Hi Jeff - Thanks for your thoughts and comments on this. We're obviously still pretty new to active participation on social!  My thoughts in line.

On 2 October 2015 at 17:40, Jeff Elder <jelder@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey folks,

Let's cut down on multiple posts of the same blog links to the two flagship social accounts, and aim a little higher for inspired posts there.

I count four posts to the Wikipedia Facebook page and four to the @wikipedia Twitter account in the past two days for the latest News on Wikipedia blog post. Buffer says those eight posts to our largest accounts have resulted in just 971 clicks, and that about one in every 200 people who saw two of the Facebook posts engaged in any way. (Strong engagement would be about four times that.)

This is fair. News on Wikipedia (NoW) was conceived as a neat way to showcase Wikipedia's coverage of breaking news, and the images we have, freely licensed on Commons, to go along with them. I do think you're absolutely right that we tweet these posts out *a lot* and that perhaps putting focus on one of the "main stories" of the week is the better way to go.

For context, obviously I try to get the posts out quickly, while the news is "hot". I think at the moment this is the only post we do multiple social pushes for in such a short space of time.
 
This is just one example of a larger issue, and I'm not singling this out as egregious, just a good case study. News on Wikipedia, thanks to Joe's impressive expertise, is a place where we can really shine. 

Thanks again ;) I'm open to ideas on how to improve this feature since honestly, right now it's both out-of-date quickly (sometimes as soon as its published, since it's a quickly digest) and covering five things equally. I'll chat with Ed and yourself off-list to look into ways to improve this segment of the Blog's coverage.
 
Our social guidelines urge us to "remember, our social handles are also about conversations, not just one-way broadcast pushes." Repetitive posts have drawbacks: People who follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook may have seen the promotion of a routine blog post multiple times, and tune out (we do see unlikes on Facebook); the algorithms note unengaged posts and drop us down as an account; repetitive posts send a message that we are pushing an agenda (blog post clicks) at the expense of fresh communication; they drain the accounts of the lifeblood of inspiration and seem canned.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. For those on this list unfamiliar with Jeff (this is indeed a public list) - he is something of a social media guru and has undertaken a fellowship in the study of the industry at Stanford.
 
The team has settled into some great and extremely useful practices around blog creation, checking in on posting, and measuring metrics. But in this area of pushing blog posts to the main two accounts, I believe the process has gone too far into an assembly line. The flagship accounts are our big stage; let's be more mindful about posting there and seek a little more inspiration. 

After talking with Katherine, I'm working on a tune-up of the best practices I hope to have finished next week. I'll also chime in here on posts to those two main accounts especially. But for now, I'd urge us to think of them as a place for our greatest hits, and work to craft posts there that are important, central to the mission of free information for all, especially engaging, or just fun. 

I totally agree with this. I do think, however, that we should of course continue to promote our blog posts on these platforms, though perhaps we could resurface older profiles and features to keep things from becoming too much like an assembly line.

Hopefully all of that makes sense... coherency isn't something I do well. ;)

best,
Joe
 

Thoughts? 

Jeff Elder
Digital communications managering
Wikimedia Foundation

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