On January 15, Poynter held a live chat  about the skills journalists need to build online communities. The chat featured Holly Edgell, community editor for WCPO in Cincinnati. To kick off the chat, Poynter’s Joe Grimm asked Edgell to describe her role as community editor.

Part of Edgell’s role includes looking at how WCPO can cover hyperlocal stories and communities. Even though it’s not officially part of her job description, another one of Edgell’s duties includes working on how to unify the digital and traditionally broadcast minds in the newsroom.

Here are a couple of tips I took from the chat:

Success is multi-platform. 

When it comes to getting audiences engaged and interested in online content, I’ve often wondered which platform matters the most.  Are retweets better than shares on Facebook? Which comments are more important: the comments on the stories posted on a news organization’s Facebook page or the  comments on the stories posted on the news org’s website? Which one of these is the best: retweets, shares, or likes? Should those in charge of online engagement make sure most of the activity is happening on an org’s website instead of its social media channels?

Edgell summed up how to measure engagement success in one sentence:

When cultivating an online community, success isn’t limited to just one platform. Comments, likes, and retweets are all measures of engagement. Every time users perform one of those actions, they are doing more than just clicking on a story.

Which leads me to the next point…

Engagement means more than just pushing out a story on different platforms and measuring the response. 

Engagement has become a popular buzzword over the last couple years. So popular, in fact, that Poynter’s Matt Thompson wrote that the word  “engagement” was dangerously close to being in an area he coined  buzzwurgatory – a period when a buzzword has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, yet continues to be used.

Thompson challenged journalists and content creators to use the word “engagement” more carefully in 2013,  suggesting that journalists should stop thinking of engagement as just exposing more content to different audiences and instead think of engagement as “deepening our users’ involvement in the creation and furtherance of our work.” 

Deepening user involvement can definitely be applied to using social media. Journalists responsible for engaging audiences online usually work with at least two social media platforms. Even though social media certainly makes facilitating engagement easier, simply having social media platforms doesn’t  automatically guarantee engagement. It’s up to web journalists like community editors to figure out how to best use social media to drive engagement, particularly on the local level.

“The social media universe is evolving ahead of journalists all the time, ” said Edgell during the chat. People want to connect around meaningful content, which is where we come in.”

Part of being a good community editor means recognizing what stories inspire the most engagement. Good community editors recognize what stories can “sell” themselves and what stories need to be “pushed” or marketed to inspire engagement. On Facebook pages, breaking news stories typically sell themselves. Users tend to ask questions about emergency situations or comment on controversial events. However, some stories inspire more engagement when posted with a question. When WCPO posted a story about McDonald’s adding Fish-McBites to its menu, the post included the question “Will you be trying this new side item?”  In fact, the majority of the posts on WCPO’s Facebook Page end in questions, and most of the posts have at least two comments.

In November of last year, NPR Digital services released a study and held a webinar showcasing the 9 types of local news stories that cause engagement on Facebook. After geotargeting content from five NPR member stations, NPR noticed a trend: their Facebook followers were eager to engage with and share local content. The nine types of stories that inspired the most engagement were:

• place explainers
• crowd pleasers
• curiosity explainers
• news explainers
• major breaking news
• feel-good smilers
• topical buzzers
• provocative controversies
• awe-inspiring visuals

In addition to posting the kinds of stories listed above,  community editors can take engagement a step further by asking audiences to provide content to share on  their news org’s website and social media platforms. This user-generated content (UGC) inspires users to actively participate in gathering content for a story.

WCPO frequently uses UGC on its page. On January 21, followers submitted videos of a fatal highway crash involving more than 70 vehicles.  The week before, the station posted pictures from followers of sunsets around  Cincinnati .

Community editors can also curate photographs from followers on Pinterest (by the way, “curate” was another buzzword Thompson wrote about as overused). WCPO pins viewer pictures to Pinterest boards. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC)  recruits its Pinterest followers to pin recipes, travel pictures, and even funny commentary to different boards. Since news organizations are using UGC more frequently, The Associated Press Stylebook has even updated its guidelines on using UGC, including how to attribute and verify the content.

Edgell also touched on another useful engagement strategy for local news: conversational Twitter accounts. When asked about WCPO’s approach to replying to Twitter mentions, she responded that all news organizations need to eventually start engaging their followers instead of just using Twitter as an output-only platform to deliver content.

More local news organizations are using their Twitter accounts to respond to questions and news tips. Both the AJC and Rhode Island’s WPRI have two different Twitter accounts: one for news with commentary and responses, and the other exclusively for headlines. AJC  has achieved a true balance of using humour to deliver soft stories while still delivering breaking news. The AJC Twitter account answers  questions and makes jokes. During the night hours, the AJC  is known for entertaining, even playfully calling a few Twitter followers by the pet name “boo” .

News orgs that use their social media platforms interactively show they are listening to their audience and  know the issues their audience cares about. They also enable their readers and viewers to share their opinions on local issues that affect them, or show their pride in their communities.

While conversational Twitter handles can cultivate  engagement on local levels,  interactive Twitter accounts may not be as feasible for national and international news organizations who focus mainly on putting out daily content, alerts, and updates. However, hosting Twitter chats and creating hashtags for stories can help both national and international news organizations engage their audiences and involve them in discussion. On January 23, The Associated Press launched its series “The Great Reset”,  which examines the economic downturn and the effect it has had on the American job market.  The next day, AP hosted a Twitter chat  with journalists Bernard Condon and Paul Wiseman. During the chat, users could ask questions about technology taking over traditionally  minimun wage jobs using the hashtag #TheGreatReset.

To find a method of social media engagement that works, news organizations may have to test and try out different strategies, which leads me to a final point Edgell made during the chat.

Study… study… and study some more. 

Edgell gave a tip that particularly resonated with me: one of the best ways to learn about social media and engagement is to study it.

I constantly compile new material about social media, including reading articles from sites such as  Mashable, PBS Media Shift, and Social Media Today.  On Pinterest, I have two boards full of articles and infographics devoted to social media and SEO. My bookmarks bar is also full of reads and webinars I’ve flagged about social media strategy for journalism from Poynter and IJnet. In fact, my goal this month is to migrate all of those articles to a board on Pinterest devoted to journalism resources (in case you haven’t noticed, I enjoy using Pinterest as a filing system).

I also enjoy both sharing and learning new social media tips during Twitter chats. Three of my favorites are #muckedUp, #wjchat, and Digital First Media’s #DFMchat.

Digital First Media’s Project  Thunderdome recently did a live chat with The Wall Street Journal‘s Liz Heron where she talked about the future of social media in newsrooms, including forseeing the possible rise of a new digital position: Facebook SEO experts.

In addition to studying, one of the best ways to learn about the rapidly changing world of social and digital media engagement  is to write about it. I’m still on the waiting list for  Facebook’s new graph search feature, but in the mean time,  I compiled a list of resources for journalists on how to use the new tool. When Frontline  released its interactive documentary, Targeting the Electorate, I learned a lot about how marketers and political campaigns use social media activity to target information to users. I broke down my interactive results and explained them in a blog post .

All in all, social media engagement is a learned activity. Resources are plentiful and every social media activity is an exercise in skill building. For a quick summary of the chat, check out Joe Grimm’s five points:

You can also replay the entire chat at Poynter.org.