Trentonian columnist Jeff Edelstein showed two things with his Facebook engagement before, during and after Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey:
- He showed how to use Facebook to engage during a big story.
- He showed how effective routine Facebook engagement gives you a strong connection with people that is invaluable when the big story breaks.
I’ve written before about Jeff’s great connection with his community on Facebook. He uses Facebook regularly, asking questions of his 4,000-plus friends and they answer, sometimes giving him column material, sometimes giving feedback on a column and sometimes just deepening the connection with chatter among friends.
That routine conversation gave Jeff a deeply engaged community that stayed in touch as the storm approached and blew through New Jersey. With a mix of humor, impatience, empathy and reporting questions, Jeff had a running conversation with the community throughout the disaster. I’m going to highlight a few of the dozens of Facebook updates that Jeff posted relating to Sandy.
It was a mix of personal and professional, all with personality. So when Jeff asked for help, it wasn’t like a journalist was asking people to do his job for him. It was a trusted friend asking for information. And he got lots of replies, whatever he was asking or saying.
Notice that he wasn’t crowdsourcing here, just conversing.
Ok, now he’s ready to ask for some information, and he does it in a chatty, how’s-everyone-doing kind of way. The responses: 79 replies, 65, 130 (and he did this several more times during the storm).
In addition to the responses to his comments and questions, Jeff had more comments and photos posted on his Facebook wall by friends than I cared to count:
As a columnist, Jeff is more comfortable than many journalists about being a person on social media, rather than maintaining that hard shell that many reporters and editors try to show the public. He chronicled his own experience with the storm as part of the news-gathering and conversation:
Here’s one of my favorite things that Jeff did: He did something thoughtful for the power-company workers trying to restore electricity to his neighborhood. Lots of us might be reticent to boast about the good things that we’ve done. But Jeff didn’t boast. He was telling his 4,000 friends to share some kindness with the power crews (and they did):
I haven’t yet mentioned the most frequent way for journalists (and especially news brands) to use Facebook: posting links to his work. Jeff does that, too, also effectively:
Here’s the column about riding out the storm and here’s his column on the rescue at Seaside Heights, which ran in print as Jeff’s column today.
I asked Jeff what were the most helpful responses he received on Facebook:
Most helpful for the public was day 2 and 3, when I posted asking people what they knew was open. People were hungry, cold, stir-crazy. Most helpful for me was asking for stories, which yielded my column for today. Also, my post where I told people the PSEG workers were hungry probably got a few sandwiches to the right people.
Here’s that request for people’s stories:
A reaction from some journalists might be to wonder how this helps us: Jeff spending so much time on Facebook. The answer might be in this comment to Jeff from Amber Bartuswicz:
Actually, you can start a thread about where news came from during this storm. Mine was only through fb a few times a day while trying to preserve the battery on my cell. The regular internet on my phone took too much power so I checked your updates and comments every few hours along with vm. Nice job, jeff.
Amber wasn’t going to the Trentonian, she was going to Facebook to find out what was happening and Jeff became her best information source. That’s good for the Trentonian brand and it’s going to generate traffic for the Trentonian. And the fact of the matter is that people are spending more time on Facebook that they are with news brands, either in print or online. By engaging with them on Facebook, Jeff is effectively gathering content for the Trentonian, driving traffic for the website and identifying the Trentonian as an essential news source.
I asked on Jeff’s wall this morning how his friends found his Facebook posts helpful (note that I didn’t ask that on the first question, but they answered about his Facebook engagement anyway):
I asked Jeff if he had some disaster tips to share with fellow journalists:
Probably using the journalist cred to help people out/have a place to vent. Getting a story/column was secondary to trying to play Facebook Superman.
And, I should add, he still got his columns, with great help from his Facebook community.
Jeff spends more time on Facebook than on Twitter and has a bigger audience there (nearly 700 Twitter followers). But he recognizes the importance of engaging on both social platforms. Even with all the Facebook engagement and with all the content he produced for Trentonian web and print products, he also engaged effectively on Twitter during Sandy:
Dear large trees in my front yard currently eying up my roof: Stop it. Just stop it right now.
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) October 29, 2012
Power out. Not a huge fan. Lord of the Flies time. Four of us and the dog. Sorry, Sparky.
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) October 29, 2012
Talked with woman in Seaside Heights. She lives two blocks from beach. Her road is covered with 6 inches of sand far as she sees.
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) October 31, 2012
No snark here: Can’t think of another NJ pol, past or present, I’d rather have fighting the Sandy fight than Chris Christie.
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) October 31, 2012
PSEG guys are legit hungry. They’re putting in 16+hour days, and very few convenience stores open. Offer them something if you see them.
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) November 1, 2012
A crazy rescue in Seaside Heights, along with some really good manners. trentonian.com/article/201211…
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) November 1, 2012
I have heat and thus inherited my brother + his family. So there’s 4 kids under 3 under 1 roof. I plan on being under the table in 2 hrs.
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) November 1, 2012
The best journalists today use Facebook and Twitter effectively. Studying how Jeff uses both would be a great place to start.
Excellent use of Facebook to connect and share information. I liked his acknowledgement of his role shift: “Getting a story/column was secondary to trying to play Facebook Superman”
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