How Investigative Journalism Is Prospering in the Age of Social Media

In a society that is more connected than ever, investigative journalists that were once shrouded in mystery are now taking advantage of their online community relationships to help scour documents and uncover potential wrongs. The tools and information now available to journalists are making the jobs of investigative outlets more efficient.

The socialization of the web is revolutionizing the traditional story format. Investigative reporters are now capturing content shared in the social space to enrich their stories, enabling tomorrow’s reporters to create contextualized social story streams that reference not only interviewed sources, but embedded tweets, Facebook postings and more. Journalists are also leveraging the vast reach of social networks in unprecedented ways. In many respects, social media is enabling watchdog journalism to prosper. Here’s how.

Distributed Reporting

On the social web, investigative journalists are tapping citizens to take part in the process by scouring documents and doing shoe-leather reporting in the community. This is advantageous because readers often know more than journalists do about a given subject, said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University.

“That was always the case, but with the tools that we have today, that knowledge can start flowing in at relatively low cost and with relatively few headaches,” Rosen said. Rosen admits that we are just starting to learn how to do this effectively, but there are certainly some great experiments being done.

Talking Points Memo Muckraker had success with this approach by having its readers help sort through thousands of documents pertaining to the investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice’s controversial firing of seven United States attorneys in 2006. TPM provided clear instructions to its readers to cite specific documents that included something interesting or “damning.”

Even though they had hundreds of readers contribute in the comments, it’s important to remember the often invisible factors that contribute to that success. The site’s readers had a shared background knowledge because they had been following the story as Josh Marshall and his team developed it over months of reporting. They were also motivated to show that the attorney general had done something wrong, Rosen pointed out.

A similar example on a grander scale is that of The Guardian deploying its community to help dig through 458,832 members of parliament (MP’s) expense documents. They’ve already examined roughly half of those, thanks to the 27,270 people who participated. The Guardian rewarded community participants by creating a leader board based on the quantity and quality of their contributions and also highlighting some of the great finds by its members.

TBD.com has been able to leverage its community during breaking news stories on several occasions, including using Twitter and Foursquare to get eyewitness info during the Discovery hostage situation. But the site has also taken advantage of social tools and mapping to investigate ongoing issues with the Metro. The site integrated Crowdmap, enabling the community to submit issues through a form, sending an e-mail or tweeting with the #tbdwmata hashtag. Mandy Jenkins, social media editor at TBD, said it has been an ongoing topic of the site’s reporting.

A Networked Newsroom

What if newsrooms were open to the public, where sources could drop in to give tips to reporters who are digging for a story? Social media opens it up virtually, and by building a networked community of sources on the social web, investigative journalists can get story leads they otherwise wouldn’t have, and are able to report stories more quickly.

Robert Hernandez, an assistant professor at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, said if journalists connect with their communities through the social web and encourage and engage in a dialogue, they’ll be more likely to get tips for stories that are worth investigating. But it’s all about the relationship.

“Social media has amplified our reach and network to increase the size of the of the crowd,” Hernandez said. “Investigative reporters need to be committed to social media to build that brand, so that one day, the investment pays off.”

Monitoring the Conversation and Sources

Though many people often joke about stalking their friends on Facebook to learn about new developments in their lives, journalists can take advantage of social search and monitoring tools to find relevant information and, in some cases, even keep up with officials’ activity. Meghann Farnsworth, the distribution and online community manager for the Center for Investigative Reporting and California Watch said its reporters use Twitter to monitor government agencies, noting themes they may be emphasizing or subtle changes in policies that in reality may have a larger impact on the public.

But perhaps the biggest challenge for many investigative journalists is opening up to the community in the first place. “Most investigative reporters are freaked out about sharing publicly what they are working on. They are convinced that the guy from the street will steal their story.” Rosen said. “But if you can’t tell people what you are working on, you cannot do any distributed reporting.”

There’s a big difference between an audience and a community. Norris probably wouldn’t have been able to convince a detached “audience” to go out and do some reporting, but because she had built a community, she was able to get them on board. It’s not just about the tools journalists use, but the community they have already established and whether that community is a genuine one or just a crowd, said Rosen. Is the relationship you have with the community strong enough that community members are willing to participate with information, advice, feedback?

