripoli. He asks questions of his followers and sometimes mentions them by name in later posts and responses. It feels like you have a personal relationship with him.
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4
How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media
Before there was a fake cobra tweeting from around New York City after his escape from the Bronx Zoo, there was the fake Shaquille ONeal. And he was Ward Andrews. U.S. basketball star Shaq was known for humourous verbal quips and he didnt have a Twitter account. So Andrews started one for him. Eventually, Twitter shut down the account. (Google Ward Andrews, Shaquille ONeal, and Twitter to read the full story).
The point of this story? If you dont take on your own identity and speak for yourself, someone else will, Andrews says. You need to be there and be the authoritative voice there. Here are eight newspapers around the world doing just that: One of the first things the group did was get the Tribune on Twitter and Facebook. This was before Facebook had pages for publications, business, and non-profits. So Tribune created an avatar called Colonel Tribune. Bill Adee, vice president/digital at Chicago Tribune Media Group, moved from his position as sports editor to the digital department in 2006. He immediately saw the power of social media. I started to look at just the numbers of how our site worked, he remembers. We got 40% of our traffic from people coming in through the home page, typing in chicagotribune.com or bookmarking it because weve been around for a long time. And I thought, Wait a minute. Where are the other 60% coming from? We had In March 2008, the Tribune started its social media That really clicked, Adee says. It was the first time I felt like we got in touch with the Web community here in Chicago. The Colonel has 800,000 followers on Twitter, which noticed what the Tribune was doing and made the Colonel one of its suggested users back when Twitter used to make such suggestions. In early 2007, he created a social media group of four people. like 12 producers focused on the 40%, but who do we have on the 60%? We had nobody.
A. Chicago Tribune (United States)
If you dont take on your own identity and speak for yourself, someone else will. You need to be there and be the authoritative voice there.
WARD ANDREWS Owner, Drawbackwards
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Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media
group. Through tweet-ups (gatherings organised by notices on Twitter), staff met a lot of local bloggers, leading to a site of Chicagos best blogs, www. chicagonow.com. We always get in a huff when people dont link back to us and our journalism, but on the flip side, we hardly ever link out to bloggers, Adee says. We found the best blogs in Chicago and reach out to them to show the traffic. Our blog network has over 300 blogs. Weve learned a lot about what bloggers want in a blog and weve carried over a lot of those ideas to our core Web site.
media, Web development, SEO, and training. There are plenty of great digital consulting agents that do big brands, Adee says. What about the local businesses, the ones that we saw as needing the most help? Many of them are already our clients on the print business. People come into the Tribune building, learn the same kinds of things we teach reporters. Its been very lucrative for us. Statistics show 80% of online users in the Chicago area are on Facebook. Thats significant. We have to use it for that, Adee says. But I think just
Another part of chicagonow.com is taking the knowledge gained from the bloggers and training local businesses to blog. Out of that venture came the Tribune Company Digital Consulting Group in late 2010. Local business owners lack broad knowledge about social media. They were happy to have help and happy to pay for it. The group has four focuses: social
using it for that doesnt give us anything. We have to use it correctly. The Tribune uses Facebook to get information from its audiences and sources as well as learn whats going on in a reporters area of expertise. Facebook is also a forum for newsmakers from Charlie Sheen to Hosni Mubarak. For now, the Tribune is keeping up with the big social media players, which seems fairly stable at the moment. Adee has faith that the Tribune and others in the industry will continue to embrace this new way of engaging with customers: I think were much more agile than people give us credit for.
Chicago Tribune
United States
At left, top: Bob McDonald, Katharina Bockli, Katie Kohler of the Tribune Company Digital Consulting Group. One of the first things the Chicago Tribune Media Group did when entering the social media arena was get the Tribune on Twitter and Facebook with an avatar called Colonel Tribune.
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B. Financial Review Group (Australia)

The Financial Review Groups professional target group seems a perfect fit for social media. Actually, they like the idea of social but in the more traditional sense of the word. The newspapers BRW Fast Club (branded after its BRW magazine) is a non-virtual community of entrepreneurs and business owners who regularly meet at actual meetings. In person. From day one, the club was profitable, explains Simon Wake, group marketing manager at Financial Review Group (FRG). But importantly the members gained most of the benefits, personally and professionally. It is something that just wouldnt have worked via a digital community. Members want to rub shoulders and network in a safe, branded environment they trust. BRWs editorial team is already very close to this broad community of 2,000 up-and-coming business leaders, so the brand was a natural fit. The caliber of members and the community at large attracted the interest of a major investment bank with a particular interest in fast growing businesses as principal sponsor. FRG staff has looked closely at business networking
sites, considering them a marketing channel because of their ideal business-focused, highly qualified audience. But that doesnt bring traffic to FRGs site, and FRG has no control of any aspect of such a venture, including advertising appearing alongside its brand or the yields associated with its brand. For some, there is a compelling reason to be involved, Wake says. For other sites, we see just as many pitfalls as opportunities. A principle consideration is that any involvement in social media requires proper resourcing. Its not a case of set and forget. In fact, quite the opposite, because social media is all about being contemporary and interactive. Any efforts in developing a Financial Review peer group within an online business network potentially drives traffic away from our sites and creates a Financial Review audience in a branded environment that we cant control. Considering that commitment, staff at FRG has weighed the production overhead of monitoring and interacting online, as well as editorial investment, against other possible content initiatives. The Financial Reviews brand values centre around trust, as we provide objective financial and business analysis, Wake says. Some aspects of social media could put this at risk. The mitigation of this risk often involves actions that fly in the face of social media norms and, therefore, cancel out the benefits. We will develop new social media platforms moving forward.
Financial Review Group

