Social Media Presence Analysis
Jeremy Wallace uses both Twitter and Facebook for work purposes. He posts on twitter multiple times a day and a few times a year on Facebook although the number of posts on Facebook seems to have gone down with each year that passes on average.
His Facebook posts recently consist of unoriginal content, published by a third party, and it seems he responded once to a person in the past two years at most on Facebook. He has 19 original posts on Facebook in the past two years and 32 from a third party source.
By comparison on Twitter he has 23 original posts in the past two days and five from a third party source. He responded four times to people on Twitter within two days for one reason or another compared to Facebook.
Mr. Wallace posts political content all around but posts a small number of personal photos on his Facebook as well. I find his posts rather engaging.
Mr. Wallace does seem to try to post other stories not written by him from time to time.
Mr. Wallace tries to engage with people who may not be subscribed to the Houston Chronicle and tries to target Houston and San Antonio readers since they make up the bulk of his followers.
He tries to use Twitter as almost a notebook. It not only saves the content but also shares with viewers and readers what is going on. He will then use what he has on Twitter in his stories a lot of the time.
He did receive social media training in 2009 about general strategies and how to use it from a political standpoint. A few years later he met with a Facebook representative as part of social media panel and talked about what strategies worked and didn’t.
He mentioned how on Twitter he is not trying to promote his own stories all the time because if you do that on Twitter or Facebook it gets lost in the noise. He tries to engage without a story attached to it or maybe the story is somewhere else so he isn’t just promoting his own stories.
He views Twitter and Facebook as a look behind the curtain and recognizes the fact he is “always on” when he uses the platforms. He is “still a journalist first and foremost” he says and so he might share some family outgoing but not too much because his audience is public.
Mr. Wallace mentions he won’t take shots at people or put opinions on his work social media platform. He asks himself would he be all right with his boss reading a post before he posts each time.
Younger journalists want to use social media like they did before they became journalists and Mr. Wallace didn’t have that issue as social media didn’t exist when he first started. He says reminding people to act like they are in the newsroom while on social media seems to help. If a person wants to have a personal social media that is fine, but don’t post opinions or things they wouldn’t do or say at work on their work social media.
Mr. Wallace finds social media to be refreshing in the fact that it allows people to engage with what journalists are doing.
He likes to go through and answer questions people may have, especially with Coronavirus going on and all. By doing this Mr. Wallace feels it will make people remember that someone at the Houston Chronicle took time to answer a question they had.
He mentions email is fine but social media allows for more responsive and immediate feedback.
While people do like to pick fights he says he tries to just move onto the next person. Some people are going to be upset no matter what he said but people looking for information he feels he can sense when they want to know something. Mr. Wallace says he likes the one-on-one interaction. He feels it’s good for him, the journalist, for the organization and for the reader because the reader gets more of their questions answered that weren’t answered in the story.
Mr. Wallace says his job has changed dramatically because of social media. Instead of a physical notebook he uses Twitter almost exclusively. He posts first on Twitter and then put it on Houston Chronicle a lot of the time to get it out into the world fast. Once a story has been published by the Houston Chronicle he will put it on the Texas Politics Facebook page and post it as many places as he can. Mr. Wallace will post a story once, or if it’s a breaking story twice with extra details, on Twitter.
Mr. Wallace tries to incorporate social media as part of a whole process of a story. He will use Twitter as a notebook, after he writes the story promote the story on social media, not to mention the fact his company will probably promote the same item. Mr. Wallace says when it comes from an individual account he feels it helps generate traffic.
As far as the future of social media and journalism working together Mr. Wallace thinks there is a lot of feeling out left to do. He thinks it’s good to remind people not everyone gets news from social media. Only about 17% of adults get to Twitter according to the Pew Research Center so Mr. Wallace says maybe 80% of the people he wants to reach aren’t on Twitter. There is Facebook but either way you fight algorithms so even with both journalists may not reach everyone they want to reach.
Mr. Wallace says it would be best for journalists to not become too overly reliant on social media. He likes the idea of using it as a tool but says it needs to be recognized the fact that most of the readers are at the newspaper website or in print edition.
He feels they need to stay true to the original pieces of journalism. He calls social media a jungle and he is right about that. Companies have to figure out how to use it to promote stories or ideas. Between social media censoring some people or not promoting their posts as much as others it does make social media a dangerous tool. Social Media is still run by humans and an extra gatekeeper. Mr. Wallace does find it disturbing and it’s good to be reminded you don’t know who can or can’t see your story. “It’s a nice tool but don’t over rely on it,” Mr. Wallace says.”
His success story was doing a live video out in a field covering the Beto O’Rourke campaign with his phone and putting it on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. It got a great response and they took off.
A congressman was harassing him on Twitter in the early days of the website and he realized that he would have to be careful with social media.
