Social media success for journalists

How is journalism changing? It’s “digital and specialized and socialized” says Columbia Journalism School’s Sree Sreenivasan.

“Employers are now looking for how much audience you can corral,” said Sreenivasan.  He also said the time to build your social media following is before you actually need it.

How do you do that?  Sreenivasan suggests sharing exclusive content and executing his “social media success” strategy.

“Be helpful, useful, informative, relevant, practical, actionable, timely, generous, credible, brief, entertaining, fun and occasionally funny,” he said.

Sreenivasan, who spoke at Excellence in Journalism 2012, also says journalists could make better use of LinkedIn.

“Use it to reintroduce yourself in cyberspace to people you meet in real life,” offered Sreenivasan.  When you send a connection request be sure to indicate how you know each other, he says.

He suggests LinkedIn for Journalists as a way to learn more about maximizing your use of the service.

In addition, Sreenivasan  encouraged journalists to check out three more tools:

  • Twiangulate – Use it to discover who the 100 most influential people who follow you are.
  • Rapportive – Use Gmail add-on to get social media information about the people you contact.
  • NutshellMail – Get daily summary of your social media activity sent to your email.

Sreenivasan shared more on why he takes 3-to-6 minutes on every social media post and how to deal with social media mistakes.  We’ll have those tips soon on Advancing the Story.

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