I was hanging out with Jon Lansner out at BlogWorld a couple of days ago when we decided to, as an homage to our mutual friend Kevin Sablan, record a podcast in his honor.
We talked lifestreaming and storystreaming, but didn’t make fun of Kevin as much as I would have liked. Go figure.
Kevin: This one is for you.
- Daniel B. Honigman (with Jon Lansner)
View Comments October 18th, 2009
I recently wrote a white paper on lifestreaming for Weber Shandwick. In it, I discuss what a lifestream is, how brands can take advantage of lifestreaming platforms, but also how journalists and editors can take advantage of storystreaming and eventstreaming, and what types of newsy content can be streamed.
In addition to the Austin American-Statesman’s recent storystreaming efforts, the St. Paul Pioneer Press has also been using Posterous in some recent crowdsourced journalism projects: “Minnesota Sports Heaven” and “Snow Shots.”
The journalism-related portion is on page 10 of the paper.
Lifestreaming: The White Paper (Weber Shandwick)
View Comments October 14th, 2009
Whether you’re a freelancer looking to get your work out there, or whether you’re a blogger at a mainstream media publication looking for an easy way to get your video content on the web, you’ll probably want to create a YouTube account to start a branded channel.
Here are some quick YouTube how-tos:
How to sign up for YouTube
1. Go to http://youtube.com and click the “Create Account” link that appears in the top right corner of the page.
2. Enter your desired username, as well as the rest of the information on the page.
3. Once you receive the confirmation e-mail and are logged in, click on your new account name link that appears at the top right side.
4. Click “Profile Setup” and fill in your profile with a photo, your bio, a link to any other social media profile or your company Web site.
How to upload a video to YouTube
1. Click the yellow “Upload” button at the top right of the page. On the next page, click the yellow “Upload Video” button.
2. Find the video you want to upload. Click “Open” once you’ve found it.
3. While the file uploads, be sure to write out a proper, concise title and description for the video. Pick a couple of tags (e.g. “news,” “chicago,” or your publication’s name), and choose a category for your video.
4. To see the video after it’s been uploaded, go to your “My Videos” page and it should appear.
Customize your YouTube channel
A user’s YouTube profile content is presented in what’s called a YouTube channel, and if you’ve created a profile for your brand, you’ll want to customize the look and feel of your channel page.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Go to your YouTube account page and click the “Edit Channel” link on the right side of the page. You’ll be taken to your “My Profile” page.
2. Your default account type will be set as “Youtuber.” There are other types, such as “Reporter” or “Director,” but you’ll may just want to leave it as “YouTuber.”
3. Finally, you may want to customize the look and feel of your Channel. To do this, click the “Channel Design” link on the left side of your “My Profile” page. Once you click through, there are some preset themes you can use, or you can customize your page with special colors – you’ll need the specific color values – or you could upload a picture as your YouTube channel background.
View Comments October 6th, 2009
I recently found out about a new tool, Trendsmap, that tracks and visually organizes local Twitter trends.
Finally, a service for breaking news reporters to not only find what one’s local digital community is talking about in real time, but who’s talking about it.
For instance, once I moved over to my region, I found conversations about
You can even drill down further into more of the city’s trends, like so:
Screenshot of Chicago Twitter trends (via Trendsmap)
Trendsmap is still in development, it seems. For now, the page defaults to a Los Angeles “home” region. (This can easily be worked around.) Also, not every region is included in the trends; only major metropolitan areas.
Regardless, I’ll be keeping an eye on Trendsmap, and reporters should as well. Through the tool, you’ll be able to find sources and build your readership with key influencers who drive the local news conversation.
Here’s a quick demo video from Trendsmap:
View Comments September 25th, 2009
If you’re looking for the Next Big Thing in blogging and social media, it’s already here in the form of lifestreaming. Thanks to really easy-to-use (and fun) software by Posterous, lifestreaming and storystreaming are going mainstream.
Daniel Honigman, on this blog, has posted some great tips and tricks on lifestreaming and storystreaming.
Inspired by Daniel’s enthusiasm, I have been noodling over what might be the best uses for this at a mainstream media operation. At statesman.com, we ran our first full storystreaming experiment this past weekend, with great success.
I organized how we did it by showing that we followed the steps that Daniel suggested in a recent blog post:
The theme
We’ve had 67 days over 100 degrees this year in Austin. That’s hot, even for us. As we zero in on breaking the all-time record of 69 days, we wanted to get the community involved. Posterous, which allows for easy collaboration and easy submission of content, seemed perfect for the job. (Note: Here’s a guide on how to use Posterous.)
Recruiting contributors
We used our popular Weather Watch blog to explain to readers what we wanted. In a nutshell, we wanted their photos and a short description of what they were doing on a hot Sunday. We sent links out through several of our Twitter channels and through the Statesman’s Facebook fan page.
Curating the content
When you create a new blog on Posterous, you are given the option to let “anyone” contribute. We checked that box. It gives you an e-mail address that anyone can use to submit a photo, text, audio, video, etc. When something is sent by an outside user, the owners of the lifestream can go in and see the entries and approve them before they appear on the blog.
