Posts filed under 'New Tricks'
An often-overlooked way to get quality user-contributed material on your site is to invite readers to blog about specific events on your news site using your software. It’s an excellent way to bring a new voice to your site, and perhaps even cover an event you would not have been able to attend otherwise. At the Statesman, we’ve had reader bloggers, through our Pluck reader blogger software, post from political conventions, a climate change summit in Bali and at Netroots Nation. During the political convention, one of our veteran reporters told me the reader blogger had a fresh point-of-view that made for some good coverage. High praise, indeed.
Here’s how:
1. Identify your blogger. Reporters can usually identify, and even contact, some likely candidates. Generally, seek out someone who has a stake in the event. For example, you could find someone who is going to the South by Southwest Festival. Contact this person and explain that you’d like to have him or her blog and explain in detail what that will entail. If you can pay the blogger, great. Often, though, people will blog for free for the thrill of getting the online play. It’s OK if the person has never blogged before – as long as he or she is interesting and willing to share their thoughts, it will be good.
2. Call the person on the phone after he or she has agreed to go over what you expect, what might be fun, how often you think the person should post, etc. It helps sometimes to offer up some blog topic ideas. Be sure to listen to his or her concerns, and address them if possible.
3. Set up the blog for your reader blogger ahead of the event. If your blogger is a true novice, have him or her send in a picture and set it up, along with a nice header and “about” page.
4. Send your blogger detailed instructions on how to access the blog, how to post links, photos and videos, etc.
5. Once your blogger starts posting, give that thing some great play. If you did find a SXSW blogger, put the updates as a link side-by-side with your other festival coverage. Be sure to clearly label the material as a reader blog.
6. When the event is over, call your blogger and share page view statistics and what you enjoyed about the work. Be sure to say “thank you.”
Of course, you could find bloggers who are already posting on their own software and just link to them. You should do that when you find bloggers who are providing relevant information to your readers. What’s good about hosting someone new on your own site, though, is you bring people into the process who wouldn’t otherwise be involved. You can find some great new voices — people who are likely to want to stay involved.
January 20th, 2009
In my work over at the Chicago Tribune, and now Tribune Interactive, I’ve been teaching folks how they can get started on social bookmarking sites.
Part of what led to the traffic increase at the Tribune was partly because I figured it out, and then evangelized it within the newsroom.
Here’s how you can get started there:
1. First, go to Digg and create a profile. It’s good to state your news affiliation somewhere on the profile, but I don’t think you need to have it in your profile name.
2. Fill your profile out completely. Add your avatar, add your name and publication, your interests, etc. If you’re on Twitter, post a link to your Twitter name.
3. Now it’s time to start messing around. But don’t start submitting stories yet. Here are a couple of places you should explore.
- First, you’ll want to look at the Digg section you’re interested in. If you’re a science reporter, Digg has a science section. If you’re a producer, check out the main page.
- Also, check out the “Upcoming” tab on the Digg homepage and on your section. While you’re there, you’ll want to not only Digg stories that are of interest to you, but feel free to comment on a couple of them as well. This will get you noticed by other Diggers.
- While you’re here, start adding some friends. See the people who have submitted stories that appear on the “Upcoming” tab. Add them. Also, you could try adding some folks from the SocialBlade lists; you just don’t want to get caught up in the numbers game.
4. If you’re looking for other folks to connect with, go to the right rail on “Upcoming.” Scroll down a bit. You’ll see something like this:
Check out some of the profiles there. You want to become friends with folks who have strong profiles. Look at:
- where they’re from
- the types of stories they like
- the number of stories they’ve submitted
- the popular ratio
5. Do a search for your news organization on Digg. See if someone’s submitted any of your content.
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I won’t lie; Digg can be a bit of a time suck. The more you comment on people’s submissions, the more stories you Digg and the more often you reach out to people, the stronger your personal network will become.
You want to become a real person on Digg, and not just someone that’s part of a faceless news organization. This and this, for instance, are probably not the best approaches.
The trick with these five steps is to get noticed, and if you do what I’ve suggested, you’ll do just that.
