Canada’s National Post takes an organic approach to its social media efforts, starting small and responding to audience needs as the initiatives grow, reports Lauren Dugan.
Dugan interviewed Chris Boutet, a senior producer for digital media at the Post, who said the staffers’ interest in social media has given rise to the paper’s use of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare:
“A group of us was using Foursquare last spring — checking in was fun, and we got into creating venues and playing around with it. A co-worker of mine even created my ‘soul’ as a check-in … and he’s they mayor of it today.
One day just sitting at the cafe patio talking about Foursquare, we began discussing how we could apply it to the product we create at the Post. Could it be useful as a news delivery tool?”
The Post now has an active community of 22,000 followers on Foursquare. The paper’s overall social strategy seems to fit the medium and the audience that it’s targeting. As Boutet says, social media is “constantly evolving,” and media companies can only keep up by listening to, and talking with, their readers.
