baseline social media
TRANSCRIPT
Journos juggle it all
• Google+
• Geofeedia
• NewHive
• RebelMouse
• ScribbleLive
• Tout
• Blogger
• Wordpress
• Etc.
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Keep in mind
• Social media is about engagement
• It’s not a one-way conversation (That’s called broadcasting.)
• Divide your time on social media in thirds.
1/3 engaging (retweets, replies, responding)
1/3 promoting (sharing links to stories, videos, etc.)
1/3 being yourself (have voice/show personality)
Twitter: Everyday uses
• Tweet breaking news
• Alert readers (ie. Highway closing, tornado warning)
• Live tweeting during events
• Promote content
• Engage with readers
• Find story ideas
• Find story sources
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Twitter: Alert readers
• Inform readers of news they need to know NOW (ie. Highway closing, severe thunderstorms, etc.)
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Twitter tips
• Research and find relevant Twitter handles to include in tweet
• Engagement better when post is handwritten as opposed to automatic (RSS)
• You can schedule posts using Tweetdeck or Hootsuite
• Include photo in tweet for better engagement
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Twitter: Tip No. 1
• Use @mention in tweets helps people notice you
• When you include someone’s handle, they’ll see it in their “mentions” feed
• If you’re lucky, they’ll follow you back
• Twitter is all about connecting. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect
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Twitter: Tip No. 2
• Check to see if hashtag you’re considering is one that’s used
• Ie. Check #childabuse and you might find #domesticviolence #negligence #abuse
• Include the hashtags you discover in your tweet
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Twitter: Tip No. 3
• Quickest way to find someone Twitter handle is to use Google
• Its search function is better than Twitter’s.
• Just google “person’s name” and “Twitter” and you should find what you’re looking for.
Twitter: Tip No. 4
• Difference between at @reply and @mention
• @Buffyandrews, only people who will see this tweet is the sender, me and our mutual followers
• To have this tweet seen by everyone, add “.” before name. ie. .@buffyandrews
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Twitter: How to build followers
• Tweet frequently
• Have something interesting to say
• Live tweet events and breaking news
• Find and follow people who share your interest
• Join the conversation. Engage. Don’t just promote
• Join Tweetchats and Tweetups
• Be yourself
• Retweet others
• Use Twitter Advance Search to find people in your community. Then check their accounts and follow their followers.
• Use hashtags to find people with shared interests
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Twitter tools: Advance search
• Find tweets by location or sentiment.
• Search by words, exact phrases, hashtags, etc.
• Search by people (ie. @buffyandrews)
• Search by dates (from X date to X date)
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Twitter tools: Topsy
• Only service that allows you to search through every tweet ever posted
• Use to find tweets from a specific time or on a specific topic
• Use to gauge sentiment around a Twitter hashtag
• Can search links, tweets, photos, videos
• Can search influencers, voices reaching the most people on Twitter
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Twitter tools: Tame.it
• Quick look at most mentioned people, most used hashtags and most shared links from the people you follow on Twitter, your Twitter lists, or based on a search term
• Results are updated live
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Twitter tools: Retwact
• Helps you notify people who have retweeted you that you've made changes to your tweet
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Twitter tools: Tweroid
• Analyzes your account and, based on your followers, tells you when the best time to tweet is
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Twitter tools: Hashtracking
• This tool gives you a free report of any Twitter hashtag.
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Twitter tools: Tweetstats
• Enter Twitter username and get a bunch of cool stats.