Australia
For its target audience, Financial Review Group has taken a more traditional approach to social while it evaluates how helpful the social media approach might be.
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But it will always be with considered thought and certainly what we develop will be worthwhile and resourced optimally. Weve never felt that we have to be there [on social media]. Rather weve looked at what wed forego to be there and, so far, some alternatives have delivered a better business case. The Fast Club works, Wake says, because its based on BRWs brand equity and its tailored to a niche audience. By their very nature, entrepreneurs are hungry for ideas. They want to learn from the experience of others and, importantly, they want to do deals. A face-to-face environment is far more conducive to achieving this.
C. Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil)

Folha de S.Paulo currently has one of the highest number of Facebook fans in the world among newspapers with 206,000. The newspaper has two goals with its social media strategy: Grow its presence on social media networks. Increase traffic referrals generated toward its Web site, Folha.com. Weve obtained a good balance between information (hard news and features), humour, and subjects that can generate discussions, according to Marcos Strecker, the newspapers social media editor. Social network referrers now represent 4% of the newspapers Web traffic, up from 2% less than a year ago. Strecker has heard it can increase 10% to 15%. Through Facebook alone, the site gets more than one million post views daily. Last October, Folha de S.Paulo launched a Facebook application, the first of its kind in Brazil, which soon will have banner advertising. The newspaper also plans to use Facebook social plug-ins, as The New York Times does currently, to allow advertising. Brazil is advanced in social media with one of the biggest rates among Web users in the world, Strecker says. You want to be present in every social media
Folha de S.Paulo
Brazil
Consumers in Brazil have one of the highest social media usage rates in the world, one reason Folha de S.Paulo is embracing the new opportunities.
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network, but Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are strategic nowadays. Streckers strategy is to post up to 12 daily features on Facebook, 30-40 Twitter posts daily for hard news, and regular videos posted on YouTube. Are they bringing in new revenue? Yes, but thats not the point, according to Strecker. At least not now. Weve had some campaigns on Twitter, which were clearly identified as advertising so they would not be mixed with editorial content, he explains. We usually advertise products of Folha Group like books and promotions, and we will very soon have banners in our Facebook application (not on the fan page). But I think revenue is not our main interest right now with social media. As in the beginning of the Internet, its more important to understand this new media, develop the right language, and have a strong presence in the networks. In Brazil, 86% percent of Internet users spend their Internet time doing search/navigation, 85% use it for social media, 75% for e-mail, and 59% for news/ information. By 2014, the number of global users of the Internet using mobile platforms will outnumber the desktop users, ComScore reports.
couple of years, its really nothing new to The Guardian. The newspapers Notes and Queries section started decades ago, tossing out questions and printing reader responses. Since the debut of The Guardians Web site 13 years ago, that social engagement has gone digital, starting with blogs in 2002 and adding comments to its Web site in 2004. In 2006, the newspaper launched CommentIsFree, which engages its audience in conversation about opinion and commentary pieces. Since then, weve basically been building and building and building on the kinds of things we have, Pickard says. But weve always thought it was important to have a dialogue with readers. We havent just suddenly got the memo that weve got to do something with Twitter. But social media tools have allowed us to extend the kind of things weve been doing and thinking about and relationships weve been building for over a decade now. In 2007, Pickards department started hosting social media training conversations at The Guardian, using pastries to get staff to show up. Back then, staff members could see how social media applied to their personal lives but not their professional lives. But all that has changed, with Guardian journalists and others now understanding the engagement process. Staff started using Flickr a few years ago. On the day
Social media is especially important for mobile, Strecker says. Its logical to have a strong presence in social media networks when we think tablets and smartphones will somehow shape the Internet of the future. Social media networks grow faster than other Internet services. Users are spending more time on social media networks. Its clear that being present in social media networks is important. I think social media will help with Internet advertising, apps subscriptions, and Internet subscriptions. It will make the news industry more effective and relevant.
Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, The Guardian launched a Flickr group called Message for Obama. The group featured pictures of people holding up signs with messages for the new American president. Three weeks later, The Guardian turned it into a book. The Guardian Camera Club is a more long-term use of Flickr, with photo editors giving readers regular photo challenges. Readers submit their portfolios and our picture editors, who are very high in their field, will do a critique of their amateur portfolio, Pickard explains. Thats never going to make it into print, and we wont write books about it. Its more about we love photography; if you love photography, how can we engage in this love of
D. The Guardian (United Kingdom)

