I don’t think it’ll spoil anything to say we plan to use social media quite a bit in every aspect of TBD, so that training will be very important both before launch and as we go into the future and technology changes. Some of our staff, I imagine, will already have a rich background in social media use, while others may not be as comfortable just yet – so many levels of training will be vital.

I’m in the process of officially updating all of my documentation, so I’m in full resource re-evaluation mode. As I post on training plans, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on what you think is missing and offer your good examples of social media use you think we should take to heart.

Today – Twitter!

So most of us know now that Twitter is a rich way for reporters to connect with sources and readers as well as build their own brands. In addition to the basics of Twitter use, new users need to know how to find the right journalists, sources and locals to follow, using/understanding hashtags and how they can use Twitter for better reporting. I usually point newb reporters to the work of tweeting reporters on Muckrack and use the live presser tweets from @theHyperFix as a good example of live-tweeting.

There are a million great resources on using Twitter. I’ve collected quite a few I like to use.

The next logical step in Twitter training is using it’s vast amount of data to find information, track trends and find sources for stories. Sites like BackTweets, TweetGrid and Twitter’s own pretty formidable search engine can really help a journalist looking for people tweeting about [insert subject here] in their area and beyond.

Web Up The Newsroom recently had a great post about using Twitter search tools in reporting and sourcing that I think may be the best description of I’ve seen geared toward reporters.

Aside from the data search, Twitter’s geolocation data makes it easy to watch trends and tweets as they happen on a map – which is great if, say, news just broke in a certain area and you want to see what’s happening there from afar. I particularly like Bing’s Twitter maps (which can turn into quite a timesuck if you let it). SocialGreat is also nice if you just want to see what places seem to be trending across all the geolocation platforms.

If you’d rather see a list than a map of trending local topics, you could check your Twitter home page – or, better yet – check out Trendsmap (using data from another great site, What The Trend). A lot of the time, these are silly chain letter hashtags or obvious news (like how Gulf and Oil are trending here right now), but sometimes you can see reaction to real-time events pop up in these trend searches (check it out right after a celebrity death or during a big sporting event to see what I mean). Trendsmap also has a great visualizer.

If you know what keyword you’d like to track over a course of time, Trendistic has a decent trend graphing application.

Aside from Twitter, there’s obviously a lot of other social media we’ll want to use in our day-to-day operations…but that’s for another post, my friends.

In the meantime, what are your favorite tips and tricks, apps or uses for Twitter I should be sure to pass on as we start training?

Instead of shoehorning some new media approach into a centuries-old tradition, we’re building something so new, it’s still somewhat intangible – and that’s the fun part. It’s also sort of terrifying.

Because we haven’t launched yet, there are no deadlines, per se (which is a tough adjustment from my last few years working in breaking news). Our deadline for now is launch – and then infinite thereafter as we continue to add new features and tweak tools.

Right now, there are no rules, but I wouldn’t call it lawless, either. All of us currently involved with TBD have extensive experience in news and/or the social sphere. We know the framework of what we’re working toward, the rest is totally up for grabs.

In the past few days, I’ve been in several meetings with the rest of the community engagement staff where we have been brainstorming TBD’s processes for reader participation, community newsgathering and the all-important continuous breaking news. There are only five of us in a room, but it’s a hurricane of what-ifs and how-about-wes.

Not once has anyone said, “We can’t do that” or “That isn’t possible”. That’s a great feeling.

I know those times are coming. Some ideas will make it and others won’t. For now, though, I’m just trying to get a word in edgewise in a newsroom full of energy and rapid-fire ideas.

In addition to these sessions, we’re crowdsourcing our TBD plans, so if you have ideas you’d like to share, please do.

The community hosts are already miles ahead of me, working hard to recruit good bloggers for our network. I, on the other hand, am desperately trying to catch up.

I’ve found being the social media producer for a website that doesn’t exist in a city that doesn’t know you is a pretty tall order. All that community I built around myself in Cincinnati is now far, far away – so now the new task is cracking the Twitter code of this area.

In preparation to launch the TBD Twitter account(s) in the near future, I’m currently working on building up my own DC base on Twitter, figuring out who to follow for breaking news, community tips, laughs and tips about cheap beer. I’m working on finding the “nodes” (as my former editor was fond of calling them), that is, the Kevin Bacons on the metro DC social media sphere who are followed by and follow everyone important.

That’ll take some time, I know. I’m just not very patient. Have ideas/suggestions? You know the drill.

