The Facebook Project: Q&A

How effective overall do you think the tips you learned from participating in the project were?

Based on the increase in likes and comments we received, I’d say it was pretty effective. Posting consistently, using a conversational voice, really increased the interaction on our page. It takes some coordination and effort, but with our web traffic increasingly coming via Facebook, we can’t afford not having a firm presence there.

What was the most important lesson you learned?

How much using a social media dashboard helped my staff stick to the schedule. We used HootSuite – which lets you time your Facebook posts in advance. On their slow day, reporters and editors could plan out their posts, and do them in advance – so when they were crushing under deadlines or out on vacation, they didn’t have to worry about posting. Using HootSuite really made this seemingly daunting posting schedule totally doable. I highly, highly recommend it for anyone who’s planning on rolling this out in their newsroom.

What was the most surprising thing you learned?

I can’t always predict what’s going to be popular. People love breaking news and commenting on posts about child predators – sure. But a generic post using GateHouse wire content at 4 p.m. Sunday about fuel efficiency? We posted that to satisfy the weekly automotive post, and it was a hit. The “most viewed story” posts rarely got comments, but it did seem to generate some traffic back to our site that we might have missed otherwise.

Did you continue to follow the posting guidelines once the project was over?

For the most part, yes. We altered a few posts to suit what was popular with our readers. For example, we switched out a post on Tuesday to highlight some upcoming sports coverage, as well as making room for some Daily Deal posts from advertising. We found that consistent posting helped with interaction, so we’re sticking to the schedule.

What, if anything, did you do differently from the recommendations?

Really, the only thing we did differently was switching out a post or two. The recommended schedule is a great starting point, and I think sticking to it strictly for a month or so really helped us determine the posts that worked and the ones we could afford to change. If I were to implement this in a new newsroom, I’d stick with the recommendations as they are, until I could get a feel for what our followers wanted more of or less of.