Clay Travis on why every writer/journalist needs to be active on Twitter

My paper had a big hot story I was covering. I was sending out regular tweets and linking to quick hits on the website. Our web traffic jumped by more than 6,000 percent.

Yeah, I said 6,000 percent and it was closer to 7,000 percent.

That made me a true believer in Twitter.

 

I'm a roll-out-of-bed-and-check-Twitter-first guy, and one of the evangelists in the newsroom about it, so I'm nearly in total agreement with the article.

One thing I'd add is that it allows reporters a chance -- if they invest the time in responding -- to find valuable readers, and elevate the discourse well above newspaper/blog comments. With enough effort (not a great amount, I think), you'll find people who will become sources/give you tips, offer fair feedback, share your stories and otherwise help promote your stuff. If your reader base is solid, you can build momentum fairly quickly.

It's a shame Twitter's list feature isn't more popular than it is, because I find that to be incredibly useful when you don't want Tweetdeck redlining in the corner of the screen. I have a list of about 20 Twitter accounts that I should keep track of as much as possible, and I switch to that one when I need to dial it down.

 

The real issue is how Twitter is being used and misused by reporters. There are certain archetypes too many reporters fall into on Twitter:

1. "I just wrote a story about this, so I'm going to tweet about it constantly" -- We get that you did a feature story on that one coach, but that doesn't mean every tweet you post for the next three days has to revolve around that interview or person.
2. "I feel the extreme need to reply to all the slapdicks who tweet at me" -- The Internet is full of morons. Your responses only nurture that idiocy and clog your timeline. Answer real questions.
3. "I tweet 200 times a game even when I'm covering something that isn't on my beat" -- I would advocate for the toning down of play-by-play even when it's on a reporter's beat, but if you happen to be filling in on the minor-league hockey game, none of your followers care.
4. "I dnt need 2 spl wrds rite" -- Your Twitter is as much, if not more, a representation of your journalism as your stories that get published on websites and in print.
5. "I cover the State U Wildcats, so I am therefore qualified to tweet constantly about everything in the sports world" -- I think it's actually a good thing to branch out from your beat on Twitter occasionally, as sports fans tend to like many sports. But if your Twitter account is associated with your work, and your work is "beat reporter for the State U Wildcats," maybe you should realize that most people who follow you want State U Wildcats news for the most part.
6. "I only tweet for one hour a day, but I tweet like 50 times in that hour" -- The whole point is having a real-time conversation. It's extremely ineffective to be the guy who posts 10 links and 40 other thoughts at 9 a.m. when he starts work, then stops tweeting entirely for the rest of the day while he does what he considers his "real work." You can get more impact with one tweet an hour for eight hours than 24 tweets in one hour and none the rest of the day.

These aren't meant to parallel Darren Rovell's "Rules of Twitter." Rovell is a blowhard who violates his own rules and assumes everyone wants to be a Twitter celebrity. But if you're a reporter hoping to generate interest and brand loyalty through Twitter, be intelligent. The big thing is: Why did your followers choose to follow you? Answer that and you can get an idea of what you probably would be most successful tweeting about.

That said, Travis' best point was more about the use of Twitter as a search engine. If Google buys Twitter, it buys the world.

 

"Yet, amazingly, only about 12% of y'all are even on Twitter so far. . .

"Twitter is a media game-changer . . . "

This doesn't make sense.

 

McLuhan would disagree.

 

I'd like to address this because I've seen this sentiment on the board multiple times.

To me, a retweet is the same as a quote. If I retweet something Pat Forde tweeted, I'm showing everyone what Pat Forde said. If he turns out to be wrong, am I suddenly wrong too?

I'm not going to go around retweeting something that's blatantly wrong, but I don't agree that it attaches your name to it.

 

You really shouldn't quote something that you know is wrong unless you are drawing attention to the fact that it is wrong and it was spoken by a notable figure . . .

 

Ideally, it shouldn't. But if you cover college basketball and you retweet a bad report from Pat Forde ... yeah, your name is attached to it. That's one of the reasons seemingly everyone includes a "retweets do not imply endorsements" disclaimer on their Twitter bio.

Think of it this way: If AP reports prematurely on the death of a prominent coach and you report what they reported ... you can blame AP all you want, and you'd be right, but the fact is, your readers/viewers were only paying attention to your report, which turned out to be incorrect. So that's on you, too, for an inaccurate report.

It's no different on Twitter: If you retweet something that turns out to be wrong ... well, yeah, you're wrong, too. (Again, this applies to those whose followers expect them to report news, such as almost all beat writers. If I, from my personal account that only my friends follow, retweet a bad report from AP ... well, nobody's paying attention to me for breaking news. But if Pat Forde retweets @BreakingNews saying that Dean Smith has died when he's very much alive ... it attaches his name to it, like it or not.)

 

I generally sidestep that by tweeting something like "Yahoo's Pat Forde reports ASU is hiring Pitt's Todd Graham" instead of the straight retweet. Seems to me it gives the proper framing while making it clear I'm not confirming it myself.

 

True.

But McLuhan predates (and yet somehow sort of predicts) the actual interactivity of the information age. At least to the extent that he asserts all our relationships to all media were always "interactive." But were they really? It's an interesting question to ask in light of technologies that serve not only as speakers on which to hear others, but as megaphones by which we broadcast ourselves.

McLuhan's notion of interactivity was conceptual. The interactivity of information age social media is real.

 

Not that he's wrong about much of it, but this is a fitting blog for Clay Travis to write. His company...is Clay Travis. What Clay probably ought to write is a blog entitled: "Good writers should start their own web sites so that whatever they tweet won't ever get them in trouble with a boss they don't have."

How's Travis' gameplan of having people write on spec for free while the site gets going working out?