This post is part of the Social Media Editor Series, featuring interviews with social media editors from news organizations about what they do and where they see social media in journalism going.

For Bloomberg L.P., a media corporation on which much of the world’s financial decisions depend, creating a vibrant social media presence hasn’t always been a priority.

But these days it’s becoming a necessity.

“Our terminal usually has stories scooped before Twitter does—our terminal is the original Twitter,” Mat Yurow, Bloomberg’s social media editor, told The Content Strategist.

“It’s tough to tell our journalists that sometimes you can find these stories before the terminal,” said the 24-year-old responsible for composing, managing and strategizing Bloomberg News and BusinessWeek’s social media presence.

The Bloomberg Terminal is a business wire service that delivers real-time financial data to computer screens and mobile phones across the globe. It’s also the company’s core product.

With its inveterate business model, Bloomberg was in no hurry to lead the social media revolution. The company only hired its first editorial-side social media editor last year.

Now it has two—Yurow, and Kirsten Salyer—who are in charge of the editorial sections’ social media, as well as teaching other employees how to use social media to find stories and sources, and to broadcast work.

Before last year, Bloomberg’s social media presence relied on automated social media posts as stories came out. Updating the old media company to new social media standards required a very direct approach to the way its journalists used social media. Bloomberg does not stake a claim on its reporters’ Facebook accounts.

“That’s really their network to connect with friends and family,” said Yurow. Twitter, however, is fair game.

“Twitter accounts are not private,” Yurow, an Emory University film and marketing grad, said. “We encourage openness—saying, ‘I’m a reporter from Bloomberg: this is what I cover and this is what I tweet.’”

Out of its 2,300 media professionals working from 146 bureaus in 72 countries, only 500 are active on Twitter. But Yurow isn’t necessarily concerned with numbers.

“It’s not as much about getting more to sign up, but to tweet better,” he said.

According to Yurow, tweeting better involves a number of considerations:

• What are you trying to accomplish? Figure out, on a case-by-case basis, whether you’re looking for clicks on your website or retweets on Twitter. Bloomberg wants both. The Terminal often transmits core financial information within a headline. Getting more clicks on its websites involves writing intriguing Twitter posts that don’t give away all the information. To get more retweets,  Yurow suggests making tweets more inclusive by attaching an interesting fact or quote.

• What’s trending? Yurow suggests sites like ComScore, Bit.ly, Topsy and Hootsuite to see what’s trending on social media. Use that information to gauge what content might be most suitable to highlight at the moment.

• What’s working? Pay attention to what gets the best responses or the most retweets. “Figure out who is reading the stories and who is sharing, and the inner tidbits they are sharing,” Yurow said. “Next time you send out a tweet, you can change it a little bit to get more traction.”

• What time? When you know who is reading your tweets, the next step is to decide when tweets would best reach that audience. For example, Yurow suggests sending out finance tweets early in the morning and evening, or delaying technology tweets three-hours to better hit the West Coast.

• Be Flexible. “Social media changes quickly,” said Yurow. “Practices and tools being used today will likely be out of date in a few months.” Be willing to adapt to the times and to new technologies.

• Be a Human. “Twitter is all about knowing there is someone on the other end of the line who will tweet back,” Yurow said. “My job is to remind people I’m here, listening to what you have to say.” This interaction is lost with automated posts.

Yurow acknowledges that social media success at Bloomberg would require better tweets and an adoption of new web and digital technologies, including API integration and user-generated content.

“Bloomberg has traditionally been an old-media company,” Yurow said. “We’re slowly building confidence in social media.”

For Yurow, building that confidence means extending Bloomberg’s goals of media “transparency” to social media.

Bloomberg’s Midtown offices, he said, visually signify the company’s ethos. “There’s not a single office and all the conference rooms are made of glass,” he said, demonstrating its literal transparency. “There’s not a single private element once you’re inside.”

But in regard to new social media developments at Bloomberg, Yurow was mum, just saying, “We have a lot of ammo we’re ready to release.”

Like what? The Content Strategist asked.

“I can’t tell you that. You’ll have to wait and see.”

