College media outlets have a long way to go with Twitter

Innovation in College Media conducted a study of 50 college media outlets to see how they utilized Twitter, and the results show that most college media outlets are not utilizing Twitter properly or adding much to the conversation.

Almost 50 percent of the outlets used Twitter as a glorified RSS feed. These organizations are using Twitterfeed or a similar tool to automatically push new content from their Web sites and blogs to their Twitter accounts. If people want to follow an RSS feed, they will follow your RSS feed, not your Twitter feed.

Needless to say, most of these outlets are wasting their time and missing a huge opportunity to innovate on a new platform. Twitter is about two-way communication. It’s nothing like RSS or other one-way publication tools.

Another 24 percent aren’t glorified RSS feeds, but they still don’t engage in conversations with users. Twelve percent engage in some conversations on Twitter, which is a good start. The bad news is that only 18 percent of college media outlets are using Twitter the way we would recommend.

These outlets are engaging in conversations, utilizing @replies, #hashtags and retweets. They’re crowd sourcing , building connections with users and acting as guides. These are outlets that get that Twitter can be a fantastic reporting tool and a great way to connect with users.

Here is the list of college media outlets worth emulating:

• reflectoronline
• DailyTarHeel
• MUjournal
• hurricanesports
• GMUStudentMedia
• TuftsDaily
• connect2mason
• chroniclesports
• OnwardState

To be fair to college journalists and college media outlets, their professional peers aren’t doing any better. The CICM post has good tips on how to use Twitter. We have a screencast on how to use Twitter for reporting, and here is a list of reasons why Twitter makes sense for journalists.

Here are some Twitter accounts for any journalist and journalism organization to emulate:

• @ColonelTribune — The Colonel is an excellent example of how to make a Twitter feed fun to follow. He is an excellent guide to all things Chicago and is an active participant in conversations on Twitter. He also uses Twitter to crowd source.
• @rsylvester — Sylvester is one of the best individual journalists on Twitter. He is pioneering the practice of using Twitter to update live from the court room.
• @ricksanchezcnn — Sanchez is one of the pioneers of using Twitter for broadcast media. Twitter now allows him to get in touch with his viewers and get their opinions. Sanchez frequently asks questions and displays the most interesting replies on his show.
• @MsBeat — Our very own MsBeat is worth checking out. The vast majority of the links she tweets are to other outlets and Web sites. She’s not afraid to send people away from BeatBlogging.Org. In fact, that’s one of the main allures of following her, because she links to content based on its quality, not on its origination. She is a guide to all things beat blogging and social media related. She is frequently asking questions and crowd sourcing. Plus, she keeps things interesting.