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February 20 2012
Resources for learning about social media
I have been collecting posts, articles, tutorials and general how-to materials that relate to how journalists use social media. I started about two weeks ago, as I prepare for a workshop in Singapore.
They are curated here: Social Media and Journalists.
The collection is housed at Scoop.it, a curation site that goes a step beyond social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Diigo, and which privileges text and tagging — rather than visuals (like Pinterest). For this particular project, I’m finding it very useful.
One example of its utility is that I can offer up a link to a subset of the complete collection by using my own tags: see all posts tagged with “Instagram.” This kind of selection is always useful in teaching and training. Unfortunately, you cannot combine tags (e.g., Instagram + howto) to narrow the search results.
I could have chosen Tumblr for this project, but I’m liking the way Scoop.it works. One of its best features is that when you “scoop” a link using the Scoop.it bookmarklet, the Scoop.it interface opens in a one-third-screen vertical overlay (shown in the first screen capture above). This allows me to scroll up and down in the source material, which makes it easy to write my annotations and choose my tags. I don’t have to flip between browser tabs.
The toolbar shown above appears at the bottom of every posted item. It’s fast and easy to edit your posts and to change or add tags. It’s also easy for others to share your posts on a variety of social networks.
A big drawback is that I can’t download or otherwise preserve my collection. If Scoop.it goes bust, I will lose all my work. There is an RSS feed, but the links go only to the Scoop.it posts; there is no link to the source material in the RSS feed. Bummer.
Scoop.it isn’t brand-new — the site launched in November 2011.
February 05 2012
August 01 2011
5,000 followers on Twitter
Sure, I’m no Andy Carvin (NPR’s social media guy), but I do feel a little thrill when the zeros turn over. The screen capture above is from yesterday, July 31, 2011.
See my recent posts about Twitter and journalism.
Sure, I’m no Andy Carvin (NPR’s social media guy), but I do feel a little thrill when the zeros turn over. The screen capture above is from yesterday, July 31, 2011.
See my recent posts about Twitter and journalism.
5,000 followers on Twitter
Sure, I’m no Andy Carvin (NPR’s social media guy), but I do feel a little thrill when the zeros turn over. The screen capture above is from yesterday, July 31, 2011.
See my recent posts about Twitter and journalism.
Sure, I’m no Andy Carvin (NPR’s social media guy), but I do feel a little thrill when the zeros turn over. The screen capture above is from yesterday, July 31, 2011.
See my recent posts about Twitter and journalism.
November 28 2010
Online video, audiences, sharing: Putting it all together
I thought about titling this post “Another stupid way news sites waste time and effort by failing to understand the Web and how people use it,” but I thought maybe that was far too broad, since it covers so many things.
This post is really about how journalism organizations could use video intelligently:
- Embedding
- Linking
- Sharing
- Full screen
- Downloads
- Engagement
- Promote other pages and stories
I spend a lot of time speaking (and thinking) about online video — both journalism video and the broader YouTube varieties. When we think about how people use online video — and by “people” I mean mostly North Americans in the college and university student age group — we absolutely must consider sharing.
How young people find out about videos (and — let’s face it — a large portion of all news and information) is because one or more of their friends posted a link on Facebook, or shared it in some other way that brought it to their attention.
It doesn’t take too much intelligence to conclude that it’s very important to make it very easy to share the videos that you produce.
The video embedded above (from the Toronto Star) won an award at this year’s Online News Association annual conference, and I really love the way it tells the story in a manner that can grab the attention of almost anyone — even if you have no particular interest in Africa or in windmills.
Embedding: I had to install an extra plug-in to embed that video here (and on a free WordPress.com blog, I would not be able to embed it). That’s one consideration — if a video is on YouTube or Vimeo, it can be easily embedded almost anywhere, in any kind of blog, and on Facebook. Make it easy for people to embed your video in WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and anywhere.
Linking: From the embedded video above, you can’t view the original. There’s no link. That’s one consideration about linking, and here’s another — the video is like an appetizer to a bigger, more detailed story. That’s often true of online journalism videos, and often there is a fuller treatment in a text story, or even a big package of related features. But how will anyone ever find those other pieces? Even at the Toronto Star’s website, this video does not appear on the same Web page with the text story! (Yes, there is a link. But it’s asking people to click and wait, and that’s not necessary.)
Sharing: These cute little buttons make sharing on Twitter, Facebook, etc., simple — this is essential.
