EIJ13: Facebook Usage Survey

“It’s no secret that journalists love Twitter. But according to former broadcast executive-turned-media strategist Steve Schwaid, that love may be misplaced.

“People in the real world do not live on Twitter,” he told journalists Aug. 25 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California.

According to Schwaid, newsrooms should make Facebook — the most popular social media site in the world, with double the number of users as Twitter, as of December 2012 — their first love, instead.

Of course, “the debate is between Facebook and Twitter if you can only do one. You should be doing both.”

Schwaid’s firm, Cedar Rapids-based CJ&N, compiled a report on Facebook usage, which he shared at a panel Saturday morning at EIJ 2013.

According to the report, 22 percent of American women are on Facebook continuously, along with 35 percent of them online several times a day.

“So you have women, who we know are the news drivers … on a platform you should be on, actively engaging them,” Schwaid said.

The numbers are even better in the women 25-to-34 demographic sought after by advertisers: Twenty-five percent of them are Facebook continuously.

“If you know where the people are, go to where the people are. … You want to be there, in whatever way we can,” Schwaid said.

History seems to bear out the approach. According to the CJ&N data:

• Women were four times more likely get their information on the July 2012 Aurora, Colo. movie shootings from Facebook than Twitter.
• Facebook was comparable in popularity to local newspaper websites for the shootings, and twice as popular as local TV websites.
• Nine months later, in April 2013, Facebook was the fifth most-popular source for Boston Marathon bombings information, after national, cable, local TV and national websites.

“Twitter is good for the moment, the breaking story as it happens,” but it’s tough to catch up on it, he said. “Information on Twitter kind of disappears, and if it disappears, you’ve got to reload, and people hate to reload.”

(He’s skeptical about Instagram, as well. News organizations are experimenting with using it, but he says it’s mostly good for teenagers.)

Dana Neves, the news director at WFSB News in Hartford, has worked with Schwaid in the past.

She advised against pushing every single story from a newsroom onto Facebook.

“If people wanted to see a continuous stream of news all day, they’d just stay on your webpage,” she said. “You don’t want to post more than 12 to 14 times (a day).”

But you do want to engage Facebook fans, because that makes the stories that are pushed onto the page more visible, as Facebook’s algorithm favors content from sources that users interact with more regularly.

“Pictures are huge” on Facebook,” Neves said. “You’ll get your most bang for your buck.”

She advised asking fans to share their own photos and to like photos posted to the site.

“I think sharing is underutilized for everybody, and it’s something you can do really, really easily,” she said.

Schwaid agreed.

“You want shares, then you want comments, then you want likes,” he said. “Whatever takes the most effort is what’s most appreciated” by Facebook’s algorithm.

Which brings us back to women:

“Women share, men don’t share,” Schwaid said.

And that’s a reflection of how they consume online media: “Most women have their smartphone by their bed table,” he said. “Any women in here disagree?”

That easy accessibility is a reflection of their usage habits, according to Schwaid.

“If (women) don’t look at Facebook first, they look at their email first,” and then Facebook.

(Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a comparable non-porn, non-sports site for men that most media companies can take advantage of, he said.)

Schwaid also has specific strategies for news organizations hoping to take better advantage of Facebook:

When posting a story to Facebook, don’t just post the web headline into the comment field up top, put in a teaser instead. And make it short, so that readers don’t have to click the dreaded “read more” link.

Avoid obviously canned timed posts.

“People don’t like automated posts” on Facebook, according to Schwaid.

The vocabulary of Facebook — with the ubiquitous “like” button causes problems with sad stories, which users feel awkward about “liking,” even if it’s just that they appreciate something being posted. Instead, Schwaid suggests, offer them an alternative way of thinking about it: “How about some likes for Richard and his snow sculpture?”

He also advises changing the organization’s cover photo regularly, celebrating the local area.

There also needs to be more of a human voice on the Facebook page: No posting photos and the like without captions or explanation and no posting images some might find objectionable — they’ll automatically show up in a Facebook feed, with no chance to opt out of them.

He also recommends engaging with those who post on a news organization’s Facebook wall. Ninety-five percent of all Facebook wall posts, he said, are not answered.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” as posters could be correcting a story, using racism or slander or complimenting the organization. Interacting with them could be as simple as just clicking the “like” for their comment, showing that it’s been read and appreciated. WFSB has someone check their page three to five times a day, just for that purpose.

And sometimes, news organizations need to put out fires.

WFSB’s Sandy Hook coverage included interviews with frightened children, because Neves said they were central to the story.

“If you saw the hundreds of children hiding in the woods and under cars” after the shooting last December, “it painted a picture,” she said.

Nevertheless, viewers were outraged, and jumped on the station’s Facebook page to tell them. Neves and the other crewmembers were asleep, exhausted both mentally and physically from their coverage and missed what was happening, until Schwaid called her up at home and told her to check out their Facebook page.

“It was like no posts we’ve ever seen. We were getting lambasted,” Neves said. Viewers had posted the station manager’s phone number and other corporate executives, urging other viewers to call in and get the entire team that had covered Sandy Hook fired.

Schwaid advised Neves to get on Facebook and to post that she was a mother with a kid the same age as the Newtown children and her logic in interviewing them. Her long Facebook Note worked.

“Even people who said ‘I still think what you did was wrong’ said ‘thank you for telling us why. Hug your kids tonight.'”

To make sure there’s no dead time on the site’s Facebook page — and Facebook is incredibly popular on weekends — WFSB has a social media staffer who specifically works weekends.

They also have a rotating shift of when they post to their page, with “wake-up news” posted between 6 to 8 a.m. each day; news and fun stories posted between noon and 2 p.m.; the busiest time of day, hard news between 4 and 6 p.m.; and, around 9 p.m., stories that catch readers up on what they may have missed.

Schwaid also recommends using Facebook sponsored posts, which he called “the cheapest way to drive markets.”

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