I have discovered in my years of working with the student newspaper, the Montana Kaimin, that it can be difficult to promote yourself on social media.
I use most social media platforms for personal and professional reasons, but sometimes it feels like it's futile to use them for journalism.
Tuesday was social media day for the Sports Journalism Institute, and I took away a couple great tips that I want to implement in the future.
One of our first speakers was Sports Illustrated's Richard Deitsch. During a conference call he allowed us to ask him any questions we had about social media.
I asked if he had any advice on how to balance beat reporting and using social media while on assignment. He offered up a great rule: "What can I tweet out that you can't see on TV."
I think this is important. It's easy during games to get into play-by-play tweets, which I am guilty of. People often use two devices when watching games, so it's important for journalists to tweet juicy nuggets that only we know.
Another session I enjoyed was with Joy Mayer, a professor at the University of Missouri who also is the director of community outreach for The Columbia Missourian. Mayer said there are four principles for what it means to be social: be part of the conversation, know what you're talking about and invite them to know you, when people talk, listen and respond and invite other people to play with you. We talked a lot about how to engage readers through sharing stories, asking for headlines and how to connect with your audience.
_ Alexandria Valdez
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