Social media can be used for more than just engaging likers and referring traffic.

We regularly use our Facebook pages to create what we call 360s. A 360 is a story that uses content created on Facebook.

For example, we will create a post on Facebook, the content (comments or photos) on that post are then used for the story either online and/or in print.

We then take this story back to our Facebook page, completing the process hence the name 360.

Runs on the board

Through 360s we encourage our audience to be part of the newsgathering process.

They reflect in real time what our audience is talking about on social media.

We build more useful stories from the advice of our readers, and in turn our readers love seeing the content they create.

360s are a great way to engage your audience and create timeless content.

We use them for listicles, photo spreads or top 10 recommendations.

Case study

Here is an example of one of our most successful 360s.

It started with a post asking people to share photos of their cake creations.

We received hundreds of cake photos on this post. We took these photos and wrote a story for online, embedding some of the contributed photos in the story and creating a photo gallery with more.

We then interviewed a member of our audience who shared photos of her cakes and did another story on her with video.

This story, along with a selection of other contributed cake photos ran in print.

We then took the story back to Facebook, sharing with our audience the content they helped create, the content they were a part of.