At the Statesman, we had several people tasked on that Sunday with checking the queue for new submissions. We approved most of the 70 submissions we received, only ignoring ones that were off topic.
Promoting and syndicating content
We talked up our project as much as possible through social media, though prominent placement on the statesman.com home page and through a prominent solicitation in print. I personally DM’d several influencers on Twitter and was looking on Sunday for people posting Twitpics that fit our guidelines so I could ask them to send those into our project. We set up a Twitter account, @Austinheat, that used Posterous’ “auto post” functionality to tweet links to each entry. We also could have sent the content to Flickr, Facebook and dozens of other services using the “auto post.”
Rewarding the contributors
We showed off the submissions prominently online (it was the centerpiece of the statesman.com home page Monday morning) and in print (we chose some of the better pictures and ran them in our daily roundup in our Metro & State section).
The results for us
We put the photos into a gallery on statesman.com, and it was the top page-view driver for our site on Monday with more than 70,000 page views. We also gained some valuable experience using Posterous and proved the concept for future projects. We published the content we received several ways: Posterous, Twitter, in our photo gallery and in print. That type of cross-platform publishing is healthy.
The results for the community
The quality of the pictures were really good. Some were funny, some were artistic, and all were thoughtful. Through this project, Central Texans could all feel the pain of a hot summer and share a small slice of their lives.
Conclusions
I personally have some more ideas for using this in the future, from eventstreaming the Austin City Limits Music Festival and South by Southwest to storystreaming coverage of a sports season. I know some of my colleagues here were inspired by the platform’s potential as well.
Has any other mainstream media outlet used these techniques effectively yet? I’d love to hear how it went.
— Robert Quigley, social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman
View Comments September 3rd, 2009
Want to really connect with your community? Assuming you’ve been working hard to connect with your readers in a virtual world, it’s time to take it a step further and let people know you in the real world.
That’s right: get out of the office! There are several ways to do this, but here are some ideas that we’ve used that have worked well:
It’s great to put faces and personalities with the peole you converse with using social media. And people love getting to know the people behind your efforts. It’s a win-win situation, so get out there.
What have you done to put a face on your organization?
View Comments September 2nd, 2009
NOTE: You may want to check out a few of my previous posts before reading this:
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Journalism and social media go together like peas and carrots. (Or, as I prefer, cinnamon ice cream and hot caramel.) You spread social media technologies, philosophies and practices in your newsroom, and as a result, your co-workers may have created Facebook accounts. They may dabble on Twitter. In fact, they may also blog in addition to producing content for print.
These tools are all great as far as information gathering, story distribution and digital brand-building, but they’re not really innovative as far as storytelling formats go. One question I hear a lot from journalists is, “Is this all there is to social media? From a journalistic perspective, what’s next?”
As you know, I’ve been on a bit of a lifestreaming kick over the last several months. Predictably, my short answer has been this: “Storystream your content.”
A storystream helps bring to light, through a chronological narrative, a particular issue, process or concept over a more significant period of time than an eventstream usually covers. Used journalistically, it turns into a collaborative stream of consciousness that tells a story.
Good stories have multiple characters, and a storystream should be no different. For your storystream to be successful, it must consist of multiple points of view. Think of your storystream as a collaborative or collective narrative, with multiple authors.
Storystreams are new. Storystreams are different. And, most importantly, a storystream can connect a publication to its readers like never before.
My friend Kevin Sablan over at the Orange County Register sketched out what he thinks a storystreaming platform could look like:
Here are some steps to creating a successful storystream:
1. Establish a theme/set parameters: Creating a stream to document the life of an entire city would be immensely difficult. Whether the framework is rigid or abstract, it’s imperative to create parameters for people to express themselves. Some examples:
In addition, you’ll need to set rules. Be very specific on the types of submissions you’ll accept, its guidelines — character count, photo resolution, video length, etc. — and, if applicable, content rights.
2. Recruit contributors: Individuals may be able to carry one part of a story, but if your storystream has multiple authors, there will just be more content your readers can relate to.
Think of all those times you asked your readers for user-generated content. It probably seemed a bit disjointed from the rest of your publication’s journalistic activities, or just an afterthought, no? Recruit your readers in the real-time telling of a particular story, and you’ll have more than one person to help you spread the word about your storystream.
For its recent “A Day in the Sun” storystream, the Austin American-Statesman announced the project on its site, on Twitter and Facebook. Announce your project in multiple media with “you”-centric language. After all, the storystream is about your readers, not you per se.
One more note: When you recruit, be sure to refer back to your theme and guidelines regularly.
3. Curate your content: Once your storystream has new contributors, you’ll need someone to oversee the flow of content — and questions — you’ll get from them. Is it the content what you’re looking for? Is it good content? Does it fall within the guidelines you laid out earlier? Curate before you publish and the story will be clearer and better.
4. Promote and syndicate your content: After your storystream begins, talk it up! Re-post your content on:
Tell your friends about your project. Tell co-workers, digerati — both local and non-local — and explain to them what the project actually is. They may be so excited, they’ll want to contribute or spread the word.