While social media may be the buzzword of the last
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photography? Social media tools are helping us to extend those kinds of interests and relationships that we already have. The main social media use at The Guardian is Twitter,
which Pickard and other social media experts feel is the most newspaper-like use of social media. Facebook was a little trickier in the beginning. Our main social media strategy, when we started using those exact words, social media, was really about making it easy for us to be found and making it relevant in places where people already were, Pickard says. Facebook was growing in popularity, reach, and influence. We clearly needed to be there. We had the feeling that what we did there was less relevant and would become relevant over time to us and our users. When The Guardian started its Facebook page in 2009, it didnt tell anyone. Wanting to look at organic activity, staff looked to see how the site was found and by whom. There needs to be a good reason for somebody to form a relationship with an organisation, she says. It cant just be because theyve heard of us. We realised that before we knew exactly what the use for Facebook was, we wanted to know who our audience was. An audience of people who find us was better for testing rather than an audience who wed funneled to our location. So we wanted to start with the early adapters or the people clever enough to be able to find us. The grassroots strategy worked. Those early adapters told The Guardian what they wanted posted as well as what they liked and didnt like. It wasnt until 2010 that
The Guardian
United Kingdom
The Guardian is known worldwide as a leader in the social media movement. But being interactive with readers is nothing new here, which may be why its efforts feel so natural in the social media realm.
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the newspaper really promoted its Facebook page. The Guardian also added a feature that shows how many times an article has been shared via Facebook or Twitter, which makes people want to share more, Pickard says. In addition to the main Guardian Facebook page, there are pages for sections within the newspaper: environment, technology, media, and sports. Generally, Pickard feels Facebook works better for brands than it does for individual news stories. Pickard, who has a background in social anthropology and worked with AOL for more than eight years, joined The Guardian in 2007. A self-described early adopter, Pickard has been blogging since 2000 and using Flickr since 2004. She and The Guardian are constantly experimenting with different technologies, talking to the founders of new social media opportunities and looking for ways in which they are relevant. Its like active watching and waiting, she says. Were experimenting, tinkering, constantly trying to find new
ways. But it all comes down to reach and engagement. Its not about the conversation. Its about the relationship; listening in and contributing to communities of interest and communities of relevance.
E. Mediahouse Limburg (Belgium)

