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Twitter and beat writing

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by dmurph003, Mar 24, 2009.

  1. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    Facebook is much more social. A real outgoing person might have 1,000 friends.

    On Twitter, a popular poster would have tens of thousands of followers, who can link your message to thousands more.

    Twitter is potentially much better at driving traffic to a blog or website, if that's what you're looking for.
     
  2. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Because it's often a different audience. You're looking at reaching the widest audience possible, right? Why not use Twitter as a tool to direct more people to your blog/site?
     
  3. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    I'll take No. 2.

    You can use both. There is a Twitter app on Facebook that updates your Facebook status when you post something on Twitter. I don't know how any of this is supposed to make more than chump change, but it increases exposure with little extra work.
     
  4. Barsuk

    Barsuk Active Member

    If you don't "get" Twitter, I would suggest signing up, logging on and checking it out. I was in the same boat a few weeks ago, but I decided to poke around, and it's pretty cool. It's hard to explain the concept, but once you see it, you'll "get" it.
     
  5. I kind of hate to say it because I fancy myself something of a Luddite, but I'm coming around to this Twitter argument. I do see the possible benefits of using it. I've always thought of Twitter and Facebook as pretty narcissistic, what with the constant updating of your status. Do people really care what you're doing every minute every day?
    But as a way of driving eyeballs to your Web site and blog, I definitely see the value.
     
  6. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    I definitely see the value to Twittering, but I still haven't been able to have any interest in following other people. The only ones I look at are Fake Rick Reilly and evil David Stern. I'm not part of the target audience, but definitely see it being a good tool for that vast audience that is out there.
     
  7. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    On this day in SportsJournalists.com history in 1957, this exact same sentence appeared, only with "television" and "Diet Coke" in quotations.
     
  8. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    They might not exist much longer, but start following your local (metro) newspaper. I follow a few of the LA Times feeds, along with AP alerts, Romenesko and others. It's just as good as an RSS reader -- immediate links to compelling or newsworthy stories. That's really the only reason I'm on Twitter right now; I use it as a newsgathering tool more than anything else.
     
  9. Bullwinkle

    Bullwinkle Member

    Did somebody call?

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  10. mustangj17

    mustangj17 Active Member

    Buck and Ace,

    I never really thought of that. I don't know if my paper would benefit from that. I don't think we have those many people that can use a computer and know what Twitter is, but I now understand how it could be a valuable too for say, USA TODAY, or the NY Times.
     
  11. mustangj17

    mustangj17 Active Member

    I use this site for news gathering. Nothing falls through the cracks. Seriously. I think I get more breaking news stories, industry news, sports news and wacky stories than anywhere else on the net.
     
  12. Notepad

    Notepad Member

    Chico Harlan is embarrassed to use Twitter.
     
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