Trustee, Dhruti Shah, gave a masterclass on gathering stories and telling them on social media. Dhruti is a BBC storyteller and award-winning journalist specialising in verification, user generated content, investigative journalism and creative storytelling through social media. Her stories have broken digital records and gone viral themselves. In this masterclass, Dhruti gave a quick run through her top tips for social newsgathering and storytelling, the pitfalls and the successes.

Here is a summary of Dhruti’s top tips:

Best social stories are:

• Human interest stories
• Resonate
• Dramatic narrative
• Offbeat (weird)
• Make you think differently
• Follow news values

Key platforms

Reddit   DeviantArt  Emails       Facebook    NextDoor

Twitter  LinkedIn     Whatsapp  YouTube    Tumblr

Weibo    TikTok         Snapchat (SnapMap)

Remember the basics:

Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?

Know what people are going to find if they search for you

What will people find – why should they trust you to tell their story?

Key extensions to help tell your story:

Invid/RevEye/Google Image/TinEye for reverse image

Remember: what can I add to my story that nobody else has?

What am I actually saying? Often the simplest question is the best

MOST IMPORTANTLY:

Don’t ever take anything emerging from social media at face value