Getting your story read: maximizing and measuring social media for branding and audience engagement If you’re wondering whether what you’re doing on social is working, this session is for you. Learn to use analytics to pay attention to your audience, and construct a personal brand and content strategy that take into account what audience members both want and need to know. – Anthony Quintano

1. Social Branding
For Journalists
Anthony Quintano
@anthonyquintano | aquintano@gmail.com
Slides, handouts: bit.ly/dennewstrain
#denvernewstrain

2. It All Started With A Tweet

3. Be Yourself
I share content
because I want people
to know the work I’m
capable of producing.
Social media has
become my
resume in progress.

4. My
Trainees

5. Where Are We Going Today?
• The need for personal branding
• The social media landscape
• Twitter tools
• Instagram tools
• Facebook tools
• YouTube tools
• Recap

6. What do you most want to know about
branding on social media?

7. Change Is in the Air

8. Personal Branding Works

9. Twitter Bio
• Use a photo that shows your face.
• Be creative
• Use usernames and hashtags
• Use the website link area - LinkTr.ee
• Set your location by city/state
• Modify your display name
• Use a cover photo

10. LinkTr.ee
• Most social platforms only allow for one
link in the bio.
• LinkTr.ee allows for multiple links within
one link.

13. Twitter Profiles

14. Twitter Profiles

15. Twitter Profiles

16. Try it: Look at Your Twitter Profile
What would you change in yours?

17. Tweet Composition
• 280 characters – USE THEM!
• Don’t start your tweet with an ‘@username’
• Proper composition when sharing a story
• What is a tweet storm?
• When a @username is unrecognizable, type name after
• Building a list within a tweet
• Using animated gifs in tweets to get a point across

18. Tweet Composition

19. Tweet Composition

20. Best Uses Of 280

21. Try it: Compose a tweet
• For this story:

22. Security Settings/Quality Filters
• Setup two-factor authentication
• You can mute accounts, key words
• If you don’t want to block someone, you can mute them
• Muting words doesn’t transfer from web, mobile, Tweetdeck.
• Set up teams to manage main accounts
• Use a domain-based email, no Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail.

23. Follower/Following
• Don’t follow more than follow you.
• Keep accounts you’re following fairly low and
use lists
• Do not follow and unfollow
(This is a spammer red flag)
• Look at the bios of those who follow you
• You can remove someone that follows you
by blocking and unblocking
• Learn to identify fake accounts

24. Twitter Lists &
Tweetdeck

25. Twitter Lists
• Use Twitter lists instead of the follow button
• Be specific in your naming of a list
• Make your lists public
• Share lists out for others to subscribe
• You can build up to 230 lists
• No limit on how many accounts you can add
• Don’t just make lists for news. Use for networking.

26. Try it: Build a Twitter list
• Build a Twitter list of those who used the hashtag #AQNewsTrain

27. Tweetdeck
• Best tool to monitor, publish and engage with
• Manage multiple accounts
• Watch Twitter in real-time
• Monitor multiple lists, hashtags and search queries
• Activity tab is helpful to monitor changes
• Manage teams for main accounts
• Use collections to curate tweets

28. Twitter Moments
• Curating tweets into a story that is share friendly on Twitter
• Use to collect your own tweets or others
• Add a photo and description and tag @TwitterMoments in tweet
• Can only incorporate tweets
• Include your story tweet in the Moment
• Twitter could feature your Moment and deliver more traffic
• Moments get higher engagement than tweeting story link

29. Twitter Moments

30. Twitter Moments

31. Twitter Moments

32. Threads
• Do not need to number your Tweets
• You can build threads at one time or
add to a thread over a period of time
• Don’t just tweet your story link.
Add context by threading additional info
• Threads are tweetstorms
• Use a thread if you feel restricted by
Twitter’s 280 characters

33. Threads

34. Try it: Twitter Thread and Moment
• Post a Twitter thread about yourself with three posts
• Share a story link with the hashtag #AQNewsTrain
• Create a Twitter Moment that incorporates your thread and story post

35. Instagram
• Instagram Bio
• Post composition
• Search/Hashtags
• Understanding Stories

36. Instagram Bio
• Similar to Twitter, share who you work for and what you do.
• Usernames and hashtags are clickable in bio
• Use LinkTree in web URL
• Use photo that shows your face
• Modify your bio when in the field

37. Try it: Look at Your Instagram Bio
What would you change?

38. Instagram Post Composition
• Long captions are ideal. Tell a story, don’t just caption short.
• If you’re going to add hashtags, do not add them in the caption.
• Feel free to direct users to ’link in bio’ when you need to.
• Tag users in your caption
• Incorporate engaging content in your caption; ask users a question.
• Links do not work in captions

39. Try it: Instagram Post
• Share a single post that tells a story in the caption
• Add the hashtag #AQNewsTrain in a comment after the photo is
posted

40. Instagram Search and Hashtags
• You absolutely must add hashtags to your posts but only in comments
• Always search a hashtag you are going to use to see how many posts
are in them
• Explore is helpful to see what others are doing when posting
• Keep your hashtag count in comments down to 10
• Don’t use general hashtags like #Instagram, #photo, #News
• Be specific with hashtags, state, city. Then get creative: #Instagood
#InstagramoftheDay.
• Create your own hashtag around a single topic or coverage.

