29 Oct 2011

Ten tips for journalists on how to get the conversation flowing

Journalists are now expected to engage with readers and to get them to ‘join the conversation’. But just how do you do that? Most of the guides I’ve found either come from a marketing perspective or from analysis of open social media, in particular Twitter.  However, having dug around a bit and spoken to some writers who do this well, in particular Toby Moores (aka @sleepydog) I’ve come up with some tips, which I'm trying out with some success with Reuters chatroom moderators. They’re just a starting point. If they don’t work for you or you’ve got better ones then please let me know.

#1 Be clear about your role
If you are reading this then you know that you or your staff are no longer purely broadcasters of content to an unseen public, nor curators of other people’s content, but also, and possibly primarily, facilitators of conversation. There are degrees of how conversational the new journalism should be. They run from comments on finished articles, in which reader contributions come after the piece has been finished, through liveblogs, in which comments and contributions from readers are key (though usually not dominant), all the way to live chatrooms, in which the content is mostly generated by others. The further along this spectrum you go the harder you’ll need to push the ideas in this note.

#2 Think about how conversations work face-to-face
Conversation is a very natural thing. It may help to think about social situations in which conversation flows. You are almost certainly already an expert in the etiquette and tactics of starting, joining and extending real-world conversations. Different analogies work for different people but try to think about all those things that you do naturally when you meet friends in the pub or at a bar, or at some sports fixture or when you host a dinner party or, more formally, what happens if you are asked to chair something like a meeting or a panel debate.

#3  Be a good listener
Sounds obvious, right? But easier said than done. The sentiment is the basis of Dale Carnegie’s 1937 best-seller ‘How to win friends and influence people’. And it comes from the observation that if you want people to open up then the best thing to do is to show some real interest in them and get them talking about what they are interested in. (A re-interpretation of Carnegie's original work for the digital age has just been published.)

The main thing to do is to keep a close eye on what people are talking about. Think about whether you could help the conversation by introducing a special guest contributor or add some content that will throw new light on the theme. If a subject is raised and you know other readers who are knowledgeable in that area then invite them into the conversation.

Think back to offline examples of conversations and what makes a great dinner party host or debate chairperson -- their seeming ability to keep things flowing by bringing in new people or shifting the subject until the conversation takes off again.

#4  Set a good example
In ‘The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online’ the new media writer, critic and teacher Howard Rheingold describes the key role of a community moderator as an exemplar or role model:

“Good hosts model the behavior they want others to emulate: read carefully and post entertainingly, informatively, and economically, acknowledge other people by name, assume good will, assert trust until convinced otherwise, add knowledge, offer help, be slow to anger, apologize when wrong, politely ask for clarification, exercise patience when your temper flares.”

Rheingold is describing a form of virtual social skills.

One of the toughest challenges in live chats is dealing with a change of tack when there is important news. When this happens think about how you would interrupt a conversation at a dinner party or perhaps during a formal conference and use some finesse to avoid showing participants any disrespect.

Part of the role is to build trust with participants -- make them feel as though their contributions will be welcomed. Be extremely careful about closing down a line of conversation to avoid the risk of embarrassment -- you know what that feels like when it happens to you.

#5 Don’t lapse into broadcast mode
If there’s too much being said by one person it’ll feel like a broadcast and participants will disengage.

Try not to overload the audience with your own broadcast messages, statements of fact or self-promotional content. If you have hard news to share then think about giving it a conversational intro or end it with a question.

Various authors have had a go at looking at the right balance between ‘broadcast’ and ‘conversational’ content on Twitter. If you put out too many messages that are broadcast then readers appear to disengage. JD Lasica, a leading light in social media and journalism in the States, proposes a 75:25 rule -- three conversational tweets for every broadcast tweet.

#6  Write as you speak not as you report
Spoken English tends to be simpler than written English. On Facebook the simpler the style of writing, the more likely readers are to respond. Use short sentences and words. Use common contractions.  You should write in the first person. Human brains are wired for conversation. That’s why we find loud, one-sided conversations on mobile phones so distracting. When people are addressed directly, even if it is via text, they think they are in a conversation and become more engaged. Kathy Sierra provides some background on the strength of this phenomenom in educational texts.

Apply the ‘pub test’. Go back over some of your previous written conversations and read your messages out loud. Is that how you would talk if you were in a conversation in a pub or a restaurant? If not you are almost certainly over-writing.

#7 Be as personal as possible.
In a chatroom, instead of opening up with ‘Good Morning everyone’ try ‘Good Morning everyone, how are you?’ Name-check people to recognise their contributions. It’s what you would do in the pub or at a dinner party and there’s nothing more powerful to encourage others to get involved. But don’t overdo the personal stuff. Social media marketing specialist Dan Zarella writes up some empirical research on language in social media in his recent book Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness. In Zarrella’s analysis of why people read blogs the overwhelming response was that the thing that kept them coming back was the author’s unique point of view not that they talked about themselves. There are some more useful tips at Public Speaker

#8  Be upbeat
Zarella found that those with the highest Twitter followings tended to have the lowest ratings for negativity. We know from numerous studies that positive emotions are contagious and that positive personality types tend to have the largest personal networks.

So accentuate the positive. When someone posts something constructive thank them for it. When summarising conversations for late-comers make sure you name-check the most positive contributors.

Think about the language you use. This one is tough but try to use positive words. For a bit of fun, If you are on Twitter then try this tool, which analyses your style based on new theories about what your word choice says about your personality (more details in this New Scientist piece.) It only takes a very limited sample of your output but may make you think harder about how you come across.

#9  Don’t be afraid to issue ‘calls to action’
Zarrella has analysed the content of the most retweeted messages on Twitter and compiled a list of the terms most likely to get you shared. Many of the top items he characterises as being ‘social requests’ including the use of the words ‘you’ and ‘please retweet’

Toby Moores suggests adopting a rule that two-thirds of your contributions should end with a question mark. There are all sorts of ways of doing this. Again think about how you behave when the conversation flags in the bar -- perhaps someone will change the subject and take it off in a completely new direction, or perhaps someone will decide they want to talk some more about an earlier topic of discussion. For chatrooms at least, the beauty of conversation is that it doesn’t have to be linear.

#10  Take extreme care over headlines and summaries
On Twitter Zarella found that the other category of messages most retweeted were those with clear indicators that they contained very useful content like ‘how to’ and ‘top 10’. You may need to adapt the style somewhat but have a look at how language is used in headlines and summaries to ‘tease’ the audience on the Huffington Post where everything is written with the aim of promoting conversation.

Think hard about how you write summaries of earlier conversations. Write them as if you were telling someone who was late to the football game what had happened -- short, sharp and with the key bits of colour. Pull out the ‘talking point’ from the content. Develop a sense of what kind of headlines will lure people in. Discover your inner Huffington Post sub-editor.