Earlier this year I was at a journalism conference in Perugia and on one of the panels was a chap from the Huffington Post. He described how during the 2008 Presidential campaign they’d had a massive scoop when one of their contributors caught a candidate gaffe on video, it was uploaded and within hours it was leading most international news sites and the talk of the day on Twitter, Facebook and more.
Our panel discussed the implications of this on the media, and I said we’re living in a golden age of social media stupidity. Why? Because at the moment you can find copious amounts of information on people, their activities, and much more – but you can also find it very quickly.
I was reminded of this by Alison Gow’s excellent post on How to (Not) kill Journalism and how the web represents such an opportunity, particularly being able to crowdsource direct with your followers. Read the rest of this entry »
Had some media law refresher training this morning. It was tough going back three years and trying to remember specific cases but the best bit of the session were the debates about the challenges now faced by journalism when it comes to online and the law.
The web is moving quickly and with certain acts dating back to to the last century, you won’t find mention of Facebook in the legal statements. First things first, if you’re unsure about media law go and grab a copy of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists. You won’t regret it.
The three main things we discussed were dealing with breaking news online, and in particular breaking crime news, the use of content from social media sites (particularly images) and commenting on stories by users. Read the rest of this entry »
Journalists have always had contacts, those people who we can go to for comment and stories. They might be professional people, police officers, nurses or the local cleaner at the comprehensive who overhears gossip when he’s having a ciggie round the back of the head’s office.
Now, though, through social media and the web we’ve got a pool of intelligent, connected and helpful people at our finger-tips. Here’s how to leverage it: Read the rest of this entry »
I thought I’d take the question above as a starting point. A Tweetup is a new concept and it’s something that is really starting to catch-on in some places.
I organised and hosted Preston’s first Tweetup just over a week ago and it was a roaring success. We had nearly 40 people in the room, many of them with wireless enabled laptops and mobiles, all contributing to a discussion on one topic.
The idea for a Tweetup is that instead of having a networking event or discussion where the conversation is completely physical you also have a virtual conversation going on. Bear with me, it does make sense. The structure of the event is an opening preamble and then a topic is discussed by the people in the room – often splitting off into separate groups. This makes it easier to manage.
For example, at the Preston Tweetup we were discussing the Preston Guild in 2012 and how the web can be used in it.
The discussions were flowing around the tables but also on twitter, take a look at the #prestontweetup hashtag feed and you can see all the good stuff that was coming out of people chatting about the topic. Yes, some of it went off on tangents – but that happens with any discussions.
The best thing about the Tweetup was that as an organiser I was getting instant feedback. If there was a problem with something I could pick up on it straight away by watching the tweets. I could also easily collect information after the event and condense it.
This backchannel conversation was incredibly useful and exciting. It also allowed some great interaction between the groups, so that people might take a question asked by one group and explore it and the then fling some more questions back out into the twitter stream for other groups to consider. There was a fantastic collaborative environment at the event.
So, I would really suggest giving a Tweetup a try. You don’t need 40 people there, maybe just 5, but get going with it and see what happens. And if you’re in the education or conference/networking sectors, you need to be on this. Doing it. Making it happen.
This month’s topic over on Tomorrow’s News, Tomorrow’s Journalists is an interesting one and one that I voted for in our very democratic way of deciding December’s topic. What have you done to build your brand online?
See where you are online
The first thing I did was go and see what is out there about me on the internet. A quick Google of my name ‘ed walker’ made me realise first of all: a) I have a really common name b) There’s a ‘Sir Edward Walker’ – not me. Having a common name is the first hurdle in building a brand online, because if you’re called Japhael Jiminez – chances are you’re pretty unique.
Start a blog
Starting a blog is a must. This should be the core of your brand online. This is where you live and breath online. If possible try and buy your own domain and a bit of hosting, as having your name as a yourname.com/.co.uk/.net will help massively when it comes to boosting yourself up those all important Google rankings. After starting your blog and making it look pretty, get posting. Post about stuff that matters to you, it’ll probably matter to other people. Your blog should be your living CV, blog about stuff you’re working on, your success’ and even some of your failures. Make sure you’ve got an ace ‘About’ page, so that if people want to know more about you they can find out.
Link to people
You’re not going to build this brand alone. When posting on your blog, link out and link far and wide. If you link to people, they will probably come and look at your blog and see who you are. They might even link back if they like your stuff!
Have a good presence on LinkedIn
Forget Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc, LinkedIn is the professional networking site and it can be used by potential employers to find you and see who you are and what you do. Ensure your profile is fully filled out, keep it updated reguarly and you’ll be surprised how much traffic it can bring to your blog and also how highly LinkedIn profiles rank in Google and other search engines.
Claim your blog on Technorati
Technorati is the bloggers website. It’s important to claim your blog as this will tell you who is linking to you and give you an authority ranking. As more people link to you, your authority grows.
Listen to those who know
I suggest people like Chris Brogan and Adam Singer, who aren’t journalists, but have built up highly successful blogs and follows online. They have built a brand around themselves online, and as a result have benefitted financially but also in building up a big and useful network of contacts.
Network offline and transfer online
Face to face is still and always will be the most powerful communication tool in the world. Make use of it, at a networking event? At a party? Social media is reasonably in right now and while it may not be the best conversation starter it’s a great conversation finisher. Make sure you leave people you’ve been speaking to with your blog address, or if you’re a guest speaker make sure it’s on your slides.