The idea of spurning social media for breaking news in order to protect your wire service would be a little like an early 90s  telephone service provider spurning the notion of developing an Internet service, instead allowing competitors to use its lines to serve up dial-up service to its customers.

Truth is, Twitter is the perfect medium for breaking news. I think of it as the latest incarnation of the “this just in!” radio bulletin.  As a tool, it is immediate, mobile, searchable by keyword and location, you can easily see who has passed on your news (via RTs), link traffic is easily tracked and, best of all, it has your brand attached so you can get credit for the scoop.

There is absolutely nothing more satisfying to this newshound than a series of re-tweets on my item from readers – and even better when it includes a begrudging re-tweet from my competitors.

If a news outlets that uses the Reuters wire is the first to post an item to a social media, it will look as if they broke that news. Their link to the same Reuters content will be the one passed around from retweet to retweet. One would think they might want to get their name on it first – but  guess not.

I see this play out every day on my Tweetdeck, as the local TV stations battle to tweet out the latest kooky AP news item from 200 miles away first. I always can’t help but think, “Gee, why isn’t the AP trying to get this into this market’s Twittersphere before local news outlets even get the chance?”

In the end, it won’t matter if they broke the news on the wires first. Most readers don’t read the wires, they read either their preferred media site or social media to get their news. As more and more news organizations take advantage of using Twitter to break news (or in the case of the BBC, mandating it), news providers who are late to the party on every story will eventually render themselves pretty useless as breaking news resources.

It’s downright shameful that an industry leader in breaking news (including some of the biggest breaking news events of the 20th century), would just let that go in favor of protecting a corner of the market that doesn’t benefit its readers or its reporters.

I have to say, the rest of the policy is rather helpful. It largely focuses on explaining how journalists can manage professional and personal brands on Twitter, including guidelines for making corrections in the social media sphere and avoiding accusations of bias with a thorough look at one’s social media profiles. All good info to know.

You don’t have to be some online expert to look like you belong on Twitter – just avoid doing the following and nobody will know you’re a dog (or just an old-school journalist) on Twitter.

1. You sign your tweets

In my book, this is the biggest sign that someone is a journo without a clue. Do you seriously need a byline on your tweet? If it is your own account, your name and picture should already be on it. If it is your news outlet’s account, I repeat: Do you really need a byline on a tweet? You only have 140 characters to work with and you’re wasting them if you feel the need to sign your name to the sentence you just blasted out.

2. You ask the Twittersphere to respond by direct message

Probably the most frequent error I see. If you put an inquiry out on Twitter, do not ask people to reply by DM. Just ask them to reply. Why? Because if you aren’t following the person who wants to reply to your plea for sources, they can’t get through to you. Ask for replies or put your email out there instead.

3. You put out general links instead of specific links

I know you really, really want people to read your blog or website, but you don’t have to make it a chore. If you want to promote a certain post, send the link to the post. If they like your blog, they’ll bookmark it or subscribe by RSS – they don’t need your site’s home page force-fed to them on Twitter. Especially avoid saying, “New post about blahblahblah at yourhomepage.com! Check it out!” Someone might come across that tweet in a Google search two weeks from now and that post/story may be off your front page by then. Don’t waste people’s time. Use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl if you need to fit in a long link.

4. You don’t post links at all

The absolute worst. Don’t say, “I’ve got a new story/blog post about X up online now. Check it out!” Everyone who sees your name on Twitter doesn’t know your website or your news outlet. You’re part of the stream that could be coming from lots of Twitter sources – and you’ll quickly be forgotten if you do this. Right after they laugh at you.

5. You never reply to anyone else

Twitter is not a tool for you to blast out links to your work. It’s a space for interacting with your followers and asking questions of those you follow. Even if you only reply by direct message to friends’ inquiries, you need to reply when you are asked a question. you should also take the time to read others’ tweets and reply once in awhile. You might even learn something!

6. You don’t follow anyone

Slightly worse than #5. Everything said there applies. Don’t know anyone on Twitter yet? Go to Twellow and search by your beat, city or interests and start following some people. Go to Muck Rack and follow other journalists or news organizations. And re-read #5 – if people reply to you, follow them. Make them the beginning of your Twitter circle

7. You never re-tweet

This is a clear sign that you only use Twitter to push out your own content and don’t read anyone else’s. If someone says something interesting, if they reply to you and you want to share it or they pass out a link you’d like to pass on, hit re-tweet. It takes less than a second to pass on someone else’s tweet to your followers. Have you never read a tweet from someone else worth that one second? If you aren’t using a Twitter client with a re-tweet function, there’s also a button to re-tweet on the web form (just hover over the tweet with your mouse and you’ll see it).

