Journalists can take a course on how to use Facebook and Instagram

Whether you are a seasoned editor or a budding journalist looking to sharpen your social media skills, well look no further as Facebook will now offer an online course for journalists.

The course will be available through Facebook Blueprint, the global training program. Primarily targeted towards spreading awareness about how journalists can utilize Facebook and Instagram to thrive, teaching them the three core steps involved in the generation of news; discovering content, creating stories and building an audience, the three modules on offer.

“Each module contains best practices and guidelines from Facebook, but also draws heavily on great journalist case studies which we hope will inspire tens of thousands of other journalists. Courses available at launch will include “How Journalists Can Best Utilize Facebook and Instagram,” along with product courses on Facebook Live, 360 videos & photos, and Instant Articles.” says Aine Kerr, Manager of Journalism Partnerships on Facebook’s official blog.

Putting it into layman’s terms, it is simply a crash course on “How To Facebook Like a Pro” and the Getting Started module explains everything about Facebook that one may find confusing. It involves getting the blue tick next to your page name and the whole shebang.

Also ,on offer will be webinars catering to journalists new and old, tailored to fit a person’s role, experience on Facebook and according to Facebook’s services and updates. Hoping to work together with journalists from across the world to offer their inputs and join the discussion to make the course as helpful and informative, and to cover each new Facebook feature and update.

The website shall also be translated into eight different languages in the next few months, offering the course to as many journalists from across the world as possible.

Traditional media has been finding it difficult to find takers with each passing day, as more and more people across the world avail internet connectivity and go online for news and other real time updates. Publishers have been becoming increasingly dependent on Facebook for web clicks and referrals, and after the introduction of Instant Articles the fight for social media visibility only intensified.

Not all publications have had a smooth transition, and have found the online ecosystem to be challenging, thus cometh Facebook to the rescue. It works for all the concerned parties as Facebook is where the people are, and Facebook wants them to stay. Publications thus had to make their way onto social media because lets face it, if they won’t someone else will.

Facebook did well by introducing the Trending section bang on the News Feed providing real time updates to its users, and then eliminating click-baiting articles, which dealt another blow to the already struggling publication houses, some of whom out of sheer desperation had ventured into click-baiting for web clicks.

To keep clickbait at bay, while at the same time making sure online publications and quality standards can coexist on their platform, Facebook has devised a plan, or a course to be precise.

Instagram too is a brilliant platform for photojournalists and other media related publications, regardless of the audience they cater to, can be utilized to reach millions of people all over the globe.

Needless to say, we expect the quality and quantity of publications on Facebook to grow significantly.