E-Media Tidbits

One day, as Jordan Glover (a 31-year-old server analyst, aka madjordan on Twitter) walked to Chicago's Daley Center Plaza to eat lunch, he noticed more people outside than usual. He also overheard some excited chatter from four women about their "lives being in danger."

Not knowing what was happening, he called his coworker Jeff Smith (aka bobbidigital on Twitter) to see if there was more news. With no information available from any local news venue, they turned to their Twitter friends.

twitter.com/BobbiDigital Initial reports of eyewitness accounts...

twitter.com/BobbiDigital

Word of the event spread almost instantaneously. Eventually, another local Twitter user, John Skach, contacted Colonel Tribune:

twitter.com/skach Once people started tweeting, Colonel Tribun e was brought in the loop.

Colonel Tribune is the Chicago Tribune's online "persona" -- a representation of ChicagoTribune.com in the social media world. This character (a "close friend" of mine) regularly interacts with nearly 800 Twitter followers. Colonel Tribune sends news, responds to random "tweets," (Twitter posts), and host events and Twitter meet-ups ("tweet-ups").

An article in yesterday's Huffington Post explains our paper's social media strategy in greater depth.

More importantly, The Colonel is about branding. He keeps the Chicago Tribune in people's minds. When news happens, Twitter users know to look to the Colonel to learn what's going on. And if the Colonel doesn't know, he'll find out soon.

...Back to the story: The Colonel alerted the Tribune's Metro desk of the tip. About 20 minutes later, we had a story:

twitter.com/ColonelTribune The Colonel let Twitter know about Tribune breaking news coverage

A conversation sprouted immediately. People "re-tweeted" our story and link, bringing it to a larger audience:

twitter.com/zoblue

twitter.com/BobbiDigital

 

In a little while, the story hit a critical mass, receiving several thousand page views in only a couple of hours.

ChicagoTribune.com Twitter traffic helped drive this breaking story up in the site's traffic rankings

The Colonel then did what any proper gentleman would do: He thanked Jeff:

twitter.com/ColonelTribune

This resulted in a private acknowledgement from John Skach, sent via direct message to the Colonel: "Dunno if @bobbidigital got a hold of you directly or if you pieced it together, but appreciate that you gave him proper attribution!"

Bottom line: There's no longer any doubt about whether media organizations should participate in social media. But when you do, be sure to thank and credit your readers and followers when they help you out.

Guest contributor Daniel Honigman is social media coordinator/strategy for the Chicago Tribune.