8. You use your news outlets main website as your web link in your profile

Sure, it’s a minor point – but it makes you look like a journalist without a clue. If someone wants to contact you off Twitter, this link doesn’t help. If you have a blog or a profile page on your paper’s site or on your own, link it there. If you have a Google Profile, Facebook page, Linked In account or anything at all that reflects you, put that link there. Think about it, would you ever believe a source whose contact information was so incomplete? Which leads me to…

9. You don’t have a profile picture

If you use the default icon on Twitter, 90% of users will just assume you are a spammer or simply someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Again, would you trust a source without a face or some sort of recognizable image? It doesn’t have to be “you” per se (though it would help your cause), but it shows you made the basic bit of effort to complete your profile.

10. You exclusively tweet just about your published work

I’m not saying you have to get personal or tell everyone what you ate for lunch, I’m just saying you need to loosen up a little. Tell your followers who you’re meeting with today, what you’re working on or what’s going on at a event you’re covering. Feel free to add comment or answer questions on the news of the day (within all the usual ethical limitations of course) or re-tweet info from other users. Or, if you’re really feeling comfortable, go ahead and get personal. Readers and sources can like journalists when they seem like real people.

Geanne Rosenberg, writing for the Nieman Lab, jumps into the Federal Shield conversation, asserting that student journalists should also get the protections of their professional counterparts. If you read this blog, you know I’m a big proponent for citizen journalists, bloggers and other “non-professionals” to get this protection, so kudos to her for recognizing the rights of students as well.

The Nieman Lab has an overview of a longer paper from Marion Fremont-Smith at Harvard law about the non-profit model for funding news. There are a lot of questions out there as to whether or not tax law might need to be changed to allow for a current for-profit news org to become non-profit. Fremont-Smith’s paper argues there should be no new guidelines or legislation needed to make this happen.

A very interesting case is going on right now where TV personality Glenn Beck is essentially trying to use domain name laws to out an online critic (and it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere). While it goes against the reason behind the law, it certainly is a creative way to circumvent other media law to take down those who oppose your point of view.

Who’s charging for content – or not

For those keeping score….

• Talking Points Memo: Exploring a membership model, but not an all-encompassing pay wall.
• Newsday – Creating a subscribers-only pay wall – and Steve Outing thinks they’re nuts & suggests a micropayment model.
• Dallas Morning News – DMN is betting on readers being willing to pay more to have a better newspaper – not online yet, but in print.
• Speaking of “premium content” that is “worth paying for”, Outing started a great discussion about what content readers might be willing to buy.
• And now for something completely different. Check out the new site for the non-profit Texas Tribune if you haven’t already. It’s lovely – simple, clean, easy-to-read. And everyone’s really hopeful this is a news experiment that will succeed.

Crazy ideas worth hearing

Robert Niles has a provocative idea – evaluate whether or not your site really needs to be in Google News, Crazy? Maybe, but check it out. There’s some potentially mind-blowing food for thought about why news sites and blogs may not want to be involved with Google News – and it isn’t about that silly  “freeloading” nonsense. He argues that search engine page views aren’t “quality” views and they might be leading to more spam.

Or, if you really hate Google and you’re Rupert Murdoch, you’ll insist the search engine is stealing your stuff against your will. Google finally had enough of the News Corp. owner, saying that if he really doesn’t want Google indexing his sites, he can be removed. Of course, this blogger thinks Murdoch knew that already.

Newspaper-sponsored blog networks! Catch the wave! While it certainly isn’t the first such blog network (ahem), the Guardian is hiring bloggers to cover local news.

And seriously, it’s been said before and said again, this time by Paid Content: When is someone going to buy Breaking News Online ? They’re the best there is at breaking news online – and yet, they are still independent.

And a word or two about the Twitter

Social Media Today has a great bit of coverage about Twitter lately i just had to share.

For one, there’s a much-needed reality check on Twitter’s trending topics from the folks at Social Media Today, more importantly, do those topics really reflect what people are actually talking about or what is really going on in the world?

They also take a refreshing look at Twitter lists from the “quality over quantity” perspective. In other words, it isn’t a popularity contest to get listed a lot, especially wen there are a lot of lists.

