Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Friday, March 9, 2012
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
JRC Chat on online comments
Good morning! Members of the Journal Register Company's Idealab - and everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat at noon.
Today we're commenting about, um, online comments and how they can be improved, how they can help journalism and how to avoid problems.
The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.
If you want to chime in, just post a tweet with the hashtag "#jrcchat" so it can automatically appear below, or post a comment in the field at the bottom of the chat box.
Today we're commenting about, um, online comments and how they can be improved, how they can help journalism and how to avoid problems.
The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.
If you want to chime in, just post a tweet with the hashtag "#jrcchat" so it can automatically appear below, or post a comment in the field at the bottom of the chat box.
Monday, May 9, 2011
How to increase your newsroom's engagement
So I tasked myself with improving our newsroom Twitter and Facebook presence (and your experience with us) back in late March and early April.
Sure, The Daily Freeman and its reporters are on Twitter and on Facebook. But pushing links (or asking questions for the sake of asking questions) is not really the way to go.
Here's what we did.
First, we needed some tools. I personally find the social media manager Tweetdeck immensely useful (here's why), so I decided to equip reporters with the program, and then add the link shortener bit.ly's API key so that we can keep track of what links works and what doesn't.
"Wait a second!" You are saying right now. "What's API? (And what's up with the stick man?)"
The application programming interface is basically a language that allows programs to talk to one another. All you do is grab your bit.ly account's "key" (also known as "a whole bunch of nonsensical characters") and add it to Tweetdeck's settings (needless to say, you need a bit.ly account and Tweetdeck).
Here's a tutorial on how to merge all this:
(Actually, here's the tutorial).
All of this is basically to figure out what messages generate responses and clicks.
Second: Training. As mentioned in this space before, I set up training session for Twitter best practices and Facebook. Here's the whole enchilada, in two parts.
How to improve your newsroom's Twitter presence:
How to improve your newsroom's Facebook presence:
As a favor to you (because you probably don't have two hours to spare to watch me, me me), I've summarized it all neatly here:
Actually, for a real summary, you're probably better off reading this.
Third, execution time.
This is where the staff really shined. Unprompted, reporters are now routinely thinking in a way that incorporates these tools into their workflow. I don't have to tell you about Patti Doxsey's live-tweeting of a murder trial with an iPad, for instance. (If I do, check this out).
Here's why we're doing this, by the way, it's not just because we can:
I also like to think that our engagement on Facebook has finally created more conversations with you. We're getting close to 2,200 likes, and there has been more connections and interactions in the past for weeks than since I remember.
Yes, there's much room for improvement, but the seeds have been planted. And they're sunflower seeds. We're tweeting more, sure, but we're tweeting valuable stuff — and not to the empty Twitter forest, which looks like this:
And this brings us to the fourth step. Evaluation, troubleshooting and repetition of successful experiments.
Using Patti's latest live-tweeting as an example. Here are some quick stats from last week's live-tweeting: The average reader of Dailyfreeman.com stayed with Patti's tweets for more than an hour. Her sessions along gathered more than 100 comments from you, some opinions, but many of them questions, which I tried to answer when I was moderating the comments.
(By the way, I used the live-blogging platform CoverItLive, so that those without a Twitter account could still follow her tweets. Here's how to use that).
Many people, incidentally, created Twitter accounts just to follow her.
Moving on. On Tuesday, we're doing a livestream of the Kingston school board candidate's forum. And we'll have a CoveritLive container for you to participate while it goes on. The livestream idea came from reporter Kyle Wind, a continuation of the many livestreams and digital-first initiatives we've had in the last year.
All this has been a bit bumpy, yes. But we're getting better and better, so hopefully you won't have to see things like this:
Or worse, this:
We'll get there.
Sure, The Daily Freeman and its reporters are on Twitter and on Facebook. But pushing links (or asking questions for the sake of asking questions) is not really the way to go.
Here's what we did.
First, we needed some tools. I personally find the social media manager Tweetdeck immensely useful (here's why), so I decided to equip reporters with the program, and then add the link shortener bit.ly's API key so that we can keep track of what links works and what doesn't.
"Wait a second!" You are saying right now. "What's API? (And what's up with the stick man?)"
The application programming interface is basically a language that allows programs to talk to one another. All you do is grab your bit.ly account's "key" (also known as "a whole bunch of nonsensical characters") and add it to Tweetdeck's settings (needless to say, you need a bit.ly account and Tweetdeck).
Here's a tutorial on how to merge all this:
(Actually, here's the tutorial).
All of this is basically to figure out what messages generate responses and clicks.
Second: Training. As mentioned in this space before, I set up training session for Twitter best practices and Facebook. Here's the whole enchilada, in two parts.
How to improve your newsroom's Twitter presence:
How to improve your newsroom's Facebook presence:
As a favor to you (because you probably don't have two hours to spare to watch me, me me), I've summarized it all neatly here:
Actually, for a real summary, you're probably better off reading this.
