Answer the phone: "Columbia Missourian, this is [your name], may I help you?"
Email phone messages to reporters right away, or call the reporter yourself. DO NOT give reporters' phone numbers to sources. DOUBLE-CHECK PHONE NUMBERS AND NAMES / SPELLINGS.
Check voicemail is MSG Wait is lit.
Press the phone line, then press MSG Wait.
The passcode is 573-882-5720.
You can answer incoming calls on any newsroom phone by picking up the receiver and dialing 82.
To transfer a call:
If the call is on hold, press the phone line again to take it off hold.
Press Transfer, the 5-digit extension, then Transfer again.
Hang up the phone.
Give the caller the number to which you are transfering them in case of a problem.
Spend 15-20 minutes at the beginning and end of your shift in SocialFlow seeing what needs to be tweeted or put on Facebook and checking the listen tab to see if there is anything that needs to be responded to.
Tweet local breaking news as soon as we get it.
Retweet high-profile sports stories, particularly football and basketball stories, from @comosports to the main @comissourian account.
For sports stories, make sure the tweets are timely. The window for game stories is pretty short after the end of the game. Game story tweets should publish immediately.
Stories about MU resonate with our audience and are good candidates for tweets.
For softer news stories or features, think about the phrasing and how to draw Twitter users to click on the link.
Try to @ people or organizations that would be interested in the story and might retweet us, particularly for local event stories. Also include hashtags when relevant. (See attached list.)
Our prime time on Twitter and Facebook is 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. If you are tweeting a news story late at night (after 10 p.m.), consider if it would be relevant the next morning. If so, set a similar tweet for the morning. But don’t forget we only have a 24-hour window for most stories. Be sure that you don’t schedule a tweet/FB post for a story after it has expired on the site.
Use the schedule tool on SocialFlow for Twitter and Facebook. If you want to tag an organization or page on Facebook, use an @ sign followed by a bracket [ and write the name of the page (i.e. @[Columbia Missourian]).
Work from the queue as much as possible. You can sort the headlines by date descending, and the feed updates pretty quickly.
Tweets and Facebook posts get MORE attention over the weekend. Look for From Readers stories or letters that are always free if everything else is expired. We should be setting more tweets on Friday to publish during the day on Saturday. The same would apply on Saturday for Sunday.
Every time you are in SocialFlow, click on the listen tab to see if there is anything that we need to respond to.
Some common handles and hashtags to use:
#Mizzou
#CoMo
@Mizzou (if it’s official school business)
@pub_works (Columbia Public Works)
@VisitColumbiaMO (city)
@DBRL (Columbia Public Library)