Why every student media publication needs to have a Twitter account (and how to use it)

Kingston University's River Newspaper account

While the good old-fashioned reporting skills of our team at the Guardian award-winning River Newspaper were second to none, I think much of our success last year could be attributed to the @RiverNewspaper Twitter account and our use of other social media.

2010 was the first year the newspaper had entered the Twittersphere and although there were arguably lots of ways we could have better used the account, it was incredibly useful when it came to sourcing stories, potential interviewees, trends and engaging with our readers.

Unlike many other student publications, The River Newspaper is print only, meaning we couldn’t easily use the account for self-promotion. However, this may have even been the key to its success; rather than simply tweeting links to our latest stories, we took advantage of the rest of the tools Twitter has to offer. My only regret is that we didn’t use it more often due to lack of time. I forsee a “social media editor” role arising on the paper before long.

Right, so you’ve signed up to Twitter, plonked your newspaper’s logo as your profile picture and explained what your publication is all about in the bio. Now what?

Here comes the “how to use it part”!

FOLLOW THE RIGHT PEOPLE

Add your university friends, their university friends and their university friends’ friends. Follow your local council and any other local business with an account. And of course, follow all your university’s Twitter accounts.

By now you should be following at least 100 tweeps. But this isn’t enough.

Often student newspapers suffer due to lack of contacts – it’s difficult to build up a good relationship with the emergency services’ press departments, for example, when you’re only in the role for a year (Or in Kingston University’s case a couple of months!) – but Twitter helps you overcome this hurdle.

At Kingston we did this the long way around by using the Find People option on the Twitter site and searching for “Kingston University”, “Kingston Uni”, “Kingston”, “Surbiton”, “Norbiton” etc.

But Mashable has a fantastic list of 9 ways to find local people on Twitter which is far more useful and will save you lots of time.

LINK

You’re ready to rock. Say hello to the world and start using your Twitter wisely.

For those of you lucky enough to have a digital arm to your publication, you must obviously let your followers know about any new interesting stories. A tip: don’t just CTRL+V your headline when linking to stories, try and sum up the story in a different way so the tweet doesn’t look like an autobot.

But don’t just link to your own material. Show you’re interested in the local community and welfare of your students by letting your followers know about other news too. This can be articles from the council press office, stories from other papers, interesting local blogs, or national student-interest pieces such as the latest from the NUS.

And (Perhaps just a personal preference) ALWAYS, ALWAYS use bit.ly . That way you can analyse who reads your links and which stories are the most popular.

GIVE YOUR ACCOUNT A VOICE

TwitPic on press night

The best media Twitter accounts don’t simply farm out link after link of endless new content; they have a personality. Some good examples of these type of accounts in the wider media are: @heatworld , @iNewspaper and @THEFLYMAGAZINE .

Some easy ways to put yourselves into your account:

Twitpic – Upload a photo of your newsroom’s shocking Ubuntu habit (That can’t have just been us), get an image of your latest interviewee (With permission of course) – showcase your on-patch reporting live and prove your’re not just stuck to your desk

Let people know what you’re up to – Putting together a newspaper is exciting, chat about your triumphs and woes.

Exclusivity – Make your Twitter followers feel as though they’re getting more than the average reader. This can be in the form of competitions, leaking what’s coming up in the next issue and letting them know of special events/live news taking place at the uni or locally.

ENGAGE – That leads me to my next point, let me bold that up…

ENGAGE

Twitter is a conversation. Join it. If a student you follow mentions they have a big exam tomorrow, wish them good luck; if someone is wondering where to go out tonight, recommend a local club with a good drinks promotion; if someone links to an interesting article, give them some feedback rather than passively pressing the RT button.

Your student media account should have just as many @s at the start of every Tweet than those without. Make sure your paper is just as much of a personality in the local community as the mayor.

Another fantastic way to engage is to tweet live news with national or considerably high local interest. The recent student protests were an excellent example of student newspapers advertising themselves and their journalism prowess on a national scale. The same can be done for local news such as accidents, fires, shop opening and celebrity visits. You don’t even need a flash smartphone. Activate Twitter Mobile on your settings and you can text from the scene even with a Nokia 3310.

SOURCING

By employing the engagement tactics above you not only may have made some new buddies, but you’ve also gained a pool of potential interviewees beyond your own friends and students in the same department.

Spend time each day to study your news feed and make note of any possible story leads. Twitter gives you the easy option of getting in contact immediately if you need to make follow ups.

Often when we needed to get a big picture-view about what the student population was thinking, we employed the use of Survey Monkey. It’s an easy-to-use free tool and the link to your survey can easily be publicised and RT-ed. The results of one River Newspaper survey completed in this way even led to the student journo being paid by the Daily Mail for use of the results in a page lead article.

If the newslist is still looking a bit dry I’d thoroughly recommend Kurrently which gives you lightning-fast cross-social media updates on whichever key word you desire and Twitterfall with its geolocation tweet search option.

Of course Twitter doesn’t MAKE a publication, but it certainly helps when it comes to attracting more readers, brand-building and finding new stories.

Have I missed anything out? Please let me know, I’d be happy to read and discuss your suggestions.

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