Lots of journalism sites are missing the boat on sharing. Earlier today I watched this video from GlobalPost: On Location: Cairo – Egypt’s pre-election crackdown (excellent work by UF grad Jon Jensen). On the stand-alone video page, it has NO options for embedding and NO options for sharing. (Note: Some GlobalPost stories have been “Liked” more than 1,000 times via Facebook.)
I had to make a screen capture from the video and upload it and link it to provide you the incentive you see above (an image that will take you to the video), and most people just are not going to do that much work to share your videos.
Journalism videos SHOULD be embedded and SHOULD be shared, but they need to LINK BACK to the journalism, to the original. The video is a promo for the rest of the story. The video is a tease, an entry point to MORE. The video should BRING people TO your site.
Does this mean online videos should not include pre-roll advertising? Maybe.
Full screen: From what I’ve seen, young people always make a video full screen if it’s possible to do it. Some videos look great full screen, and many do not. Of course, there are bandwidth constraints, etc. I’m just saying we should consider how the videos look when blown up to a width of 1200 pixels — or larger.
Downloads: If I could download the windmill video and keep it on my iPhone, I would show it to people. Too bad — the Toronto Star does not allow me to download it. If more journalism organizations treated video as (downloadable) podcasts, they might get a lot more leverage out of the video work.
Engagement: The windmill video above has some non-standard enhancements to the storytelling, and I think they work fantastically well to grab and hold the viewer’s attention. Usually I feel uncomfortable about using music in a journalistic video — I’m concerned that it takes away from the journalism, the credibility, the realism. In this case, however, I just love the music because it really does enhance the story. (Too many videos use bland music loops that add nothing.)
Most people are quick to click away from a video if it fails to engage them — 20 percent of viewers will quit a video in the first 10 seconds (source; from analyst firm Visible Measures). To me that says the crucial characteristic of every video is a strong opening. Grab people immediately; guarantee that they are going to see something interesting.
The windmill video is not too long (3 min. 10 sec.). It does not try to tell us everything. That’s why we have the text story.
Video as promo: Increasing page views
Online video is immensely popular, especially with younger Internet users, and its popularity is still increasing. That’s the reason to think about it more, and figure out effective ways to use it to bring good stories to people’s attention.
Consider the two videos linked here: The story about William and the windmills can be bringing viewers to the Toronto Star for years (because it’s not tied to any breaking news), but it ought to be linked better — not only to the Star’s text story but also to other sites and pages (inside the Star and outside) — about NGOs and Africa and Malawi and the 2007 TED Talk that introduced William Kamkwamba to the world and the book and the blog. A video with long legs is worth extra time and effort — in production AND in promotion. (Educators: Show your students the TED video and the Toronto Star video and discuss storytelling!)
The GlobalPost video about current elections, on the other hand, has a short shelf life — nevertheless, it could be linked to a zillion other stories related to Egypt and the region. The BBC has always been my exemplar for this kind of cross-linking (and self-promotion); see this example: Egypt holds parliamentary poll (two insets within the story: Related Stories and Parliamentary Vote). Why doesn’t GlobalPost have links like those on its video page? Why squander that opportunity?
If you’re not familiar with GlobalPost, read this from Nieman Journalism Lab (November 2010).
Online video, links, and people: Putting it all together
I spend a lot of time speaking (and thinking) about online video — both journalism video and the broader YouTube varieties. When we think about how people use online video — and by “people” I mean mostly North Americans in the college and university student age group — we have to consider sharing.
How young people find out about videos (and — let’s face it — a large portion of all news and information) is because one or more of their friends posted a link on Facebook, or shared it in some other way that brought it to their attention.
It doesn’t take too much intelligence to conclude that it’s very important to make it very easy to share the videos that you produce.
Blah blah.
September 21 2010
Teaching Twitter to students
This semester I took a course I have been teaching for 10 years and moved it to a WordPress.com blog. The students and I still meet in person once a week to discuss ideas, but otherwise, everything is on the blog.
Each student was required to start his or her own WordPress.com blog, and all their assignments are submitted as posts on their blogs.
This week’s assignment centered on Twitter, and I’m very happy with the results! My intention was to give the students an experience of using Twitter that would introduce them to new people and new sources of information and show them one of the most significant ways that Twitter is different from Facebook.
If you want to see the students’ reactions and reports about their experience, their blogs are linked in the sidebar of the course blog. Just follow the link to the assignment (above). This week only you can see a link to their Twitter posts (because of the way I set up the RSS feed) — but by Friday those links will start to be replaced by links to their next assignment.