DISCLAIMER: It’s been argued that Digg traffic isn’t necessarily the best out there. This post is meant to be a “how-to” for folks who already want to start Digging.
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If I haven’t convinced you, check this out:
Chris Lang, “How to Build Powerful Digg Profiles That Get Dugg.”
January 15th, 2009
Twitter can and should be used as the official account for your news organization, much the way @statesman and @ColonelTribune represent the Austin American-Statesman and the Chicago Tribune. Here are 10 tips for Tweeting as your news organization:
1. Follow people who are following you. To be fair, a lot of media accounts miss this important point. It’s in journalists’ DNA to push information out without listening to their audience. Change that.
2. Respond to questions, suggestions and comments. It doesn’t cost you anything but a few minutes’ worth of effort. This simple rule can relatively quickly turn your organization from a seemingly cold, uncaring institution into your audience’s trusted friend.
3. Do not use Twitterfeed. Nothing against the clever third-party vendor that pushes RSS feeds onto Twitter, it’s just that shoving your headlines out mindlessly does not make a good news Twitter account.
3. Be a one-stop shop for information. Retweet your followers’ interesting posts. Link to your competition.
4. Know your audience. Ask them if you’re Tweeting too much. Ask them if they want more. Build a quick survey and ask them to fill it out. What do they want you to Tweet more about? What should you avoid? Listen to what they say and adjust. Do your followers mostly want local news? Give it to them.
5. Trust the person or people Tweeting for your organization. Pick people who have sound news judgment and a knack for finding interesting stories. Talk to them about what you hope to accomplish. Then let them do their thing.
6. Post in a conversational tone. It’s hard to get out of the “President signs bill” headline writing mode, but do it. Think of it as sharing headlines with friends – what you say if you were telling a friend via e-mail about that bill signing?”
7. There’s no real “undo” button in Twitter, and you shouldn’t have a copy editor reading each Tweet. Therefore, take a deep breath before you click the “update” button.
8. It’s not only about driving traffic to your site. You have to keep your community interested in your account or you’ll lose them. Don’ link bait — by that, I mean don’t post lame content just because you can write a clever headline that you think will draw clicks. It might work the first couple of times, but people will stop clicking on your links.
9. Check Twitter Search to see what is being said about your news organization. Jump into conversations if you can be helpful. Do not be combative though.
10. Market your efforts relentlessly. Find a place for Twitter content on your web site. Show it on your evening broadcasts (ala @ricksanchezcnn). Run house ads for your Twitter feeds. Think about hosting a Tweetup, which is basically a big party with your followers. If you’re doing this right, people will want to meet you.
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As always, if you have any additional ideas or tips, please post them below!
January 13th, 2009
If you’re a reporter, editor or producer — or even if you’re a novice blogger — you should know and interact with others in your field. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging your neighborhood or city, or if you’re blogging a non-location-based subject, (e.g. health, sports, tech); it’s good to be a part of that blog community.
How do you do that?
First, you’ll want to audit the blogs that are relevant to you. For instance, if I’m looking up blogs that are similar to Old Media, New Tricks, I’m doing:
1. A search on Google Blog Search for:
- The name of my blog.
- Relevant keywords. If you’re not sure about your keywords, your analytics tool will display top referring keywords . (If you don’t have an analytics tool, try Google Analytics.)
- Well-known blogs in the field.
2. Search on Technorati and Alltop for:
- Once again, keywords.
- Who links to the blogs you found in step one. To do this, do a search for the blog and then — assuming it’s signed up for Technorati — you’ll see an authority ranking for the blog. Technorati authority can tell you how long the blog’s been around, how good it is, etc. Look up blogs you found in your blog search. See who linked to them.
3. It couldn’t hurt to do a couple of Google searches for your subject matter. Once you get several pages into the results, you’ll probably find a blog or two to your liking.
4. Search social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Reddit, Digg, Mixx, etc. for stories containing relevant keywords.
5. Of course, ask your friends and folks you trust in the field. They’ll probably have an idea or two.
6. On top of that, scour the blogrolls of the sites you find. You’ll find a hidden gem or two in there. Trust me.
Secondly, you’ll want to start subscribing to these blogs via RSS. If you don’t have an RSS reader, try Google Reader or Bloglines.
