Author: Jim

A couple of weeks ago, the world conspired to give me LOTS of things to write about. This lead to a sort of natural experiment on this blog. I got to post–a lot. So for the first time, I got to test that old social media advice that posting regularly helps with traffic.

So I posted every single weekday, well, just about single weekday (except for two Tuesdays), for four straight weeks in a row.

(I can’t believe I’m going to actually show you my behind the scenes; a blogger never tells!)

You can see what that meant for my traffic here:

Those four weeks of over 500 views per week? Try to guess which four weeks I was regularly posting?

Now look at the four weeks prior. What do those four weeks look like? Not much of anything, right? Because I hadn’t posted anything.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is (to me) a direct correlation. Post more, get more traffic. Post less, and struggle to see that tiny little Views bar.

The lesson today? This stuff is HARD! You’re a communicator, which means that you’re underfunded, understaffed, under-resourced, and over-burdened by the amount of work you’ve got. And now I’m telling you that you’ve got to do more, more, more if you want to see success.

So now I ask you, have you experienced this? Is posting every day feasible for your organization?

Feeling stressed over how to deal with social media in a disaster? You’re not the only one, that’s for sure. We already talked about how the media was dealing with how sped up news dissemination has become, and how they’re failing to keep up. This change isn’t a small one. It won’t require that a small change in how we, or the media, do business. Social media will bring about a fundamental rethinking of how we do everything; breaking news is just the first area where the effects are really being seen.

As we try to figure out how to integrate social media, it helps to look for people that are already using it to great affect. And, in my mind, you can’t get much better than the folks who run the @BreakingNews Twitter account (and website and apps). They started up with a few folks, editors, they call themselves, around the world who monitor online news sources. When something newsworthy happens, they are able to pick up on the local alarm bells and announce it to their global audience. They got so good at doing this that they were eventually bought out by MSNBC. (The article I’m going to link to says that they’re given complete autonomy at MSNBC, and they even have their own editorial and technology teams.)

Last week, BreakingNews General Manager, Corey Bergman, was interviewed by the tech site, The Verge, on how they’ve not only succeeded and got to where they are, but also the unique way that they approach the news. It’s an enlightening read for anyone interested in the future of media, and also drops in a few tips about how breaking news might affect government communicators.

You’re called Breaking News — do you feel pressure to be first? How do you balance that with accuracy? The Boston bombing story obviously tripped a lot of other outlets up.

With us it’s interesting — there’s pressure to be second. When someone breaks a story all eyes are on us to see if we’re going to cover that story. So there’s definitely a balance between speed and the ability to verify that something is real. And there are a number of factors that come into play. What source or sources have broken that story? What’s their track record? What are other sources saying? How likely is it to occur? What’s the history of stories like this?

There’s also a gut check. Does it feel right? If there is anything that doesn’t feel quite right we’ll wait a little bit. In this business it only takes a minute or two for others to chime in and others to begin reporting on it. So if there is any doubt about the truth, we’ll wait a beat.

Bergman also talked about the need for a sizable team that can be scaled up as needed–something NO government has today, unfortunately.

Running alongside that, all these different streams of information are coming in from Twitter and the wire services, and all the live feeds we’re watching. We’ll divvy up people to watch different live feeds, and as they began to discover new pieces of information they’ll put it into real-time chat. So one editor is in charge of making the call, and he or she is watching all these different discoveries come in from Twitter, and on the chat.

What you’ll notice running through the piece is the absolute focus on “getting it right.” They’ve realized, as a platform, that their reputation for ALWAYS getting it right is their most important currency. That’s their value added. They confirm.

It’s a lesson we all could learn, I think.

In crises, one of the things we’re taught to keep an eye out for is rumors. Squash rumors! Track rumors and report them! Redirect people, but gently! Rumors will throw your messaging off as you’re now reacting to things in the media, as opposed to setting the message and tone yourself. That’s all well and good, especially when the disaster is happening in your backyard.

But what if it’s happening a world away? In a country with a history of tamping down on communications that don’t support the official party line, especially if those rumors make the country look bad? Maybe rumors aren’t so bad then.

One of the very best H7N9 bloggers out there, Crawford Kilian, posted an article last week found on Xinhua.net, a Chinese newspaper with an n English-language section of the site. The article is about all of the work Chinese officials are doing to squash rumors around H7N9 influenza.

And that’s a good thing, right? Squash rumors! Or is it?

In the case of H7N9 influenza, where we already know that information that will help with surveillance, planning and protection measures is being withheld for reasons of credit during publication, is rumor squashing the best course of action (for the world, I mean; not the censors)?

We’ve already seen that social media “rumors” have provided the world world with more information about the outbreak:

Yesterday, a “gutsy” employee at Nanjing Gulou Hospital posted a picture, confirming a case of H7N9, to Weibo, a Chinese microblogging network similar to Twitter (except Weibo is censured by the Chinese government). In a movement that demonstrated the power of social media, this Weibo user forced the hand of hospital officials to publicly confirm this case, via Weibo.

Are we really in a position, given the life-preserving need for information, to lump rumors automatically into the “bad” side of things? We’ve already talked about how the truth is a process that we ultimately arrive at, do you think that rumors might be a part of that process? Maybe they’re not rumors, just unconfirmed reports that help us move towards the truth? Even debunking a rumor refines what the final truth would be.

And just a reminder that this isn’t a China-bashing post. The inimitable Maryn McKenna posted last week on a series of new cases and deaths from novel coronavirus that was just reported, weeks to months late. Now imagine the value that a rumor mill like Weibo could be in Saudi Arabia. How much better we all might be protected.