NCTJ delivers exclusive webinar for accredited course providers, hosted by Facebook

The NCTJ and Facebook today held a ‘train the trainer’ webinar for heads of journalism, course leaders and tutors on all NCTJ-accredited courses.

The free webinar provided an opportunity for attendees to gain the latest knowledge about Facebook, to then share with students.

Attendees were told how to create and share great content and engage new and existing audiences on the platform.

Some of the latest algorithm changes were discussed by Sarah Brown, training and news literacy manager, EMEA at Facebook, who explained that the key to ensuring content is seen and engaged with on the platform was to make posts timely, relevant, conversational and authentic.

Facebook’s News Feed values were listed as follows:

• Friends and family come first
• News Feed should inform
• News Feed should entertain
• We are a platform for all ideas
• We value authentic communication
• People can control their experience
• Constant iteration

Sarah explained that mixing up the content of posts is important, and told attendees to make use of Facebook Live, photo, video, 360, polls and more.

Facebook Groups were also pointed out as a great way for journalists to increase engagement, and Sarah explained how journalists can get involved and interact with Group members and collaborate with tools such as Polls, Docs, Events, Live and Chat to discuss things and organise activities in real-time.

The NCTJ will be partnering with Facebook again later in the year, to deliver a seminar for both journalists and journalism educators.

Following feedback from attendees of last year’s Facebook Journalism Project seminar, the event in October will focus on topics such as News Feed, Facebook Live and video (including monetisation), Facebook Groups and new forms of storytelling including Facebook Stories.

If you are interested in finding out more, please contact cecilia.judmann@nctj.com.