KAIT-TV in Jonesboro, Ark., is a small station with a large social media presence.
The station, which is in the 180th television market (out of 210) in a metro area with a population somewhere around 150,000, has found ways to gain about the same number of fans and followers as some of the country’s top newspapers.
The station had 19,447 Facebook fans and 2,828 Twitter followers the last I checked. By comparison, a new Bivings Group study found that the top 100 newspapers (by circulation) have an average of 21,214 Facebook fans.
News Director Hatton Weeks has four suggestions for news organizations that want to improve their social media presence.
1. Get everyone involved.
2. At a minimum, post items four or five hours before the news begins to push to the newscast.
3. Find an internal social media guru, and let that person lead the charge.
4. Make sure your website is updated often, and the stories also get shared on the appropriate social media.
Our audience is engaged more with our product, their voice is heard, and they feel like they’re part of the news.
Read more at Poynter
