- Illustration by Geek and Poke

I started promotion of my blog post in social media with no assumptions. My goal was to find out how social media could benefit my reporting and journalistic research.

Content Promotion in Facebook

My story was about launching a startup in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I wrote about a small woodwind and brass shop on Bedford Ave. It opened a year ago and goes well despite the bad economy.  I joined two Facebook groups on my community and posted links to my story on their walls. In two weeks, neither the “I GREW UP IN GREENPOINT” group nor the “Welcome to Poland LOL JK you’re in Greenpoint” group members commented on my post, even though both pages have over 2,000 participants. I also tried direct messaging some of them, but got no answer. In Facebook promotion only a wall post on my personal page solicited 3 comments from my colleagues and friends, and also six “likes.”

Content Promotion in Twitter

Twitter promotion was more effective thanks to hashtags and conventions. I targeted not only local blogs, but a newspaper, too. I got a same-day reply to my question from the author of one of the most popular blogs, who found me thanks to the #Greenpoint hashtag. She also started following me.

Social Media and Survey Ideas

To solicit ideas for my future survey blog post about restaurant businesses in my community district, I needed responses from as many New York City residents as I can reach. So on Facebook, I promoted my survey on eating habits on our class page. To get opinions from a wider range of respondents, I posted a question about what businesses would people open in New York on my personal wall. And the first reply hit the beat I chose for my survey blog post: a friend who lived in New York City for several years said that she’d open a tea room or a bakery. I also promoted survey in Twitter and eventually got 12 responses. Unfortunately, Survey Monkey doesn’t allow tracking where respondents came from. In the future, I would include a question about it in my survey. It would help to know the demographic information of people surveyed.

Facebook and Twitter could be helpful tools for a journalist, depending on his or her purpose. Here is what I have learned from my experience.

Social media sites are good for:

▪   Finding sources

▪   Establishing yourself in a specific community (may take time)

▪   Gathering ideas

▪   Addressing targeted audiences (learning their demographics, interests and agendas)

▪   Easy search by key words within a specific community

Social media sites are NOT so good for:

▪   Content promotion for journalists with no reputation (first, it’s important to establish yourself as a good source of information)

▪   Connecting with sources (e-mail works much better, because Facebook and Twitter users tend to guard their privacy from random people)

▪   Survey promotion within specific communities (people could be suspicious to a link from a random person)

Summing it up…

Thanks to social media groups I learned what businesses no longer exist in my CD: I found some statuses nostalgically describing shops that were closed in Greenpoint. Google helped me to find experts on business in New York City and contact info of Greenpoint bloggers. Then, the good old way of e-mailing in just two days brought me a lot of useful ideas, opinions and resources.  I got information about popular new restaurants in the neighborhood and the financial environment small businesses face in New York City. This might be helpful to engage people in my future survey blog post.