Twitter Best Practices For Journalists and Newsrooms

Twitter Best Practices For Journalists and Newsrooms Commonly asked questions “Our followers have skyrocketed recently. What did we do right?” “I only have 140 characters. Why should I use a hashtag?” “How do I get my Twitter followers to retweet my content?” 2 Research Methodology 150+ journalists and news publishers included in study 1000s of tweets over six-month period examined to uncover patterns of quality engagement Data serves as a model for how others can create follower growth and engagement on Twitter 3 What you can do to drive follower growth 1. Tweet your beat 2. Use hashtags 3. Share what you’re reading 4. @Cite your sources 4 Tweet your beat For journalists who post a concentrated number of Tweets in a short time span, follower growth is 50% more than expected (1.5x). 5 Tweet your beat Live-tweeting or posting several updates about a news event relevant to your beat is one way to increase engagement and follower growth. The Guardian’s David Smith (@SmithInAfrica) saw an increased number of followers when he live-tweeted the of South African runner Oscar Pistorius, a part of his beat as Africa correspondent. 6 Tweet your beat Twitter users who continue to live-tweet news relevant to their beat often see a steady stream of new followers. NBC News’ Shawna Thomas (@ShawnaNBCNews) often posts or retweets news related to politics. Thomas sees a steady rise in followers and has positioned herself as a go-to source for such news on Twitter.