At the Mormon media symposium last week, I attended the presentation given by Kris Boyle entitled, “Latter-Day Tweets: The Mormon Times’ Use of Twitter as a Reporting Tool”.
Kris analyzed tweets tweeted by the Mormon Times from March 1, 2010-August 31, 2010. His main question in his research was “How does the Mormon Times use Twitter to distribute news and info?” involving the following subquestions:
Q: When do they tweet?
A: 415 total tweets (2.25/day), posted mostly from 8am to 4pm
Q: What do they tweet?
A: 26% tweets on columns
22% tweets on local content
75% tweets promoted MT content
Q: Links
A; 85% had links
70% MT links
15% didn’t have links
Q: Interaction
A: 49 tweets
12% were replies
4% were retweets
8% sought feedback
Kris found that MT’s tweets compared to other papers in daytime postings, actively used hastags, and a lack of interaction. They contrasted in considerably fewer tweets, columns were primary focus, included links more often.
The conclusion that was brought from Boyle’s research is that the Mormon Times is looking for ways to reach a newer, unique audience, promoting more content that interests global readership, and striving to reach out more to its general audience.
I really looked forward to attending this presentation, especially since I'm a huge advocate of Twitter. I found the information interesting, but not really surprising. I think all forms of media and many businesses are involving themselves in social media, but aren't really sure how to best take advantage of it. I believe those involved with social media are still experiencing an experimental phase of how to best interact with their consumers, which was made evident in Kris Boyle's research. I would love to see this same study done with a larger news corporation like the New York Times.
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