Then, create a spreadsheet of blogs you think are worth their salt. How can you tell?
- good content
- longevity
- comments, but even if a site is good, it may not have many readers yet. Keep that in mind.
- authority (Technorati, a high Alexa ranking, if the blog’s author is quoted in any mainstream media articles, etc.)
Once you identify your blogs, start commenting on them. Most mainstream media bloggers neglect to do this, so in my mind, they aren’t legitimate bloggers.
You should link to them on occasion. If you have a blog, an easy way to do this is the ol’ “links of the week” post. This will get you noticed. Bloggers will notice the traffic you’re sending them, and then they’ll be more likely to link back to you.
If you follow these tips, you’ll become part of your blog community. You’ll be able to create a following and be more than just a byline.
January 6th, 2009
Once you decide to put your organization on Twitter, the temptation is great to turn on Twitterfeed, which automatically puts RSS feeds into Twitter, and forget it. It’s like magic! You just have to come up with the idea of using Twitter and Twitterfeed does the rest!
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy — if you want Twitter to be useful for your organization.
Twitterfeed is a clever program. It pulls entries from RSS and posts them on Twitter with headlines or without, with links or without. You can tell it to send 1 entry every hour, 1 a day or as many as 5 every half hour.
Here’s the problem: People generally do NOT want to follow an RSS feed on Twitter, especially from a news organization. Twitter is a conversational tool. It is a personal tool. If you want to read an RSS feed, you can use Google Reader. If you want people to follow your newsroom’s account, put a person on it. A real person.
More news organizations are figuring out what Twitter is about, and are realizing that feeding an RSS feed to Twitter doesn’t work. Check out @dallas_news, @coloneltribune, @statesman, @phillyinquirer and @kxan_news for examples of what an account is like with a human voice behind them. Compare to @startribune (which didn’t use Twitterfeed, but was an RSS feed until it stopped updating two months ago).
It’s nice to see newspapers figuring out the right way to use Twitter.
The Indianapolis Star had Twitterfeed on full blast until Oct. 30, when it sent out this Tweet:
Since then, the Indy Star has been sharing links with a human touch. It makes all the difference. Twitter is free. All you’re spending by doing it the right way is work hours. Do it — you’ll like the results.
December 9th, 2008
The New York Times today launched “Times Extra,” which is an alternate front page that links to stories that are NOT produced by the Times.
In the past few months, more and more mainstream media outlets have warmed up to the idea of linking to material outside their own sites. This in effect could turn old media, which is used to being the source of news, into news aggregators, at least sort of like the Drudge Report. The idea behind it is that although you jettison your readers off to other material, they will keep coming back to your site because you are a one-stop shop.
The Dallas Morning News has also waded into this by hand-picking opinion pieces from around the Web and posting them on their opinion page. The material is posted along side their own work — they often even play up material from outside the Morning News above their own.
It makes for a much better user experience, and it is likely to make their opinion page a destination site for people who are looking for smartly chosen opinion pieces from around the Web.
If you maintain a hand-chosen Twitter account (as opposed to dumping RSS onto Twitter) for your news organization, you should also link to outside material. Colonel Tribune and the @statesman do it as a matter of practice. Why not be the place to go to for news, no matter where it comes from?
By new media standards, old media has been very slow to pick up on this idea. Even the Times, which is ahead of most mainstream media in trying Times Extra, isn’t making it the regular home page — users have to click on a tab to get to it. (To find it, click on “Try our extra home page” tab near the top of the paper’s standard home page).
The open exchange of links is what drives information on most of the Web, outside of mainstream media. We doubt this idea will still be embraced at least right away by all in the old media — after all, it is hard for some to believe that sending folks away from your site is a good thing. It’s hard to argue with the numbers, though …
Check out who is on top of the Nielsen Online ratings for news sites for February 2008:
The following is data from Nielsen Online on the top 30 sites in the “News” category based on February 2008 traffic. This data takes into account U.S. home and work Internet usage, and it shows both unique visitors to each brand or channel and sessions per person. For more information about the sourcing of this data, please visit www.netratings.com.