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Christie may not have the 1.2 million Twitter followers Booker has, but Christie managed to convince his nemesis into doing a Seinfeld-inspired comedy sketch posted on YouTube (just replace ”Booker!” with ”Newman!”).

The result is two politicians from opposing political parties, who could be up for election against each other next year, showing other politicos that it’s possible to disagree, agreeably, and have a sense of humor.

The key to the collaboration was that the video humanized both Booker and Christie.

Booker received national attention last month when he saved a women from a burning building.  The video plays up Christie’s jealousy of Booker’s heroic acts while revealing the trump card that Christie has over Booker – national attention in the vice presidency sweepstakes.

In commerce and politics alike, it is safer to talk about differences. Companies tend to get little exposure, so they like to show their best side whenever they can. But as social media allows for more intimate connections, authenticity can make a brand — or a politician — seem more trustworthy.

Booker notes that people tweet to him quicker than they will call 311 for general city issues such as a leaning streetlight. From technology companies to local businesses on Twitter, the trend is the same — it’s easier to post a tweet with a complaint rather than finding the support phone number, and often faster to get the issue resolved. 

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has praised Booker for his use of the social media platform.

Buzzfeed calls Booker ”a singular glimpse at the future of political life on the social web.”

Booker says he doesn’t plan to mute the transparency he maintains on Twitter — complete with apologies, joking  and rooting for local sports – if he continues his rise to national figure. He sees tweeting as an opportunity to speak directly to constituents, to break news and to shape the media.

The same user engagement that propelled Booker from local politician to national role model can enable companies to develop a beloved brand.

And taking a page from Booker and Christie, a friendly rivalry between competitors can occasionally highlight both more effectively than each might be able to do on their own.

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Inbound marketing, which is less costly and provides two-way interaction with customers, is proving to be an effective way to generate customer leads and increase sales.

Marketers that take the inbound route start conversations with customers by posting interesting and informative content, according to an infographic by Voltier Digital. Outbound marketing tends to find consumers by using advertising, and the marketers don’t aim to educate consumers.

The numbers are startling: 200 million Americans are on the Do Not Call list, 91 percent of emails users end up unsubscribing from company newsletters, and 86 percent of people skip ads on TV.

In the past two years, the average budget that companies spend on social media and blogs has doubled, and 66 percent of marketers “say their company blog is ‘critical’ or ‘important’ to their business.”

In addition, 57 percent of companies reported that they acquired customers through their LinkedIn accounts and company blogs. As for Facebook and Twitter, thosse numbers were 48 and 42 percent, respectively.

If inbound marketing seems right, just remember: content is king.

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Axis allows users to view results without leaving their current page, and shows a preview of those pages. The tool was designed especially for people logging onto Yahoo through mobile devices.

At the beginning of May, Bing started incorporating social media results into its search engine, showing users their friends’ answers to questions. Just a few days later, Google announced the arrival of the Knowledge Graph, which tries to mimic human thought, connecting ideas to determine which results users actually want to see.

Axis is available for download on Apple’s iOS-powered smartphones, tablets, or as an Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or Chrome extension, according to ClickZ Marketing. Although the Chrome extension contained a bug, the company claims to have fixed it.

Director of product management at Yahoo Ethan Batraski writes, as quoted by ClickZ, “By supercharging the browser with a visually rich search experience and seamlessly connecting that experience across all of your devices, we are delivering an experience that will change the game.”

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For marketers and bloggers, interesting and arresting photos dress up an otherwise bland post and attract the desired attention.

On sites with photos, page views are 94 percent higher than those that only contain text. On Facebook, posts that have photos are 120 to 180 percent more engaging than those without them. It’s clear from the statistics that users crave visuals.

“In a landscape where everyday marks a cutthroat battle for attention, images are becoming as essential as text to professional bloggers, web publishers and businesses alike,” writes Shutterstock’s Adam Singer in his post, “Why Images Are Vital to Modern Blogs.”

Singer says that text is “easily glossed over” because people are scanning the Internet quicker than ever. However, photos can slow people down, because “strong imagery is something that can’t be ignored.” He also points out that if a brand uses the same imagery styles repeatedly, the viewer will begin to associate the photos with the brand.

Premium content usually contains images.

