Social Media and Journalism: A Match Made in Story-telling Heaven

When I first scored my internship at Everywhere, I assumed there was no way I could combine my journalistic abilities and the skills needed at a social media marketing firm. Without a doubt, I was mistaken.

For one, things are different here at Everywhere, you’re encouraged to share knowledge of your own while simultaneously absorbing everyone else’s, but in a good way. Simply put: you’re not expected to sit around looking pretty and making coffee runs. Though we do value our coffee, we have a great coffee machine right in the office and everyone is more than happy to make their own cup themselves.

It’s often around the coffee machine that we have conversations about how intertwined social media and journalism have become. Here are my three takeaways on the similarities between journalism and social media.

1. Grammar is King (or Queen): To say that grammar is essential when writing a Facebook post or news article would be an understatement. Social media audiences expect the same level of professionalism from brands as they do their newspapers and news outlets. Just because it’s social media, doesn’t mean you can get away with rogue apostrophes or bizarre spellings of words. In fact, with the presence of social media, any grammatical blunders found are called out quickly and often publicly.

2. Your Opinion Matters: At the end of any article, we usually see a “Comments” section where readers can sign into their desired social media account and voice their opinions. Similarly, domestic and international news articles are plastered on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Pew Research found that 3 in 10 adults get their news from Facebook. This number is sure to increase as Facebook has included a trending stream with relevant hashtags and trending topics on the right-hand side of the homepage.

3. Limitations are Inevitable: Both news articles and social media platforms often battle with character/word limits. For example, Twitter’s 140-character rule is expected to be sufficient when answering the 5 W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. When the truth is, just the words “who, what, where, when and why” take up 27 of the 140 characters! Be it journalism or social media, being brief and being to the point are critical to delivering your message.

The truth is, journalism and social media have more in common than most people realize. It’s not just old media or new media; it’s just plain old media. As for me, I will continue to enjoy the best of both worlds here at Everywhere, with a delicious cup of coffee, of course.