• Also will show you your tweet cloud and hash cloud, just for fun:)
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Twitter tools: Followerwonk
• Tool used to find, analyze and optimize for social growth
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twXplorer
• Enter search term
• Will return snapshot of most common terms, hashtags and links to explore further
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Tweepdash
• Provides quick overview of your Twitter community
Who I follow, but doesn’t follow me back (Celebs)
Who follows me, but I don’t follow back (Fans)
Who I follow and follows me back (Friends)
• Add and remove users easily from your Twitter account
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WeFollow
• Directory of prominent people organized by interests
• Designed to recognize the most prominent voices speaking on a given topic
• Use to construct a “beat” of people to follow
• Can sign up if you want to be acknowledged as an expert on a given topic
• Looks at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin
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SocialMention
• Social media search engine
• Search for any term and get links to mentions on blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos and more
• Lots of networks, from Photobucket to Facebook
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Facebook: Everyday Uses
• Post breaking news
• Alert readers (ie. Highway closing)
• Crowdsource
• Engage with readers
• Promote content
• Promote event
• Find story ideas
• Find story sources
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Facebook: Breaking news
• Keep readers up to date with the latest news from their community
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Facebook: Crowdsource
• Ask people a question Ie. Do you think the city needs to toughen its dog laws?
• Crowdsource responses
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Facebook: Promote content
• When you promote content, you might get comments that you can repurpose in print OR embed post in your article page online
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Facebook: Find story ideas
• Asked readers what was their favorite way to make deviled eggs. One answer led to a local business story.
• Bridget Floyd With minced Brother Floyd's Righteous Pickles instead of relish!
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Facebook: Tips
• Identify breaking news as “breaking” or “breaking news" Analysis shows increase in engagement
• If reader asks question on Facebook, answer it
• Schedule for engagement
Engagement=18 percent higher on Thursdays/Fridays
Engagement=32 percent higher on weekends
Best time to post 1 to 3 p.m., also sweet spot in evening
• Use hashtags
• Try writing longer posts. Clicking on the “more” link triggers relevancy
• Use photos: Images receive 37 percent more interactions
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Tout
• Take videos from breaking news event and share via social networking sites
Google+
etc.
• Can use hashtags and tags
• Can retout (like a retweet)
• Similar to other social sharing sites (Follow people, like Touts, etc.)
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Tout
• Touts are embeddable in article pages on website, blogs, etc.
• You can edit a tout in dashboard
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Google+ tips
• Research and find relevant Google+ accounts to tag
• Type “@NAME” to locate accounts
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Soundcloud
• Online audio distribution platform
• Mobile app
• Users can record, upload, promote and share sounds
• Embeddable
• Useful to capture audio at scene
• Use with Soundcite
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Verification: Basics
• Develop or find and use human sources
• Verify source and content they provide
• Challenge sources: “How do you know that?”
• Beware of things that look too good to be true
• Triangulate what’s provided with credible sources (documents, photos, videos, etc.)
• Ask yourself: “Do I know enough to verify?”
• Communicate and collaborate with team. Don’t go it alone
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Content
• Identify and verify original source and content (location, date, time)
• Can you find the content elsewhere online? Triangulate
• Can you identify the person who shared/uploaded the content and contact them for more information?
• Does the weather for that day match what you’re seeing in image/video?
• Are there any identifying elements? (clocks, TVs, etc.)
• Use Google street view/maps/satellite imagery to help verify locations
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Source
• Is person who shared content a reliable source?
• Check person’s social media accounts (Twitter, Google+, etc.)
• How active are they on social media?
• How long have their accounts existed?
• Check biographical information on accounts
• Who are their friends and followers?
• Who do they interact with?
• Check professional background on sites like Linkedin
• Challenge source (How do you know that?)
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Obtain permission
• Be clear about which image/video you wish to use
• Explain how it will be used
• Clarify how the person wishes to be credited
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Protect brand
• Only takes one serious error, falling for Internet hoax, to damage reputation
• When mistake happens, respond quickly, correct swiftly
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Tools: Verifying identity
• AnyWho: Free white pages directory, reverse look-up function
• AllAreaCodes: Look up any name and address listed against a phone number
• Facebook Graph Search: Use to locate people. Don’t need to know name of person you’re searching for. Can search based on other known criteria such as location, occupation and age.
• GeoSocial Footprint: Tracks the users’ location “footprint” created from GPS enabled tweets, social check ins, etc.
• Hoverme: Plug-in for Google Chrome reveals social media users’ profiles on other networks from their Facebook news feed
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Tools: Verifying identity
• Linkedin: Use to track individual down through their work history and connections. Check their credentials
• Muck Rack: lists thousands of journalists on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Quora, Google+, LinkedIn who are vetted by a team of Muck Rack editors.