Third, execution time.
This is where the staff really shined. Unprompted, reporters are now routinely thinking in a way that incorporates these tools into their workflow. I don't have to tell you about Patti Doxsey's live-tweeting of a murder trial with an iPad, for instance. (If I do, check this out).
Here's why we're doing this, by the way, it's not just because we can:
I also like to think that our engagement on Facebook has finally created more conversations with you. We're getting close to 2,200 likes, and there has been more connections and interactions in the past for weeks than since I remember.
Yes, there's much room for improvement, but the seeds have been planted. And they're sunflower seeds. We're tweeting more, sure, but we're tweeting valuable stuff — and not to the empty Twitter forest, which looks like this:
And this brings us to the fourth step. Evaluation, troubleshooting and repetition of successful experiments.
Using Patti's latest live-tweeting as an example. Here are some quick stats from last week's live-tweeting: The average reader of Dailyfreeman.com stayed with Patti's tweets for more than an hour. Her sessions along gathered more than 100 comments from you, some opinions, but many of them questions, which I tried to answer when I was moderating the comments.
(By the way, I used the live-blogging platform CoverItLive, so that those without a Twitter account could still follow her tweets. Here's how to use that).
Many people, incidentally, created Twitter accounts just to follow her.
Moving on. On Tuesday, we're doing a livestream of the Kingston school board candidate's forum. And we'll have a CoveritLive container for you to participate while it goes on. The livestream idea came from reporter Kyle Wind, a continuation of the many livestreams and digital-first initiatives we've had in the last year.
All this has been a bit bumpy, yes. But we're getting better and better, so hopefully you won't have to see things like this:
We'll get there.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
JRC Chat at noon on collaboration, 'Journalists on Facebook'
Today we will be collaborating and talking about, um, collaboration! We'll bring some tutorials for journalists and bloggers, produced by us and from all over, with the goal of get them all in one single space for easier access.
We're also going to be talking about the recently unveiled "Journalists on Facebook" page and what can we get out of it.
The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.
If you want to chime in, just post a tweet with the hashtag "#jrcchat" so it can automatically appear below, or post a comment in the field at the bottom of the chat box.
As always, you are welcome to participate at anytime you want
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Monday, November 15, 2010
How to make Quick Response codes work for your publication
Starting Tuesday and through November, you'll see this at the bottom of the front page in the print edition of the Daily Freeman:
It's a QR (Quick Response) code. It will run with the following explanation.
"Scan this QR (Quick Response) code to 'Like' the Freeman on Facebook. You will need special software on your camera-equipped smartphone to decode the image. Search for ‘QR code’ in your phone’s app store"
You'll need a smartphone, and it could be any of these:
This is part of the Journal Register Company's Idealab, something that I'm not explaining again.
Anyway, if you are too lazy to search for 'QR code' in your phone's app store, here are some, based on a quick search and categorized by device. I'm only listing free apps:
iPhone:
* QR app;
* Neoreader;
* QRCode.
Blackberry:
* QR Code Scanner Pro;
* BeeTagg;
* ATT Code Scanner.
Android:
Barcode Scanner;
Goggles.
And here's an awful person doing a live video pretending to explain QR codes.
I know. Awful.
Note that this video, via the Freeman's new Livestream channel, was broadcast, well, live, through the site's channel and on Facebook, which would have added amazing user interaction if I had actually bothered to tell anyone that I was broadcasting.
Oh, well. Next time.
P.S. If you are keeping tabs, my challenge was to double our Facebook fans and triple our Twitter followers. I've been off since Oct. 30, so I'm technically just starting today. Since then, we've gone from 1,200 Facebook 'Likes' to 1,424; and from 600 followers to 651. Some of that growth is natural, and some is due to ease of access (you might have noticed the widgets on our stories and the main site). The big push starts now.
It's a QR (Quick Response) code. It will run with the following explanation.
"Scan this QR (Quick Response) code to 'Like' the Freeman on Facebook. You will need special software on your camera-equipped smartphone to decode the image. Search for ‘QR code’ in your phone’s app store"
You'll need a smartphone, and it could be any of these:
This is part of the Journal Register Company's Idealab, something that I'm not explaining again.
Anyway, if you are too lazy to search for 'QR code' in your phone's app store, here are some, based on a quick search and categorized by device. I'm only listing free apps:
iPhone:
* QR app;
* Neoreader;
* QRCode.
Blackberry:
* QR Code Scanner Pro;
* BeeTagg;
* ATT Code Scanner.
Android:
Barcode Scanner;
Goggles.
And here's an awful person doing a live video pretending to explain QR codes.
I know. Awful.
Note that this video, via the Freeman's new Livestream channel, was broadcast, well, live, through the site's channel and on Facebook, which would have added amazing user interaction if I had actually bothered to tell anyone that I was broadcasting.
