Mandy Jenkins, Social Media Editor of TBD.com, visited our class on Feb. 10, to discuss the importance of social media networks in one’s professional and personal life.
Jenkin’s advices:
- Build a blog to reach a lot of people.
- You should do personal work to get yourself hired.
- Interact and connect with others – get your name out there!
About TBD.com:
- Local news Web site for D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland
- Covers local (ex: Metro) and hyper-local news (ex: neighborhoods)
- Likes to cover big or small stories that affect people’s day-to-day lives.
- A team of 15 reporters and 200+ bloggers
- Work with freelancers
The Role of a Social Media Editor:
- 90% of time is spent listening, researching, digging into information that is available – particularly through Twitter
- Tweets help reporters get a jump start on what to write about
- 10% of time spent sending news to CNN, Huffington Post, etc. to get attention
TBD’s bloggers:
- Found based on their credibility
- TBD links directly to blogger’s post
- TBD not responsible for what is posted by bloggers
Helpful Websites:
- HootSuite or TweetDeck – builds Twitter lists
- Twellow – lists Twitters by popularity
- Trendsmap – shows what people are talking about in different areas of the country
- Storify – builds a story that pulls in other people’s Tweets, photos from Flickr and videos from YouTube
- Xtranormal – aids in creating animation