41. Instagram Stories
• Keep number of stories low, roughly 8-10
• Use location tag and hashtags for discoverability
• Explain your story to your users in your first post
• You don’t need to appear on camera to do stories but it is suggested
• As goofy as it may seem, users like the use of stickers and gifs when
appropriate.
• When verified, you can add links to each story.

42. Try it: Instagram Stories
• Introduce yourself in Instagram Stories
• Use the location tag and #AQNewsTrain
• Tag myself and another user in the room. Search for them in the
hashtag
• Add another user’s story in your own.
• Build a collection of posts from a hashtag of your choosing

43. Facebook
• Page vs Profile
• Post composition
• Facebook Live
• Groups
• Analytics

44. Facebook Page VS Profile
• Profile is where users can add you as a friend or follow public posts
• Page is where any amount of people can like your page
• Profiles are limited to 5,000 friend adds
• News Feed favors personal profiles over pages
• Profiles do not have analytics, pages do
• You should have both and post to both.
• Facebook pages allow you to add video to your cover photo

45. Facebook Post Composition
• Status updates can be long or short.
• Hashtags are a waste of time.
• Visual content works best
• When posting a link, make sure the image preview reflects story.
• Don’t copy and paste title when sharing story. Use alternative text
• Try to use the check-in location and tagging pages or profiles in status
when appropriate.
• If a link does not have an image preview, upload an image or video to
supplement the link.

46. Try It: Compose a Facebook Post
• Create a link post with a status text that does not copy text in preview
• Include the hashtag #AQNewsTrain in the status

47. Facebook Live
• Your broadcasts should be longer than 10 minutes
• Make sure to check-in with the location tag
• Add a title to your broadcast
• Try to use a tripod when possible
• Make sure when someone is speaking, audio is clear
• Verbally acknowledge people in the chat
• Explain to people what they are seeing and why you are showing it
• Always make sure you have good cell signal or Wi-Fi available

48. Try It: Facebook Live
• Launch a Facebook Livestream from your phone. Broadcast to your
page.
• Add a video cover photo to your page

49. Facebook Groups
• Groups take a long time to grow
• Closed groups work best
• Create a group around a specific topic, not a broad beat.
• Use the survey questions in order to approve users to the group
• Focus on a small number of groups. Too many are hard to manage.
• You can use a group to find sources for stories and get feedback from
readers.
• Groups have to be maintained daily. Don’t neglect.

50. Facebook Analytics
• Focus on engagement metric
• Reach is a good marker for a healthy page, but don’t use it to mark
success
• Any data from Facebook Insights should be taken with a grain of salt
• Video metrics are helpful but not always accurate
• Check the people tab regularly to see who is engaging
• Comments, shares and likes are the three most important metrics
• Ignore page views, page previews, actions on page

51. Try It: Facebook Page Analytics
• Check the people tab regularly to see who is engaging
• Comments, shares and likes are the three most important metrics
• Ignore page views, page previews, actions on page

52. Parting tips
• You don’t have to do everything you learned today
• Determine your strengths and focus on them
• You should be present on all platforms but post more where your
audience is.
• Don’t neglect any platform.
• Always experiment and never get comfortable

53. What Do You Want to Try First? How
Can I Help?
• Don’t ever hesitate to reach out to me for advice or questions
• Engage with me on social media
• Email: aquintano@gmail.com
• Website: anthonyquintano.com
• Twitter and Instagram: @anthonyquintano
• Facebook: facebook.com/anthonyquintano/
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anthonyquintano/

54. YouTube: Content
• Video should be roughly 7-8 minutes in length
• Evergreen content works best
• ‘How to’ videos get most visibility for longer period of time
• Video metrics are helpful but not always accurate
• Design your thumbnail previews with text
• You can have a low subscriber count and still get lots of viewership

55. YouTube: Analytics
• Viewer retention is very important
• Watch time is most important metric
• Subscriber count can be low and still achieve high view counts
• If numbers are low or dropping, change your content.
• When starting, don’t get caught up in the details of analytics