“Unconsciously, we elevate the worth of a site that has images mixed in with stories,” Singer says. ”Of course, a site with great content can stand on its own, but when coupled with images, it creates a synergy, encouraging shares, Tweets and Stumbles.”

Photos are mood setters and can assist with the storytelling process on a blog post.

When it comes to personalization on a blog, photos also come in handy, Content Marketing Institute‘s Jodi Harris told The Content Strategist.

“Any image, really, can enhance an article because it helps to humanize the concepts being talked about,” she said. ”It helps an article become more than just nameless, faceless, chatter — it helps readers view the author’s insight as a relatable, personal experience.”

Picking any old image isn’t going to be effective

“If it’s a unique, intriguing, or personalized image, it can definitely make the content more share-worthy,” Harris says. “Generic clip-art or abstract art, maybe not so much, though.”

Photos command attention, and for marketers  and publishers that means dollars. Images drive value. In March, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion and Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media sites of all time.

“Any content —  print, online, mobile, or what have you — looks more professional and authoritative if there are relevant images included,” Harris says. ”While an article or two might be fine without an image, an entire collection of content would seem dry, dull and like a scientific journal if it had no images.”

Images courtesy of familymwr/flickr

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Last year, Converse’s Chief Marketing Officer Geoff Cottrill said they were “doing nothing” on Facebook.

A year later, Converse has more than 30.5 million likes and the #2 spot for top brands on Facebook.

The Content Strategist caught up with Geoff Cottrill to see what’s next for Converse’s content strategy.

The Content Strategist: What is Converse’s stance on content creation and curation by brands?

Geoff Cottrill:  Our content philosophy is built on driving meaningful relationships that are true to our core values, spark creativity and inspire advocacy.

Whether it’s about showcasing a musician that has just recorded at Converse Rubber Tracks in Brooklyn, a showcase we put on at SXSW, a street art exhibit in Beijing or a Three Artists. One Song collaboration – we focus on developing stories that are compelling for our consumers.

TCS: What has changed (or remained the same) since last year in how the Facebook page is managed?

Cottrill:  First, I think we need to recognize that people are today’s “new media.” They are advocates for the things they love and have an easy, quick, and effective way of spreading the word about what they love. Social media is driven by people and they are ultimately in control of the messages they send as well as the ones they choose to receive.

Brands are now forced to recognize that people are the media channels and the experiences they have with your brand are often what gets communicated to others. It is important that our message be relevant. We’ve seen the advocacy model work in a powerful way.

We’ve never once asked to join our Facebook page, or to “like” us. Yet, we now have over 30 million fans on Facebook. We believe this growth has come as a result of a few things.

First, our brand has stood for creativity for many years and creative people all over the world have made this brand what it is today. Second, we try very hard to celebrate our consumers and not tell them what to do (or what to buy).

If you respect your consumers and provide them with good stories or experiences they become advocates on your behalf. This brand belongs to the people who wear it.

TCS: Converse is the #2 brand page on Facebook – what’s next?

Cottrill:  We are going to continue our focus on celebrating our audience and not ourselves, try to be useful to our consumers along the way, continue to create our own platforms like Converse Rubber Tracks, and do all we can to help bring cultures of people together via experiences both on-line and off-line.

We’ll also continue to evolve our social media strategy as the platforms continue to expand and as new ones emerge.

Our role as marketers is changing every day. We now have a massive network of people around the world who want to hear from us. With a global network of consumers as big as ours in place we will continue our shift away from traditional means of brand communications to new and innovative ones.

We now have the ability to create our own content programming on a much shorter time line than normal broadcast methods. This is pretty exciting to us.

TCS: Any tips for content marketers who want to emulate Converse’s success?

Cottrill:  Keep it simple and be clear on who you are. Remember that your consumers are part of the equation when it comes to storytelling. Engage with them and put them in charge sometimes and let them take your brand into places you may not have thought of before. Act as a welcomed party guest. Be interesting, think creatively, think globally. Believe in what you are saying, and take a step back to listen and watch.

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In journalism, much of the innovation is focused on expanding the news experience online and putting it on various devices.

A few journalism start-ups are thinking about the how to distribute information in new ways, not just in terms of news reporting, a distinction best expressed in a recent essay by Stijn Debrouwere. This type of innovation rises above the dime-a-dozen news application.

