The future of news runs through social media

How I gained 30,000 followers on LinkedIn.

The world runs on social media.

I don’t expect this to ever reverse. Professionals young and old need to plan accordingly.

My friend Julia Munslow, a senior editor with The Wall Street Journal, understands this better than most. She invited me to speak at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she teaches reporters how to best leverage social media.

It's an important lesson in modern storytelling. After all, how good is a good story if no one sees it?

Julia’s particularly smart about video content. She’s the one who first pushed me toward video reporting while we were in Berlin, Germany together for a Fulbright fellowship last September.

I was terrified to get on camera but, as Julia instructs her students, fear shrinks with practice.

So Julia asked me to share my “LinkedIn strategy” with the class. Despite recently hitting 30,000 followers on the platform, I said I didn’t think I had one.

When I laid it out, though, I realized I do.

On that platform I publish anecdotes like this, stories and ideas that pique my interest, and I do that everyday with a mix of text and video.

Volume, I suppose, is the strategy.

This isn’t different from how I approach my reporting for Opening Bell Daily, my personal blog or even my private Moleskin journal that no one sees.

Volume, I told the class, is the best way to get good at something and a great way to establish your own voice. Plus, there’s nothing more exciting than discovering what lies on the other side of consistency.

In my experience, it rarely disappoints.

Talk to you soon (i.e. see you on social media!),

Phil Rosen
Co-founder, Editor-in-chief, Opening Bell Daily