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Top mistakes made by journalists in social media

As journalists take steps to participate in the web, many are making missteps that have cost them the very ground they had hoped to gain. Whether it has been ignoring blogging or not offering something compelling to visitors, certain mistakes have been very damaging. Many of these missteps on the web have been a trend since the beginning.

It is clear that social media provides some of the best hope for the future of journalism. News organisations, especially print publications, can not afford to let the opportunity of social media pass them by.

However, with a new media format comes a new series of pitfalls. If journalism is to take advantage of social media, it needs to avoid making the simple mistakes the way many organisations did with the original web.

1. Being broadcast only

While it is tempting to use social media as just a new platform to broadcast your content, social media is designed to be a two-way street and encourage interaction.

It is easy to connect your RSS feeds with a Twitter account and let others follow you, just as the BBC does. This is a very limited use of the technology and will be quickly overshadowed by those who actively participate in the medium.

2. Using as advertising only

At the other end of the spectrum is using social media as a form of promotion and not working to actually cull the relationships that you initiate. Whether this is done by sending large numbers of “friend requests” on social networking/news sites or “follows” on Twitter. This is often viewed as a form of spamming and works to irritate other users.

If your company becomes known as a source of spam, it will be almost impossible for others to take your work seriously, even if you have a strong reputation away from the web.

3. Not linking out

Many news sites, including The New York Times, do not link to other sites on the web. Readers on the web favour sources that provide them access to the most amount of organised information possible. Linking to other sites is not only a natural way to aid your visitors in finding what they need, but to encourage others to return the favour.

This becomes especially troublesome when a news organisation uses elements of a story from a blog or website and, while providing attribution, fails to provide a clickable link. That is considered a serious blunder that often times upsets both the slighted author and observers made aware of the error.

4. Not using social news

Social News sites such as Digg and Reddit have given some lesser-known sites and blogs readership statistics that best many newspapers and magazines. Although these visits may not be very lucrative, they expose your work to a new audience and boost your reputation.

Missing out on these sites is throwing out free traffic and exposure. If you are unsure of how to exploit them, use the Share This button to get started.

5. Not blogging correctly

The mainstream media, for the most part, was late to join the bloggers. However, now that most are actively keeping up at least some form of blogging presence, many are not using them to their full advantage.

Ensure that any blogs operated by you and your company are doing the following things:

• Publishing an RSS feed, preferably a full one
• Updating blog search engines, likely using a service such as Pingomatic
• Enable comments so visitors can respond
• Accept and send trackbacks and pingbacks to aid in exchanging links
• Offer easy subscription methods, likely using FeedBurner

Blogs are not simply regularly updated websites, but a decentralised social medium. It is important to connect your blogs with the web and let others connect with you.

6. Taking too much/too little control

Social media does not fit neatly within the editor/reporter paradigm of traditional media. It is a fluid environment in which the people facing the audience have to make quick decisions to respond to events as they happen.

News organisations often stifle this natural flow by demanding an impractical amount of control causing writers to wait so long for approval that their responses are late and stilted.

On the other end, some organisations set no standards for reporter conduct and this causes unprofessional behavior, including sockpuppetry, where an author pretends to be other people so it appears they have more support.

Guidelines must be set and quality reporters/writers must be used. But many of the rules simply do not apply, especially as it relates to comments and personal interaction.

7. Not getting experienced authors

Traditional news organisations have centuries of experience with gathering and reporting news and most leverage that experience well in their main publications. However, when it comes to social media, many either use novice journalists, with limited experience in either journalism or social media, or allowing experienced reporters to spend part of their time in the social sphere without much guidance on how to best work in it.

It is important to ensure that reporters either have experience with both traditional journalism and social media or that experienced reporters are paired with people more knowledgeable about the web.

Without this stewardship, the time and money spent on pursuing social media will likely go to waste as either poor quality work gets drowned out or high-quality work is never given a chance to be seen.

Conclusions

The mainstream media can not afford the same mistakes that it made in the early years of the web. News reporting is evolving and, though the major news outlets have a significant advantage in terms of trust, name recognition and resources, those advantages are dwindling as the alternatives grow in strength and size.

If the news organisations of today are going to survive the next 50 years, now is the time to start investing in and work with new technologies. Though the efforts today may not be financially lucrative immediately, they can and will pay off in the long run.

In short, those who diversify and carry their names and reputations into the new era will be the ones to thrive in it. It is that simple.

 

Tags: journalism, mistake, news site, social media, social network, twitter,

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