Lessons from Reporters - by Patrick Thornton on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 11:21 - View Comments

Social Media isn’t a Website Plug-in it’s Something You Do

From Robin Hamman: "Social media isn’t something you add to a website, it’s something you do. When I look back over the social media projects I’ve been involved in over the years, it’s obvious that the key variable upon which success, or failure, is dependent is to what extent to which social media has actually been integrated into the overall editorial proposition."

As I’ve been saying: Once you have started a network – it has to become part of your daily work routine. If it’s something you just pop in and out of every now and then – expect it to fail.

Here are some great examples from Robin.

clipped from www.cybersoc.com

Works: A chat room where the presenter dips in and out of the conversation, reads comments from the chat on air, uses the chat room to actually drive part of the programme works because the effort expended in hosting the chat is well spent.

Doesn’t Work:  A stand alone chat room fails because someone with better stuff to do has to sit there and moderate it.

Works: A focused, topical, editorially relevant discussion off the back of a piece of content can add value to that content for participants and non-participants alike.

Doesn’t Work: An open ended discussion space where participants set the agenda, chit-chat about what they want and chit-chat drifts far away from the editorial of the site or page does little, if anything, to add value for non-participants.

Doesn’t Work: A facebook group that simply tells audience members what they already know or can find out easily – the time and content of the programme.

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BeatBlogging.org was a grant-funded journalism project that studied how journalists used social media and other Web tools to improve beat reporting. It ran for about two years, ending in the fall of 2009.

New content is occasionally produced here by the this project's former editor Patrick Thornton. The site is still up and will remain so because many journalists and professors still use and link to the content. BeatBlogging.org offers a fascinating glimpse into the former stages of journalism and social media. Today it's expected that journalists and journalism organization use social media, but just a few years ago that wasn't the case.

About the Author of this post
Patrick Thornton is the editor and lead writer of BeatBlogging.Org. He is @pwthornton on Twitter.