Lessons from the Newsroom: What Search & Social Can Learn from Journalists
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We know "everyone's a publisher now," but what does that really mean? This keynote from Search Engine Journal's SEJ Summit dissected three areas to focus on when figuring out what content to create for your audience.
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Lessons from the Newsroom: What Search & Social Can Learn from Journalists
- 2. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Be curious Give people what they need AND want Respect your audience 3 Takeaways
- 3. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Director ofAudience Engagement The Hometown Paper Of the Internet
- 4. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon analytics, social media, grammar, bacon, & SIBERIAN HUSKIES I Like
- 5. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon One Siberian Husky in particular
- 6. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon I’ve worked for and WITH
- 7. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon I thought I’d always be: A newspaper journalist.
- 9. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side? - George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones Be Curious
- 10. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Cartoon by Cathy Wilcox
- 11. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon What is Search if it is not to satisfy curiosity?
- 12. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon What do you search for? How do you search for it? How do you search for it on social?
- 14. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Curiousity Doesn’t kill most cats Photo by lauragrafie via Flickr Creative Commons
- 15. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Give people what they need AND what they want
- 16. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Give your audience what they want and need Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. - Lawrence Block
- 19. Want vs Need?
- 21. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Respect your Audience I'm always trying to gain and keep the audience's respect. I always want them to know that the show doesn't think they're stupid for watching. - Dan Harmon, creator of Community
- 22. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Don’t brush off all haters
- 23. The saga of dat boi
- 24. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Sometimes you turn them around
- 25. #SEJSummit @AmyVernon Be curious Give people what they need AND want Respect your audience 3 Takeaways
Editor's Notes
- At a city council meeting when I covered Hollywood, Florida, I heard the public works director talk about gray water being used to irrigate the golf courses. WTF was gray water? I needed to understand, as Florida’s coastal water supply was in danger of saltwater intrusion, which would cause a water shortage. Turns out, it was just the way they talked about “recycled wastewater”. In other words, the water from flushing your toilet was gonna be used to water golf courses. Alrighty, then.
- So I researched. I talked to the public works director and learned all about how gray water was treated to the point where it was even cleaner than the water we usually drank. And when I moved out to a new paper in Arizona, a team of reporters was working on a project about the water shortage. You know, in the desert, where that makes sense. I offered to write a story on water reuse. Our project won awards, including an explanatory journalism prize from our parent company. And I have that award, today, because I heard something I didn’t know and was curious.
- The thing is, search is not monolithic. Bing & Google bring up different results, depending on the search (Hillary/Trump autocompletes). Searching on Google also is quite different than searching on Twitter.
- Case in point. You find WAY more tweets that use the #WaterReuse hashtag than the #GrayWater hashtag (go ahead, check it out now)
- Everyone (well, most people) are curious. They are constantly seeking out information – about themselves, their families, what they eat, where they live, where they’re traveling to, what to buy, what to buy for friends, and on and on and on. Journalism survives – and will always survive – because it satisfies that curiosity. This is why brands have become their own publishers – to satisfy the curiosity of potential customers. And even if you’re not being your own publisher, your social strategy can focus on satisfying that curiosity.
- Still one of our most-read articles via SEO, month after month. Is this groundbreaking journalism? Of course not. Is it something people want? Hell yeah.
- A lot of people don’t want to read a story like this. They don’t want to be reminded of how horrible we can be to each other. But unless we write about important topics, we are complicit in people being uninformed.
- So how do you figure out what’s want and what’s need? By focusing on curiosity when writing content, you can pique customer's interests, which will drive engagement For a company website, it’s really good to know what your audience is going to be curious about because they’re going to be more likely to click on things that pique their interest But what they need? Find the things that are important for them to know about you. About your product. About your industry. They will notice. And appreciate it when they find they do need this info. What is information they might need that you might be hesitant to share? Recalls, issues, problems. Industry trends if they don’t perfectly align with you. The more accurate and vital your information, the better it will be.
- This. Is. Dat Boi. We wrote about him, explaining the meme. The meme community blew up our inbox on Facebook, telling us how we’d destroyed this meme, their beloved dat boi. How could we? We were horrible, horrible people.
- How it ties into journalism