Slide Decks Are Dominating Social Media PLUS Journalism.co.uk Launches Project to Support Innovation in Smaller Newsrooms

July 02, 2021

I almost wrote that PowerPoint is taking over Twitter, but it's really these slide-like formats on Twitter and Instagram that are engaging audiences. That's just one development we've got today in social media. Digiday has a piece looking at the ROI that media outlets see with various social media platforms. Twitter comes in last. Facebook looks to pivot Instagram to compete with TikTok.

A tool to automate community calendars for small newsrooms. And a reminder to keep an eye on your mobile services.

Inside the Mind of the American News Consumer

Here are some quotes from the paper.

"I usually have my iPad with me while I’m watching [the news]. I will google something. I’ll kind of do like a faux fact-check." — John, middle-aged liberal

“I have a dad that’s a genius. He consumes news like a maniac ... I’m gl…

I always find it interesting to talk to people or watch people as they consume news because they surprise me. We think we know what motivates people, but when they tell us what really motivates them, it does force us to take stock.

UK Mentorship Project to Support Innovation in Smaller Newsrooms

Journalism.co.uk launches a pilot programme to help smaller news publishers experiment with new tools and strategies

My friends at journalism.co.uk are launching a mentorship scheme for smaller local and regional newsrooms to support innovation and experimentation. I know it will be brilliant.

While eye-catching data viz pieces like the Financial Times “Coronavirus tracker” or New York Times “The Pandemic Has Split in Two,” are accurate and effective for a numerically literate public, a number of graphic stories like these might prove challenging to the broader public that newsrooms may wish to reach.

Research shows that American audiences lack 'numeracy proficiency' to understand those beautiful data visualisations we're creating. "The report found 63% of U.S. adults were unable to reach level 3 in the scale, which requires 'interpretation and basic analysis of data and statistics in texts, tables and graphs.'" Ouch. I wonder how much of a problem this is elsewhere.

PowerPoint for Social Media

Slides and cards are a good way to highlight the strongest part of a story, whether it's a visual component or a tidbit that competitors don't have.

I will say that we've done some of these slide-based social media presentations, and audiences have really engaged with them. A number of them with pandemic information have been some of our best performing social media content.

Friday Social Media News Roundup

Twitter has a history of sharing feature and design ideas it’s considering at very early stages of development. Earlier this month, for example, it showed off concepts around a potential “unmention” feature that would let users untag themselves from others’ tweets. Today, the company is sharing a few more of its design explorations that would […]

When it comes to driving results for media companies, Twitter is near the bottom of the heap among social platforms despite being among the most widely used.

Facebook's Head of Instagram said the service plans to start showing users full-screen, recommended videos in their feeds.

Local Calendar Automation for Small Newsrooms

The less time journalists spend on rote tasks like data entry, the better. In this project we automated collecting event information for St. Louis Magazine’s website’s event calendar.

When I was the executive editor of four small newspapers, our communities and some of our core audiences expressed that with the slimmed down output that they really missed the community calendar. And even with our bigger properties, research showed that 'things to do' resonated, especially with younger audiences. It came down to competition and resources. This is a good step.

A Good Reminder of How Important Mobile Performance Is

If the current upheaval in the market signals anything, it is that the relationship you have with your customers must be transparent and mutually beneficial.