How a Journalist Engages Fans

Kristof has 145,979 fans on Facebook. He writes at The New York Times and he writes for his readers. He's humanizing his work by telling the stories of the people he meets through his personal lens.

And he's doing that in a conversational medium that allows his fans to interact with him however they choose to do it - by comments, likes, with images. It looks like he's using his Facebook page as a place to put his field notes to capture what interests him and what he's learning.

This is a great use of an interactive tool to build community around ideas and connections. A few things that caught my attention on the page that help interaction and engagement:

1. simple call to action - Fan Nick!

2. a specific tab for his upcoming book, Half the Sky

3. use of boxes to organize content on the page

4. use of teasers and puzzles to jump start a conversation

5. asking fans to vote for or pick something

6. use of video and photography - an image is worth a thousand words

7. the story behind the story - this is very compelling to readers

8. notes to articles written by others start good discussions

9. the idea that most of the material is real time appeals to online users

10. a short conversational bio with further links to his online presence

These may seem like very simple things to many of you. However, in the aggregate, they each contribute to readers building a relationship with the ideas and content Kristof shares - and through it, with him.

Contrast this approach with that of Thomas Friedman, who sets the agenda with his columns, books, and talks and you will see the difference immediately. Friedman is a leading journalist with a very nice portfolio site. Search Facebook and what do you find? Who's setting the agenda on conversation and connection?

Is Kristof showing us the future of journalism? Integrated, connected, multimedia, directly from the field. What does that teach businesses?

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Mark Joyella]

Nicely broken down and absolutely dead on. Kristof is a perfect example of how to build a community around traditional reporting that takes full advantage of social media, both to drive an audience to a story, but also to engage the audience and drive the story itself.

[Ari Herzog]

Valeria, how do you feel about fan page owners such as Kristof enabling interactivity from his fans but without himself interacting back? For instance, I scrolled to an earlier wall post with numerous comments -- http://www.facebook.com/kristof#/video/video.php?comments&v=213394434200 -- and I don't see his name in those comments. The presumption is he is reading them, but wouldn't you agree that the nature of interactivity and collaboration is reciprocal?

Or is enabling people to comment if you don't comment enough?

[Jeremy]

Not lying helps.

http://areyoutargeted.com/2009/10/29/interactions-with-the-press/

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Mark - I like the fact that he comes back with subsequent posts revealing more about a story, giving the key to the puzzler, etc.

@Ari - what I hope will happen moving forward is a less formulaic approach to social media. Frankly, I am quite tired of the usual checklist of what to do and what not. Case in point is the usual response that comments speak to engagement. There are different ways of doing engagement. Face to face and email are preferred by many of my readers, for example. Also, the posts here are shared a lot. I choose to respond to comments because I keep to a fixed publishing schedule. Kristof publishes a new micropost about what's next. Should I hold him to my own choices? Clearly, people look engaged at his Facebook page. Just thinking out loud here. Noticed that "challenge" is your MO. My responding to your challenge does not mean I'm engaged with you. Two different things. At least think about it.

@Jeremy - sure, not lying helps in general. Another case is when your boss doesn't throw you under the bus or fabricates conversations that never happened, for instance. Or your partner steals funds. I could go on. Thank you for stopping by.

[Brian Driggs]

Being available through multiple modalities is a great idea, but only so long as you're able to consistently reciprocate that engagement with members of your community. I'm all about these connections being organic. Nothing forced at the foundation will ever come across as genuine at the front door when the visitor rings the bell.

I like the idea of presenting the value of participation in the community up front, reinforcing that through relevant topics and conversation, and keeping that call to action focused on why people want to connect. If visitors can easily see that other participants are getting the value sought through the link that brought them here, the targeted call to action will be the gentle nudge inviting them inside.

Hundreds of thousands of friends on Facebook isn't anything to which I personally aspire, but I would love to see those who enjoy my/our sites interacting with each other across platforms as well as across brands. Part of me thinks that, if we provide the the right mix of value and entertainment, the community will build itself.

Sure seems to be going that way lately. It's nice to see Kristof's tribe, if you will, is bigger than he is. It might have been all about him at once, but isn't the whole point of building a community to raise awareness of a cause or belief system? I'd rather participate in a community than have to focus on running it.

No need for management. Let's do this together. That's my game plan. I help you. You help me. Together we benefit.

[Danny Brown]

I think as we see more "traditional print" media continue to suffer, more approaches like this will take place.

Perhaps the next wave of journalism will be online experiences, with the journalist in question not tied to a specific paper or publication, but fed across many?

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Brian - the idea that the person who created the page and kick started the community remains the only person with whom the community interacts is a bit outdated. As you suggest, it's the community itself that begins to interact with each other on the basis of their mutual interest that drew them together in the first place. No, the high number does not have significance, per se. Except for any platform needs to reach critical mass for the 1% who interact to start conversations. For my own fan page, the critical number was around 250 people.

@Danny - of course, the question then becomes one of sustainability. Who pays the bill? Will we see sponsors for journalists? Who would those be? Companies, governments? Private organizations?

[Ari Herzog]

I wonder what percentage of the people posting comments in response to Kristof's Facebook wall posts are the same percentage who send Twitter messages in response to tweets by Ashton Kutcher and Kim Kardashian. None of the three respond to the level their fans would like.

I'll grant you there shouldn't be a formula, but if you're posting a comment in response to someone, whoever that person is and whatever medium you're using, don't you want a response, whether by the author or another commenter?

Letters to the editor are published, read, and usually commented on in the form of subsequent letters to the editor. Why should anything online, formulas inclusive, be different?

I don't have a MO, Valeria. If anything, I ask questions. I don't challenge. What makes you think that?

[Valeria Maltoni]

It would be an interesting research. Although my hunch tells me that they are quite different kinds of people who would follow Kristof vs. Kutcher. Have you asked them? If I'm curious, I go in, join, participate, and ask.

Many people write also to put their thoughts out there. In many ways, we write first and foremost to think out loud - four our own selves.

A very small and carefully selected number of letters to the editor ever get published. The limits of print space. We can pay attention to a very small number of activities and conversations at once. The limits of brain waves in the seeming limitless online space.

Indeed, our sense of self demands being heard. However, while others can give us replies, we're the ones who hold the answers.

As for your last question - your way of posting questions is leading. Don't I want a response? It depends on whether I'm really in inquiry mode or just looking to think out loud. Communication is as fascinating and complex as humans are. Knowing what to listen for is an acquired taste.

[Ari Herzog]

If my way of asking questions is leading, you can blame my years of newspaper reporting. Old habits die hard; is it a bad thing?

[Christa Avampato]

Hi Valeria,
I just learned about your blog from Chris Brogan's post today. I love this entry and am a huge fan of both Kristof and Friedman. I never thought much about their contrasting styles before - thanks for bringing this thought to my attention.