The Post's social media team drives traffic and interest in daily content, works tirelessly to make stories perform.
How do you solve a problem like social media?
Excuse The Sound of Music pun for a brief moment to think about how you consume your news, whether it's with The Post or otherwise. A brief glance at our Web analytics for the past month already reveals quite a bit about what we're sure you already know — more than half of our readers visit our articles on a mobile or tablet device. Most of them come from Twitter, Facebook and Google.
It used to be that a good paper could be partially defined by its visibility and accessibility — how close a news stand was to you and how easy you could access it. Picking up a paper on your walk to work or having one delivered to your doorstep is far easier than walking into a Starbucks and standing in line to make your daily news purchase.
That's sort of how we see The Post's social media team. They're the on the front lines of making sure our stories are read and placed where the reader can find them. If you have to go digging for our stories, you'll likely become distracted on your way there. Nobody likes to wait in line.
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So, that's why our social media team tweets on the half-hour, and schedules several Facebook posts throughout the day. The Post's Instagram is updated frequently with our best photos of the day, always mentioning the stories that accompanied them. When we post a story to Twitter and you engage — retweeting it, favoriting it, replying to it — we sit up in our seats and ask what made you so interested. The next time we share it on social media, a little bit of your own interests will drive how we do so.
For example, if @ThePost tweeted a story about Big Mamma's Burritos and dozens of you seemed to engage, you're going to see The Post's writers perk up and share that story on their own feeds. You're going to see it appear on Facebook or Instagram. You just helped shape our virtual news stand. It can seem eerie, and at some times trivial, but it's just about the best thing we could be doing to get you to thepostathens.com and to make the work The Post accomplishes each day valuable.
So how do you solve a problem like social media? Retweet, favorite and reply.
Emma Ockerman is a junior studying journalism and Editor-in-Chief of The Post. Want to talk to her about social media? Email Emma at eo300813@ohio.edu or tweet her at @eockerman.
