Travis Lyles began a new role as director of social media at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) in April. He previously worked for Business Insider, The Virginian-Pilot and The Washington Post.
Lyles leads a core social media team, building strategy infrastructure and platform playbooks for the AJC. He oversees four individuals — who meet regularly with newsroom journalists — to promote content and create it for social media audiences. Editor & Publisher caught up with Lyles to talk about today’s social media landscape. The following Q&A has been edited for brevity
E&P: How do you balance social media strategy with flexibility?
Lyles: The two things go hand in hand. I think it’s super important to have a playbook for social overall, but also for each individual platform. That’s one thing I’ve really started tackling in the past two months. I think it really has helped just build an infrastructure for what we’re aiming for, this is our north star, and getting the entire team aligned on that. Any good audience team, any good social team, also brings a level of experimentation to their daily output. We’re constantly looking to experiment and dabble in different things.
E&P: What’s your view on social media and subscriptions/conversions?
Lyles: There is still the ability to drive traffic through platforms like Facebook and X, and obviously you can get subscriptions through people hitting the paywall. I think social as a whole is moving more toward a way to get folks to the top of the subscription funnel. These are investments in younger generations that we have to make, and we might not see it immediately … but I think it’s a long game worth playing.
E&P: What new experiments or initiatives are you pursuing?
Lyles: Continue to build trust with our audience. We are launching a series called “Ask Atlanta.” The premise of the series is basically … bring the audience with us into the conversation. We really want to do more what we call social‑first content — so content that might not necessarily be tied back to something that’s on site, but something that’s either created by our video team or even created by our social team, specifically for an audience or an off‑platform audience.
E&P: Which platforms do you prioritize, and what should smaller newsrooms do?
Lyles: We focus a lot on Instagram as a social team, and you know, we see the growth in that area. Our goal is to engage the audience on that platform, whereas Facebook is a more natural traffic driver. I would say, pick your targets as a small newsroom. A lot of small newsrooms have a lot of success on Facebook, so maybe it’s Facebook and Instagram.
Don’t feel like you have to do everything. It’s better to be really good at one or two things than to be OK at six different platforms.
E&P: What software or systems should newsrooms consider regarding social media?
Lyles: I’ve had a really good experience with Sprout Social. You can do a bunch of different things within the interface — publish content, you can do social listening, you can do analytics. If you can get a platform like Sprout or one of these other publishing platforms that really give you in‑depth analytics that you can lean on, that’s super helpful.
E&P: Final message to editors and publishers?
Lyles: Always put the audience first. Put ourselves in the audience’s shoes. Think critically about how we frame our most crucial journalism in effective ways.
Bob Miller has spent more than 25 years in local newsrooms, including 12 years as an executive editor with Rust Communications. Bob also produces an independent true crime investigative podcast called The Lawless Files.
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