There are plenty of news organizations on twitter however most of them are a study in what not to do. However, one organization has risen above glorified RSS feeds and with a single twitter account changed my opinion of an entire news division.
Here’s how @YahooNews changed the game.
The secret weapon – People
Check out their bio,
The official Twitter account for Yahoo! News, the leading online news site. Tweets are hand-picked by the Y! News Team and 100% RSS feed free!
Hand picked? How quaint in these days of twitter feeds. They know that using human beings is what sets them apart. This strategy takes time, effort, & money but the resulting authenticity and value is priceless.
(More proof is found in the fact that the tweets come from Tweetdeck)
#Hashtags
I’d probably die of shock if the @NYTimes ever actually used hashtag. I mean why would an organization want to increase the visibility of their tweets while contributing to the larger conversation?
Yahoo liberally uses hashtags on everything from #Hurricane news to #MIA airport evacuations.
Lists
Yahoo News creates excellent Twitter lists around news subjects.
- Hurricanes – http://twitter.com/YahooNews/hurricanes
- Supreme Court – http://twitter.com/YahooNews/scotus
- even the Discovery Channel Shooting – http://twitter.com/YahooNews/discovery
It’s nothing short of astounding that a news organization is helping me listen to others. These lists sometimes even include rival news sites but Yahoo seems to actually care about creating curated and useful lists.
I’m a heavy user of Twitter lists and this was the tipping point where I became a real fan of @YahooNews.
Replies
Yes there are a few national organizations that use hashtags and a couple even create a lists but how many organizations will actually reply?
Egads! Is that actually humor?
YahooNews just get’s it.
The list of what Yahoo is doing right just keeps going. Everything from excellent syntax to new style retweets, and even attribution are all the result of actual people understanding how to use twitter. In doing so they’ve created one of the most useful and authentic news sources on Twitter.
Bravo @YahooNews
