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http://go.illinois.edu/tweets Class members will attempt to identify correlations because respondents’ eval- uations of tweets and researcher-assigned scores in the 10 qualitative catego- ries in an attempt to draw conclusions on what qualities are most relevant in drawing attention in social media. Additional qualities may be developed with further analysis of the data. Class members then hope to produce an industry-style research report that will be made available to campus and local media. THE DISCUSS ACTIVE IDENTITY CONNECT ENJOY NOW Background Social media have emerged as being among the fastest growing, most wide- ly used, yet least well understood news outlets today. To determine which factors are most conducive to effectively managing a so- cial media news platform, 16 students in MDIA 290 / JOUR 480 Social and Dig- ital Media for spring 2016 created The ’Nois , an experimental Facebook and Twitter feed designed to serve students at the University of Illinois. The class was an outgrowth of a Scripps-Howard Foundation grant. The grant allowed the class instructor, Associate Professor Eric Meyer, to spend part of the summer at the Dallas Morning News as a visiting professor of so- cial media. It also brought the newspaper’s social media editor, Mike McCray, to campus as a professional in residence for part of a week this spring. Literature review Few scholarly studies focus on specific content and presentation techniques for social media postings. Background is more widely available in industry lit- erature regarding presumed “best practices,” such as: u Using a consistent voice. u Developing a humanistic, engaging approach that does not come across as one-way. u Grabbing attention by focusing on unique content expressed in unique ways. u Connecting each posting to a trending, popular topic. u Considering the varying demographics of social media users. u Using data analytics to determine what’s working or isn’t. u Updating regularly but without overwhelming the audience. u Engaging the audience with topics of specific interest. u Creating dialog. One study asked 1,443 Twitter users to rank 43,738 tweets according to wheth- er they were deemed worth reading. Findings suggest not overusing hashtags and not retweeting conversations. Percentages of tweets deemed worth read- ing, by researcher-assigned category of content or presentation: u Funny, exciting: 36% u #ConnectNois for academic and career news Social media posts were strategically written for each persona and were tar- geted using the hashtags. After several weeks of live posting and evaluating of engagement metrics, however, the class became convinced that the cam- pus’s diverse student body could not neatly be divided into niches and that individual students’ broad ranges of interests often crossed over into multi- ple niches, which could not be demographically defined. The class also concluded that content in campus and community media was not sufficiently engaging and that one of the essential characteristics of so- cial media was the development of human-to-human messages with greater personality than was present in most local media coverage. With apologies to MacLuhan, it’s not the medium; it’s the message. As the class shifted away from re-posting material from local and campus me- dia and began assessing students’ informational needs and interests in- dependently , it again relied on engagement metrics and review of scholar- ly literature to develop content and presentational standards that it hypothe- tized might prove the most engaging. It also increasingly employed images or “memes” as these seemed more en- gaging. With the feed refined by preliminary pilot experimentation, these ul- timate research questions emerged: u RQ1: What are the most effective methods social media platforms can use to reach and interact with readers? u RQ2: What attributes of postings done by The ‘Nois are likely to at- tract the most attention from readers? After analyzing Twitter and Facebook engagement data from two months of posting multiple times daily via Buffer.com, the class developed its own set of 10 attributes that it believed might be most likely to engage readers. u Immediacy: Does the posting contain specific indicators of current timeliness? u Unexpected: Does it deal with unique or uncommon oddity? u Engaging: Does it ask a question or urge a response? Methodology Initially, the class relied on referring readers to existing content published by traditional local media, a strategy employed by most traditional media out- lets with their social media feeds. The class attempted to use social media to segment the audience into separate niches, divided by demographics and perceived interests. Content was designated for each niche or “persona” by separate hashtags: u #EnjoyNois for entertainment news u #ActiveNois for sports and fitness u #DiscussNois for political news u #IdentityNois for news of cultural diversity u #NowNois for breaking news Pilot experimentation u Self-promotion: 36% u Question to followers: 35% u Informative news: 33% u Opinions: 30% u Catching up: 27% u Presence: 20% Another study measured engagement, replies and retweets based on time of posting and other factors. u From 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., Twitter outperforms Facebook; from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m., Facebook outperforms Twitter. u Engagement on Twitter is 17% higher on weekends. u Four or fewer tweets per day are ideal. u Adding images, links and two or fewer hashtags increase engage- ment. u Specifically asking followers to retweet encourages that behavior. u Using fewer than 100 characters seems to increase engagement. In social media marketing, industry literature advises: u Adding URLs and hashtags increases number of retweets. u Users prefer sharing of information and thoughts to status updates. u Tweets with negative sentiments are more likely to be retweeted. These are other guidelines and studies were used to structure the strategies by which class members posted to Facebook and Twitter. MDIA 290 / JOUR 480 class Advertising u Mike Brodecki u Ryan Donlan u Michele Ellis u Molly Gordon u Alia Kamal u Henry Prystowsky u Aaron Swearingen Communication u Ruoxi Su u Brea Thompson General studies u Masic Chen Journalism u Khaoula Dellahi * u Rhea Kressman * u Colleen Romano u Blaize Stewart * u Ryan Vasicek * Visiting scholar u Ahmed Orabi * Graduate students Identifying effective practices in social media Rising above the ’Nois: u Conversational: Is it written in informal language? u Humorous: Does it attempt to be amusing without being deprecat- ing? u Personal utility: Is the content specifically relevant to, or can it be acted upon by, the target audience? u Talk factor: Does it spark conversation or deal with a popular cul- ture topic? u Emotion: Does it invoke or relate a human, emotional response? u Active visual: Does it contain a realistic or active visual representa- tion of the topic? u Simplify: Does it make a complicated topic seem more understand- able. Each class member then rated 100 actual tweets from The ’Nois and other lo- cal social media channels, scoring each on five-level Likert scales measuring each of the 10 qualities. Intercoder reliability was confirmed using a test of standard deviation of scores. An online questionnaire was developed to ask a diverse group of approximately 750 students to assess their level of interest in each of 20 tweets randomly selected from the pool of 100. Responses were on a five-level Likert scale to facilitate curvilinear analysis of possible correla- tion with researcher-assigned qualities. Demographic data were gathered to ensure an appropriate, though still convenient, crosssection was contacted. Data currently are being gathered for analysis in the final weeks of the semes- ter. To participate, visit: Next steps H I G H L O W Immediacy Unexpected Engaging Conversational Humorous Personal utility Talk factor Emotion Active visual Simplify 4.2 4.1 4.4 4.3 4.3 4.3 4.5 4.4 4.3 4.5 1.4 1.3 1.4 1.4 1.0 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.3 MEAN SCORE FROM 15 EVALUATORS