Brand or channel; sessions per person; unique audience (000)
1. drudgereport.com; 19.9; 3,445
2. Daily Kos; 8.9; 1,204
3. Fox News Digital Network; 8.3; 10,177
4. CNN Digital Network; 7.9; 37,181
5. AOL News; 7.7; 21,119
6. Yahoo! News; 7.4; 35,274
7. MSNBC Digital Network; 6.4; 34,013
8. ksl.com; 6.0; 796
9. Breitbart.com; 5.3; 2,674
10. Google News; 5.3; 12,050
11. Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division; 5.1; 13,998
12. NYTimes.com; 4.9; 18,975
13. Netscape; 4.8; 2,709
14. Townhall.com; 4.7; 1,152
15. Media General Newspapers; 4.6; 1,761
16. GTGI Network 4.5; 1,345
17. Star Tribune; 4.3; 2,108
18. TWC News Websites; 4.1; 840
19. NewsMax.com; 4.0; 4,054
20. Zwire; 3.9; 1,089
21. Cox Newspapers; 3.9; 5,197
22. washingtonpost.com; 3.8; 10,441
23. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; 3.8; 1,259
24. The Buffalo News^; 3.7; 502
25. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 3.6; 1,472
26. MediaNews Group Newspapers; 3.5; 5,850
27. USATODAY.com; 3.5; 10,571
28. WorldNow 3.5; 10,588
29. IB Websites; 3.4; 7,565
30. St. Louis Post Dispatch; 3.4; 1,022
December 4th, 2008
Although Twitter has turned into an (almost) instant messenger service, it was originally designed as a microblogging tool. The idea was to give short updates on what’s going on around you to a group of friends.
Twitter does still work well that way. Only now, your group of “friends” might be thousands of people, and what’s going on around you might be a natural disaster, an election or a concert. Twitter can be an excellent tool for “live Tweeting” these big events.
Here are five tricks for getting the most out of your live Tweeting:
1. Pick the right event (note: funerals are the wrong event). Ideally, the event you want to live Tweet would be interesting to the vast majority of your followers. Bonus points if it’s an event a lot of people want to attend but can’t get into and it’s not televised.
2. Tweet as often as is needed, but not too much. Yeah, that’s horribly vague, but if you use Twitter for a while, you’ve seen someone do “too much” on Twitter. If you flood your followers with too many Tweets, no matter how interesting they may be, you’ll annoy them and maybe even lose them. If you must live Tweet an event from an account with diverse followers, be sensitive to the fact that a lot of your followers might not care. In that case, keep Tweets to a minimum (hit only the high points). If you feel like you need a lot of Tweets from the event, start a separate account just for that event. If possible, start that new Twitter account well before the event and try to recruit followers who might be interested in that event to follow the new account.
3. Follow regular good practices on Twitter. When you find a relevant, useful tweet from someone else at the same event, retweet them. Reply to people who ask you questions. Thank people for helping you out.
4. Don’t #go #hashtag #crazy. They’re #annoying. It’s OK to use a hashtag in moderation (as in one or at most two per Tweet). Hastags do have a place – they allow for people to aggregate Tweets from an event and give an easy way to find event-specific Tweets in Twitter search.
5. If possible, post photos, quotes from people at the event and any observations that you truly think will be useful to your followers. Content is, as always, king.
December 3rd, 2008
If you’ve tried to instigate change within your newsroom, you’ve probably heard some exasperated staff members say something like this: “They keep asking us to do more with less!”
From their point of view, this is what “change” often sounds like:
Not only do you have to do your old job (well), now you have to write stories for the Web, which you didn’t have to worry about even five years ago. Of course, you now have to blog – regularly. And shoot video. Don’t know how to shoot video? You’ll figure it out. Edit the video when you’re done, too. Even the intern knows how to do that, right? Oh, and we need all of this quickly — as in now — because our Web audience is gone after 5 p.m. By the way, you should try Twitter and live chats, too.
It’s not hard to see why they feel like they’re being asked to do too much, is it?