5. Reward your contributors: Come up with some incentive for your readers to contribute. Invite your storystreamers in for an exclusive tour of the newsroom. Give them a percentage off their newspaper subscription for a couple of months. Give them a T-shirt. Buy them a beer. Do something.
If you follow these steps, your storystream will bring your readers closer to you than ever before. It will also get them excited to be a part of your news brand.
As always, if you have any suggestions, please feel free to post them as comments below!
View Comments September 1st, 2009
Robert and I had so much fun at last year’s SXSW Interactive Festival — here’s a picture of us before we started — we decided to throw our hats in the ring again.
We have two panel submissions in the mix this year. They are:
If you’d like to weigh in on our panels, you’ll have to register for the PanelPicker.
We look forward to seeing you all at the next SXSW Interactive Conference!
View Comments August 17th, 2009
As newsrooms become more digital, it becomes more important for reporters, editors and producers to keep up with digital contacts and readers. The thing is, the social Web tends to be a very, well, “What have you done for me lately?” sort of place. In order to stay on top of things, you must monitor and respond to your contacts’:
This can become rather tiresome, especially if one looks at it as work — that’s a different blog post altogether — but it’s something that must be done nonetheless.
Last month, I blogged my thoughts on lifestreaming, and how it is to become the future of the web. I believe a feed-like (as opposed to blog-like) lifestreaming service, FriendFeed, may be the key to streamlining one’s digital activities.
You might not see an immediate benefit to using FriendFeed. In fact, you may think, “This looks just like Twitter. And FriendFeed just got bought by Facebook. Why would I use it?” Here are three reasons why you should use FriendFeed:
1. FriendFeed, when used properly, compiles all digital activity in one place. Forming a deep digital relationship with your contacts and readers take time, but if you read and respond to their blog posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, blog comments, Flickr photo posts and everything else, there’s a good chance your relationship will improve quickly. (Of course, you don’t respond to everything; focus on your influencers.)
FriendFeed compiles everything in an easily navigable stream, and it links directly to their posts. Just click through and respond, either on their FriendFeed page or — better yet — on the page itself.
2. Build your digital street cred. Many digital professionals are on Twitter. They’re not on FriendFeed yet; it still has that “geeky” early-adopter feel. If you’re on FriendFeed, and you use it to keep up with your contacts — not to mention make new ones — it makes you stand out.
3. Your good influencer/blogger contacts are there. There’s a good chance that any blogger worth their salt is on FriendFeed. If your contacts are in the space, you should be there too. Period.
FriendFeed, in my mind, is the new RSS reader. If you use an RSS reader (e.g. Google Reader) to keep up with your contacts, give FriendFeed a try. You can find me on FriendFeed here.
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NOTE: I derived this post from one I wrote for the Weber Shandwick “Social Studies” blog.
View Comments August 14th, 2009
Some time ago, Gina Chen wrote a wonderful blog post on “Save the Media” on Technorati and its uses for journalist bloggers.
I mentioned Technorati about a week later ago in my post, “Get to know your bloggers,” as part of the basic research every reporter, editor and producer — hell, every blogger — should do when starting a blog.
Let’s walk you through what you’re actually going to do on Technorati:
1. First, you’re going to want to join the site, of course. Create an easy username/login, because you’ll be able to “claim” as many blogs as you want, which is good if your newspaper or broadcast station has multiple blogs.
2. Once you’ve done that and received your login, you’ll click “Blogger Central” near the top of the screen and scroll down to “Claim Your Blog.” You shouldn’t see any blogs, since you haven’t claimed any yet, but this is what I see, because I’ve already claimed two blogs:
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3. When prompted, type in your blog’s home page URL to claim it.
4. Technorati will then give you a bit of code to link to insert in a blog post for publication. After you “ping” Technorati, in turn, will then spider your page after you “ping” it.
Pinging Technorati is simple. In your first post, just code in something like:
<em>If you like my blog, you can also check out my Technorati page <a href=”CODE”>here</a>.</em>
5. Now you should ping the Technorati page. You can also set your blog up to automatically ping Technorati when you post a story. You blog will soon show up on your “Claimed Blogs” page.
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Once you’re on, here are a few things to remember:
- Your blog authority is determined by the number of inbound links you’ve received over the last six months.
- Technorati is a great way to find blogs similar to yours. If you see one that has a high authority rank, you probably want to start commenting on it to get noticed.
- One interesting trick is to set up all of the blogs in your blogroll — and tags you care about — in a Technorati Watchlist. In a blog post on “Micro Persuasion,” Steve Rubel suggests this is a good way to keep track of what’s going on in your part blogosphere. (NOTE: I haven’t tried this before, but it seems to make sense.)
If I haven’t convinced you, maybe these folks can:
- Darren Rowse, Problogger.net – ‘Help me, my mom is my blog’s only reader’
- Allen Stern, Center Networks – ‘How I use Technorati’
View Comments July 6th, 2009
