How to create the contents that journalists really like

Social media is changing the way how news is created and consumed, as well as how journalists approach their crafts. It is thus important to develop shareable and informative news stories to adjust in the digital platforms.

 To address this dynamic, NewsWhip, Edelman and Muck Rack ran a survey in order to study US social news. The study analyzed the 50 most-shared articles from 6 hot topics and surveyed more than 250 working journalists. Below are the results:

• Journalists are leveraging five ingredients to craft shareable stories: imagery, localization, trending-topics, human voice, and brevity.
• 76% of journalists feel more pressure to think about their story’s potential to get shared on social platforms.
• 74% of journalists prefer originally created videos. However, 13% would choose consumer generated or third-party videos and only 3% are using branded videos.
• Journalists see five key trends: more digital and mobile, quicker turnaround, more (original) video, smaller and more focused stuff, and rising social influence.

 Additionally, the study revealed which networks influence the news we read and which publishers are successfully adapting to this social sharing world.

• Facebook dominates social platform interactions.
• Non-legacy media publishers such as The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Mashable, and PlayBuzz make up the majority of the most-engaged sites on Facebook.
• The HuffingtonPost featured more video than other news sites.
• BBC, New York Times, and Mashable posted the most amount of shares on Twitter, while Forbes, New York Times, and Business Insider posted the most amount of shares on LinkedIn.

 Social media enables publishers, companies, and journalists to directly engage audiences. However, sharing behaviors is impacting how news is produced, and even which stories are selected for production and prominent distribution. It is a new complex web of intermediaries between media and audiences.

 In the future, communicators will need to develop systematic thinking and a more connected way to linking up all media strategies to make sure they get heard. They have to discover shareable story angles, deepen media relationships, and help journalists create original video content.

(Lorenzo Marcellino and Eileen Lin contributed to this article)