Here are three tricks to help spur that change without sparking a mass exodus of talent out your door:
1. Train them well. There’s nothing that makes extra work feel even more burdensome than not knowing what you’re doing. If you’re asking print reporters to shoot video, identify people in your newsroom who already appear to have a knack for it and have them work with those who do not. Pay for a multimedia expert to come in from outside for training if possible. Editing video is tough. Don’t foist that onto someone without some serious training. If your broadcast news reporters are being asked to write print stories for the Web, bring in a writing coach. Your city’s newspaper might even be willing to ship off a wordsmith adviser for a day in exchange for a video trainer.
2. Pat people on the back when they do the right thing. I once had an editor who never gave positive feedback. When I complained/whined a little that I wasn’t getting any positive feedback, he wryly said, “We expect good. I’ll tell you when you screw up.” That management style didn’t work then, and it certainly won’t work now. Even if you’re not the person’s boss, if you catch them writing a great blog post or starting a good Twitter account, send them an e-mail saying how great it is. CC the top bosses. Telling people they’re doing the right things goes a long way, especially considering the current business climate. Also, make a big deal out of successes. When a staffer’s blog receives a lot of comments, send a note out to the newsroom linking to that entry. Explain why community involvement is good. When you get a news tip through Twitter, let everyone know that is where you got it. When the video page views go up, have the money people stand in front of the newsroom and give a cheery report about the growth in that part of your site. People are more likely to take on new things if they see the tools work.
3. Lead by example. Whatever position you are in, show you mean business by making changes yourself. Write a blog, even if it’s not for your publication. Start a Flickr page and invite people to tag photos from a company gathering. Join Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, etc., and use them. It lends credibility to your preaching.
Even your organization’s biggest anti-change die-hards know by now that we’re not going back to 1995. Don’t just talk about change — do something to make it happen.
November 20th, 2008
If you’ve managed a community that allows commenting or hosts other types of user-generated content, you’ve seen it. Behind the shield of a screen name, the ugliest parts of society sometimes is on full display: racism.
Recently, community managers across the country have had to decide whether to zap or keep comments about Barack Obama that could be considered racist, but the issue comes up often in online communities.
There are no hard rules on this. Each community manager (and organization) has to take a lot of these on a case-by-case basis.
Here are three guidelines that we offer, but we’re interested in hearing how you’ve dealt with this:
1. If there is an clear racist word or phrase in the content, the material is toast, the user is banned and you move on with your life.
2. If the user walks the line by using code words, it’s a little muddier. You might be misreading the author’s intent. Often, it helps to grab a coworker and show him or her the material. Usually, though, your first instinct is the correct one. If you decide you have a racist on your hands using code words, warn or ban the user.
3. If the user is not clearly being racist, but you might be sensitive to a topic (e.g., the person is against illegal immigration strongly, and you see that as being racist because of your own stance), try to get a second — or even a third — opinion. As a community manager, it is still your right to nix any material, but if you come down too hard on the offender, you’ll lose credibility within your community. A heavy handed manager can kill a community.
If you’re a community manager, how far do you let people push the envelope?
November 13th, 2008
(Cue telemarketer voice.)
You’ve heard the news! You can get some massive traffic and buzz to your stories through social media. But unless you’re Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki or even Rick Sanchez, you don’t have a ready-made buzz machine.
How can you get traffic? Social bookmarking sites, of course, like Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and Reddit. Here’s how you can get started:
1. Sign up for Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Mixx. Try using the same user name for each, just to maintain consistency. (Also, check out niche sites like Tip’d, which is a site just for business stories.)
2. Once again, fill out your profile. Completely. You don’t have to say you’re with a mainstream media organization; just don’t lie about it if you’re asked.
3. Start browsing, but don’t submit anything just yet. The way to get noticed is to leave smart comments on people’s posts.
4. If you can, find the site’s search function and do a search for your news outlet.
5. Befriend people who submitted stories from your site. But before you do, check to see the last time they submitted. There’s no use becoming friends with someone who hasn’t been on the site in over a year.
I will admit, this can be a time suck if you’re not careful, but it’s good to make yourself known to the community. Don’t worry about building up a power profile on each, but it’s good to become part of the conversation.
If you want, you can find me on StumbleUpon, Mixx, Reddit and Tip’d. Add me and I’ll add you back!
November 12th, 2008
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