top of page
This site was designed with the
.com
website builder. Create your website today.Start Now

1. Graphic content

 

The Global Journalist Facebook account is mainly used to promote the content published on GJ's website and to repackage old stories. Our strategy was based in creating graphic content (timelines, infographics, charts) to present old stories in a more attractive way. We scheduled all the posts using Buffer, a tool that also allowed us to measure their success and level of engagement with the audience.

 

After taking a look at the strategy followed last year, doing a SWOT analysis of GJ's previous performance on this platform and examining the Facebook pages of other newsrooms (local, regional and naional), we decided to focus on the creation of graphics content because we determined that it was the most succesful way to attract the audience and take it to the main website of Global Journalist. Just as an example, here are some analytics about the engagement by the posts according to their nature:

Among the graphic content we created for Global Journalist there were interactive timelines, a Photo of the Week initiative and several infographics that focused on different stories and were posted along with a brief introduction and the link to the piece on the website. There are many examples on the Graphics page. These posts reached considerable large audiences and were especially succesful in terms of attraction and engagement.

Another strategy that we followed on Facebook was contacting journalists and media experts from different countries in order to increase the strenght of Global Journalist as a brand and get the support of people who could be really interested in the content created by this newsroom. Most of them did not show much interest, but some of them helped to promote Global Journalist among their contacts. For example, David Kordalski, president of the Society for News Design, spoke about GJ on the Facebook group of the SND and shared the link to the website and Carmen Arroyo Nieto, a teacher assitant at George Washington University, presented the newsroom to hundreds of Communication and Journalism students. Here are the rest of the people that we contacted:

 

  • Scott Klein, assistant managing editor at ProPublica and co-founder of DocumentCloud. He's also a teacher at the New School J+D program. 

  • Jonathan Corum, a New York Times graphic designer.

  • Josemi Benítez, graphic designer for Spanish newspaper El Correo.

  • José Luis Orihuela, an Argentinian specialist in Twitter and new media with a considerable presence on Twitter.

  • Ramón Salaverría, an associate professor and researcher on digital media at University of Navarra and visiting scholar in the University of Texas at Austin (2014-2015).

  • Matts Odéen, a Swedish journalist.

  • Florencia ABD, an Argentinian journalist specialized in data visualization.

  • Andrew Losowski, former senior editor at The Huffington Post and adjunct in Journalism+Design at The New School. 

  • Alberto Cairo, journalist and professor at the University of Miami

  • Verónica Basurto, journalist that was forced to leave Mexico and go in exile due to the threats that she was receiving. She shared the link to GJ's website with some interesting organizations interested in the content published by Global Journalist, such as Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders.

  • Hugo Valdez Padilla and Pérez Arellano, both VICE reporters in Mexico.

  • Dan Archer, graphic journalist at Mizzou.

Simply Measured

We also tried to modify the language that the newsroom was using on Facebook in order to get a more familiar tone. Since we considered that the posts were in general "boring", we decided to use quotes, ask questions to the audience and write in a "direct way" to catch people's attention and take them to the main website. Here's an example:

3. Colloquial language

4. Research

Facebook Strategy

2. Professional support

IIn order to get a deeper knowledge about social media in general and how to take the maximum advantage of platforms like Facebook and Twitter, we dedicated some time every week to learn about different tools to create graphic content, strategies to reach larger audiences and increase engagement, ways to increase the success and strength of online brands and many other issues related to new media. Here are some of the links that we considered interesting and useful:

bottom of page