Best Practices for Journalists on Facebook

oleh Facebook + Journalists (Catatan) pada 2 Mei 2013 pukul 23:56

By Vadim Lavrusik, Journalism Program Manager at Facebook Learn how to get started as a journalist on Facebook, how you can use the platform to share news with your community and the tools that can help you in your reporting. To learn more about how your media organization can best utilize Facebook, vist: Media on Facebook portal. 12 Best Practices for Media Companies Using Facebook Pages Also visit the facebook page on https://www.facebook.com/journalists?

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Use Follow to Grow Your Audience

Follow enables journalists to update readers and sources, while reserving personal updates for friends only. Whichever beat you cover, enabling Follow on your profile gives you the opportunity to share public photos, links and analysis about the latest news with your readers and viewers. Simply turn on Follow to enable readers to keep up with your public updates without having to add you as a friend. Creating a Page that your readers or viewers like to get your updates is another alternative for sharing with your community on Facebook. Learn more about setting up a Page in our resources center. (Profile with Follow example: Ari Shapiro, White House Correspondent for NPR)

Use Authentic Photos for Profile & Cover Photos

Your profile and cover photos are a reflection of your journalistic brand. Choose photos that represent you and your work best. Below is an example from WGN's Nancy Loo. Profile Photo: Choose a headshot photo that is professional and shoulders up so that people can easily recognize and see your face -- even on smaller screens of mobile devices. Cover Photo: Upload a cover photo that represents your work but keep it authentic and not overly promotional. Contact information or website details should be left for the About section of your Page or Profile. Your Cover Photo can also be a great way to highlight some of your recent reporting.

Optimize Your Profile

If youre going to use your Profile to engage with a broader audience and to grow your followers, you have to make sure your Profile settings are setup properly. Here are some settings to consider adjusting on your Profile: Public Search: If you want to make sure your Profile is findable on and off Facebook, enable public search in your Follow settings. Username: Create a custom username for your profile that you can use to share your profile (i.e. facebook.com/username). How do you know if you have a custom username? Check or edit it in yourFollow settings.

Comment Settings: When you enable Follow, youll notice in the settings there is an option to adjust who is able to comment on the public posts. To enable followers to comment on your public comments, set the setting to everyone.

Post Audience: On each piece of content you create, youll be able to adjust who is able to see the post. To publish a photo that followers get in their News Feed, make sure to select public in the privacy drop-down of the post. You can always change the setting on any post retroactively.

About Section: Tell people who you are by filling out your work information and about section. You may have your About section filled out, but hidden to non-friends. When clicking the edit button across various sections, each one will have a privacy icon showing you who its visible to. Adjust to public what you want followers to see.

Secure Your Account As you setup your profile, it's important to make sure the account is secure. Here are 7 things you can do to help keep your account safe:

1. Pick a strong password: Use a combination of at least six numbers, letters, and
punctuation marks (like ! and &) 2. Make sure your email account(s) are secure 3. Log out of Facebook when you use a computer you share with other people 4. Run anti-virus software on your computer 5. Add a security question to your account

6. Use extra security features for your account like login approvals
7. Think before you click or download anything To learn more about security on Facebook, visit our Help Center. Facebook Mobile for Updating On-The-Go Make sure youre setup to keep updated on Facebook from your mobile device and are able to post photos from your reporting. There are a variety of Facebook apps that youre able to use for general updating, managing a Page, reaching out to sources via Messenger and more. Learn more about Facebook Mobile.

Share Breaking News People want to be informed about news as it happens. As news breaks, post a status update or photo to inform your audience. In a recent analysis of posts from journalists and news organizations on Facebook, posts that included breaking or breaking news in a posting received an increase 57% in engagement. Of course, images are often stronger than any words. Steve Silva of the Boston Globe was at the scene of the Boston marathon bombings when he posted this image shortly after the two explosions.

