Daily Tar Heel reporters and editors are now taking questions via Formspring.

Answering reader questions isn’t a new idea, but we’re excited about trying that with this new platform. This isn’t a tool that was created with a journalistic purpose in mind, but neither was Twitter or Facebook - two tools that have we now recognize have immense value for journalists.

Creating a forum where readers could easily ask questions of DTH staff has been on our radar for awhile, but we’ve been limited by time and ability. Formspring might not be the most nuanced way for us to accomplish this goal (I imagine the ratio of spam to legitimate questions will be high), but I’m happy we’re trying something new. I think this is a really good lesson for other college newspapers: Make the most with what you have, and stop waiting for something better that might never come.

For several weeks now I’ve been posting on The Daily Tar Heel’s new Tumblr blog. The idea was borne out of my experience with my personal Tumblr and through this Q&A with the man behind the Newsweek Tumblr.

So far I’ve used the blog to share DTH cartoons, photos of weird goings-on in the Quad, reader comments and national stories about higher education trends. It veers more towards the light-hearted, although I have used to to respond to complaints about our coverage I saw raised in other Tumblr blogs.

What I like: Mostly, it’s ease of use. These are things I come across throughout the day, and they don’t always have a place elsewhere. In the past I’ve thrown similar-style blog posts up on our campus blog, but it’s not well-suited for a quick quote, photo or link. And sometimes that’s all that needs to be shared.

I’m not so sure how this fits into our overall strategy, or whether it serves any purpose.  Even if it does, I’m not sure if it’s something that is worth devoting limited time and resources to. We’re steadily gaining followers, and we’ve gotten a good deal of traffic from links posted to Twitter, but whether readers get anything out of it is another question. Undoubtedly we’re reading a different type of audience than we typically do though, so the question becomes then how to get them to dailytarheel.com. And that I haven’t figured out yet. Any suggestions?

I’m really happy to announce what will be my last job at The Daily Tar Heel: community manager. As online managing editor I helped create this role, and I’m excited to see it continue and play a part in shaping it. We’ve made so many strides this year under Emily Stephenson’s leadership, and I only hope to continue in that vein.

My title is officially community manager, but I most identify with the notion of a community host similar to how Steve Buttry has described the role. Here’s how I described the role in my application:

Ideally, the community manager would realize that there’s actually very little about the community that can be managed; instead, she needs to be able to participate and know how to get the most out of each interaction. The community manager needs to be a personable and recognizable figure in the community, such that people know who to contact with concerns and ideas. She also needs to be trusted by the community. The community manager must recognize that she needs to build a relationship with the community before she can accomplish her goals. We can’t just swoop in and ask readers to share things with us — there needs to be a relationship from the beginning that encourages openness. For the DTH, the community manager needs to be someone who can relay concerns back to the newsroom and make its mission more transparent to readers.

I have my own ideas for what I can do with the role, and I’m excited to get started. For those who are old hats at this job, any advice?

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?