Best Way to Engage Your Community? Communicate With Them!

Best Way to Engage Your Community? Communicate With Them!

A recent report by the American Press Institute (API) concludes that the best way for journalists to foster successful interaction with their readers in online communities is through collaboration.  The standard model of posting an article and allowing readers to comment on it no longer works (if it ever did).  What works today places the journalist as both article writer and participant in the comment area, responding to readers, answering questions, and helping them understand the story to a much greater degree.

For the report, researcher Monica Guzman interviewed 25 journalists and news leaders from local and national organizations and gathered their best practices for reader and commenter engagement.  The almost unanimous response: Show up in the comments.

Last year, the Engaging News Project out of the University of Texas at Austin studied 2,500 political comments on 70 political posts by a local TV station and found that uncivil comments declined by 15% when the reporter responded to them.  The conclusion, people are more polite and they know someone they respect is watching them.

Here are a few more best practices from the Engaging News Project report (these can work in any community, not just news ones): stick to the facts of the article, answer questions, try to understand the motivation of the commenter, build relationships with frequent commenters, encourage good manners, and let commenters disagree.

And, very importantly, get help from professional moderators if you become overwhelmed with trolls and personal attacks or need assistance during off hours and weekends.  If the story is especially controversial and you don’t have time or staff to handle the comments, turning off the comments is never an option.  Doing so is a guaranteed reputation sinker.