Oh, well. Next time.
P.S. If you are keeping tabs, my challenge was to double our Facebook fans and triple our Twitter followers. I've been off since Oct. 30, so I'm technically just starting today. Since then, we've gone from 1,200 Facebook 'Likes' to 1,424; and from 600 followers to 651. Some of that growth is natural, and some is due to ease of access (you might have noticed the widgets on our stories and the main site). The big push starts now.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
How to improve your social media presence
A few days ago, I ran into a tweet by my tweeps at our parent company, Journal Register Company, touting that the company's "social media efforts (are) outpacing some of nation's largest print publications."
It was a ranking of the top newspapers in the nation's Twitter followers, and it pretty much showed that some of our sister papers ranked better that some big national publications.
Alas, the Daily Freeman's Twitter account wasn't among them.
The blog Journalistics had similarly posted a ranking of top newspapers' Facebook pages, and our own page would have ranked 25 among those surveyed, even though we're way smaller when it comes to circulation.
That got me thinking.
We're a small shop, and (spoiler alert!) our Facebook posts had generally consisted of tweets that were automatically posted on Facebook. Even though, as JRC Idealaber and awesome dog person Karen Workman pointed out during a social media training session, you don't want to just post just links, and that's pretty much what we've been doing.
So here's a problem. Our social media presence, thought somewhat strong, is not what it should be. I've tasked myself to at least triple our followers on Twitter, currently standing at 600, and to double our Facebook fans.
But how?
In my last post, I mentioned that a couple of our Storify posts were not from our tweets but from our users (that's you). When Billy Joel came to town, we did a story, sure, but I also went around social media to create a storyline using your very posts to create a timeline of his trajectory. When the Ulster County Jail was featured on "Ghost Hunters" and I found myself with no time to watch it or tweet it, I was able to curate a story using your posts.
Both of those stories amassed great interest. And Facebook, in October, was the second largest referrer to our site, surpassing AOL, Yahoo, and Bing, and second only after Google.
So using Karen's tips and fitting them to our newsroom capabilities, we're going to engage you in a more, er, engaging way.
My plan will also include highlighting our featured bloggers, so that they get some traffic and we get some too. We've already experimented with this with our staff blogs, and the traffic results are incredible.
As a side note, I should point out that unique visitors increased dramatically on my blog, just by posting my latest rambling as a latest update on the Freeman's site. So my plan is to increase our own traffic and that of our featured bloggers by highlighting their posts when they have something fresh.
Since I'm technically on vacation, I left the iPad and the Netbook in the newsroom, so our reporters can experiment with them and use them as they see fit.
I'll let you know how we're doing. And, as always, feel free to tell me I'm a crazy person that should be institutionalized.
It was a ranking of the top newspapers in the nation's Twitter followers, and it pretty much showed that some of our sister papers ranked better that some big national publications.
Alas, the Daily Freeman's Twitter account wasn't among them.
The blog Journalistics had similarly posted a ranking of top newspapers' Facebook pages, and our own page would have ranked 25 among those surveyed, even though we're way smaller when it comes to circulation.
That got me thinking. We're a small shop, and (spoiler alert!) our Facebook posts had generally consisted of tweets that were automatically posted on Facebook. Even though, as JRC Idealaber and awesome dog person Karen Workman pointed out during a social media training session, you don't want to just post just links, and that's pretty much what we've been doing.
So here's a problem. Our social media presence, thought somewhat strong, is not what it should be. I've tasked myself to at least triple our followers on Twitter, currently standing at 600, and to double our Facebook fans.
But how?
In my last post, I mentioned that a couple of our Storify posts were not from our tweets but from our users (that's you). When Billy Joel came to town, we did a story, sure, but I also went around social media to create a storyline using your very posts to create a timeline of his trajectory. When the Ulster County Jail was featured on "Ghost Hunters" and I found myself with no time to watch it or tweet it, I was able to curate a story using your posts.
Both of those stories amassed great interest. And Facebook, in October, was the second largest referrer to our site, surpassing AOL, Yahoo, and Bing, and second only after Google.
So using Karen's tips and fitting them to our newsroom capabilities, we're going to engage you in a more, er, engaging way.
My plan will also include highlighting our featured bloggers, so that they get some traffic and we get some too. We've already experimented with this with our staff blogs, and the traffic results are incredible.
As a side note, I should point out that unique visitors increased dramatically on my blog, just by posting my latest rambling as a latest update on the Freeman's site. So my plan is to increase our own traffic and that of our featured bloggers by highlighting their posts when they have something fresh.
Since I'm technically on vacation, I left the iPad and the Netbook in the newsroom, so our reporters can experiment with them and use them as they see fit.
I'll let you know how we're doing. And, as always, feel free to tell me I'm a crazy person that should be institutionalized.
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