On Saturday, May 22, 2010, the Asian American Journalists Association DC chapter held a seminar on social media for journalists, featuring:
- Writer/AAJA-DC board member Katherine Reynolds Lewis, who created and runs CurrentMom.com
- BBC Digital reporter/producer Franz Strasser, who crafts online strategy for World News America
The following is Katherine's handout from her presentation:
Social Media 101
Key Principles
- Listen more than you talk.
- Monitor your brand and your Twitter handle. It's a conversation. (see point 1)
- Remember, it's all public. Don't say anything that could come back to haunt you.
Twitter A microblogging site where users "tweet" their thoughts in under 140 characters and "follow" Twitter users whose tweets they want to track.
retweet When a tweet is preceded by RT, you are repeating what another Twitter user has said.
This is considered a compliment and an overture in Twitter culture -- something between a friendly wave and buying someone a drink.
DM When a tweet is preceded by D, it is a direct message -- private to all but the recipient.
The message it only visible to the person whose Twitter handle comes after the D. For example:
D @PeggyHu Can you please email me at lewis(at)currentmom.com?
By contrast, if you leave off the D, you are speaking to the person, but your tweet is visible to the world.
hashtag On Twitter, you often see a hashtag # preceding a word.
This can identify the subject matter of your tweet, such as #sm = social media. Or, it can identify you as participating in a group discussion event, whether real-life or virtual, such as #journchat = a Twitter chat on Monday nights and #TEDxPotomac = a TED event held at GW University on May 20. It can also be used to share information about a quickly developing news story, such as #oilspill
Twitter users employ hashtags to discover others who are talking about topics they follow, or are attending the same event. If you're in the audience of a talk, you can search the event hashtag to see what other attendees think of the speaker.
SocialOomph This site lets you schedule tweets in advance, track keywords of interest (such as your name and Twitter handle), send automatic DMs to new followers and manage your list of followers.
TweetDeck This service lets you view multiple Twitter accounts and your Facebook feed simultaneously, as well as track chats and create groups of followers. It's a great efficiency booster.
HootSuite This combines many of the features of SocialOomph and TweetDeck. You can manage multiple Twitter accounts, Facebook and other social media accounts from one interface. You can schedule tweets, track statistics and monitor your brand.
Prepared for AAJA-DC by Katherine Reynolds Lewis
Katherine@katherinerlewis.com* www.currentmom.com* @KatherineLewis
Freelance writing on money, work and family * group blog for entrepreneurs