http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7foo47S6H9Y&feature=youtu.be
Who: IVN Social Media Director
What: Twitter Best Practices for Journalists
Where: Google+ Hangout
When: Thursday, December 20th 6pm PT/9pm ET
We're excited to invite you to join us for our first live IVN Workshop. We will discuss the growing influence of Twitter in journalism and will take questions on how to effectively use Twitter as a resource. To start the conversation, here are five Twitter best practices for journalists:
1) Engage Your Followers:
Reply to their tweets, send them direct messages, ask them questions, mention them, participate in tweet chats, create lists, and personalize your tweets.
2) Utilize features unique to Twitter:
Twitter is unique in that your thought, or tweet, is limited to 140 characters. While it sometimes seems impossible to include everything you want to say, your link, and a relevant hashtag into this space, the 140-character limit is a good thing. Your goal becomes to succinctly and effectively encourage users to click on your link, reply, retweet, favorite your tweet, or to follow you.
Instead of using this space to make your case, use this space to bring readers onto you content. Twitter's 140 character limit inspires creativity and promotes direct communication, both key elements in journalism.
3) Find a "niche" and stick to it:
Your goal on Twitter is to be valuable and to be a resource for your followers. Giving people information they can use is imperative to growing a following. As tempting as it is to tweet about anything and everything that interests you, the most successful strategy for a journalists is to "tweet your beat."
4) Remain Professional:
Although the 140 character limit of Twitter warrants abbreviations, it does not mean your spelling or grammar should suffer. You are a journalists and should act like one on all social media channels you engage with. To maintain a level of professionalism, refrain from posting personal, offensive, inappropriate, or inaccurate tweets on your professional Twitter account.
5) Promote Your Articles
In order to get the most out of your article, you need to share it with a variety of users on Twitter. Journalists receive two times as much activity on tweets when a URL is included, so including a link to your article is a great way to promote your content.
We'll be talking more about these 5 Twitter best practices for journalists and more this Thursday, so tune in to IVN!