Mediahouse Limburg launched madeinlimburg.be in September 2010. The idea was for the Web site to become the Facebook of local entrepreneurs, hence the focus on the individual, his or her challenges, successes, and occasionally his or her failures, explains Koen Van Parijs, who is on staff in the general management department at Mediahouse Limburg and assistant to the CEO at Concentra, Mediahouse Limburgs parent company based in Hasslet, Belgium. Within five months, the Web site surpassed most of the companys original objectives, now reaching 50% of its target market, attracting significant new revenues from a book in review that was tied to the Web site, and organising a well-attended event (51 businesses opening their doors to the public on Made in Limburg Day). Staff ran institutional and B2B campaigns on the Web site with advertisers presenting themselves; staff started field-selling ads in April. What we like most about madeinlimburg.be is that we have been able to deliver a unique experience to readers and advertisers at a very low cost since we leverage existing platforms whenever possible (e.g. CRM) and
Mediahouse Limburg
Belgium
MadeInLimburg.be was created to be the Facebook of local entrepreneurs and is an ever-evolving, popular platform.
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make extensive use of available open-source technologies for both our Web site and our crawling technology when new development is necessary, Van Parijs says. Van Parijs attributes the initiatives success to the simple fact that people like to read about people. The majority of the news on the Web site is peopleoriented, while issues like economics are left to the traditional newspaper. Madeinlimburg.be has about 500 exclusive stories online at any given time and has about the same number of comments from readers. Traffic is about 30% above target. Each day, the site gets three to four times as much traffic as the Web site of the largest service organisation for entrepreneurs nationally. To comment, readers must log in. Most comments: Are about a promotion or deal. Are on the photo galleries (I saw you or Have you seen me?) Are about issues related to every entrepreneur (like costs or regulation). It wasnt really conceptualised as a social networking site, but it will turn into a social networking site, Van Parijs says. When people want to do that, you will have to follow. Our vision was to write about people, but when you write about people, people start doing things. At some point, madeinlimburg.be will have a button similar to the Facebook like button, but it will say Proficiat, (Congratulations). The thought is that this will cause interaction to increase when people can hit a button of congratulations in addition to (or instead of ) commenting. Madeinlimburg.be also has a Facebook page, with 1,100 people as fans among a target group of 20,000.
The Web site gets 30,000 to 35,000 unique visitors each month. Staff has launched a daily newsletter that is e-mailed to a target audience at 6:00 a.m. every morning, which is sending more people to the Web site. The newsletter is averaging six new sign-ups each day. The Web site was designed as an umbrella platform for the book and events Mediahouse Limburg had in mind. And it is with the former that the new revenue is coming in. While advertisers have asked for more advertorial presence on the Web site, so far the company has refused. Facebook, Van Parijs says, is a platform thats hard to beat for sharing content. But on madeinlimburg.be, readers really like to see their name. News companies should provide users with more options to interact with stories, to see what other readers have done with stories, to see the journalist behind the story, to see how the story became the story. These are all things that we can bring to our platforms, be it powered with a Facebook log-in because competing with Facebook or the next thing isnt an option anymore or otherwise, Van Parijs says. If people are discussing your information on Facebook, then the value is created on Facebook. The only way discussion will happen on your site is if youre interesting enough, if you are open to people, if you make it easy for people. Traffic from Facebook becomes more valuable each day, he says. Facebook is a key starting point, but it is only that. Social media is not just about mechanics like profile pages, buttons, status updates, Van Parijs says. Its about personal communication, conversation. If you want to be social, you have to be social in bringing people in front and be open for conversation. Having a more powerful platform like Facebook, and we are working on that would certainly lower the threshold for participating. But in the end, it is about people and about conversations.
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F. Metro (Canada)
In 2010, Metro was the first newspaper in the world to be on foursquare, a location-based social networking service that has a gaming aspect to it and uses GPS tracking a perfect fit for Metros urban, on-the-go readers. Location-based is really key to Metro, says Jodi Brown, marketing and interactive director at Metro Canada, based in Toronto. Now we have a relationship with about 35,000 followers. Whats in it for our readers as they move around the city is that Metro gives them tips about what they could or should be doing or eating. Metro Canada also has an iPhone news app with a section called m-flyers (mobile flyers). Like the paper flyers retailers created, m-flyers are in your hand as you
move around the city, delivered when an opt-in reader is near the advertising business. Metro can also deliver banner ads that are geography specific, a huge hit with car dealers. What were working on is layering news and information as you move around your city, Brown says. Were adding contextual information about each of our nine cities to get you the news closest to you. Brown is a fan of Twitter as the best way to share news, tidbits, and links with readers, and Metro Canada has about 30,000 followers. Among the news and headlines tweeted, Metro also tosses in some marketing and takes questions from followers. At Metro Canada, managing editors are key to social media, watching what the reporters do all day and managing the flow of tweets and posts going out so as not to flood readers feeds. It really tends to be a pretty engaged audience, Brown says. Twitter is great because if readers have any questions they may wonder why you took an angle on something, for example its such an immediate way to get feedback. Metro Canada has had a Facebook page since late 2009 but really didnt start putting much effort into it until the past six to eight months, feeling that Twitter and foursquare were better social media venues. Facebook is now Metro Canadas No. 2 referrer behind Google.
Metro
Canada
Metro uses the fact that its audience is urban and in movement for its social media strategy, which centered on foursquare early on.
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Metro is about to launch Be Seen in Scene, a Facebook fan page readers can fan for a chance to have their photograph in the Scene section of the newspaper an effort to build its number of Facebook fans. The campaign for the page will be promoted in the newspaper. Its always a 360, Brown says. You can drive more traffic through Web sites and brand, but you want to get something back from our core platform.
youre ready for. When your browser knows how many articles youve read about Libya, that youre pretty well-versed in the background, then it can recommend articles based on your level of knowledge. Metro definitely is along for the social media ride, Brown says: Its just part of our fabric.
G. The Press-Enterprise (United States)

