by (Note: This piece pairs nicely with this item I wrote a few months ago for PNConnect Digital Essentials)
Stories about the current media landscape regularly assert that writers, at both established publications and newer sites, are being pressured to spend more and more time engaging with readers. This engagement can occur on-domain in comments (if they still exist), or off-domain on Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere. Many writers worry that this obligation will distract them from their main jobs. Plus, where does one even start engaging with all the commentary that’s happening?
At its core, this is a simple workflow issue. Essentially, it requires a few steps:
First, one needs to acknowledge that most writers are indeed too busy to sort through and prioritize all the feedback they receive on their own. For that task, you need someone who actually specializes in community management, or a team of experts. These people will sort the valuable responses from the blatant trolling and escalate accordingly.
That leads to the second need: a ticketing system that accommodates escalation from the community management staff to the writer. Some comments may require an answer within hours; others are less urgent. This ticketing system allows the community team to assign different levels of prioritization for the person who needs to write the response. It also gives the response author a single location to view a curated feed of comments needing replies. Plus, tracking everything in a central location ensures important comments don’t fall between the cracks, and everyone is held accountable.
Of course, this structure is very similar to how we organize and coordinate internal influencer programs. That’s because that’s exactly what this is: an internal influencer program. These are best practices for activating internal subject matter experts for an external-facing program designed to show off their expertise.
As noted above, many newsrooms and blog haven’t thought about these challenges before, and neither have many corporate publishing programs. Taking steps to implement this workflow now takes your engagement to the next level and can help your publishing program stand out from the competition.
