How To Optimize Twitter: Be Real, Profiles, RT, Hashtags & More Twitter loves me, Twitter loves me not. Getting found and heard on Twitter isn’t as easy as the early days. Back then you could hang out and easily meet people at what was referred to as the largest online cocktail party. Today you can still mix and mingle with top influencers, but the party is getting bigger and the saturation level is getting murkier. Twopchart’s latest figures, and countdown chart, show Twitter growing at a rate of around 11 accounts per second and reaching 500 million registered users this month. Why is Twitter winning the social media race as the “go to” platform for breaking news and influencing others whether you are a top tier journalist, celebrity, brand or personality? Simplicity and Visibility Twitter’s popularity rose out of its simplicity. Twitter is also winning in visibility. How can a brand best optimize with the times and stay in the tweet game without losing time and money? Keep it Real Optimizing the Twitter Profile Tweet Structure Example: Hashtag Tips
The Future of News How do you build local engagement on Twitter? A Journal Register Co. editor mentioned a common challenge in a newsroom trying to master social media. How do you build an engaged audience on Twitter? My answer to the editor (expanded some as I’ve thought more about it): Engaging followers is largely a result of two factors: following people who care about your community and conversing with them. How many people follow you (and how many you follow) are not as important as identifying the people who share your interests and engaging meaningfully with them. I know of three tools that would be useful for building an engaged Twitter following. You can also use Advanced Twitter search to look for tweets by location (here’s the tweets within 15 miles of Yardley, Pa., where JRC is headquartered). I would not make these sites a one-time visit either. In any of these cases, if you follow people in your community (or people who show their interest in your community by tweeting about it), you will get quite a few who will follow you back.
A journalist’s guide to SEO Last week the BBC announced it was to start optimising its headlines in an attempt to gain greater visibility in the search engine results pages, so I thought I’d take a look at journalism and the web. Over recent years, many online news providers have had to adopt search engine optimisation (SEO) best practice into their articles in order to maintain their audience figures. Yet I often see journalists and even some bloggers bemoaning the need to optimise their work, as though it means all the quality has been drained out of the article and replaced with Google-appeasing nonsense.
Hiring in the Digital Age - Technology Even for twentysomethings, the job description is clear: Everyone is an editor in chief. Wired.com Not so long ago, magazine and newspaper editors knew exactly what they were looking for when hiring young journalists. Certain jobs called for certain skills: Reporters had to report, researchers had to research, designers had to design. These days, things are more complicated. Over the last few years at The Atlantic, I've played a part in hiring several dozen young digital journalists--into new jobs, thanks to our web expansion, or into open slots created by departing employees. The upshot: Today, everyone is an editor in chief. This transition from vertical job descriptions to horizontal job descriptions is perhaps the most profound change in newsrooms that are full of change. As an industry, we've come to the point where we are asking a lot of relatively inexperienced twentysomethings, perhaps too much. But the new world prizes other skills, too. And then there's speed.
The article as luxury or byproduct A few episodes in news make me think of the article not as the goal of journalism but as a value-added luxury or as a byproduct of the process. * See the amazing Brian Stelter covering the Joplin tornado and begging his desk at The Times to turn his tweets into a story because he had neither the connectivity nor the time to do it in the field and, besides, he was too busy doing something more precious: reporting. (It’s a great post, a look at a journalist remaking his craft. Highly recommended for journalists and journalism students particularly.) (And aren’t you proud of me for not drawing the obvious and embarrassing comparison to Times editor Bill Keller’s Luddite trolling about Twitter even as his man in Twitter, Stelter, proves what a valuable tool it is?) * At South by Southwest, the Guardian’s folks talked about their steller live-blogging. * Of course, I need to point to Andy Carvin’s tweeting and retweeting of the Arab Spring. So what is an article? An article can be a luxury.
Accuracy Accuracy is at the heart of what we do. It is our job to get it first but it is above all our job to get it right. Accuracy, as well as balance, always takes precedence over speed. Corrections Reuters is transparent about errors. Sourcing Accuracy entails honesty in sourcing. Here are some handy tips: Use named sources wherever possible because they are responsible for the information they provide, even though we remain liable for accuracy, balance and legal dangers. Quotes Quotes are sacrosanct. It is not our job to make people look good by cleaning up inelegant turns of phrase, nor is it our job to expose them to ridicule by running such quotes. Reflecting reality Accuracy means that our images and stories must reflect reality. Datelines and bylines Accuracy is paramount in our use of datelines and bylines. Attribution Accuracy means proper attribution to the source of material that is not ours, whether in a story, a photograph or moving images. Reporting rumours
WordPress, Twitter, the Elks Club: 10 new routines at a news startup This is what a profitable post-paper newsroom looks like: And this is what it feels like: 15 hours a day, seven days a week, from the 7 a.m. check-in with your spouse-turned-business-partner to the midnight bookkeeping. No kids, no vacations, no car. No office; your only away-from-home base is a former Main Street antique shop that sells shared-workspace memberships to freelance software developers and the like for $100 a month. No novels before bed; there’s no time. In the two months since Ann Arbor became the nation’s newest no-newspaper town, there’s been lots of talk about its status as ground zero for the new ecosystem of Web-native niche outlets. I found a lot of new routines and emerging practices. Creating 10 heavily reported and edited posts a week, maintaining the site’s daily news digests and gossip feature, editing three regular columnists and selling the ads to support it all requires “literally every waking hour” the couple has, Chronicle editor Dave Askins said. Could you?
The Walkley Foundation - Resources Journalism News Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (UTS)Has information on short courses and speakers, as well as happenings in the Australian journalism scene. The Poynter InstituteThis is a school for journalists in the United States. The site contains up-to-date information and research on trends in the industry, media ethics and professional practice. Today’s Front PagesAn interactive site which allows you to browse the front pages of newspapers from 75 countries. Media & Communications InsightThis site publishes a regular update on Media and Communications law in Australia, which is definitely worth a read. Fairness & Accuracy In ReportingA US site that aims to monitor media practices and bring to light overlooked news stories. Reporters Without BordersOrganisation devoted to free press and safety of journalists worldwide. Online Tutorials / Tech Skills Guides Knight Digital Media Center TutorialsThe motherlode for learning how to use specific equipment, software and skills.