Enterprise Media publisher of The Press-Enterprise
Metros youth the free daily is 10 years old in Canada is an advantage as it plays with social media. The New York Times does a nice job with social media, but it still feels fairly traditional, Brown says. Its hard to change completely the way you do things, she says about more established newspapers. I think theres a big shift thats going to happen. Also, the nature of technology and what your browser is able to remember will change. Content providers should be able to leverage that somehow to deliver to you what
newspaper in Riverside, California has seen phenomenal Facebook growth and usage by small businesses since 2009. Working with champions across the sales department, The Press-Enterprise created a set of social media services that small businesses would be able to easily use. The goal was to generate incremental revenue from existing advertisers and help the newspaper reach more deeply into the small business marketplace. To reach that goal, the newspaper: Surveyed the local marketplace: To better understand the social media usage of the group of advertisers most likely to benefit from social media, local newsmedia companies should conduct an annual online presence analysis of advertisers from the past six months, recommends Andrew McFadden, manager, innovation and business development at Enterprise Media. Our local analysis showed that many businesses were
The Press-Enterprise
United States
Enterprise Media has monetised social media by becoming the local expert in it.
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struggling to keep up their Web sites and could use social media to improve their presence online, he says. Did an internal audit of social media competency: The Press-Enterprise also conducted an internal audit to learn how its sales people use social media and identify training needs. We learned that most people use social media in their personal lives but not as a business tool, so we developed training materials and sales programmes to teach them how to use social media to improve revenue and how to sell it, McFadden says. Beginning with a simple concept, the social media platform needed to solve the problem of I know I need to be on Facebook, but I dont know how to do it.
had some notable successes in helping local companies launch social media campaigns and increase engagement. Prior to engaging the newspapers services, a local museum had shown some success in increasing engagement by using a personal profile instead of a business page. Since August 2010, the museums fans increased from 500 to more than 3,000, leading to increased engagement and comments. The Press-Enterprise team was also able to apply social media marketing techniques to increase exposure for a local termite inspection company with no social media presence to create hundreds of Facebook fans and more than 700 Twitter followers in just a few short months. We have created a dedicated team of social media
Shared out social media expertise: Success depends on having the right people employing best practices and the right leadership to support innovation, McFadden says. The newspaper has
experts that support all of our clients and provide insights for our content teams, McFadden says. While our launch and growth processes are extensive, the key is to understand how the client builds business relationships offline and translate that into interesting content and engagement activities online. As the local newsmedia company, there is an opportunity to enhance our business-to-business brand by being the trusted expert in social media and social media marketing. Unlike any other advertising service, social media is about creating interesting headlines and relevant content that attracts attention and readers. Who knows how to do that better than the local newsmedia company?
SOL
Portugal
SOL gives its readers the option of liking its content through Facebook or retweeting it through Twitter, as well as the ability to connect to Facebook through SOLs own Web site.
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H. SOL (Portugal)
SOL first launched its Web site when the newspaper was born in September 2006. Unchanged by September 2010, it needed a facelift. We were already on Facebook and Twitter, but the old Web site didnt have the option to share the content we published in those social networks, explains Teresa Oliveira, SOLs online editor. With the new Web site, coinciding with the explosion of Facebooks popularity in Portugal, readers can share our news through the most important social networks. Additionally, SOL gave readers the option to like its
content through Facebook or to re-tweet it, as well as giving readers the option to connect to Facebook through SOLs Web site, adding a widget on its pages to enable readers to see which friends also like SOL. Lastly, readers can also share news through Facebook without needing to be registered on SOLs Web site. SOLs Facebook friends have multiplied and continue to grow, passing 57,000 in February 2011 to become the networks second largest community amongst daily and weekly newspapers in Portugal. A few thousand news stories are currently shared per week, a great many of them through Facebook, and much of the newspapers content is liked or re-tweeted.
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5
Structuring Social Media as Revenue or Brand Opportunity
Is social media about revenue, brand, or both?
Social media is one of the stronger brand-building tools that we can have to create trust and conversation, says Jodi Brown of Metro Canada. There are lots of other ways to hit your bottom line. It takes time to do it well, but it hasnt cost us a penny in terms of dollars spent. Were not paying separate teams to do this. Weve incorporated it into the heart of our business. Drawbackwards Ward Andrews understands the mentality of the bottom line. But news companies must understand the difference between monetary capital and social capital. The latter, he says, carries more weight in this new, social media world. If you have truly built a community with your Twitter account, with real people talking to real people, youre going to be able to deliver a quality product that is exponentially higher than the other guy, Andrews says. Its not going to translate in quarter one on the bottom line, but were looking at a younger generation thats more interested in my company because of our social capital than our monetary capital. The value to my employees who work for me is much higher because they work for a company that works for a brand man. Weve seen this in business for years. Theres so much The company launched in early 2011. Its analytics tell editors what people are most interested in at the moment, by the minute or by the hour, giving them the Consider a company like Visual Revenue. The New York -based company provides editors with actionable, real-time recommendations on what content to place in what position right now and for how long, using predictive analytics that allow media organisations to proactively manage the cost of exposing a piece of content on a front page, whilst maximising the return they expect from promoting it, the companys Web site touts. But the money will come, experts say. At the end of the day, Im going to want to follow the Twitter feeds of people and brands that give me the best information and contribute back to my community instead of the ones that dont. But thats a new concept, and its a younger generation that values that. Its very hard to explain to an aging editor/publisher that for them, there may be no monetary value in the short-term. value in saying you work for Nike.
Social media is one of the stronger brand-building tools that we can have to create trust and conversation. There are lots of other ways to hit your bottom line. It takes time to do it well, but it hasnt cost us a penny in terms of dollars spent. Were not paying separate teams to do this. Weve incorporated it into the heart of our business.
JODI BROWN Marketing and Interactive Director, Metro Canada
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Chapter 5: Structuring Social Media as Revenue or Brand Opportunity
A newspaper has a lot of content, and most of it is archived content within the first day and a half. The most money is happening then. This is the time when people want to read the story. The metrics help calculate how much money that newspaper makes if they can keep people there reading it longer [using an advertising calculator].
MARSHALL SPONDER Author and Specialist, Web Analytics, SEO/SEM
knowledge they need to make decisions about moving content around.
already is going on. News companies could: Sell custom content like in-depth articles or special
Author Marshall Sponder feels such data is key to newspapers trying to engage readers and bring in revenue. This addresses the problem of figuring out on the front pages of section pages if you have the right content up there long enough, Sponder says. A newspaper has a lot of content, and most of it is archived content within the first day and a half. The most money is happening then. This is the time when people want to read the story. The metrics help calculate how much money that newspaper makes if they can keep people there reading it longer [using an advertising calculator]. Tameka Kee of Social Times Pro sees several possible ways newspapers could bring in new revenue from sites like Facebook, where all sorts of social commerce
photo spreads. Rent an in-depth Q&A in the same way that Warner Bros. is renting movies on Facebook. Why couldnt a newspaper sell a 15-minute video interview in five-minute snippets for US$0.99 cents each? If its valuable enough, then somebodys going to buy it, Kee says. Its not going to be core revenue, but it might end up being a content play, another option for them to sell their content. Means of distribution and means of consumption have changed, says the Guardians Meg Pickard. Digital media allows consumers to customise, time shift, use completely different formats. News organisations must stop thinking like they are talking to consumers in one way at one time. Each content must be relevant in its own way, Pickard says. Rather than mass, think about how we can stimulate and serve and monetise many niches. Niche
Social media engagement

