“My life became a blur. Tweeting furiously. Hopping over to Facebook to post a story there. Clicking through our Twitter mentions for possible retweets. Fielding requests from Slate editors to promote their newest stories ...
“I had been instructed to keep an eye on Chartbeat to see if any stories suddenly spiked in traffic. That was a hint that the story had legs—people were into it, and so it merited an additional boost on Twitter and Facebook. I saw a piece from our excellent politics correspondent Jamelle Bouie doing well, so I threw it some Twitter love. I noticed a moving personal tale from the writer Rebecca Schuman drawing clicks, so I goosed it on Facebook. I sorted through Slate’s mentions and found some people saying nonhorrible things, so I retweeted them. I checked back to see which stories we hadn’t promoted in a few hours, and shoved them back into the spotlight. I began to get the hang of it ...
“In the afternoon, with the automated program now doing the grunt work, I got more creative. I played with the language on tweets to see if they’d pop. I chucked a few oddball stories up on Facebook, to see if they’d surprise us with unforeseen traffic pizzazz. During the 3 p.m to 4 p.m. hour—traditionally a dead period, I learned—I’d been instructed to post one of my old articles that has reliably gotten a lot of Facebook traction ...
“At the end of the day, I had my first and only brush with ‘viral lift.’ Moneybox writer Alison Griswold cleverly wrote a post about a new, controversial phenomenon known as ‘hot desking’ ... The story exploded on Facebook and Twitter. I kept tweeting it in slightly different ways, over and over. It dominated Chartbeat—I could watch the numbers soar in real time. It was thrilling.
—Seth Stevenson
