Traditionally, journalists have approached their audience as passive consumers, not as active participants. Of course the world has changed, and newsrooms are catching up to the fact that audiences have more power than ever to find, curate and create their own news and information.

That's why turning to your audience for their questions about their community can be transformative. You're listening to what your audience needs and by finding the answers, you're serving your audience. You're creating stories that address needs you know exist in the community because you're listening.

But because news outlets haven’t actively included audiences in their storytelling processes, it can take some time to teach audiences that your organization is listening to them and to prove that their actions have impact in the newsroom. Don't be discouraged if you place the form on your site and there aren't 100 questions the next day. Teaching the audience that you're open to and responsive to their curiosity takes some time, and it requires some effort around spreading that message.

The more stories you complete and promote that were started with community questions, the more likely your community will understand that they can participate, and the more likely they'll be to think of you next time they have a great question.

It’s good to keep in mind that Hearken is first and foremost a framework for keeping the audience first in your approach to journalism. Our technology supports this framework, and is a major ingredient to your newsroom’s success with this model, but it’s not the only ingredient. Your organization's commitment to this kind of audience engagement and service matters too!

Throughout our help documents you’ll find resources and tips for encouraging participation on each of those platforms. But first check out our tips for making the most of Hearken’s technology.

The form embed is your central technology for listening to and engaging your audience. It is the main conduit by which your audience poses questions they'd like your organization to answer. This embed is responsive and you can place it wherever you'd like on your website. 

Learn more about creating and editing a form embed.

In order to inspire thoughtful audience questions, your form will need a good question prompt. 

Learn more about perfecting your prompt.

If you place the embed in prominent places on your sites (I.e., your home page, articles or pages that tend to get the most traffic), more of your audience will see it and your chances of them taking action and asking a question are higher. We recommend embedding it at the foot or sidebar of Hearken-powered stories to help make the process of asking a question clear and easy for readers. 

Putting a form on a dedicated landing page is another important strategy. Creating a centralized landing page for Hearken is a core technique for ensuring success and ongoing engagement. It gives you space to introduce and explain the Hearken process to your audience. It also provides you with a single location you can drive traffic to from social media, newsletters, and wherever else you promote your Hearken project. And overall, the landing page helps make your engagement narrative consistent and easy to follow for your audience, which is crucial for sustained engagement.  

Learn more about building your landing page. 

Depending on how much traffic your site gets, you may get enough questions from your community just by placing the form embed in a few places. But the embed is not the only way to gather questions. Media organizations using Hearken have found it valuable to solicit questions in a few other ways too. 

When you’re just starting out, we recommend using multiple platforms to get the word out about your Hearken series and how the audience can participate. Our members use a mix of promotions: from social media to email newsletters, printed ads, live events and on-air promos. (Some channels of promotion depend on what kind of newsroom you are.)

Learn more about in-person outreach and social media engagement.

Regardless of the methods you use to gather questions beyond the form embed, we recommend you enter all the questions that you collect into the Hearken Engagement Management System (EMS) so they can all be accessed and managed in one place.