This graphic from VisualRevenue.com gives a visual glimpse of the key words readers of The New York Times liked via Facebook.
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Chapter 5: Structuring Social Media as Revenue or Brand Opportunity
plus niche plus niche equals mass. Rather than finding one thing for one million people, we find 10 things for 100,000 people. Just because this has always been about trying to find one thing that works for everybody, what does that look like in the changed world, a world in which mass doesnt work? Thats where were looking at this. A series of engaged niches that are loyal, have relevance, have details. Does that beat the anonymous mass, fleeting and fickle drive-by audience? Thats the sort of quandary that everybody is really coping with at the moment. How do you think about the changing shape of the audience and the changing shape of attention? The Guardian doesnt feel like it needs to make money directly off its social media activities, Pickard says. A sustainable business, yes, but the two are intricately tied together. One of the keys to extending revenue is through increasing and enhancing reach and engagement, she says. Engagement will point to different usage of our sites, Pickard says. Being able to say, Look, its not just 40 million who have come to a site once, but weve actually got people who are loyal, come back frequently, this is how many times a day they use it. Its being able to say our relationship is not just for fun because were able to do something more with them, and they become a more valuable audience. Adee agrees, adding, however, that there is money to be made in social media. And The Tribune is making it.
Adee has a budget and a P&L. So, social media is about revenue and brand. It is about the revenue: Every incremental bit of revenue counts, social media consultant Murray Newlands says. Some newspapers have a very large presence on Facebook, Twitter. There are advertising opportunities within both. Thats where their advertisers want to be. If they dont, theyre missing out on not just revenue but also an opportunity to engage on behalf of advertisers. They should be looking at where do advertisers want to engage with their audience? Because really, part of what a newspaper is, is a conduit for engagement with the audience. It is about the brand: I consider social media a big engagement and brand initiative, says Jodi Brown of Metro Canada. Strengthening your brand through social media doesnt have a direct monetised impact, but it does impact your brand as a whole. The more engagements you have, the more our engaged readers love us on the way to work. We are able to launch more new products that can be monetised if we have an engaged audience who loves us on all platforms. It is about both: Its about building a legacy, leaving a legacy in the long-term growth, Andrews says. If youre on there early, you have the opportunity to gain market share as markets emerge. That may be the value. The guys who were online early, theyre the ones who have a mature digital department who are actually making money on it. If 10,000 hours of work goes into being proficient in something, youd better start your 10,000hour clock now.
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6
Social Media Optimisation (SMO) for Publishers
Now that youre figuring out SEO, lets start working on social media optimisation (SMO), which is all about human connections. And reporters arent so sure they like that.
The solution to that? Empower a new generation of reporters who are connected and spend part of their day writing and part of their day connecting. That connection is a commodity, and newspapers need to realise that. Its content marketing and its social networking, but its also audience building, author Brian Solis says. Newspapers are competing for attention. They have yet to really acknowledge that. What were looking at is a whole new infrastructure, a new type of connected reporter down to the HR level. They have to be rewarded for this audience. The era of the traditional journalist is over. Of course, social media doesnt fall entirely into the lap of the reporter. Social media should, in Solis opinion, be a new role of the managing editor or a new breed of editors all together. Luke Brynley-Jones of Our Social Times recommends: The big plus for newspapers in this is that they already Listening: You can buy services to search out in specific terms and phrases what people are saying have an engaged audience. Brynley-Jones says they just need to leverage that audience and engage with them, what about your content. Facebook has privacy standards, making such tools less helpful. But say you have data coming in on readers who are interested in tropical fish. You can put that into specific search tools, allowing you to give out niche news on the topic. Engagement play: A key strategy for future revenue models must include increased customer engagement. News companies might consider a team to do this. You need to have somebody there responding to the discussions [articles] spark, on Web sites, the mobile versions of Web sites, or on the actual platforms where a lot of the discussions will be taking place, BrynleyJones says. The reason for it is not just to spark off conversations and chat about it. Just by being involved in the conversation, you are connecting yourself better with the customer. Through that, when you do come to want that customer to do something for you, buy something, join something, share something, then theyre more likely to do it.
Just by being involved in the conversation, you are connecting yourself better with the customer. Through that, when you do come to want that customer to do something for you, buy something, join something, share something, then theyre more likely to do it.
LUKE BRYNLEY-JONES Founder, Our Social Times
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Chapter 6: Social Media Optimisation (SMO) for Publishers
perhaps taking one of these discussions about a specific news story and holding a live event or discussion. Then it becomes either an event or a report or a news story that they can then monetise, he says.
Sponders most recent focus is social media metrics: You could track everything if you want to take the trouble, he says. Barnes & Noble has the ability to know Sponder is at
Tapping into the real time news currency: Social media dashboards (like MarketMeSuite) are a way to balance consumer need for immediate news without overloading Twitter feeds and, thus, a newspapers Web site. Theres a big land to curate what you get from Twitter, Brynley-Jones says. Basically, there are downloadable apps to set up different columns for different topics. Theres a column for all your social media monitoring. You can set it up so if somebody mentions a specific word of phrase within a specific distance, say 50 miles of London, you can automatically send them a message. Such technology allows newspapers such geomapping relationships, especially important with the rise of consumers using smartphones for their social media consumption. Useful information for newspapers to have? Yes, but most arent very savvy about it. From what Brynley-Jones has seen from the publications hes spoken to in the United Kingdom, newspapers still have traditional teams set up, tracking the demographics and metrics of their distribution. Because of their strong background in statistics and analytics, sometimes they havent had the will to shift into social media, he says. Thats going to have to change. Theyre rightly, to an extent, focused on the bottom line. I used to walk into offices and say, You need to be listening and engaged, and they would look at me like wheres the money? Whos going to pay for all this? The answer, though, is the same as it is for any business. Which is theres a curve with social media, an investment of time and effort. You start with a really high investment of time and very little return. Then, gradually, the amount of time you have to put in drops and the engagement youre getting goes back up. Its the scale of engagement.
