Hat Tip to ATC/Theo this week for a very nice use of the Quote Tool. (See attached.) Short, to the point, and made people want to find out what the word actually meant. Nice job!
Another hat tip to Graham Smith, for launching nprplays.tumblr.com — NPR’s new gaming spot on the web. The site launched with a hilarious video featuring Nina Totenberg unboxing a PS4. Well done to Graham, Steve, Becky Harlan, Serri Grasile, Meredith Rizzo, Nina, Issac, Elise Hu, and Jim Wildman for coming up with a ridiculously good idea and executing it nicely online and on air . If you haven’t seen it, check it out.
(And if you’ve done something on social you want to share (and you should) with a wider audience….please write to us.)
Facebook Metrics: We tried something a little different on the NPR Facebook (which passed 3 million likers this week.) Each night, we scheduled a piece from our archives to post sometime between midnight and 6am. And turns out, these evergreen pieces do really well. I think it’s partially based on how the teaser paragraphs were written: They were short, personable, and let people know why to listen:
https://www.facebook.com/NPR/posts/10152117038691756
https://www.facebook.com/NPR/posts/10152114489806756
I would like to continue doing this. If you have a piece that is evergreen and you would like to promote it again, please let us know and we can schedule it for the overnight (when we don’t have continuous new content.)
Another piece to note: https://www.facebook.com/NPR/posts/10152122633346756 did amazingly well. The tease was simple: “This is just lovely.” Why did it do well? As Wright said, the tease was human. I think it’s good to “write human” as much as possible.
Listservs: I’ve been subscribing to a series of daily digest listservs, which essentially present nuggets of news in an emailed, easily digestible way. It’s worth subscribing to a few of these. Why? They have thousands — and in some cases — hundreds of thousands of subscribers who are getting some of their daily news through email. And the way they’re written is really engaging, really intimate, and very public radio friendly. Here are four to try:
Now I Know — Dan Lewis is the social media director at Sesame Street. Every day he picks one fact to highlight in an daily email. Here are his archives. I particularly like the way he integrates his older content into each new post.
The Next Draft — (recommended by Wright) A daily digest of news from a guy named Dave Pell, who calls himself the managing editor of the Internet. He often highlights our coverage. I especially like the way he uses numbers to essentially create a listicle of news you need to know. He also often highlights stories using quotes.
The Weekly Ann Friedman — Ann Friedman is a freelance writer who writes a weekly email highlighting her own work, the work of people she finds interesting, and other tidbits of knowledge. I LOVE the way she writes these. If you are a writer here and want to promote your own content, please look at this. She’s self-promoting in a way that is conversational and non-threatening — and feels like not self-promoting. I think there’s a lot for us to learn from this.
The Skimm — (recommended by Claire) Geared towards younger women. They have a rabid audience of followers, some of whom only get their news from The Skimm. In their words, "theSkimm is the daily e-mail newsletter that gives you everything you need to start your day. We do the reading for you - across subject lines and party lines - and break it down with fresh editorial content.”
We have newsletters. We also do news roundups on the blogs. I think there are takeaways we can learn from these newsletters — or even see what they deem as “important” to their audiences.
Medium: Medium is a startup from the creators of Twitter and Blogger. It is one of these sites that I think we need to keep our eye on (and perhaps get more heavily involved with.) Couple of reasons:
1. They show how long it takes to read one of their posts. Slate is doing this too. We have the ability to see how long it takes to read our posts in Newsflex.
2. Major writers are now writing for them. As Kate pointed out earlier this week, Mother Jones is putting stuff up there, as is Jezebel.
3. Maryn McKenna wrote a 19 minute piece this week on Medium that I could easily imagine on Wired or Shots or The New York Times. It’s a lovely piece and displayed beautifully.
4. Want to know more? Here are their Editor’s Picks for must reads. Here’s Nieman Lab’s assessment of what they are. Have an idea that might work on there? Come talk to us.
Today in 1963: Lastly, please follow @todayin1963 today if you aren’t doing so. Tomorrow is the anniversary of JFK’s death, and Kat/team are planning a spectacular tweet-a-thon in real time. Please RT and hype from your personal accounts. We can own this space on the Internet tomorrow — and should, because Kat’s been doing an amazing job on this account. Please help her and Code Switch out today and give @todayin1963 some love.
Want info on something? Have a site/tip/advice for the group? Send it along.
