How one media company utilized two social networks differently

In the third section of his book Social Media Strategy, author Keith Quesenberry talks about the differences between social networks, blogs and forums. He breaks down what certain social mediums, like Facebook or Twitter, can offer a company when it comes to using the medium for marketing.

This reminded me of my first summer internship at Cox Media Group, two summers ago. Before I got to start writing for the newspaper (the Dayton Daily News), I shadowed their social media team for the first two weeks of the summer. I picked their brains on what they posted, when they posted, and as it pertains to this chapter, how they posted when it came to networks like Facebook and Twitter.

In reality, the way they approached Facebook and Twitter were quite different. As the book describes, there are different audiences on each platform. Here were some of the key ways in which the Dayton Daily News social media team differed their usage of each platform:

1. Not just local news

As a media company that pays to use AP content, the Dayton Daily News website would pick up national stories that might gain local interest. These are largely human interest stories, and while they have little news value for the local consumer, they will often get clicks because they catch the consumer’s eye.

On Facebook, the newspaper would mix posts like these in with posts about local news (which were actually written by Dayton Daily reporters). They would post one or two national AP stories an hour, along with one or two local stories during the same time span. Because they had a much demographically wider audience on Facebook, and because people tend to interact with the company more in that medium, they figured that this would be a good way to sustain interaction -- through human interest stories.

2. Just local news

Meanwhile, Dayton Daily would use Twitter much differently. They would rarely post AP content on Twitter, as they mostly stuck to posting locally written stories. They took more of a ‘news’ approach to their Twitter account, as they would provide updates on stories and retweet their own reporters who were covering a live event.

But in general, they did not use Twitter as much for human interest stories. They believed that their Twitter page was less about consumer engagement and more about pushing news, so that’s what they used it for.

3. ‘Live coverage’

As mentioned earlier, Dayton Daily would cover live events with Twitter by retweeting their reporters, who were live-tweeting an event from their own account. They did not use Periscope or any other video platform, just threads of tweets.

Facebook, however, was different. Instead of making tons of posts about an event, they would do a ‘Facebook Live’ video for it. These would often be a big hit because consumers could see the event as it was happening and could also react to it in the comment section. But this difference in platform usage highlights one of the main differences in the way they handled each network: on Facebook, it’s less about lots of quick posts and more about one, more encapsulating most. On Twitter, meanwhile, live-tweeting through a thread of multiple posts is encouraged.

This is because the algorithms of each network provide for different platforms. On Facebook, there is no timeline, so the most current posts don’t always float to the top. Therefore, live-posting an event would be pointless. Meanwhile, the opposite is true for Twitter.

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While these were the central differences between how Dayton Daily utilized Facebook and Twitter, there were some things that remained constant between both platforms: the way they handled reader comments, the key local stories that would be posted, and the way in which they represented the company as a whole. While the content differed, the branding was largely the same between both platforms.