The local newspaper in Myrtle Beach (The Sun News) came up with a great way to build relationships with its audience by posting bio videos of their newsroom to their Facebook page. This initiative gave readers a chance to understand the paper’s staff with the goal of creating a dialogue between reporters and readers to foster trust and engagement.
“We live here. We play here. We’re raising our families here. Local newspapers aren’t the big box “media.” We’re your neighbors. This project is about introducing the staff as members of their community. We posted the videos on Facebook and Twitter and plan to use them when reporters write columns.”
The videos are about one minute in length and the reporters share a bit about their background and interests and each video ends with ways to contact the reporter.
The paper saw some unexpected results, like proud family members sharing their reporter’s video which created new followers from extended family members.
The Sun News learned a few things from their experience and suggested that those who try this create all the videos before launching the project and encourage others to have some fun with the videos and let the staff show their true personalities.
