A little over a week ago, I started making changes to the main twitter account of the Ventura County Star (@vcstar).  

The big change was that I took out all automation (the account was being populated by a "breaking" news feed that can now be found here: @vcsbreaking)... and made sure that each tweet was handcrafted. 

The "big" lesson I learned:

• The VC Star has too much content for one twitter account.   I quickly found that some of the more obscure articles were being shared and retweeted (and I love retweets!) but it rarely makes sense to publish "niche" articles to the main @vcstar account because I know that they could only appeal to a small portion of the accounts followers.

The result is that I created a variety of new accounts so that I could have a place to tweet just about every "original" article that comes out of the VC Star from journalists and bloggers:

• @VCSCrime
• @VCSPolitics 
• @TimeOutVCS
• @VCSCommunity 
• @VCSEdu
• @VCSPreps 
• @VCSEats
• @VCSBiz
• @VCSFire  

And the traffic results were quite impressive.   A screenshot I took yesterday from supr (which tracks clicks from links I'm posting to twitter) shows that the clicks on links that I've been posting have gone from a few hundred a day to over a thousand a day (and still growing pretty impressively).

However, more interesting, there has been a noticeable increase among VC Star staff in using Twitter.  While I've made almost all the updates to all the accounts over the past two weeks or so (How I managed this without spending all day every day in front of a computer is worthy of a follow up post!), word is spreading about the power of twitter to not only publish ideas, but to crowdsource them.  And I'm most excited that I've had more than a few journalists reach out to me to ask how they can get involved with using Twitter more effectively. 

I'm confident that as the journalists get more involved, you're gonna see higher quality tweets, richer engagement, and better outreach to the VC community.

Probably the only lesson I've learned that has a negative slant is that I now think I've created one too many accounts.  When I created the @vcsedu account, I hadn't realized just how much overlap there was between "education" and "community" articles.   For almost every article with an educational slant, I'm conflicted because I also want to publish it in the community section.  At least in the near term, I'm going to abandon the @vcsedu account.

So far, it's been a wild ride over the past two weeks or so where I feel like I've learned a ton about what works (and what doesn't) when tweeting as a newspaper, and I can't wait to see what great things happens as we get more journalists involved!

With regard to many of the things I'm doing with Twitter at the VC Star, I'm not sure where my original ideas start and where I was inspired by a great conversation I had last with Andrew Nystrom of the LA Times and Keven Sablan of the OC Register at the Redwood Bar.  Hopefully, they see my actions at the VC Star along the lines of "imitation is the sincerest of flattery" or as my friend Downtown Scotty Brown says Amateurs retweet, professionals steal.

Finally, if you see the VC Star screwing something up on Twitter (or simply missing the boat on an opportunity), don't hesitate to let me know!

And since you made it this far, you might also find these resources interesting:

• Background on the VC Star's Social Media project
  
• A Twitter Cheatsheet
• A Social Media Marketing Strategy
  

Yesterday I spent some time some members of the VC Star team where we talked about ways we could improve the VC Star's main twitter account (@vcstar).

Here is what I didn't like about the way the twitter account was being used:

• It's almost entirely "breaking" news which tends to be focused on negative news (fires, shootings, court cases, stabbings, etc) and doesn't highlight the wide breadth of content that gets published by the VC Star every day
• Almost all of the content is automated from an RSS feed so sentences get cut off and the "teaser" text is rarely compelling
• It's pretty obvious no one is manning the ship (thanks to the automated feed and the lack of following back), which really cuts down on how much people can engage (i.e. replies and retweets) with the VC Star on Twitter
  

After a great discussion, here are the changes we decided to make: 

• We're going to create a new twitter account for breaking news (@vcsbreaking) for people who want to continue to get this automated feed on twitter!
• The updates to the main twitter account (@vcstar) will now include a mixture of breaking news and general interest stories similar to what we've been doing with the VC Star FB page
  

Obviously, if you like the breaking news feed, then by all means, please subscribe to @vcsbreaking where we'll continue to give you that same great feed!  

And since you made it this far, you might be interested in some of the social media theory behind the changes as well as an overview of the social media project I'm working on with the VC Star.

What do you think of these changes?  Is there something else you'd like to see us do on Twitter? Facebook? 

While the title is a bit outlandish, Vadim Lavrusik wrote a great summary article about the 12 things Newspapers Should Do to Survive.   Much of his advice, such as publishing on multiple platforms and going niche, is right on target (and almost exactly what I've stated I'm trying to accomplish with our social media strategy at the VC Star).  

About the only thing missing was an overall framework that ties everything together... I'd like to think I've been working on such a framework and have presented it to multiple audiences (including on a radio show, a webinar and a conference presentation), but have never written about it, so here goes.

