ReporTwitters Blog

There are many news organizations around the globe that send out headlines and links to full stories on Twitter. But they are missing out on a vital element; an interactive conversation with readers.

Journalists that Twitter personally about their professional lives know first hand, as do many bloggers, that Twitter is all about conversation. The potential is huge for driving noticeable traffic to websites by actively Twittering about what you’re writing about.

That is why it is a pity that other than a handful of newspapers, printed media are not embedding reporter tweets into their regular coverage. Not only would it help newspapers to incorporate new media, but it would also open a way more interesting interaction with readers than the regular comments on articles. The potential for newspapers to embed Twitter is two-fold; they can assign staff reporters with the task to Twitter reality style news in conjunction with their articles or they can seek out Twitter users who happen to be in close proximity to news events and send them requests for information.

The latter option would liven things up the most and to achieve this is a rather straightforward affair; locating Twitter users on a map is easy. Since an editor can assess from a person’s Tweet whether they are involved in a news event, judging whether to invite the Twitterer in question to submit live commentary is rather risk free.

Some mainstream events have been covered by Twitter users in outstanding ways already, including the much-famed San Diego fires, which spun off Hashtags, an entire Twitter keyword instant reporting organization, all by itself. The beauty of organizations ‘discovering’ Twitter is that they evangelize hoards of people of people. The secret to Twitter’s viral-ness as well as the common thread that unites all Twitter based communication is that everything is a conversation. And conversations engage, inspire and build bridges.

Many solo journalists and bloggers firmly believe that Twitter is there for you to ‘drive traffic’ to your publication. This also holds true for newspapers. Traffic translates into ‘audience relations’ in media realities. But news media miss out on the (relatively easy) opportunity to engage readers by using Twitter only as a repurposing tool for their news.

If you browse Twitterholic’s top 100 Twitter users in terms of follower numbers, newspapers are not in the lead. Why is this? Look at what the big Twitter users are doing; they’re involved in two-way interaction! The New York Times is the largest newspaper in the ranking. Its Tweet has 2,404 followers, a number that’s dwarfed by Twitterholic’s number two, Robert Scoble’s 14,000 followers (Barack Obama pipped him from the top post last week). Scoble has built his followers in a totally different way than newspapers go about recruiting readers. The Twitter-o-sphere operates on popularity that’s personal. From that follows on that credibility doesn’t necessarily build on objectivity.

Should newspapers therefore shy away from Twitter? Not at all. Reporting isn’t adverse to a person-centered approach. Patrick Thornton, a journalist Twitter user who writes The Journalism Iconoclast, outlines how he goes about building traffic to his blog, using Twitter; “Before I make a Twitter post, I often talk about what I am writing about, why I am writing it and just give my general thoughts. People can then ask me questions or make comments. It’s a public conversation.”

Many 0f the 80 reporTwitters members employ similar tactics. It really all boils down to finding appropriate ways to connect with your audience, an on Twitter, you simply ‘talk’. The days might be gone that newspapers could claim the monopoly on audiences, but catching up isn’t so difficult.