If you’re interested in using WordPress.com in this manner for a course, leave a comment here — I’d be happy to answer any questions!
(Note: This course happens to be for graduate students, and it’s not a skills class, so I’m not teaching them how to be journalists.)
March 30 2010
Portability, Participation Rule for New Media Consumer
We're spoiled by technology. Today, we expect more from our media than we can get from print, radio or linear TV.
If you're like me -- and, increasingly, evidence shows people are -- you crave portability, fungibility, the ability to listen to a book or article, to watch a TV show or movie or YouTube clip whenever and wherever you want. You may even, like me, want to chop off pieces and show them elsewhere, tag them, mash them up.
Consuming media the way it used to be provided (and sometimes still is) can be so woefully inefficient. Who wants to have to sit down and consume at the provider's convenience, rather than their own? Who has time for appointment TV any more? Just look at the research that finds more and more of us using DVRs, avoiding commercials and otherwise changing viewing habits.
It's not necessarily that we object to a reasonable level of advertising or fees. We're increasingly using services like Hulu or Netflix that let us watch shows and movies on demand, even if we have to suffer ads, or pay for the privilege. It's worth the price in order to not be at the mercy of whatever happens to be available, either in real-time or on-demand through a cable. It's great to have the choice of what screen to use, too. And who doesn't enjoy being able to zoom back a minute or two and catch something they liked or missed?
During the Winter Olympics, I couldn't bother sitting through tape-delayed events that had happened hours ago or that I didn't care about. I not only recorded the shows off the air, using an Eye TV device mentioned in this MediaShift story on cutting the cord to cable, but also set the program to automatically convert the broadcasts to iTunes clips that took up less space on my hard drive and also made them easy to transfer to computers and other devices.
Shifting from Eyes to Ears and Back
If you're like me, you also enjoy reading and listening to books you're interested in. I may read a chapter or two, then listen to a chapter while doing the dishes. I get through the book faster and enjoy the continuity. When an audiobook doesn't exist -- which is surprisingly often -- I'll try to get the digital edition and have my computer's speech-synthesis application read it to me. Even with the distortions and glitches, it's good enough to give a good rendering of what's in print.
I'll do that for newspaper and magazine articles, blogs and research papers, too. It's a great way to not have to stop reading because I have something else to do that requires the use of my hands or eyes. If I'm going to be traveling, I might record the audio into an iPod so I can listen while standing in line or taking a taxi to the hotel. I'll certainly access books remotely via computer, Blackberry or iPod Touch.
By now, you may be thinking: What's this got to do with trends in media or the media business, at large? This guy is a huge geek, and he's unlike 90 percent of humanity.
But that really isn't the case. Yes, I am reasonably comfortable with technology, but I don't use it for its own sake. I use the technology because it is liberating, it let's me do things I've always wanted to. I know I'm not the only person who's engaged in time- and place-shifting by using a timer and tape recorder to grab favorite radio shows, for example. It's no secret why audio cassette decks used to be sold with two slots for tapes, only one of which had a "record" button. I still record things on a videotape when I want to bring them over to someone else's house to watch.
Our time is valuable, and the more we can control it the more value it has. So, too, does media become more valuable when we can better weave it into our relationships. If we can snag a piece of something and blog or tweet about it or email it to a friend, it makes it easier to have a meaningful conversation and be engaged.
Age of the Participatory Consumer
A recent study from IBM media research found that we're moving from "traditional devices" to "connected experiences," that media consumers from all generations, but especially the younger ones, are moving from passive to "involved" consumption of media, and from limited to open access. Consumers around the world, it finds, increasingly expect to control and participate in their media.
There's a lesson here amid debates about what media consumers will pay for, and which distribution channels and levels of access can be controlled. Device makers, too, need to figure out a balance between portability and access, as the iPod's masters showed they learned by finally offering DRM-free versions of songs. I also predict the Kindle will do the same as competitors with more open devices gain market share.
Anyone who produces media or the devices to consume them will have to provide enough value for us to put up with any restrictions. More importantly, they need to understand that technology has made us into new kinds of consumers.
Dorian Benkoil is consulting sales manager, and has devised marketing strategy for MediaShift. He is SVP at Teeming Media, a strategic media consultancy focused on helping digital media content identify and meet business objectives. He has devised strategies, business models and training programs for websites, social media, blog networks, events companies, startups, publications and TV shows. He Tweets at @dbenk.
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