Video: Publishers still missing an opportunity with social media

Some publishers think that social is just a distribution channel (0:14)

They distribute their content, but they might not have the resources to actually engage the users. So even though the get users to participate, they are not maybe capitalising on those relationships that they’re using. They could better use that content, and engage back, and say thank-you to a user when they are actually replying – just simple things. But it’s more about having the resources. Some of them know what they should be doing, but they don’t have the resources for that.      

Some social media channels do require specific content just for that platform (1:20)

Snapchat is a good example: there are some publishers that actually create content just for that platform. I know from experience that it’s really tough for smaller publishers that need to start building content for different channels, but I think part of that reason is how news production is organised anyway. So that they should maybe be thinking about organising in a way that they have the content, and then they have producers that actually tailor that content to other channels, instead of pushing the ready content first and then trying to distribute it. 

Social media makes it easier for publishers – and audiences – to break down national borders (2:03)

Let’s say I’m from Finland…so Finnish people can now participate on discussions and they can learn about new brands through social, instead of the old days when they were stuck with the national news sites and the ones we have in Finland. 

And more people are learning English – in Finland it’s almost considered as a second language. There are some challenges obviously – to set up the tone in multiple languages you need to be quite careful. But on the other hand if you do English content I think it’s quite universal.  

More and more, you see the older generations participating [in social] (2:55)

Obviously they are more active, the younger ones, and you can see it from your friends, kids, etc. that the younger generations are ready to video themselves and take images and selfies. But more and more you can see the older generations as well participating. 

We’ve had some cool case studies with National Broadcasting Company of Finland, where they asked people to send images from Elderly Homes, like taking care of older people, like ‘How could you fix it?’ ‘How could you make it better?’ and there was a totally different demographic sharing those images. So it’s not only for younger generations. It’s more about the topics… if you set up a different topic, which is targeted for – another age group in a way – then you might get some interesting results.

This interview was conducted by Jamie Gavin on behalf of FIPP.

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