Atlanta Journal-Constitution TikTok Blogs

May 5, 2022

The team tackling TikTok has wrapped up this semester! Since our last blog post, we have conducted a focus group, met with the social media team at AJC, drafted a few more TikToks, created a strong marketing strategy report and wrote out our final strategy deck to hand over to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Let us take you through how we crossed the finish line.

In mid-April, we held a focus group over Zoom with nine participants to gauge their interest in the different TikToks we had created so far covering content on local and national news, food and lifestyle. We learned that Gen Z has a high interest in short, fast-paced daily news recaps that allow them to learn of the major headlines for the day and seek out further information on their own. Additionally, they enjoyed learning about unique local businesses and wanted to see places in their city that weren’t well known. Our participants voiced that they want to see consistent content and tone from a news TikTok account like the AJC, rather than a wide range of video types. Lastly, participants had great interest in a ‘behind the scenes’ video to meet the journalists at the AJC. Even while watching news content, viewers want to see content that is personable and engaging. From the feedback we received in the focus group, we went straight to the AJC to share what we learned. 

In our conversation with the folks at the AJC, we got to share our progress and hear from Rodney and the social media team, Kelly and Joseph, about where to go from here. They had ideas on how to adapt their In Context YouTube videos for TikTok and wanted to know what kind of content they could start drafting first! Following this meeting, we got right to work and drafted a few more TikToks, including an In Context video edited from Joseph’s original footage and an updated Local News Recap TikTok utilizing a graphic we created with the AJC logo. Beyond our goal of creating a presence on TikTok, the feedback we received from our focus group provided helpful insight that could be implemented on other existing social platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube.

One of our last two steps left in this semester included creating a marketing strategy report to describe how we would gain traction for our TikTok account. Our ideas ranged from hiring a huge TikTok influencer to promote the account to utilizing the AJC’s existing social media accounts to spread the word. 

Finally, we created our strategy deck to hand over to the AJC, full of TikTok need-to-knows, strategy on creating content and a guide on how to measure success with analytics. Our hope is the AJC will utilize the information we compiled to launch their account and feel confident in their promotion and creation of TikToks. At the end of this capstone class, we fully solidified our “why” for news organizations joining a new platform like TikTok. Good journalism evolves with the times and we saw TikTok as an amazing opportunity to reach a younger, diverse audience and deliver quality news content in a shorter format. We hope that our strategy deck is an accessible and informative dive into TikTok, for anyone at the AJC wanting to learn about the platform even if they don’t work on the social team. 

Throughout this semester, the four of us have not only gained experience in social media strategy and planning, but learned what it takes to build a product and effectively work with and communicate in a team. We could not have done this without the guidance and support of our professor, Christian McDonald, and Rodney Gibbs at the AJC. Thank you for following along on our journey and stay tuned to AJC’s socials. 

Food TikTok produced by team member, Jenn Xia

March 31, 2022

We’ve come a long way from our last update! After doing weeks of research and meeting with Rodney Gibbs, the senior director of strategy and innovation at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, we’ve solidified the project’s marketing goals and AJC’s voice for the TikTok platform. Let us walk you through how we got there!

We sent out a survey to gauge interest about consuming news on Tik Tok, understand what kind of content people want to see, and understand roadblocks keeping people from consuming news on Tik Tok. From this survey, we learned that news feels overwhelming and untrustworthy to people ages 18-25, and that people want important local, national and global news consolidated into quick and easily understandable videos. We also found that while viewers had concerns about misinformation in TikTok, there was a large interest in having news delivered in an engaging, yet informative way. Since most viewers turn to TikTok to decompress and relax, survey responders said videos with a lighthearted or humorous tone would do better and deliver news in a way that combated the existing dread of the news cycle they may find on other platforms.

After researching what has already been done, what works and what doesn’t, we got to creating. 

We each took on different types of TikToks to tackle- from food and local news, to repurposing existing segments the AJC already has like ‘Unapologetically ATL’ and ‘In Context.’ We were able to apply our findings from our initial research (on which news organizations succeed on Tik Tok and why) to the videos we created.

Video1: Narrated green screen TikTok about the vandalized Midtown Intersection

Video2: TikTok based on ‘In Context’ segment covering NFTs

Video3: TikTok on local artist Tyler Mitchell

After creating our first round of TikToks, we met with Rodney again to review the videos we produced and received feedback. We learned the AJC is hoping to produce new content instead of reusing archival footage and would rather we used trending TikTok sounds than instrumental music. From here, we produced more TikToks with these changes in mind:

Video4: TikTok with trending sound to promote Education beat

Video5: TikTok with trending sound about Georgia university system’s decision to not require standardized tests

Video6: Food TikTok highlighting a local business

Video7: TikTok trend to promote the AJC TikTok account

Looking forward, our next steps are to begin planning our focus group and implement the feedback we’ve received on the TikToks we’ve made so far into a social media strategy for the AJC.

February 18, 2022

Why TikTok? Why The Atlanta Journal Constitution?

Hey y’all — if you’re anything like us, you’re spending hours scrolling through your For You Page on TikTok. But beyond dancing and niche corners of the internet, we believe TikTok is a powerful and engaging tool newsrooms can utilize to share current events in accessible and digestible ways for young and diverse audiences.

Meet the team: Mia Cooper, Kaitlin Berger, Gabrielle Keene and Jennifer Xia. When we heard about the opportunity to collaborate with Atlanta’s only major daily newspaper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, on launching their TikTok account with the goal of diversifying their audience and shining a new digital spotlight on Atlanta, we jumped at the chance to combine our love for social media and journalism.

TikTok was the number one downloaded app in 2020 and 2021, and has over 1 billion active users worldwide. This short-form video platform has skyrocketed in popularity, especially among younger users, with 63% of users under the age of 30. While the AJC has retained their traditional print news audience, their readership skews older, wealthy and white. We believe that news is for everyone. 

Early on, we met with Rodney Gibbs, senior director of strategy and innovation at the AJC, and solidified the goals of the project: to offer news in a multimedia format through social media to reach audiences who don’t typically consume news and present it in an informative, yet engaging way.

By taking the AJC to TikTok, we can inform Generation Z by bringing them news in short, understandable videos for free. Our hope is that this TikTok account will get more eyes on AJC content and ultimately direct viewership back to the AJC’s website and traditional news stories. We want to help the AJC “push on” by innovating the way they deliver content to their audience.

But more than getting clicks and views, we hope to inspire a more literate and conscious youth, where engaging with current events is not only fun and interesting, but necessary to understanding the world we are a part of. From politics and sports to food and social issues, the stories we share are what connect us and push us forward to a more just world. And that can come from even a single TikTok account.