Social Media Tips for Local News
Brand Voice: Can We Have Some Personality Please
At a neighborhood BBQ party, you wouldn’t walk up to someone and say:
Hey, I’m Dan. I have a story airing tonight on NBC. It’s about how Texas has dealt with the aftermath of a mass shooting.”
That’s not conversational and people would think of you as not relatable. What you really do is ask questions, tell a story, listen and relate to people.
Let’s put a face onto the local news brand and let personality shine through. People often want connection, not just information. This comes from brand voice. To create your brand voice Buffer recommends thinking of the 3 C’s:
Culture — What makes you stand out from all the others who are after the same audience?
Community — Listening can reveal how your community speaks and can help you speak easier with them and to them.
Conversation — Personality and authenticity are key here. Think about what you can offer.
Since a station may have many people working on different platforms, Hootsuite suggests the team come together to know the answer to the following questions, so the brand has a consistent voice on multiple platforms.
· What are your values?
· What makes you different?
· What do we want others to say about us?
· How do we improve people’s’ lives?
· What tone does our audience use with their people?
· What don’t we want others to say about us?
A voice helps us connect with our audience in an endearing, meaningful way. The payoffs can be big.
“Traffic is nice, but conversation with the reader is nicer. A glorified RSS feed is a waste of time.” — Esquire’s voice, Matt Sullivan
Social Persona: Relate to your Followers
Denny’s is known to do this well based on its different followers across different platforms. Bizarre on Twitter ( I don’t get any of the jokes, so clearly, I am not their target audience) and more traditional on Facebook, but still with personality.
To do well on social media, companies must develop some personality in a professional alter ego that is relatable to its audience. Define who you are and what makes you different. Different or unique are essential to being seen over other similar news organizations.
“From finding your brand voice to publishing relevant pieces, social media personas help you tap into content that speaks to different members of your audience.” — Sprout Social
In local broadcast news we had “Sally”, a 35 year old soccer mom to think about when we were writing a story. Who are you writing for on Twitter, Facebook, IG and TT? Knowing this you can create more engaging posts with your target audience.
Baseline metrics for figuring out our social persona:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Income/spending power
- Pain points/frustrations
- Personality traits
- Goals
- Objections
- Brands they support
Your audience can be different on EACH platform; thus, your social persona could be different on each platform as well as brand voice and story selection.
Posting Frequency Guidelines: It is NOT Every Hour
Research for 2022 show how many times to post to hit that sweet spot:
Instagram:, post between 3–7 times per week.
- Later did a separate research project and found if they broke accounts up by follower size the numbers are different:
- For accounts with 1K-250K followers: posting 14 or 20 times per week delivers the highest reach rate per post, while posting once per week delivers the highest engagement rate per post.
- Stories should upload 2 times a day. According to Instagram chief Adam Mosseri in 2021.
Facebook: post between 1 and 2 times a day.
Twitter: post between 1 and 5 Tweets a day. (Of course, there are plenty of power users out there… accounts posting 50 or 100 times a day)
“Don’t get too post-happy. Aim for quality over quantity.” -Hootsuite
2022 Algorithms: Don’t Do What You Did Last Summer
We can create the best content, but it won’t be seen unless we can play to the algorithms that change every year.
- Time spent: Are you going to spend time on the post?
- Likes: How likely are you to like the post?
- Comments: How likely are you to comment on the post?
- Saves: How likely are you to save the post?
- Taps on Profile: How likely are you to tap on the profile after seeing the post? (For example, a CTA to click the link in the bio)
For IG stories a quick poll, link, or quiz sticker can drive engagement.
1. Interactions with the post: People’s feed will prioritize posts with a lot of engagement thus, the post is open for many to see.
2. Who posted it: People are more likely to see content from friends and business’ they already interact with.
3. Type of content: If someone often interacts with video, they will see more video. If someone engages with photos, they will see more photos.
Ideas to start:
Survey current employees for what they are interested in and would like to see more of. If you tailor your social content to the findings, station employees will be more inclined to share your posts. That is engagement and a wider audience for reach. Hootsuite had to do it within its own company.
Gary Vaynerchuk (author of crush it!) recommends responding to every comment you get. This is not one way media. We are now in a two may media world.
Power of Emojis 📺 📰 : Millennials & Gen Z
YouGovAmerica reports, 57% of Facebook posts get more 👍 and 33% drive shares and comments if they contain emojis in them. Emojis could also 📈engagement rate by 48% on Instagram. One quarter of tweets with emojis see increased engagement.
Using emojis in your messaging can add an extra level of personality and relatability to your brand. You can humanize your brand and relate to your audience by 🗣 their language with the emoji they use daily in text messaging, chat and personal social posts.
Asking your followers to interact with your post using an emoji is an easy way to encourage engagement. It can be as simple as asking your followers to agree or disagree with a statement using the 👍🏼 or 👎🏼emoji.
Most of the time, it is best to limit your emoji’s to 1️⃣ per line. Although most news organizations add 2 to 3 emojis at the end of the post copy. 📝 📰
Cheers to pioneering local news and social media in a meaningful and revenue producing way. 🥂📱
