Journalists have to market their work in social media

Versión en español aquí.

A young acquaintance was applying for an online reporting job at an internationally renowned news organization.

But the interviewer did not focus on the job candidate's articles. He wanted to know more about the metrics of audience engagement with the candidate's stories -- time spent, social sharing, search traffic.

How had the candidate used social media to capture readers? How effective were the tactics? What measurement tools had he used to gauge effectiveness?

In other words, did this job candidate understand how to capture and interact with the audience on the web?

You don't need all the skills to get started

Entrepreneurial journalists have a tough job.

They need skills not only in journalism but marketing, technology, sales, managing online communities and basic accounting, among other things. Fortunately, they don't need to have all the skills mastered at once.

Start small, but start

This is one of the takeaways from entrepreneurs profiled in Mark Briggs's book “Entrepreneurial Journalism: How To Build What's Next for News.” 

The profiles should give hope to beginners because the founders of successful web ventures such as Paid Content, Talking Points Memo and West Seattle Blog started small and gradually built their sites into authoritative sources in their respective niches.