their store and tweet him while hes there. The reality right now is that technology allows more information or intrusion, depending on how you look at it than customers may want. Technology aside, newspapers content puts them in the perfect position to partner well with social media, Sponder says. While there are worries about where that content appears and where people are using it, social media loves and needs content. Sponder mentions the Huffington Post as a perfect example of how media use social media. The whole social media ecosystem functions on having something to talk about or share, he says. Sponder recently saw a New York magazine that sponsored a video film workshop, offering a weekend class for US$1,000 much less than the US$30,000 or US$40,000 one might pay to shoot and produce video through a private company or school. That magazine will now curate and feature that content, almost like a guild, Sponder says. Not like the old guilds but in a sense that one thing the publishing outlets have is an audience, he says. That offers some unique possibilities that a lot of others cannot offer. When Sponder looks at the major players among U.S. newspapers, he sees that theyve given up trying to monetise their online content; they are trying not to lose any more subscriptions and trying to give their print newspaper subscribers more platform options to see their content. And social media clearly is one of those options. Even at The [New York] Times, you can see how so many people comment on Facebook, he says. Theres
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Chapter 6: Social Media Optimisation (SMO) for Publishers
the possibility now to cull responses that really didnt exist until about five years ago. The question is, again, what to do with it, how to monetise it. The information itself is free, but the intelligence and knowledge that come out of it isnt. Complex Magazine in the United States used a metrics system that was able to determine, based on different parts of the magazine and its network, who its audience is and what content they may want to see shared, Sponder explains. The system suggests to social media managers which of the magazines posts and articles are more sharable. That content is, thus, shared more. This curation of content intelligence using a social graph produced a 25% increase in site traffic and a 30% increase in the number of fans of the magazine at the end of 2010.
Gathering the analytics of social media is getting easier. The real hurdle is what to do with it, Sponder says. Thats where newspapers need to invest. Its how you layer it, what you do with it, how you relate it to business metrics, and business goals, which is really what people are willing and needing to pay for, he says. Those are hard things to do, and thats why they cost money. Maybe using Twitter gives you relatively good results or Cloud gives you some interesting results, but they are not reliable. Increasingly what money is spent on is reliability, the validity of the data. What data do newspapers have that someone might spend US$10,000, US$15,000, or US$25,000 on? My feeling is the data itself is a commodity, Sponder says. It has been for the last two years. More than the intelligence behind it, the datas the gem.
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7
Social Medias Next Steps at News Organisations
While news organisations admittedly are still finding their way with social media, planning ahead is tricky. Thats true whether they simply have a Facebook page, have enriched Facebook-like interaction on their Web site, or are restructuring their different departments to embed social media.
Even the most innovative newspapers like The Guardian and Metro are watching actively watching, as Pickard puts it to see where social media will go next. This is a movement led by three drivers: 1. Technology. While many believe its fine to sit back and watch while 2. Obvious long-term leaders like Facebook and Twitter. 3. Consumer whims and newly developing habits. It is like the iPad/tablet question in many of those ways (replace Facebook and Twitter with Apple) but unlike it in the way that social media is an issue of relationships, not a specific platform or device. As Brian Solis once said, Monologue has given way to How flexible and pliable newspapers are in this space to consumer needs as well as their own will dictate how well they fill and engage with it. Social media is creating lots of additional content, and I suppose that competes with attention with traditional newspapers, Newlands says. People get their news from a variety of sources, and those other news sources compete for the ad dollar, driving down the revenue Leadership at any organisation is not something that you have just because you work your way up, Solis says. Its something you have to continue to earn. If youre not steering your organisation in a direction that dialogue. But newspapers are all about monologue. All about the masses. Neither of which will work with social media. Newspapers simply must get out of this centuryold mindset. And that starts at the top, Solis says. the big players in the industry determine the best way to monetise and engage with readers with on the tablet platform, that isnt the case with social media. Everyone interviewed for this report believes newspapers will find their way into it whether you go all-in like Metro or make an informed decision based on your audience to go a more traditional route like Financial Review Group. stream for newspapers. And because newspapers had a traditional way of looking at things, theyre bad with keeping up with the monetisation methods that some social media publications have had. Most of them have been slow to react. I see it, in a way, as similar to Detroit and the car industry as far as the type of structural industrial change.
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Chapter 7: Social Medias Next Steps at News Organisations
is embracing emerging opportunities, then you dont belong in that position. The sooner leaders realise that its their responsibility or have people within their
organisation who can convince them theres an iceberg ahead, the better. The difference is that everybodys telling you that its there.
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8
Conclusion
Struggle though they will, the future of news media and social media are intertwined. Technology simply makes richer the connection between the two.
Perhaps none of this should be a surprise. There is no such thing as social media, Mediahouse Limburgs Koen Van Parijs says. Media have always been social. Media provide information, entertain people, and, more importantly, help people integrate socially giving them something to talk about, establishing relationships with other people by helping them, sharing things. Media help build and confirm their values. Ten years ago, we talked about the personalised newspaper. We always thought personalising meant that we, as news publications, would control it, that we would aggregate the information. Look, were in 2011 and people are aggregating for themselves. Your profile page or your wall on Facebook is a kind of newspaper. It doesnt really look like a newspaper, but theres a lot of news thats relevant for you, and you can customise it yourself. Its the most personal newspaper you can imagine. The lessons from this social revolution are numerous and fluid: That, among other questions, is still being navigated Money can be made through social media. whether news companies like it or not. Consider the social mean content like grains of sand theres a lot of it and its inexpensive, Echo States CEO Khris Koux says. What the publisher needs to do is blow glass. How do I make a vase or a wine glass or a bottle out of this sand, which is so plentiful and cheap? Thats what I keep going back to the experience. What experience do you craft with 1,000 tweets and 500 photos so it becomes beautiful and part of the story and doesnt drown the story out? There is no tangible benefit to these social experiences taking place off the newspapers Web site. Newspapers inherently have the content necessary to engage with their readers via social media. Revenue is not the only consideration. Facebook and Twitter improve the newspaper brand by getting its content in front of an otherwise unreachable audience that wants to engage.
Ten years ago, we talked about the personalised newspaper. We always thought personalising meant that we, as news publications, would control it, that we would aggregate the information. Look, were in 2011 and people are aggregating for themselves. Your profile page or your wall on Facebook is a kind of newspaper.
KOEN VAN PARIJS Mediahouse
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Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue To Dialogue: Dawn Mcmullan