Community-Sourced Mapping

“If I see a tweet come in, either directly to us or on a random keyword search, I can dig in and try lots of combinations to find more witnesses and more info,” Jenkins said. She also uses Facebook status searches at Openbook or Open Facebook to monitor news or dig for information. “If reporters aren’t currently tapping into these two search types, they’re missing out,” she said.

There are many enterprise tools for monitoring conversations taking place on social media, such as Radian6 or Spredfast. But the web also offers many free and simple tools for easy social searching. Jenkins said many of TBD’s staff members monitor the social web every day to follow up on questions or happenings around town.

At The Washington Post, reporters are constantly on the look out for sources on social media or examples to use in their stories, said Mark Luckie, the national innovations editor. He said social tools make it much easier to connect to the community or get readers’ input for a story.

“The collective wisdom on social media is far beyond the knowledge of the individual reporter or even the collective newsroom,” Luckie said.

Established social networks are great for finding sources and connecting dots more easily, “but journalists shouldn’t wed themselves to a particular tool simply because it’s popular at a given time,” Farnsworth said. Perhaps the greater understanding comes from recognizing and reacting to the fact that the entire web is becoming social.

Keeping an Eye on New Tools

Tools with potential are cropping up all the time. For instance, Farnsworth said she’s keeping a watch on the Appleseed Project, Diaspora and Storify to see what storytelling opportunities might arise there.

Storify is a curation tool in beta and invite-only that has generated buzz among journalists in the industry for enabling content producers to easily curate social content with context into an embeddable stream. So, what better way to tell Storify’s story than by using the tool itself? Read more at mashable.com

If Not Email, What IS Facebook Offering?

First a quick look at the product Facebook just unveiled. It’s a revamped messaging system that involves three key points: seamless messaging, conversation history and a “social inbox.” Every Facebook user will receive an @facebook.com email address according to their user name (which is also their Facebook URL). Users will be able to email off-site, receive emails from other systems, interact on-the-go with SMS and mobile Web apps, and all of this will take place in Facebook messages. From the Facebook blog post:

To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.

What Does It All Mean?

To get a little insight on Facebook’s announcement, we got in touch with Jared Goralnick, founder of AwayFind, and Joshua Baer, founder and CEO of OtherInbox, and asked them what they thought the big takeaways from today were. What we have, they seemed to independently agree, is a feature that will be sticky among the younger, Facebook generation and will decidedly change the way we communicate.

“This will blur the lines between email and SMS and chat,” said Baer. “It’s a much bigger step than when Gmail introduced chat history but still aligned with the same concept.”

While Facebook has been getting a bit sentimental, as of late, with its feature additions (“Friendship pages“, anyone?) the ease of moving between one system, one device, and another may prove to be the ultimate advantage when dealing with Facebook’s new system. As your situation changes and you move from computer to mobile Web, from mobile Web to SMS only, your Facebook conversation can follow you. When you finally make it back to your home computer, you can see it all in one place – this is the big takeaway.

Goralnick said that it might be the system’s simplicity that really helps it take off and make Facebook’s messaging product “significantly stickier”.

“I believe there’s a generation of people,” said Goralnick,” who will use this in place of Gmail or Yahoo, for simplicity sake.”

It All Comes Down to Trust

As with most discussions of Facebook these days, it all returns to privacy concerns and whether or not we trust the site with more and more of our information. During the announcement, alarm bells went off when one member of the audience asked if Facebook would be capturing information about non-Facebook users. “Yes,” answered Zuckerberg, “in some way we do that.”

While Goralnick feels that Facebook can attract a lot of activity if properly designed, he says the privacy could be a sticking point… and then again it might not.

On that point, we’ll have to see what happens next. Unlike other recent social media failures, this is an integral part of Facebook’s system, so it won’t be whether or not Facebook users use the system, but how they use it.

It’s Up to the Users

“We will need to be confident that FB has our best interests in mind, and that’s where the whole privacy discussion enters. Do I want to have my most personal communications through Facebook?” he asked. “But the next generation has already made clear that they do use Facebook for nearly everything.”

