How do you make a news story go viral again? Well, you call people or email them asking to share your story on Facebook, Twitter etc, right? Especially those you’ve quoted in the story.

You use your finely honed journalistic skills, such as your immaculate powers of persuasion and impressive contact book, phoning contacts en masse to make them share the stories you’ve written that are relevant to them all over the social web, right?

At least that’s what you might do if you are Mette Bugge, sports journalist at Schibsted-owned Aftenposten, and take to this brave new social media world of ours like a fish in the water:

Naturally employing every trick in the book from your almost 40 years in journalism to make the social web work for you.

Bugge will share these insights into how she works with social media and distribution during «Kommunikasjonsdagen», a big national conference for the Norwegian communications industry in Oslo today (hashtag: #Komdagen ).

I’m able to share some of them here ahead of her talk, as I was privileged enough to listen to her during a smaller, Girl Geek Dinners Oslo, event last year.

To describe what happens when a story really takes off on Facebook - or goes viral / receives a massive amount of likes and shares – Bugge uses the endearing term «Faceball», and she uses it as a verb (as in «to Faceball» or «a story Faceballs / Faceballed».)

On the photo I've shared below, she explained that she uses the term "Faceball" to describe 'when a story starts 'to roll by itself on Facebook'. It's similar to, but obviously not the same, as to "snowball" , a term I believe Doc Searls coined many years ago, which I've written about here.

I was very taken in with Bugge’s enthusiastic talk, especially since a lot of the stories she covers have sources that are far from the early adapter crowd, such as local sports clubs, and might only be too happy to receive a friendly reminder via email or phone.

It only goes to prove that, as Jay Rosen said some time back when introducing this story on Connie Schultz: «Good journalists (of any age) are naturals at social media, if they take the time to learn the form and do it right» - and perhaps, one might add: even better when they merge their traditional journalism skills with digital journalism skills.

NB: Mette Bugge was presenting at Girl Geek Dinners Oslo in her capacity as on of the «spearheads», or digital ambassadors if you like, for Aftenposten's "Digital Spearheads"-project, read more about this here.

 

Faceball=når en sak virkelig begynner å rulle på Facebook. Godt konsept fra Mette Bugges herlige foredrag om hvordan hun jobber m distribusjon i sosiale medier under @girlgeekdinnersoslo hos @aftenposten #Facebook #Faceball #ggdo #aftenposten #sosialemedier

A photo posted by Kristine Lowe (@kristinelowe1) on Jan 27, 2015 at 10:40am PST