Storify

So much media is created, but how do we experience it in a meaningful way? This is the problem Storify aims to meet, explains co-founder Burt Herman. The tool allows users to create a story out of individual social media posts — pictures, tweets, videos and more.

The startup is located in San Francisco and the two founders both have a background in content – Herman was a reporter for The Associated Press and Xavier Damman founded a publication for high school students in Belgium.

The first users were journalists, who proved to be an effective sample group because Storify met an immediate need — an easier way to embed social media posts that attributes the original creator in a single step. An early feature allowed a Storify to be embedded into any CMS that was compatible with HTML — it was an important step for the product because even newsrooms with the most archaic web technology could use Storify.

“Newsrooms have a very established workflow, so we must create something that adds value to that flow,” Herman said. Storify did not create more work for journalists who used social media in reporting, but made integrating social posts easier — and it continues to be a favorite brand among journalists. 

In the future, Storify plans to expand its service to be a platform as well as a tool. The stories its users create are hosted on Storify’s site, and users can now comment on individual social posts inside a story, effectively making the story itself a new type of discussion board.

One weakness of comment sections on news websites is that there is no way to sort the comments that refer to the opening of the story, versus other later claims by the writer or quotes from sources — perhaps Storify can provide a more pinpointed avenue for conversation. 

Narrative Science

To put it mildly, when journalists first hear the framework behind Narrative Science, they tend to worry more about job security. Essentially, the company has taught a computer program to write stories, but Narrative Science only hopes to replace the tedious and repetitive aspects of reporting, namely, turning data into words.

One example of the formulaic type of stories Narrative Science produces is this earnings report from Forbes, one of the company’s 30 clients. And yes, the technology gets a byline. Forbes is able to publish more stories more cheaply by using Narrative Science’s technology, which ideally allows the publisher to pay writers to do more enterprising work.

“Data is tremendously valuable,” Kris Hammond, Narrative Science co-founder and CTO, told The Atlantic. “It’s unbelievably valuable. But it’s not valuable as a spreadsheet of numbers. It’s valuable based on the insights that you can glean from it.”

Notably, Narrative Science employs a new kind of journalist to create its technology. Based on a job listing on the website, the ideal candidate is “an excellent writer who is comfortable working with data and coordinating with our engineering team. Grammar is important, but logic and basic mathematical skills are also essential.

Circa

People may jump at an opportunity to party like it’s 1999, but according to Circa’s Ben Huh, they consume news like it’s 1899 every day — and that’s what Circa purports to change.

Since Circa is still in stealth, Huh declined to comment for this article, but a blog post suggests his focus is “big breaking news.”

Huh is specifically frustrated with the fact that news stories often begin with a brief summary of past events, something that was necessary when a new story had to be printed in the newspaper each day. Essentially, he hopes to better target readers so their time isn’t wasted with information they already know — the article would be unique to each person and recognize if they had already read up on the topic.

Like both Storify and Narrative Science, Circa seeks to combat information overload.

“We’re solving a different kind of problem. There is more information created today than ever before. But as a society we’re less informed,” Circa co-founder Matt Galligan told TechCrunch. 

So far Circa is mum on details, but based on past press, the product will be mobile. Circa hopes to launch this summer.

Top image courtesy of qvist/shutterstock

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The video campaign, which started Tuesday, can be viewed on the company’s YouTube channel.

For fans to receive a song of their own, they can “fill out a form with their name, city, musical genre and reasons ‘why you’re awesome,’” according to Mashable. This song, dedicated to Andrea K. from Arizona, is a rock song. This one, made out to Mari from Riverton, is a country tune. The brand is releasing videos of all genres to its fans.

AT&T isn’t the first company to undertake a personal video campaign. In 2010, the Old Spice Guy sent out messages to bloggers, random Reddit and Yahoo Answers users, and people who tweeted at him. The campaign went viral. In April, Kraft sent out “cheesy” thank you videos to fans on Facebook.

Customers like a personal touch, especially through videos, because it gives a face to a marketing campaign.

