Mars and a mohawk: Smart reporting with social media

Here’s a social media lesson for the next big event in your market. So often the question is (or should be), “What separates our coverage from the 20 other media organizations covering this story?”

If you were on Twitter during the Mars landing, you knew the star of the show was “Mohawk Guy,” an animated guy in Mission Control with a wild haircut. The Twitterverse had no trouble identifying him, finding his Twitter account and putting an appealing human face on the story. TheAtlantic.com quickly captured the story by listening, not just talking, on social media.

Within a day or two, the “mainstream” was playing catch-up to the Twitterverse.

And today, when President Obama called the Mars team, he said,  “I understand there is a special mohawk guy working on the mission.” Again, TheAtlantic.com did a nice job with the story, incorporating a Twitter user’s vision of Obama with a mohawk.

It’s easy to see how this kind of work could be a winner at big football schools. And there are probably are many “smaller” but still popular events and topics ripe for this approach.

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