Leveraging Social Media for Audience Impact

Washington Post Social Media Editor Amy Nakumura Explains It All
Amy Nakumura told NPF Widening fellows that resisting social media can stifle storytelling and lead to a disconnect with audiences. Her job creating social content for the Washington Post helps produce understandable and easy to follow information.
by Emma Teeuwen, National Press Foundation

As the digital footprint in today’s media sector continues to expand, journalists must learn to leverage social media effectively. That was the key message shared by Amy Nakamura, the Washington Post’s social media editor during the 2025 Widening the Pipeline final training.

Nakamura helps navigate the Post’s media strategy across many platforms, including TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X, Blue Sky, Threads, WhatsApp, LinkedIn. But she said her specialty is on Reddit, the popular social news aggregation and forum social media platform.

“My job as a social media editor is to make the news as accessible and understandable as possible,” Nakamura said. “I often think about my friend who’s in medical school and she tells me, ‘I have 20 minutes in the day to figure out what the heck is going on in the world outside of the hospital.’ So I think a lot about her when I craft social media posts or a Tweet, or an Instagram post. If she only saw one thing today, I better make sure it’s understandable and easy to follow for her, and people like her.”

Nakamura said Reddit is a great way for journalists to share their stories to communities already interested in a topic. But the portal’s benefits don’t end there. Nakamura also helps reporters do Ask Me Anything sessions, another way to spread information while also growing connections.

“And really, this is the best way for your reporters to connect to the public,” Nakamura said of Reddit AMAs. “I think this is one of the best parts of my job as a social editor on Reddit is being able to give people access directly to the information that they need.”

Nakamura said Reddit also helps local publications build regional connections, especially if they are struggling on other platforms.

“…A lot of people think the Post is a national paper, but on Reddit, I share a lot of our local coverage because Virginia, Maryland, and DC have really active subreddits,” Nakamura said.

Many audiences crave more information even after reading social posts, Nakamura noted. She urged journalists to respond to comments to provide more information. “Like actually responding to people being like, ‘What happened next?” or “I have a question about this.’ ”

This strategy isn’t just limited to Reddit. Reporter engagement with social media audiences is important, because to listening to audiences can guide reporters to the kind of issues communities care about.

“We’ve asked and polled our WhatsApp audiences, ‘Do you want to see more climate? Do you want to see more lifestyle things?’, and we really found that they do really love the international news” she noted.

Journalists should also be strategic about which social media platforms they choose to leverage. Factors to consider include the demographic of the audience, or if it’s necessary for the link to the piece to be posted can help determine where to share their work.

“Sometimes we have to make decisions about, ‘Will this post hurt us versus help us?’, and sometimes we have to pause on X or certain platforms based on what we know about those audiences”, said Nakamura.

The performance of a post also depends on the platform as well. Some companies have the algorithm boost and prioritize posts that native made content.

“Meta has recently told us that they’ve adjusted their algorithm to prioritize videos made in their Edits app, which is their own video editing app for Reels,” she said. “So I would really encourage people, if you’re trying to grow your Instagram audience, to use Edits to make your Reels, because it’ll automatically give it a boost…”

Visually, it’s also important to frame a social media post in ways that point people to the story. One technique is tweaking headlines. Nakamura recounts changing a headline from a health story to fit in with a trend going around social media.

“…Instead of the headline being ‘Follow These Tips to Slow Aging in Your Brain’, we changed it to ‘Entering A Flow State Might Slow Aging In Your Brain, Here Are Other Tips.’ And so, it actually overperformed on Instagram, whereas it might have underperformed if we focused more on the aging part than mentioning flow state,” she said.

Speaker: Amy Nakamura, Social Media Editor, The Washington Post

Summary and transcript: https://nationalpress.org/topic/lever...

This fellowship is funded by the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation and the John C. and Ethel C. Eklund Scholarship Fund.

This video was produced within the Evelyn Y. Davis studios. NPF is solely responsible for the content.