Keep Followers Updated Keep people updated as the story develops. When news organizations posted multiple updates in quick succession during a news event, they saw a 10% increase in engagement on their Page posts. Below, Nick Kristof of The New York Times and Don Lemon of CNN share their from-the-scene updates with their followers to keep them updated about news surrounding the Boston bombing.

Share Behind-the-Scenes Photos & Videos To Grab Attention People are fascinated by the journalistic process. Sharing photos from the scene of your reporting gives them a glimpse into the newsgathering process and shows your audience that youre on the ground. In an analysis of journalists on Facebook, photos received+50% engagement than non-photo posts. Also, enablingPhoto Sync on your phone can make

sharing easier by saving photos you capture on your mobile phone to a private folder of photos you can share later. Below Grayson Schaffer from Outside Magazine shares a photo from his climb on Mount Everest and Rob Marciano of CBS shares a photo from a tornado chase.

Include Your Expert Analysis When Sharing Stories Facebook is a people-driven platform. Your followers want to hear your personal voice and, more importantly, your expert analysis on the story youre sharing. According to an analysis of journalists sharing stories on Facebook, links that included analysis received +20%

referral clicks. Whats the context they need to know about the story? Is there an important angle that needs to be highlighted? Include those details to draw followers in. Political journalist and commentator Ezra Klein infuses his analysis to tease a story he's written:

Start Conversations Your community wants to be part of the conversation. In fact, posts that include a prompt for conversation or a question receive 70% above-average engagement than posts that do

not. Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post uses her profile to host a Q&A with her followers.

Enable Participatory Journalism

Your followers are a powerful network of sources that help you gather information and content for stories youre reporting. When youre trying to find individual sources, casting a wide net to your followers can be a good start to find people to interview. Facebook can also be a great way to source commentary from your readers about a news event. Whatever the content youre looking to source from your community, make the prompt clear and simple. Explain how you may use the content and follow-up with the user when you have additional questions or need clarification. ESPN's Matthew Berry uses his profile to solicit information and stories from his followers.

Use Graph Search to Find Sources & Content Graph Search makes it easier for journalists to find sources and content around stories youre reporting. People: For example, if youre doing a story on a specific company and youre looking to interview someone who works at the company in their New York office, you could do this by searching for People who work at ACME Inc in New York to find potential employees to reach out to. Photos & Location: Graph Search makes it easier to find public photos and filter the results, such as finding photos posted within a specific location -- as broad as a city to photos posted at a specific landmark or event (i.e. Photos taken at Boston Marathon). This serves as a great tool during breaking news situations or even to conduct research about a location to get a sense of what it appears like visually. Researching Interests: Graph Search enables you to conduct searches based on peoples connections to interests on Facebook. For example, you can do searches like

Sports teams liked by people who work at the NBA or Movies liked by people who are film directors or books read by CEOs.

Use Interest Lists To Create Custom Feeds

Interest Lists enables journalists covering specific beats to better organize and stay updated with their sources on Facebook. By adding profiles and Pages to an Interest List, youre able to see a custom feed of updates only from the Pages and people you included to source content for the list. For example, if youre covering politics and want a specific stream of updates that are focused on the topic, you can create a Politics and Local Officials list and add politicians, journalists, advocacy pages, etc., to create a custom stream.

Creating a list is easy. You can always add or remove people and its up to you whether the list is private or public. Once youve created the list, youll see a bookmark for the list as a mini feed section on the right. You can use that bookmark to navigate to the custom feed at anytime. If you create a public list, others can follow the list, which will add a bookmark for the list to their homepage. By following your list, however, they are not able to change the members of the list. You can also follow existing public lists by going to the lists page to search for topics that interest you:facebook.com/addlist

Add Follow To Your Website Leverage your publishing platform to grow your following by adding the Follow button to your website. The button, which is linked to your Facebook profile, enables your readers to follow you on Facebook without leaving your website. Its easy to install with simple embed code, which you can find and customize on theSocial Plugins page. If you run a website using Wordpress as your content management system, you can also take advantage of the Facebook plugin, which includes the Follow button and makes integrating it into your website even easier.