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April 2011

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue By Dawn McMullan

INMA Partner in Business

Cover art includes: The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, SOL

KHRIS LOUX CEO, Echo States

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 1: What Social Media Means to a News Publisher

Time spent on online activities

Note: n=48,804 Sources: TNS, Digital Life, October 10, 2010

Internet users who manage social network profile

48.3% 58.1% 45.1%

2008 2009 2010

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 1: What Social Media Means to a News Publisher

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

A. The marketing transition

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 2: The Short Social Media Revolution at Newspapers

MEG PICKARD Head of Digital Engagement, The Guardian

B. The social media department

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 2: The Short Social Media Revolution at Newspapers

TAMEKA KEE Lead Researcher, Analyst, Social Times Pro

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 2: The Short Social Media Revolution at Newspapers

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

A. Your place or mine?

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 3: Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 3: Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 3: Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types

Their intellectual property needs to be those

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 3: Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types

The social media players

foursquare: A location-based social networking Web site designed for GPS-enabled

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 3: Applying Engagement and Conversation to Consumer Types

C. Three types of news consumers

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

A. Chicago Tribune (United States)

WARD ANDREWS Owner, Drawbackwards

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media

B. Financial Review Group (Australia)

Financial Review Group

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media

C. Folha de S.Paulo (Brazil)

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media

D. The Guardian (United Kingdom)

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media

Newspapers and Social Media: From Monologue to Dialogue

Chapter 4: How 8 Newspapers are Practically Using Social Media