“We’ve had so many flame-outs recently from Google (Buzz, Wave) that its hard not to be skeptical,” said Baer, “but I’m bought into the vision.” Read more at www.nytimes.com

B2B marketers are increasingly using social media to connect with their customers, but oftentimes they are not using those tools effectively. One report found that only 32% of B2B companies engage with their customers on a daily basis via social media. Another discovered that 46% of B2B marketers thought social media was irrelevant. And another found that 60% of B2B firms have no staff dedicated to social media and just 10% of B2B firms use outside agencies or consultants. While the vast majority (86%) of B2B companies use social media for marketing, it’s clear there’s considerable room for improvement.

Increased online investment is one sign of change. Forrester Research is betting that interactive spending will double from 2009 to 2014 to total $54 million. While it’s not clear how much of that money will go into social media, the report was bullish on the new tools provided they’re used correctly. “Social marketing is great for building more intimate relationships with your clients and prospects,” wrote Forrester’s Michael Greene. “But many marketers are diving into social marketing without a coherent social marketing strategy.”

Chris Chariton, vice president of marketing services and product management for GlobalSpec, couldn’t agree more. “Trying to make use of all of the available social media tools can be overwhelming to industrial companies [GlobalSpec’s specialty], especially if you are faced with limited resources,” said Chariton. “So we recommend that you approach social media with a vision and defined goals. Don’t look at social media as a stand-alone marketing tool. It is just one tool in your online marketing toolkit, so whatever steps a company takes in social media, they must be taken hand-in-hand with other marketing efforts. Social media goals should support overall marketing goals.”

Senior Account Executive Deanna Ferrari of WordWrite Communications suggests first learning how and if an intended audience is using social media. “I always recommend doing targeted searches to see where your customers are. Perhaps they just read blogs — so start your own blog and comment on others, leading prospects back,” said Ferrari. “It may be harder to find the right audience, but once you do, you can create a channel so that prospects and customers can interact and engage with you, learn your product or service, and hopefully become a lead or a sale.” Read more at mashable.com

HOW TO: Get the Most From a Small Business Social Media Presence

Today’s reality is that your business needs to be on social media, but the mere existence of your business on sites like Facebook () and Twitter () doesn’t guarantee a single sale, or even a single referral. In order for businesses to succeed in the social media space, they need to be properly educated on what works and what doesn’t. More importantly, business owners need to have realistic goals about what they’ll get out of social media.

When the right tools are used effectively with the right motives in mind, social media can have a huge impact on small business marketing and customer service efforts. You just have to understand how to properly determine and assess the return on investment you’re looking for.

I asked a panel of successful Gen Y entrepreneurs how small businesses can go about getting the most out of their social media marketing and how they can convert more of their existing social media followers into paying customers. Here are their responses.

1. Experiment With Social Networks

“Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t be used as marketing platforms, but rather one-to-one direct communications mediums with customers, potential customers, journalists, and other stakeholders. As the population of Twitter increases, and people start following thousands of other people, your message gets lost. Facebook’s news feed algorithm stops marketers from using their Fan Page as a loudspeaker because fans that aren’t engaged won’t see their content anyway.”

2. Quality, Not Quantity

“Social media is first and foremost about building relationships. It takes time and consistent effort to see any meaningful results, but the time and effort you spend are worth it in the long run – if you do it right. While it’s great to have a large following on Twitter and Facebook, the value of your followers list is all about quality, not quantity. Think of it like this: if you had an ice cream shop and a thousand people a day walked through the door, but 950 of those were lactose intolerant, your high foot traffic wouldn’t be making you much money. To convert your social media followers into paying customers, remember ‘WIIFM’ (What’s In It For ME). In other words, you have to give your followers a reason to want to do business with you, and that reason has to be a benefit to them. Contests are one great way to engage followers, and if you tie them in with your business and give [a prize] that means something to your target audience, you can see results fairly quickly.”

3. Lead Your Followers Down the Purchasing Path

“Don’t be afraid to ask for the sale once you’ve developed trust and a relationship with a prospective customer. Use your Facebook Fan Page and Twitter account to ask people to take the next step, whether it’s calling you up for a quote or proposal, downloading a whitepaper, or signing up for a trial account. Repeat your call to action regularly, with lots of useful content, information and trust building in between your requests.”

