How My Facebook Post Went National
Since I live in Wyoming, where the bulk of Yellowstone Park is located, I knew my Facebook friends would be interested to see it.
I posted the photo
on my Facebook wall with a short description:
"A Yellowstone Park employee took this picture from his car. The fleeing 1600 pound bison has shredded flesh on his legs and sides from an unpleasant encounter with the approaching 800 pound grizzly. Welcome to Wyoming.
"
We later discovered that the photo was taken by, Alex Wypyszinski, who had just dropped off his wife at work and had a few hours to kill one morning last April.
About My Facebook Friends
I currently have 2,757 friends who are made up of mostly public relations pros and journalists who have friended me through PitchEngine. There are also many friends who are actual "personal friends" from various parts of the world. Via Facebook, I share stories about my personal adventures living in Wyoming as well as my hits and misses as an entrepreneur, being the founder/ceo of PitchEngine.
Some of my friends are former colleagues from my days as a news anchor and reporter in Montana. One such friend, Jerry Makoff, is the Online News Producer and Social Media Director for KTVQ, a CBS affiliate in Billings, Montana - where I used to work. Jerry saw the post and shared it Q2's Facebook Fans. He also decided to do a little digging by placing a call to the Yellowstone National Park officials.
My post had already received about 300 comments in a little over an hour. Most of them were, "OMG!," or "I hope he got away," - but some of them were from those self-proclaimed Photoshop experts who try to crash the party by calling the photo a fake. With a little research and a phone call to Yellowstone Prak District Ranger Michael Keator, Q2 verified, "The picture is authentic."
I posted an update with a link to Jerry's discovery, which he posted to KTVQ.com, the news channel's website. By now, the post was being shared and reposted by thousands of people via Facebook and now, Twitter. Within a few hours, and a little support from our Park friends, Q2 News was able to track down the photographer himself. What transpired brought clarity and more details about the adventurous photo.
"I thought I was having a hallucination or something," said Wypyszinski. "I couldn't believe what that buffalo looked like." The full article on KTVQ.com tells the story of one lucky photographer. I quickly added an update to my original Facebook post (now with more than 700 comments and 400 likes), along with a new post, "The Bison Got Away."
The Results
"The Bison Got Away" story is now the most viewed story ever in the MTN group (Montana Television Network) with a total of over 250,000 views (UPDATE: 1M+). The story represents a true case study of a story going viral. It was shared on Facebook more than 10,000 times on the first day. And this past weekend, the story was picked up by all major news networks and was read in all 50 states and 136 countries.
Why was it so effective? Well, it was a captivating image, of course, but that's not the whole story. Because it was already deemed newsworthy - evident by the comments, shares and "likes" - it was a no-brainer for the news network.
This is how the news business is changing. It didn't take a producer to determine what was newsworthy, it took a few hundred people. We are all news producers now. Journalists, producers and media outlets in general who try to remain gatekeepers of information will dwindle. Thanks to social media, we have the power to choose what is newsworthy.
Do we need journalists? Absolutely, they do the homework. I remember reading on Twitter that Michael Jackson had died, but at that time, none of the news networks had confirmed. I knew that there was a chance that it was untrue, but I still knew long before people who relied on more traditional means of news gathering. Later, it was confirmed by the media.
It seems that now, we can have our news, and eat it too.