And get ready to take down your “English only” Twitter search filter. Soon enough, we’ll be able to translate tweets with no problem.

The always awesome Paid Content has an excellent analysis by Nic Brisbourne on his version of the future of news. At it’s core – it isn’t anything you haven’t heard before: Better quality writing, investigative journalism and in-depth analysis are a commodity we in the professional news world have going for us, even as news itself is an abundance.

He suggests we should leverage this to reinforce our place in the market – and do so with less cost and without charging for access to the news. He notes the examples of TechCrunch, Pitchfork and Huffington Post leveraging their trusted brands into things they can charge for – and doing so with a low enough overhead to make it with decent online ad rates. It isn’t earth-shattering – but it is at least the most plausible plan I’ve ever heard.

On the flip side – there’s the privately-funded investigative model of journalism that’s still wearing it’s fledgling feathers – but it’s really rocking out. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out  ”Strained by Katrina, a Hospital Faced Deadly Choices” in the NY Times Magazine. The long-form investigative narrative is the sort of journalism we all wish we were doing – and it wasn’t done by the New York Times, for once. The work on this piece was funded by a grant through ProPublica – who worked with the NY Times to get it into print. Could agreements like this be a part of the future for in-depth reporting? If work like this is what comes out of it, I’m sold.

News on News

• Ok, I get it, so maybe you want a more technology-oriented solution? How’s about an iPhone App that Automatically Picks the News You’ll Like ?An RSS reader that builds a custom news network for you based on your reading habits? That sounds like something we should be working with. Even if the reader doesn’t “pick us” to be in an individual’s mix, something like this makes news accessible to those who don’t have the time to find new news sources. Maybe that new source can be you?
• Every online news source has either considered or tried free classifieds, with varying levels of success (mostly bad). Boing Boing asserts that Newspapers can’t make themselves as simple as craigslist – a well-deserved slam on the classified pages of most newspaper sites. There’s a reason why Craigslist works and we may have missed the point in trying (pathetically) to duplicate their effort.
• Did you know The Guardian is the most bookmarked newspaper on delicious? I don’t really know what that says about them, but they must have a lot of news their readers find to be useful – or else they wouldn’t be bookmarking it. Check it out.
• First it was the bloggers, now it’s the tweeters getting into the press boxes. One twittering fan has gotten courtside press credentials at St. John’s – the first of his kind (and probably not the last).

Social Media News

• Breaking News: Social Media Is for Narcissists! To some people (i.e. my parents), it may seem like a no-brainer that my generation (Y, Why?) is full of narcissists in regards to social media. What is interesting is the surveyed groups of (much younger) Gen-Yers understanding that that might not be such a bad thing to really sell yourself in such a competitive world – not only in business, but in life.
• In related news, all that news about teens not being into Twitter may not be right. It isn’t so much that the proportion of teens on Twitter are low, but that the majority of social media users are older simply because the social web is growing up. Twitter – unlike many of the others – actually started with an older group and they’ve had a longer time to adopt it.
• Pat Thornton writes on Poynter about different newspapers’ approach to Twitter use – and how there doesn’t seem to be one right answer for getting a good ROI out of it. Automated accounts sometimes work, personal accounts sometimes don’t – so perhaps variety is the answer? (At Cincinnati.Com, we have both)
• As you know, not everyone is sold on social media’s value – not even all of those marketers and brands out there. As much as some old-school companies might be fighting, the stats say Social Media Resistance Is Fading Fast and adoption rates are soaring.

Cool Tips!!

• If you’re the sort of journo is is doing (or desperately trying) multimedia and online work in several software suites, you might find this collection of software cheat sheets from 10,000 Words helpful. It outlines helpful hints for all sorts of video, audio and web programs.
• And while most of these little hints apply to marketing and advertising types,it might be good to know these Eight Twitter Habits That May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-Followed so you don’t look like a tool on the Internets.

Take Note

• According to the internets, More Employers Use Facebook To Vet New Hires Than LinkedIn, hence why I keep stressing why you should A. Be on these networks and B. Be doing it well enough to not look dumb.
• And not that it should be news to anyone here, but Twitter is The New Way Mainstream Media Breaks News. I can’t preach it enough around my paper – let’s break news on Twitter first, then worry about the links. We do this at my paper every day – and sometimes I won’t even bother tweeting a headline if we aren’t first in our market or it isn’t original. The traffic from Twitter isn’t much anyway – so it’s better to be first than first with a link. Of course, we still want to be factual, too (that one’s for you, Bruce).