Twitter and other social media
Make sure you’re using social media such as Twitter to join in the conversation, find and follow relevant people. Give people a reason to follow you by posting regularly and by posting interesting links to Twitter. Don’t tell us what you had for breakfast, that’s what Facebook status updates are for. Make sure all your social media presences link to your blog and that your blog links to all your social media presences. Think of your blog as the continent with lots of little islands around it.
Join relevant networks (like TNTJ!) and get networked
If there’s a network for your industry, join it and meet people. You’ll be surprised how interested they’ll be in what you do and what you may be blogging about.
Image in this post is used under creative commons from flickr user See-Ming Lee
He’s right, everything needs to be accessible and the old barriers within business’ need to disappear or it will be the business’ themselves who disappear. The very nature of the web is to share, I’m writing this blog post now and I’m sharing something with you. Someone tags this in delicious and shares it with their network, someone else emails it to a friend. It’s easy to share online.
That’s why it’s important that organisations, even the smaller ones like I work for, get their house in order and get everyone sharing. The flow of information around an organisation is almost as important as the flow of information from the organisation. I work for an organisation, a Students’ Union, who are a very sharing and caring kind of organisation, but there has to be a putting aside of old issues and a realisation that if the organisation is to move forward then information, best practice and most importantly ideas are not discussed behind closed doors but are passed around to be added to, taken away and made better.
While people hide behind job titles, department names and bottom lines then nothing will move forward. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, if you’re not sharing with your colleagues ideas then things won’t happen. For public organisations there are definitely loads of ideas floating around about how to make things better, how to improve what’s already there – I’ve had many of them while developing the Union’s new website – but they never go anywhere other than into a pad to be thought about next year. What if that pad was online? You scribble a note, and everyone can see it an contribute. The staff intranet shouldn’t be a boring list of when the next fire inspection is, it should be a buzzing community of everyone having their say about the next big idea.
And if there’s not enough people to fulfil all the ideas, as inevitably with public organisations there aren’t, then share them with others. You’re not in competition, you’re all working towards a common goal. As Chris Brogan says:
Sharing is a new business tool. And it’s not really obvious. You have to think about the ways you can share, the ways you can’t. You have to weigh whether you’re giving away the best part, or if there’s plenty to go around (so often, the answer is B).
So there we go, how is this sharing going to happen? If the people at the top see the possibilities that social media can have the opportunities for innovation that are bubbling underneath them.
Completely agree. Although London is where I grew up, I feel more at home ‘up north’. Plus it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. Stupid Conservative think-thank.
Good point made, but are they just trying to protect their brand and make sure they don’t get overrun by a load of crap ads and marketing materials like MySpace did? I hope LinkedIn stays the way it is, as it’s a useful tool.
Over the coming weeks I’m going to be taking a look at how third sector organisations (charities, voluntary organisations, lobby groups) have been using the web as a campaigning tool. This came about as in my role at the Students’ Union at UCLan I am investigating ways for the Union to use the web for campaigning, as previously the organisation relied heavily on printed material and suffers from a general lack of imagination around campaigning. And the biggest problem, no people.
So, to kick things off I’m looking at Action Aid. As their website header proudly states they’ve been fighting poverty for 35 years – but how is the web playing a role in fighting poverty?
The key to any successful campaign is PEOPLE, people and MORE people. People feel, have rights and have time/effort/energy. Many hands make light work and all that. Well, on the frontpage of Action Aid’s site – perhaps not as prominently as it could be – is ‘MyActionAid‘. This is hosted on a separate URL so can be promoted offline. This is a social network for activists.
Social networks and media should be great for charity. They allow the creation of social networks around specific topics, and for Action Aid they’ve taken this to a higher level by hosting and creating their own network. I can’t get access to it, as I’m not a member, but this rather funky (E4 style video clip) shows me the power of it:
Good stuff and great use of video, plus it helps if you’ve got a relative celebrity to do your voiceovers (yeah that bloke off the E4 ads who puts loads of sarcasm into everything). However it’s only had 266 views on Youtube.
The homepage of MyActionAid could be a bit better, they highlight upcoming events but it could do with showcasing more of the fundraising events that are upcoming. Overall though, a cracking social network for activists.
The campaigns section is titled ‘What you can do‘ – good stuff, if I saw the section ‘Campaigns’ I’d be bored stiff. This is engaging and a call to arms, it says ‘We are ActionAid, come join us’. Not ‘We are ActionAid, we campaign on this’. Again, it’s about engagement and people. I managed to end up clicking a big circle called ‘Take action now’ but when I did I was a bit disappointed to find a news story about a Labour minister giving his heart. The form to actually take action about this was below the scroll line, so I might not have bothered to look. If there’s a form, put it high up or at least have a big link to it.
Great social network for activists, but frontpage could have more of a buzz about it and feature more of what the activists are doing to campaign, raise money etc
Good use of blogging to support campaigns, helped by some creative PR
Hiding away forms that encourage engagement below scroll lines is not good
Good use of video to promote the social network, was good to watch and helped by star voiceover
Been reading a lot of Chris Brogan and Adam Singer recently, all about building your own brand online. I guess that was part of the reason for creating this blog, giving myself the opportunity to explore what I’m working on in more detail and blog about the industry(ies) that I am in.
Brogan posted about how to make the most of your LinkedIn profile and he’s spot on. LinkedIn is far more valuable than facebook. I see facebook as something social, something for keeping in touch but LinkedIn is a professional network. One of the things I picked up from some training last month that the future will involve those who are good and want to be leaders in business, or anything else for that matter, people who are able to build and manage a network.
Networks are even easier to build now thanks to online and social media tools. Make use of them and keep building a network, I know I will be as a I progress through my career. You never know when these people are going to come in useful.
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