FOF Marketing Defined

I call the overall framework FOF Marketing... FOF standing for friend-of-friend, friend-of-fan or friend-of-follower.

The idea behind FOF Marketing is to put your online marketing focus on creating content that will be shared by the friends/fans/followers of your business with their friends/fans/followers.  

If you're creating content and using tools that's focused on reaching your existing base, then you're likely creating dead-end content that's not helping your overall social media efforts.  Instead of creating content that's meant to be "consumed", we really need to be thinking of creating content that's worth sharing... and then using the tools and technologies that make sharing your content easy.

FOF Marketing = Relevance

The main reason to be interested in FOF marketing is that it puts your online focus exactly where it should be... On attracting an extremely relevant audience.  

Traditionally, the way to attract relevant traffic to your website was to improve how your site ranked in Google because Google's search algorithms is well tuned to send targeted traffic.  However, the one audience that's often more relevant than Google's search engine are the existing friends and fans of your business.   In other words, do you want to find people who are likely to be interested in local ventura county sports, then your best bet is to reach out to the friends of people who actively engage in Ventura County sports...

FOF Marketing in Practice 

As someone who loves to market businesses online, I've become enamored with the Facebook platform because they make good FOF marketing so easy.  If you write a status update (could be text, a link, a video, a photo, etc.) and someone leaves a comment, or "likes" your update, then that information gets sent to their profile and is likely to be shared with their friends. In addition, if you're running a Facebook business page, and someone engages with on your business page, then Facebook will often help spread the word to their friends by recommending your page to their friends.   This is the classic FOF Marketing in that people are sharing things with their friends/fans/followers by simply engaging with your content.

Interestingly, retweeting within Twitter can be a form of FOF Marketing in that it can really help you spread your content to the friends-of-followers (again, a ridiculously relevant audience for most businesses including newspapers!).  The fact that retweeting is such a widely-used aspect of twitter makes it an extremely effective way to generate interest in your content should you be so lucky as to write updates that others find worth sharing with their followers!

I've been thinking about the concept of FOF Marketing for quite a while, but one of things that prompted me to create this post was the news today that the Huffington Post showed they get the power of FOF Marketing by creating a deep integration with the Facebook Platform.  Now, whenever you read or comment on an article on the Huffington Post, you can have that information shared with all your friends on Facebook!  It's fascinating news and I think a demonstration of the type of integration we'll continue to see between social media sites and news sites into the future.

Where to start?  

A little while ago I was put in the enviable position of working with the executive team at the VC Star to develop and implement an online social media strategy for the Ventura County Star.     I love thinking through online marketing strategies and couldn't imagine a more timely and interesting project.  

The social media strategy

From my perspective, the real focus of a social media strategy for the VC Star needs to use online tools to build and strengthen community relationships.  With that in mind, the three part strategy I've designed includes:

• Build out Community Hubs. On "niche" topics like local politics, local sports, local business, etc, I want to make sure that the VC Star has a thriving online community of people who love engaging with these issues.  It's well worth noting that the VC Star has already started down this path with sites like 805mom, Eldercare, and VC Pets, as well as more than a few sports and political bloggers, but I'm hoping we can push this to the next level by building out additional tools that will allow for community experts to engage in a meaningful way on the VC Star website.   
• Engage on Social Networks. With a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, and a YouTube channel, the VC Star team has already started reaching out to some of the most active communities on the internet.   Going forward, I not only want to continue these efforts, but I want to get even more relevant to the VC Star community by focusing on niches like our new VCS Preps and TimeOut VCS Facebook Pages. 
  
• Educate through Meetups. One of my favorite parts of social media is how it can create blogs that extend from the online world into real world situations.  For most businesses, getting people to connect with your business online is the first step to turning them into customers, advocates and potentially, even friends.   I'm hoping to host or facilitate regular meetups at coffeeshops, restaurants, bars (and maybe even kitchens!) to help people in Ventura County connect. .  

While I talk about building out "hubs", I'm definitely hoping this blog, socially wired, can become a social media hub where I will host a conversation around what the VC Star is doing as a way to help you understand how you can better market your business online.

Over the days, weeks and months to come, I'm going to go into a lot more detail on how we're using (and you can use!)  tools like Twitter and Facebook to market your business... So please consider subscribing to this blog and/or becoming a fan of my Facebook Page where I've built up a strong community of people who love to share ideas around using social media tools to build businesses. 

And if you have thoughts on this strategy (am I way off base???), want to share ideas for where we should focus, or want to take part in helping me manage a "niche" that you find particularly interesting, please don't hesitate to reach out!