Social media provides opportunities for news organizations to connect with viewers and build their brand. It is important to understand viewers' online behaviors and device usage to engage them across platforms. While daily social updates are recommended, quality should not be sacrificed for quantity. Success requires planning across networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest which have large, demographically varied audiences. Events are a great way to boost engagement offline. Best practices include consistency, utilizing each network's strengths and crowd-sourcing new content ideas.

1. Social Media & Your Professional
Newsroom Brand
Presented by: Lisa Jeffries – Marketing Manager,
WRAL.com
LJeffries@WRAL.com | @LisaAtWRAL
919-821-8545

2. First, Let’s Talk About
Viewers
• What are their online behaviors?
• What do they spend their time
doing?
• How do we find out who they are?

5. Why Does TV News Care?
• Nielsen: 40% of tablet and
smartphone owners use them while
watching TV
• Email is the top activity for both men
and women during television
programming and commercial breaks
• When not in front of a TV, where are
your viewers?
• Are they connected?
• What type of device are they
using?

6. Your Personal Marketing Mix:
Including Social Media
• Social media is a tool like any other
marketing and communications utility
• Success comes from planning, testing,
analyzing, and responding accordingly
• Social sharing goes beyond text updates and
pictures
• Video
• Location-based
• Social media is about:
• Current topics and news
• Popular culture
• Friends and family
• Experiences

7. Avoid Social Media Burnout
• You only have so many hours in the day, and the
majority of your time should be devoted to your
primary job tasks and skillsets
• So how do you select which social networks to
cultivate?
• Go where the masses are
• There’s always going to be a “hot, new, latest
thing” in social networking
• Are you in a niche industry? Is your audience
already there?
• Commit to daily updates
• Post a picture/video/link
• Higher conversions and
interaction

8. Get the Most Out of Your
Experience
• Nurture each medium
independently
• Each network speaks a different
“language”
• Never underestimate the power of a
referral
• 69% of follows on Twitter are
suggested by friends
• Participate individually and equitably
• Crowd-source your next great idea
or story

9. Social Media Networks & Stats
• Facebook
• 1.06 billion monthly active users, 680 million
mobile users
• More than 50 million pages and 10 million
apps
• FourSquare
• 25 million users, 1 million businesses, 10.4
million monthly users
• Instagram
• 100 million users, 4 billion photos
• Acquisition/Integration with Facebook
• LinkedIn
• 200 million users

10. Social Media Networks & Stats
• Pinterest
• 25 million users
• Tumblr/Microbloggig
• 150 million users
• Twitter
• 500 million total users, more than 200 million
active users
• 56% of customer tweets to companies are being
ignored
• Top 3 countries on Twitter are the USA (107
million), Brazil (33 million), Japan (30 million)
• 32% of all Internet users are using Twitter
• YouTube
• 800 million users, 4 billion views per day

14. Facebook
• Start building your professional
brand now
• Facebook profile vs. Facebook page
• You don’t have to accept “friend
requests” from viewers and people you
don’t know
• 5,000 friend limit
• Who owns it and what can you do
with it?
• Every station has different rules,
standards, or guidelines

19. Twitter
• The same way you “segmented”
your personal life and your
professional brand on Facebook,
you can and should here, too
• Call letters are your best friend
• Twitter’s “Lists” feature is your
second best friend

21. YouTube
• Heavily searched
• Well-integrated with Facebook
• K.I.S.S.
• Keep it “simple”
• Keep it “short”
• Promotional value
• Professional brand, portfolio
• Viewer posted content

24. Events: The Original
“Social” Activity
• @WRAL at the @NCStateFair
• Deep-Fried Tweetup
• Connecting daily tent happenings
to social media
• Contests
• Increase subscriber base
• Promote product/service
• Engage with new viewers

25. Foursquare
• Great for on-the-go or in
the field reporters,
journalists, and other
members of the media
• Easily integrated with
Twitter (not directly for
Facebook Pages)
• Personal use vs.
professional brand use

26. Instagram
• Image driven
• Heavily-mobile userbase (just
recently launched web/online
profiles)
• Heavily-female demographic

28. Pinterest
• Time Inc.’s Cooking Light site has seen impressive
growth, with social media referrals and mobile playing
a big part
• Social media referrals are now the #2 source of traffic
for CookingLight.com, and “the brand has introduced
new strategies to ensure these traffic numbers
continue to grow”
• And since the mobile site launched back in February of
last year, it has grown 106%
• While the brand is present on multiple social platforms
and uses online video, Pinterest has come to play a
major role in social marketing. Long Lowery tells Folio
Mag:
• “Pinterest is hugely important for us right now. Search
was a big part of our growth in January but social
referrals was the number two reason and it was
primarily from Pinterest”

30. LinkedIn
• Viewers aren’t necessarily jumping at the
chance to connect with you here…
• But your industry is!
• This is a key place to build your
professional brand
• And establish yourself as an expert
• Topics and discussions are
underutilized by those seeking to
establish their reputation

31. Tumblr/Other Blogs
• Blogging and micro-blogging is a
tremendous way to set yourself
apart from your peers, but it
requires the most time and
commitment
• Micro-blogging sites like Tumblr
can be a small start to making this
a regular habit for you and is very
mobile friendly

32. Best Practices? What to Read?
• http://mashable.com/ - for an
overwhelming amount of social media
chatter
• http://www.poynter.org/ - for industry-
respected newsroom training and best
practices
• Consider your personal brand your
business
• http://business.pinterest.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/business
• https://dev.twitter.com/media/newsroom
s