Mediaboss Marketing

The Financial Times is in constant conversation with readers on social media, with all journalists encouraged to engage.

"It's really important that we show that we are talking to people and listening to them and hearing their views," Sarah Laitner, communities editor at the FT, told Journalism.co.uk. "It's also an important source of generating traffic and registrations to our site, which has metered access."

And reporters are also encouraged to use social for newsgathering. "It might have been that in years gone by you were out on your beat, but now your beat has also emerged on Twitter, on Facebook and on LinkedIn," Laitner said. Sarah Laitner, who has been in her current role for 18 months, was previously blogs editor, and before that Brussels correspondent, for the FT. More recently she has been joined in the newsroom by Maija Palmer, a former technology correspondent and editor in the management team, who has taken up the role of social media journalist. There's also Rebecca Heptinstall, a social media manager in the communications team.

In this feature we run through 10 lessons in social media engagement from the FT, looking at the different ways it engages with its audience on social media across platforms including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Tumblr.

Facebook

The Financial Times Facebook page has nearly 700,000 likes, and the engagement proves that Facebook not only works as a distribution platform for viral cat videos and quirky stories, but for business and economics too.

"It's a question of tailoring the question or picking the topic that will resonate particularly well with people on Facebook," Laitner said.

Here are a few Facebook lessons: 1. Use Facebook's regionalisation feature to speak to readers in particular countries

The FT has a global readership and the team frequently uses the regionalisation feature of Facebook to "personalise our fans experience", Laitner explained.

At the height of the unrest in Brazil in June, Laitner and Palmer decided to ask Facebook followers who live there what they thought it would take to end the protests.

See more here:
10 social media engagement tips from the Financial Times