Twitter as a tool for enriching journalism

Published on Tuesday, 05 July 2011

Written by David Brewer

  

This list was put together for a social media training course in Baku, Azerbaijan in July 2011 and has been added to this site's training resources for those who couldn't get a place on the workshop. It is created from the notes I sent to participants at the end of the first day of a four-day social media course held at the Azerbaijan Media Center. Day one was about Twitter.

The following tips may be helpful to those just learning about using Twitter for news gathering and news dissemination. Feel free to use as you see fit. It is covered under the Creative Commons License BY-NC-SA 3.0 which means it can be used by anyone for non-commercial purposes.

Starting off

• Set up a Twitter account
• Fill out your profile (see step 2 in the module ‘Become a global media brand in 60 minutes’)
• Check whether those you respect and are interest in are on Twitter
• The simple way is to search the web. Typing in ‘Media Helping Media on Twitter’ will reveal the twitter account @helpingmedia at the top of the first page. This works for most accounts. (But be careful, another user may have reserved the address. Always check the tweets before following.
• Take a good look at what is being tweeted by others
• Look at the tone, language and style used
• Watch how others include links, @references and #hashtags
• Ensure your profile contains the keywords needed for the right people to find you. For example, if you are a journalist in the Caucasus add those words to your profile.
• Add keywords that are likely to get you listed by others. Journalist working in the Caucasus may get you added to lists of ‘journalists’ and ‘Caucasus’. You never know, Al Jazeera, the BBC or CNN may contact you for information and request your help one day.

Your contribution

• Know who you want to reach and Tweet with them in mind
• Be clear on what you want to say
• Add value to what is being said
• Ask questions and offer answers
• If you want to retweet something always add a comment to say why the tweet is important
• Don’t just tweet your own stuff. It’s okay to tweet articles you have written which you want to share with your followers, or which you think may be helpful to others, but if your stream consists of links to your writing only, people may switch off. Twitter is a global conversation not a cheap PR exercise.
• Always retweet on merit
• Never retweet if you haven’t clicked on the link in the tweet and read the article
• Always look for some added value in the article you are reading and edit any retweet to reflect the new angle you have found
• Have someone in mind when you tweet. Remember, Twitter is used by people. Your tweet needs to reach them and mean something to them. Vague tweets with no focus just add to the noise.
• Don’t try to be too smart in your tweets – it doesn’t translate well
• Don’t waste peoples’ time with tweeting rubbish – they won’t thank you for it
• Aim to stimulate debate and contribute to the global conversation
• Never steal content and pass it off as your own
• Always mention the person who first tweeted an issue/story

Explore new contacts

• Never enable auto follow; if you do you will end up following some spammers
• Others may judge you on who you follow as much as what you say
• Be discerning about who you follow; make sure they match your interests
• After searching for contacts in your specialist field, check them out and only add them if they are making a valuable contribution
• Twitter will then suggest ‘who to follow’ based on who you are currently following and what you are tweeting and retweeting.
• Accept these recommendations with caution, they are not always helpful – although often they are
• Check the twitter lists of those you intend to follow to see if they are following interesting people
• Make your own lists of good contacts and make them public
• Use Twitter lists to keep your contacts manageable
• Consider creating a www.paper.li of the various lists so that you can have a daily roundup of the stories those you have listed are tweeting
• Think carefully about auto tweeting paper.li. Some resent their inbox being clogged up with unwanted notifications. Paper.li is probably best used as a personal automated curation tool to enable you to monitor what those you have listed are doing.

Hootsuite

• Hootsuite is my preferred desktop news control tool because it's web based (and so works on any computer), is fast, and the dashboard is set up in a way that I find intuitive.
• Set up categories in the top navigation of Hootsuite- important for organising your news gathering
• Add streams to each category depending on your interests - makes it easier to monitor specifics and cut down on the noise
• Include key words, single words, hashtags and lists - help Hootsuite give you smart results
• Monitor those tweeting and click on their name if they interest you, read their biography, check their tweetsand decide whether to add them to your digital contacts book
• TwitterFall is also good for newsgathering.

Your progress

• Always check your Klout rating to see whether what you are tweeting is working or not
• Use Tweeteffect to see what tweets lost you Twitter followers and which gained followers
• Never treat Twitter as a competition to get the most followers; it’s not about numbers it’s about quality of contacts
• Work on your Twitter presence every day
• Make it as professional and focused as possible
• Remember, you are a global media brand and Twitter is just one of the tools that can help make that brand relevant.

 

  

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