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OoVoo can be used on all smartphones, unlike Google+, and it will allow 12 people to hang out at once – two more than Google’s 10, according to Business 2 Community. And, just like Google+, Oovo will “record the sessions and allow them to be uploaded onto Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter for sharing.”

Users of Oovo can use ”call link,” which allows them to invite people through social media, text, and email. Google+ doesn’t have this feature.

The competition is good news for marketers everywhere, since there is now more than one social networking site on which to connect with customers via video. Both Oovo and Google+ Hangouts on Air can be used to find out who customers really are by chatting face to face, provide customer service, and host a talk show or info session.

These platforms are useful for both content marketing and social media campaigns. Video marketing is on the rise, and budgets are increasing to produce quality videos.

Content strategy via Contently

Simple co-existence between the two isn’t enough at a time when evolution is constant and clients clamor for creative, technologically enhanced solutions. Agencies and startups need each other, so how can they get along?

At AKQA’s skylight-bright SoHo office, a full house of agency hacks, freelancers, and startup leaders gathered recently for a panel-led conversation on disparities and conversion between agencies and startups.

Moderator and AKQA Chief Creative Officer Rei Inamoto began the discussion by asking, “Should agencies act like start-ups?” He ended by asking each panelist to give a one-sentence piece of advice to brands, start-ups, or agencies.

Our lessons learned:

Agencies: Play to Your Strengths

Cindy Gallop, former chairman of BBH, recognized that, “Tech ventures hate us and they need us.” She cited David Karp, founder of Tumblr, who said advertisements made him sick to his stomach.

Earlier this month, the mixed-media blogging site rolled out a new native ad plan. Given his druthers, the young founder would have gone ad-less, but most business models inevitably encounter a need for ad revenue. While “startup envy” affects individual business people and agencies alike, agencies can thrive by playing to their expertise.

When asked what agencies might be missing, Google’s Managing Director of Agency Business Development Torrence Boone said, “First of all, agencies do amazing things. One of the first things I think the industry needs to do is be more positive about itself and the value it does add.”

He described the ad industry as “overly self-critical and navel gazing and always suffering from identity crises.” Startups need agencies in order to succeed. While startups are often more agile and perhaps “cooler,” agencies hold power in their access to and knowledge of brands.

“Every venture has the opportunity to be a great advertising platform with the help of the ad world,” Gallop said.

Startups: Fail Fast

In the start-up world, one failure can simply be the beginning of a larger project. Charlie O’Donnell, venture capitalist and partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, said, “I don’t necessarily think failure’s a bad thing as a startup.”

In a room of four start-ups, three may fail, but the three best people from those disintegrated ventures will move forward and work for the one successful startup. The start-up funnel supports failed innovators, as long as they keep moving.

Startups have the advantage of agility; they can move quickly and iterate repeatedly.

O’Donnell used the now ubiquitous game site Omgpop as an example: “[They] failed at a whole bunch of things before they came up with Draw Something.”

This is where Google’s Boone encourages agencies to emulate startups. He argues for failing fast and pushing against risk aversion: “Because of the legacy of the way marketing and branding developed, there’s so much emphasis on going to market with this big, epic idea.”

Instead, Boone thinks agencies could succeed by generating smaller ideas, seeding those aggressively, and then monitoring them so they accrue into something big, similar to a startup process.

Brands: Be Open to Creative Processes

Eric Wheeler, CEO of social ad network 33Across, advised brands to “really understand the value proposition and the relationship that’s going to come with a long term agency partner.”

The best brand-defining work won’t be done in a week. Being open to layered, innovative work ultimately serves both brands and the agencies with which they collaborate.

Gallop’s sound bite to brands was, “Lose the fear.” She called fear “the single biggest barrier to doing something extraordinarily innovative and creative that delivers revenue.”

If brands can accept — and even encourage — an agency’s lengthier, more creative processes, they’ll see better results and more fulfilling business relationships.

 Everyone: Collaborate

“Start-up plus agency equals the future, in some form or another,” Gallop proclaimed.

Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue haven’t come together as much as they could, and should. If the flexibility and nimbleness of start-ups is able to meet the heft and expertise of agencies, future brands will have the pleasure of doing business with a power couple.

Images courtesy of Sergej Khakimullin/shutterstock

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