4. Engagement = Consumers

“If I could talk to you right now, I’d ask, ‘What exactly are you selling?’ While the principles remain the same, social media is best leveraged by tweaking it slightly to suit the industry. There is also a misconception that social media leads to customers. It doesn’t. Social media is a great way to engage with your audience and turn them into consumers. Think about it this way – you have to attract and then convert. Social media is helping you attract the audience and build your community. But, there are two types of conversions. The first is the more common one where someone becomes your consumer. They sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your blog, or just plain ‘Like’ your Facebook Fan Page. They’ve taken the first step! Over time, the right ones becomes paying customers. This is the second type of conversion — the paying customer. Use social media to attract consumers, and then turn them into customers over time. Remember, social media is an important but small part of overall online marketing.”

5. Use Social Media to Make Friends, Not Leads

“Next time someone friends you or replies to you, don’t just say ‘thanks for following,’ or worse, don’t just count them as just another number or dollar sign. Take two minutes and actually look at who this real person is on the other side of the computer and ask how you can help them in an authentic way. Provide them value and become a trusted friend and this relationship building will convert into sales and evangelism for your company.”

6. Give Them Something To Talk About

“The key to converting followers to customers is offering them something that they need, or identifying a pain that they are having that you can solve. You’ve done the hard part by finding followers and fans. Once you have followers and fans, it’s just a matter of finding out what value you can provide to them. If they are unwilling to buy from you then it means they are either not truly fans or followers (just happened to accept your request), or that you have not uncovered their pain points to provide a solution. An example with our company is that we had tons of fans and followers of our brand, but not everyone needed junk removal. So we surveyed them to find out what services we could provide to them and learned that moving was one that they needed more often.”

7. Numbers Aren’t Everything

“To gain paying customers you’ll need to focus on attracting the right followers, and not just on attracting the most. Communicate often with useful information to increase your value, and focus on pitching your product in a genuine way. Make sure you have a professional web presence, and with any luck, you should start noticing your efforts pay off.”

8. Monetize Other Channels

“The hype around social media doesn’t necessarily translate into sales — in fact, it rarely does. Unfortunately, few people will tell you this because they’re busy hyping the next big thing. For example, I get more than a thousand times the financial ROI from my boring old e-mail list than from my Twitter followers. Now, if your goal is engagement or long-term bonding, social media can be a good play. But if your goal is direct revenue, I would focus on other channels that you can track and measure, such as online advertising and e-mail marketing.”

9. Show Followers What They’re Missing

“You have to show them what they are missing out on and how your business can be helpful and provide a sense of enjoyment to them as well. Truly engage with them, get to know them, show them your personality and make them want to be a part of what you’re doing. Show them why they can’t live without you and be creative with it.”

10. Remember “Top-Of-Mind-Awareness”

“I would recommend giving limited-time, special opportunities that have a strong call to action to your social media community rather than just simply pointing them to your website. Another way we’ve gotten a return on our social media [channels] is posting video testimonials that our clients give us for our fan and personal pages. This builds credibility in prospects’ minds by showing that we’re busy and that we do good work. It also keeps us in top-of-mind awareness. We’ve had prospects call us often and mention that they just saw a post and thought of us.”

11. Go Freemium to Build Premium

“Building up fans and followers isn’t enough — you need to engage with them in substantial ways and introduce them to your product in a way that gets them wanting more. As a thought exercise, you might want to ask yourself what aspect of your product you can offer to your social media community for free. If you provide real value, for free, then show them ways they can spend just a little bit of money to get an exponential boost in value — the next tier of your product offering — you may start seeing greater conversions (and return on the initial investment it took to build that community in the first place).”

12. Foster Genuine Interactions

“First, you may want to rethink how you are viewing social media. If you’re looking for an immediate pop in revenue, you’re likely to give up quickly on social media and completely miss the larger opportunity it provides. Of course the broader goal of all marketing is to generate sales; however, if you show up on Facebook and Twitter simply to promote your product or service it is likely you’ll be ignored. Social media is about genuine interaction and building relationships. By fostering relationships, social media becomes an incredibly powerful tool. Provide interesting content that will generate buzz, provide helpful hints and unique discounts that are only available on Facebook or Twitter. Customers will appreciate the ability to participate in a dialogue directly with your brand and these interactions will show up on customers’ news feeds. The resulting brand exposure and word-of-mouth will ultimately pay dividends in the form of new customers.” Read more at mashable.com