• Numberway: a directory of international phone books
• Person Finder: open source databank for individuals to post and search for the status of people affected by a disaster. Whenever a large scale disaster happens, the Google Crisis Team sets up a person finder
• When did you join Twitter: Check account’s creation date
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Tools: Verifying identity
• Pipl.com: Comprehensive search of individual’s Internet footprint (social media accounts, public records, etc.)
• Rapportive: Gmail plugin gives users a profile on their contacts, including social media accounts, location, employment
• Spokeo: a people search engine that can find individuals by name, email, phone or username. Results include contact details, occupation, education, marital status, economic profile, etc.
• WebMii: searches for weblinks that match an individual’s name, or can identify unspecified individuals by keyword
• WHOIS: finds the registered users of a domain name and details the date of registration, location and contact details of the registrant or assignee
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Tools: Verifying places
• Flikr: search for geolocated photos
• free-ocr.com: extracts text from images that can then be put into Google translate or searched on other mapping resources
• Google Maps: online map that provides high-resolution aerial or satellite imagery covering most of the Earth. Number of viewing options
• Google Translate: can be used to uncover location clues (ie. signs) written in other languages
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Tools: Verifying places
• Météo-France: France’s meteorological agency provides free Europe focused radar and satellite images, maps and climate modeling data
• NASA Earth Observatory: Repository of global data imagery, with free maps, images and datasets
• Panoramio: photo-sharing website carrying millions of geolocated images uploaded to a Google Maps layer
• Picasa: search for geolocated photos
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Tools: Verifying places
• United States ZIP Codes: an online map of the United States categorized according to ZIP code. Users can search for a specific ZIP code. Provides information about zip code (stats, demographics, list of high schools, etc.)
• Wikimapia: crowsourced version of Google maps containing points of interest and descriptions
• Wolfram Alpha: a computational answer engine that provides direct, factual answers and relevant visualizations
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Tools: verifying images
• Findexif.com: Can be used to reveal EXIF information
• Foto Forensics: Website uses error level analysis (ELA) to indicate parts of an image that might have been altered. ELA looks for differences in quality levels in the image, highlighting where alterations might have been made
• Google Search by Image: By uploading or entering an image’s URL, users can find content such as related or similar images, websites and other pages using the specific image
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Tools: verifying images
• Jeffrey’s Exif Viewer: Provides the Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) information of a digital photo (date, camera settings, GPS location)
• JPEGSnoop: Free Windows-only application that can detect whether an image has been edited. Can open AVI, DNG, PDF, THM and embedded JPEG files. Also retrieves metadata including: date, camera type, lens settings, etc.
• TinEye: Reverse image search. Find out where an image originated, how it is used, whether modified versions exist and if there are higher resolution copies
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Tools: Verifying web pages
• Whois Lookup: Gives date a page was created and information about its creator
• Internet Archive: Check to see changes made to website
• Diigo: Are people bookmarking this page using Diigo? Who's bookmarking it? etc.
• Delicious: Another bookmarking service
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Tools: Other tools
• Snopes: Site debunks (or verifies) info that circulates online.
• AIDR platform: Uses human and computer monitoring to weed out rumors on Twitter
• Ban.jo: Aggregates social media into one platform. Can cross-check images and events against each other
• HuriSearch: Search content from over 5,000 human rights related Web pages and filter to find verifiable sources
• Verily platform: Users can ask specific questions and get UCG evidence for and against
• SearchSystems.net: International directory of free public records
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Tools: Other tools
• InformaCam: App uses metadata to reveal the time, date and location of photos or videos
• YouTube Face Blur: Developed out of concern for the anonymity of individuals who appear in videos in high-risk situations, this tool allows users to blur faces of people who appear in videos they upload. To use, after uploading video, go to Enhancements and then Special Effects. There you can choose to blur all faces in the video.
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Why it matters?
