The media industry, especially the journalists themselves, aren’t typically seen as advertisers.
However, they need to sell their work in order to keep their job. Their work needs to be read/listened to/viewed to earn revenue, which means that getting people to do so is essential for business. Journalists are constantly riding the line between wanting to sell their work but also not wanting to come off as pushy or aggressive, which would ultimately hurt business.
It is the classic conflict of push vs. pull advertising and the question of how much should a brand push their content to try to engage with its consumers.
Social media has added another layer to this decision-making process for journalists, as many news organizations now rely on online consumerism, making social media a crucial avenue of content sharing for the industry.
One network where this presents a particularly complicated challenge is Twitter. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, where the algorithm will push certain types of content to the top of one’s feed, Twitter is still true to its roots as a ‘timeline.’ The most current posts will be at the top.
While Twitter has pushed “In case you missed it” content near the top as well, and will also alert users if one of their most engaged followers tweeted and it received a notable amount of likes or retweets, the network is still largely chronological.
Because of this, many posts go unseen. They get lost in the ether of content that many users have if they follow over 400 or 500 people. This presents a problem for journalists, who need their content to be seen.
How do journalists fix this problem? They try to find ways to sell each story/podcast/video more than once. That way, if one person didn’t catch it on their timelines the first time, they might see it again on the second posting. However, journalists have to balance this reposting with the knowledge that some of their followers might have already seen this content, which could make it annoying to see it too many more times after that.
This is a tight rope that all journalists must walk. Here’s what I’ve found, in following hundreds of professional journalists and also experimenting with content marketing myself, as to what the most effective methods of reposting on Twitter are:
1. ICYMI (In case you missed it)
The best journalists will repost their content 10-12 hours later, prefacing the second post with the acronym, “ICYMI.” This lets their followers know that this is not the initial posting and that they might want to click on it to see what they missed. It is also an opportunity to rephrase the ‘sell tweet’ with new anecdotes or points of interest, in order to entice consumers who may have passed up on it the first time they saw it.
2. Adding to a thread
By tweeting out follow-up notes on a post’s thread after the initial posting, the initial tweet can gain interest and potentially drive people to click. It also allows the journalist to expand on their work and engage with followers in discussion.
3. Retweeting your own work the next day
While this might sound a bit out of touch, this is not seen as egotistical or flagrantly self-promotional. Twitter now allows users to retweet their own work, so journalists will often do so about a day after their original post was made in order to promote the content one final time.
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In light of these methods of reposting, it’s also equally important to build up work before it’s posted for the first time. By promoting work in anticipation of its release, more people will be interested in consuming it once it’s out.
And the most important thing for journalists is that in between all of this promotional tweeting must be down-to-earth, personal engagement. By interacting with others and being engaging, and in doing so appearing human and conversational, your followers will grow closer to you. This is essential. It can’t all be promotional work.
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