In about a month, The Daily Tar Heel’s Facebook fan count has grown by slightly more than 1,000 people — approximately 250 percent. How?

We created our Facebook page in early March, but beyond entering basic info and setting a profile picture, we didn’t do much with the page in terms of interacting with readers. Our fan count was growing gradually, but lacked any sort of momentum.

The graph below shows our fan count since May, but also the incredible jump in our number of fans beginning when our community manager began work in mid-August.

The community manager post at the DTH is a new one this year. We felt like devoting one person — Emily Stephenson — as the face behind our social media accounts would increase the quality of our interactions with readers. The rapidly growing number of fans validates this theory, and because a good amount of traffic to our Web site generates from Facebook, the more fans we have who are potentially clicking through to our Web site clearly benefits us in the long run.

On a daily basis, Emily chooses selected articles to post on our Facebook page. Other times she asks readers for input for future stories we’re working on. Sometimes she asks for feedback on stories we’ve written. She responds whenever readers ask questions, and she’s also solicited reader-submitted photos via Facebook. Emily’s also the face behind @dailytarheel on Twitter (which has seen considerable growth in followers since mid-August too, but had a much more developed fan base than our Facebook page initially).

What Emily’s doing isn’t rocket science, but the results show there’s incredible value in what she’s doing. They also show how much news organizations can benefit by just talking and listening to readers online. Fancy apps are great, but they can’t replace basic reader-reporter relationships.

I’m working on getting things ready for the DTH when we get back in the fall, and already I’ve had some questions about what search engine optimization is and what it’ll mean for our workflow.

Since this was a topic I felt I’d come back to a lot, I went ahead and organized my thoughts into a slideshow that I can use for future training for staff. Here’s what I felt were the basics of what any journalist needs to know about search engine optimization. Have I left anything off I should include?

One of the things I learned while managing editor for print last year was the importance of knowing what you want to accomplish. I took time today to jot down my goals and iron out with my awesome boss what my job will detail next year as online managing editor.

I realized I can be most effective if I focus on small-group training, giving intensive feedback and delegating the execution of projects to others.  I also realized while making this list that I can’t do it all, and that I can do much more if I help others do it well.

I think this list is pretty thorough, but I learned last year that the never-ending role of management is to deal with whatever is thrown at you. I’m sure my job will end up encompassing much more than this, but I think this is a good start. Thoughts?

Daily

• Ensure Web site, blogs, social network accounts are all working properly; get problems fixed.
• Oversee the homepage and posting of Web updates throughout the day with online editor.
• Oversee interactions with readers via social media throughout the day with the community manager.
• Send staff e-mail of readership statistics.
• Critique blogs, videos, podcasts, slideshows and other online-only content when the lesson is applicable to all staff. Send links of interesting things to read.
• Send individuals feedback on blogs and other online-only content when critique is too detailed for staff listserv.
• Work with reporters while they edit and upload videos, podcasts, slideshows and other online-only content. Approve before publishing.
• Work with copy editors on hyperlinking and headline writing for the Web.
• Be a third-read on online-only stories. Work with reporters to format print stories for the Web.
• Answer questions from readers and help troubleshoot problems, or refer to someone else to answer.

Weekly

• Send out an e-mail of weekly highs/lows of online content.
• Set goals for the content for the week ahead.
• Weekly management meeting.
• Coordinate plans for multimedia, photo coverage for the week ahead after enterprise.

Monthly

• Meet twice-monthly with online representatives from all desks.
• Meet with Innovation team.
• Solicit professional critiques of our work.
• Work with news adviser to schedule enrichments.

Because The Daily Tar Heel’s strategy next year involves social media more than ever, we felt it would be helpful to establish a policy to guide reporters on how to use it. My goal was to create a policy that emphasizes the value of social media while sets some standards so as not to embarass the paper.

In general, we plan to trust our reporters to know what is acceptable and what is not. We’re going to accompany this policy with training at the beginning of the year on how to use social media.

10 rules for using social media:

1. Use your own name and photo. If you using your account for DTH reporting, identify yourself as a DTH reporter in your profile.
2. Tell your editor if you plan to tweet as a DTH reporter. Likewise, let your editor know if you plan to livetweet something.
3. In general, do not post something online that would not be appropriate to run in the paper or on dailytarheel.com.*
4. You must disclose yourself as a DTH reporter to potential sources the same way you would if you were meeting face-to-face.
5. Do not disclose political affiliation on profiles and do not write about your political preferences in updates.
6. Do not criticize a colleague’s work.
7. Promoting your work via social media is encouraged.
8. In the interest of transparency, staff meetings are considered open unless otherwise stated.
9. It is acceptable to “friend” sources, but do it evenly. For instance, if you cover the Chapel Hill Town Council, if you wish to follow one member on Twitter, you should follow all of them.
10. Respond to people who contact you via social media. If you aren’t the appropriate person to answer their questions, refer them to whoever is.

In making this list I looked at several professional papers’ guidelines on social media. Most missed the mark with the limits that they placed. I want to make it as easy as possible for readers and sources to contact DTH reporters and place a high premium on transparency. My experience with social media is that it’s expanded my reporting capabilities and made me more responsive to our readership, and I wouldn’t want to limit other reporters.

Feel free to comment with suggestions/improvements. I’m also interested to hear if other college papers have social media policies or are looking to create them.

*Added after a suggestion from Jason Spencer.

Last night I was hired as The Daily Tar Heel’s next managing editor for online, and I couldn’t be more excited at the opportunity to lead the paper’s transition to online journalism. My goal and @andrew_dunn’s goal is for the DTH to be at the forefront of reinventing journalism.

We’ve got a lot of changes in store for dailytarheel.com and the newsroom’s online operations in general.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be moving off the College Media Network and onto a Drupal-based site developed by Stunt3. We hope to launch a beta in mid-May, and the fully featured site will replace the beta by July 1.

Starting in August, you can expect to see updates on dailytarheel.com throughout the day instead of just once a day. We’ll do this by adding online and copy staff to daytime shifts. Copy staffers will be writing SEO’d headlines and Web summaries and posting content. Online staffers will be maintaining the home page, using social networking and developing Web features and applications.

We’ll also be introducing a community manager, who will expand our presence online on Twitter and Facebook and who will cultivate user-generated content. Andrew’s already written about the new Innovation team - let us know if you’re interested.

Other features you can expect to see throughout the year on the Web site:

• A searchable map of on- and off-campus crime
• Downtown bar and restaurant guide
• Standalone galleries for multimedia content
• Regular podcasts, including a daily podcast talking about the major news of the day and what readers can expect in the next day’s paper
• A recommend function on articles
• A mobile edition
• Content grouped by topic, not desk
• Liveblogging
• User-generated content
• A DTH FAQ to serve as a readers’ guide

We’ve started a DTH internal wiki, we want to transfer DTH e-mail addresses to Gmail accounts, and I’m also looking at ways we can do more of our internal planning online. Throughout it all I plan to chronicle here and on a DTH blog what we’re doing so that other college papers can use it as a resource.

Beyond all this, my job is responsible for training staff to understand and embrace the Web. Reporters will be hyperlinking and tagging their own stories, they’ll learn video and audio, blogging and social media. Staff will learn by doing. Teaching these skills will help us accomplish these other goals.

Andrew and I have lots of ideas about what we can do to improve dailytarheel.com. A lot of it hinges on getting good feedback. What do you think? What should our online newsroom next year include?