What I’m going to learn from Colonel Tribune
I had a great chance two weeks ago to visit the Chicago Tribune and pick the brains behind its social media experiment known as Colonel Tribune. As a veteran of 13 years with the Tribune Company myself, I could appreciate the irony of turning the somewhat staid company’s heritage with Colonel McCormick on its ear.
There’s also the delicious irony of forging a persona on social media sites like Digg and Twitter with the image of a graying, mustachioed older gentleman.
None of that is lost on the three people I spent time with at the Tribune: Bill Adee, the associate managing editor for innovation; and social media coordinators Erin Osmon and Amanda Maurer.
In a word, the Colonel is a persona that Erin and Amanda (and former colleague Daniel Honigman) created, maintained and updated. He is the public “ambassador” of the Chicago Tribune on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Technorati, FriendFeed and others. Spending time in Chicago gives me some hope that we might do something similar with a 107-year icon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The Weatherbird (who already has a blog, by the way).
The project started in March and has gotten some traction in other blogs since then, including a relatively high-profile feature on the Huffington Post’s debut Chicago edition. Spending time with the Chicago crew and reading up on some of the other blogs about the project has taught me this:
The Weatherbird
The Colonel “gets it.” [via poise.cc] “The Colonel is out there, accessible, making friends, shaking hands, befriending the webiverse. And what does that get him? It gets him messages from his readers saying things like ‘Hey there’s a whole bunch of scared people outside of Daley Center, any idea what’s up?’”
The Colonel is carefully thought out. Maurer and Osmon said their team spent a lot of time thinking about who the Colonel would “be” on the web. What kinds of things would he Digg? Or submit to Digg? Would he be a wild and crazy guy? Would he love stories about debauchery and women? Nah. “He’s old school,” Maurer said. “But likes to do hip things.”
The Colonel isn’t flesh and blood, but he acts like it. “People prefer interacting with someone who is flesh and blood, so to speak,” Maurer said. The blogosphere is sprinkled with anecdotes about Col. T reaching out with news tidbits, responding to other readers’ tweets and whatnot. While I was there, he alerted readers to an accident on a local expressway.
The Colonel is about driving traffic. [via SpeakMedia] “Since its foray into social media, the Trib’s web site has seen increased traffic and an eight percent increase in page views, according to the paper’s Todd Andrlik.” Adee said traffic reports before the Colonel indicated that 40 percent of their traffic was generated “on site” or within the Chicago Tribune’s web site. Sixty percent was attributed to off-site pointers. That’s now up to 70 percent, he told me. Hands down, he said, Digg drives the most traffic to the site out of all the social media sites the Colonel frequents.
But the Colonel isn’t just about traffic. The time Colonel Tribune spends on other sites such as Facebook and Twitter gives the ChicagoTribune.com a connection on the web to readers. It may not be measurable as direct traffic, but it’s measurable in the tips that come to the newsroom and the quips that get exchanged. “I felt we were not in touch with our web community,” Adee said. That concern isn’t quite as pronounced now. “We are different because it’s not just a push. There’s a back and forth.”
And, via SociALL Media Blog: “The more intangible but arguably important benefit of this gentleman is the fact that he is helping take away the stodgy, old media feel of a relatively ancient media organization and showing this city that this staple Chicago company is very open to transformation and adaptation.”
The Colonel can’t be too parochial. Erin was certain an item about local son Bill Murray skydiving to launch the city’s air and water show would be a winner on Digg. It wasn’t. Too parachial. Yet when Bernie Mac died, the Colonel submitted some of the Tribune’s stuff about that story — and it did well. Hard to tell. Erin agrees with Amanda that “you need to get a feel for the community you’re submitting to.” But they’re willing to try. And carefully. The Colonel never submits more than a couple of things a day to Digg.
The Colonel spends quality time with reporters. Well, not really the Colonel. But his puppeteers. And by quality time, they help teach reporters how to Digg stories, what to submit and how to get involved. It is time-consuming.
The Colonel works on focusing. Yes, Col. T is on a whole mess of social sites. But he’s not terrible active on all of them. His “handlers” are picking their spots and dropping in on the others. Twitter, Digg? Big. Reddit? Not so much. Not really the Colonel’s crowd.
Finally, the Colonel isn’t afraid to rock the boat. Yeah, he’s not universally beloved in the vaunted halls of Tribune Tower. Erin says they’ve heard this refrain from more than a few people: “The ‘real’ colonel (McCormick) must be rolling in his grave now.”
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Kurt's Tweets- Realizing how woefully out of touch I have been with this part of the county. (@ Saint Louis Bread Company) http://4sq.com/5z5Bfh
- Just had my first Gmail phone call -- with my parents -- and the quality was fantastic. Wow. http://tcrn.ch/a8GndI
- Another day, another interview. Fingers crossed. (@ Saint Louis Bread Co) http://4sq.com/avGImL
- Helping my son learn the first 20 elements on the periodic table. Disturbed by how many more elements there are since I studied this stuff.
- Giving blood. (@ St. Martin's Episcopal Church) http://4sq.com/aiWuEk
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Thanks for the (digital) ink, Kurt.
You still have to call me back, by the way!
[...] is the beauty of efforts like Colonel Tribune at the Chicago Tribune. The Colonel participates in the social networks he has joined — and he has drawn a following [...]
[...] Digg.com Reddit.com Google News (where you can create RSS feeds of searches) Google Blog Search (same thing) Chicago Tribune’s “Colonel Tribune” page. My blog post on Colonel Tribune. [...]
Kurt: Let Bill, Erin and Amanda know that the “real Colonel” was a multifaceted gent who had a very wry sense of humor. I appreciated having a chance to learn some of the back story of the Colonel Tribune site. As for Weatherbird shouldn’t he be
“Major Weatherbird” or something?
[...] Digg.com Reddit.com Google News (where you can create RSS feeds of searches) Google Blog Search (same thing) Chicago Tribune’s “Colonel Tribune” page. My blog post on Colonel Tribune. [...]
[...] Lots of people have argued that newspapers should get away from using their Twitter feeds simply as conduits to link to their own stories, and that a more personal, human approach can lead to a bigger and more engaged audience of followers. Obviously, today is an unusual case, but it’s worth noting that the Rocky’s Twitter account has gone from around 60 followers to over 400 in the past few hours. [...]
Good luck with the Colonel, It seems to be a good idea for your marketing.
Good luck with the Colonel, It seems to be a good idea for your marketing.
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!