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps drive traffic to your website
• When people are searching for something (service, product, article, etc.) they use most relevant keywords
• By making your site more SEO friendly, more people will find it. The more people who find it, the better
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Web headlines can stand alone
• Do you immediately know from the headline what the article is about?
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Use keywords
• Think about how you would search for something
• Put keywords at or near the beginning of the headline. Word order matters
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Don’t abbreviate
• Always use full names for:
Famous people
Organizations
Places
Teams
Businesses
etc.
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Don’t use puns, cute headlines
• They’re great for print, horrible for website
• Print: Too much Heat
• Web: Detroit Pistons lose to Miami Heat 101-98
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Use full company names, etc.
• Put the names of companies, organizations, etc. in headline
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Descriptions/keywords
• If the person’s name is not familiar to your audience, use a likely search phrase.
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Use descriptive first words
• Start columns with the columnist’s name and opinions with the word OPINION. Likewise, use PHOTO or VIDEO to denote multimedia.
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Helpful articles
• 55 quick SEO tips
• 5 Tips to Boost Your SEO in a Competitive Online Environment
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Social media
• Perhaps the most important tool in your marketing toolbox
• It’s the new word-of-mouth advertising (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, review sites, etc.)
• Efficient, allows you to connect with people interested in your work
• Helps you engage with your audience
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Who should promote
• Every journalist should promote his/her work using a variety of social media channels.
• The responsibility for promotion begins with you. Not your editor or anyone else.
• No one cares about your work more than you. Own it.
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Why promote
• Bring content to the attention of those most likely to be interested.
• By building audience, we build more opportunities to stack digital dimes.
• 72 percent of online adults use social networking sites
• YouTube now reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network.
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How to promote
• Share links in a conversational way in places where the links would be relevant, welcome content. These include:
• Google+
• Blogs
• Newsletters
• Websites
• etc.
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Identify audience
• Identify the audience for your content (blog post, story, video, slideshow, etc.)
• If you want to hook fish, you have to cast your line where they swim.
• Use tools like Topsy to find potential targets
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Match audience with content
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• Read Across America Day
• Seuss FB page
• Kids Craft Corner FB page
• PetSmart
• Petco
• Elementary teachers
• Elementary schools
• Children’s book publishers
• Etc.
Match audience with content
• Medical marijuana
• Epilepsy FB pages
• Epilepsy Google groups
• Epilepsy Twitter accounts
• Etc.
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Look at metrics
• Measure value of your hard work; adjust if necessary
• Watch what gets the most traffic, most links, most social shares, most comments
• Social media audience will help spread your content if they find it worthwhile
• Content that attracts most attention tends to be well-defined and focused B
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Facebook tips
• Find relevant Facebook pages
• Be conversational; don’t want to come across as a spammer
• Comment within thread that makes sense
• Tag people in comment when appropriate
• Include links and keywords in post
• Peak time = 1 to 3 p.m., also boost early evening
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Facebook tips
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When you post within comment thread on Facebook, check to see who shared the post. Those who shared post are potential targets
Promote: Twitter tips
• Research and find relevant Twitter handles, accounts to include in tweet
• Use photos
Promote: Google+ tips
• Research and find relevant Google+ accounts to tag
• Type “@NAME” to locate accounts
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Promote: National websites
• Submit unique, weird or important posts that could go viral to:
Digg
Fark
StumbleUpon
Drudge
Boing Boing
Jezebel
etc.
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Parting words
• Content finds readers; they often don’t look for it
• Best content provides value to reader
• Use SEO best practices
• Don’t be afraid to try new things and fail
• Be a visionary
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Follow me
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• Buffy’s World: http://www.yorkblog.com/buffy/
• Buffy’s Write Zone:
http://buffyswritezone.blogspot.com/
• Author website: www.authorbuffyandrews.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Buffyandrews
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buffy.andrews
• Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/102646936236475852585/posts
Follow me
• Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/buffyandrews/
• Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/buffyandrews
• Storify: http://storify.com/buffyandrews
• Instagram: buffyandrews
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=40047960
• RebelMouse: https://www.rebelmouse.com/Buffyandrews
• Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7370309-buffy-andrews
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