Matt Navarra
Social Media Director for The Next Web
Discussion
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
Hey all! I'm Matt (@MattNavarra - on - everything.) I'm the social media director for global tech news site The Next Web (TNW). I am responsible for the entire social media strategy and output for TNW and our popular TNW Conference events.
We have a community of over 4.5+ million people spread across all the major social platforms... so keeping keeping our audience happy and engaged is a tricky but fun task.
Previously, I worked for the UK government as a digital communications lead, and even spent some time in Number 10 Downing Street. Shortly, i will be transitioning into my new role as Head of Content for TNW...
...So... Ask Me Anything! :)
upvotesharetweet・
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
You live in Cardiff and write for a tech publication.
I live in Cardiff and work for Product Hunt.
Firstly, how have we not met haha?
I'm not a fan of Cardiff so I wont bother going too much into that, but why do you enjoy (if you do) being based in Cardiff? (I quite like being out of certain bubbles sometimes)
What is the key to growing, scaling and maintaining community in a positive way?
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@bentossell I am also shocked we have never crossed paths when we're so nearby! I love Cardiff. It's not my hometown, as i was born and brought up near Bristol, UK. As for growing a thriving community... Humor and being real in how we engage helps i think. We try to reply to comments as often as we can, and we also respond constructively to complaints or issues readers post in comments. But if someone trolls us or is just way out of line... we will deal with you ;) We also cross promote a lot on social and our TNW Conference events are a big help in boosting our online community.
Mohamed Abbassi
@pixmonkey · Founder @Peps / Peps.io
Hey Matt, thanks for being here. My question for you is : what advice would you give to someone starting a tech news site to scale/ engage the audience through social media presence ?
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@pixmonkey It's a competitive and tough market. And one that is getting harder. I'd say start small and focus on Twitter to build a decent size audience. Then move on to Facebook later as that takes more time to build momentum.
Julian Ilson
@julianilson · Chief Enchilada Officer, Me3app.co
Hi Matt!
Assuming a startup has a global vision, but the launch strategy is to begin in one city (due to the importance of local network effects for the product), is there anything we should consider doing differently in our efforts to get as much local and global coverage as possible?
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@julianilson Think before you email your pitch. We get 100's a day. Same for other publications too. You need to grab our attention in the title of the email fast, and get to the point, quickly. Be creative, but dont get too clever and over think it. Jump on trending topics on social of your app//business/startup can relate to it or has an angle that can link to it. Act fast when it does. Use Product Hunt! We always check PH daily to see what's hot/new that we sometimes miss. Hope that helps.
@mattnavarra @julianilson great advice 🐥
Will Dinkel
@dubyaemdee · Founder of ObeeMobee
Hey Matt! Thanks for taking time to chat with us!
With a team working across the globe, what are your go-to tools to keep everyone connected and productive? Is there anything missing, like some tool that you wish us makers would make?
Have a good one!
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@dubyaemdee We use Slack as our tool of choice for communicating across the whole TNW staff community. Works well for us. Fun tool to use too. Wish it had threaded comments though! (grrr). I still have not seen a great tool that lets us all stay LIVE on video in one place that lets us engage in a more real way via video.
Danny Denhard
@dannydenhard · Founder & CEO of Denhard Media
Hi Matt, thanks for doing this.
With you impressive shares across social media can you talk about the tools you use and how you spot new trends to create content for the site and how you select what social content to share? Cheers
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@dannydenhard Our core tools are: Socialflow, Tweetdeck, Parsely, Google Analytics, Buffer (for events), and a few smaller ones. We use Newswhip's Spike tool to spot trending content, and we monitor Twitter using smart searches and tools like DataMinr. I also have a ton of alerts setup on Slack from multiple sources like Reddit, HackerNews, Product Hunt, Twitter, Facebook, Digg and more, to alert me to content / news that is getting a lot of social traction. We pick stories to go to social which we think will do best dependent on the platform. Something highly shareable is a must to go on Facebook, and a very topical trending news post tends to pick up traction faster on Twitter. LinkedIn is great for business news and lifehacks, etc etc.
Marcos Ortiz
@marcosluis2186 · PM, Growth for @MyCP & @MyPaladar
Hey Matt. Thanks for joining us here. We appreciate that !!! I admire the Content Strategy at The Next Web, so my question is about that: How do you create the content plan for the next month at TNW? Is a team effort? Thanks again
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@marcosluis2186 Shock news coming up! We don't really use one for the main news/features content we pump out daily. We DO schedule stuff on weekends to give readers a 2nd chance to see our top posts again on Twitter and Facebook. And we often hold back on posting something to social until we think it's prime time to do so based on our data + a hunch. We also plan ahead for events like a new Apple event for a product launch. but beyond that, nope.
Elena Tolstokoraya
@elena_tolstokoraya
Hey Matt. I'm curious what kind should be a startup to interest you?
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@elena_tolstokoraya I love all things social media related (unsurprisingly). So, if you have a cool new tool or app, hit me up!
How many people typically manage @TheNextWeb Twitter account, and what are your thoughts on frequency of posting? I try to space things out every one hour, with some every 30min tweets from @ProductHunt -- but I see @TheNextWeb and especially outlets like @Mashable sometimes tweet 3 different articles in 10 min
M
Matt Navarra
@mattnavarra · Social Media Director for @TheNextWeb
@nivo0o0 @thenextweb @producthunt @mashable We are dictated too by the news of the day. If we have lots of new posts and news is hectic... we will post several times an hour. We also repeat our news/feature tweets 3 times over the first 24 hours. This upsets a small number of twitter addicts as they end up seeing the same thing a few times. But most people don't use Twitter like that, so we have to make sure our content is seen across all timezones by reposting it a few times. There are only 2 people on the TNW social team covering 24/7 365. 1 in the US. 1 in the UK. Me! But we're adding a new person based in Amsterdam next month. The editors are also active on Twitter and step in to help fairly often.
Mark Davies
@mrmarkdavies · @MrMarkDavies
@mattnavarra @nivo0o0 thats a really useful insight
Natalya khaykis
@zipjob · Marketing for Zipjob
What type of content do you recommend startups focus on when starting out?