Keeping News Alive

• The Online Journalism blog asks if the (UK) Times’ Culture subscriptions is a potential model for charging for online newspapers. Why? It’s more than just a newspaper subscription – it’s a membership with incentives like ticket deals, exclusive access and more. It’s just one way to make a pay wall worth it if this kind of model would move to the web.
• Speaking of paying for news, a CUNY project sought to find New business models for journalism to answer, “What happens to journalism in a top-25 metro market if a newspaper fades away. Can journalism be sustained? And how?” There are four total – some of which have been panned and a couple of others that have real legs (though none are really earth-shattering).

Innovations in Social Media

• Mashable reports that our friends at TweetMeme are working on Retweetable Comments. Huh? You’ve seen on several blogs and articles where you can tweet article from a button, but this would allow people to tweet individual comments on those blogs. A very cool way to get comments to go viral (and encourage commenting in the first place).
• Speaking of Twitter, Patrick Thornton has been hard at work at Bringing engagement to an old, one-way medium. His marketing plan for a new novel is exactly what social media marketing should be – fun, creative and original. While his exact approach doesn’t exactly work for a news entities’ needs, using social media as a customer service platform is a must. Why else even be on Twitter if you can’t answer questions?
• If you haven’t checked it out yet, the Huffington Post has embraced the  age of “My” news with a new Facebook Connect hookup that allows interaction between Facebook profiles and user activity on their sites.  The sync is  a no-brainer for an operation of their kind – and a lot to live up to. Something like this takes a lot of work, but it would be great to see more news orgs (and yes, smaller ones) jumping into a forward-thinking arrangement like this.

• You have to read Five Key Reasons Why Newspapers Are Failing from Bill Wyman at Splice Today. It’s an excellent analysis of How We Got Here from someone with perspective both inside and outside the news business. A lot of it we newspaper types know already – but a lot of it we don’t want to acknowledge is part of the problem.
• Part Two: On how the monopolistic mindset, terrible web design and a rejection of new technology contributed to the fall.
• Newspaper war raises a question: Who keeps the tweeps? – Once a reporter builds a base in social media – who owns that base? If a newspaper gets claim to/responsibility for a reporters’ tweets (which seems to be the case), do they also own those followers? In this case, at least, I say yes. but not always. Likely not the last we’ll see from this debate.

How-Tos and Ideas:

• 10 Things You Must Do to Earn Your Audience’s Trust – Journalism has lost a lot of public trust of late – so these lessons should ring especially true for us. With so many online tools at our disposal, we should be good at this (but we usually aren’t).
• HOW TO: Take Advantage of FriendFeed’s Unique Features – Now that Facebook has purchased FriendFeed, I’d expect more people to take not of it’s network-combining power. Here’s some need-to-know tips on it.
• 10 Creative Contests Powered by Social Media – Great examples from Mashable for innovative online contests.
• Add context to news online with a wiki feature – again, more good ideas for news and opinion content that goes beyond comments.

More Social Media News

• Industry Moves: National Geographic Gets A VP Of Social Media – Can anyone else just not believe that it took the Times and now National Geographic this long to get a clue?
• TWITTER ANALYSIS: 40% of Tweets Are Pointless Babble – It should come as no surprise to anyone who lives on Twitter (like me), that tweets are largely empty. The ones of merit, though, are really worth it.
• Facebook’s New Privacy Features: A Complete Guide – Facebook’s always changing their game up. They’ve recently made it so anyone can see public profiles. Here’s a guide to how to adjust your settings.

• Facebook: No Sponsored Status Updates Allowed – So Facebook decides to keep it real (so to speak) and ban sponsored updates. The real question is – when will Twitter follow suit?

While I still pull my head together, I have gathered a few links of interest. Check ‘em out.

• 10 Stunning (And Useful) Stats About Twitter
• Why news sites might regret setting up pay walls
• New Tricks: Why you should use Technorati, and how to get started there
• The good news is they’re paying more than HuffPost
• Lifestreaming: Is the era of live-tweeting over?
• Newspapers: Stop Hiding Behind The First Amendment
• Protect your privacy on Facebook -10 privacy settings you should consider
• Mainstream Media Still Has Eyes Wide Shut

• Flickr Photo Download: Facebook vs Twitter – Interesting graphic comparing Facebook and Twitter’s audiences and usage stats.
• twitter.com – Quantcast Audience Profile – I used Twitter as an example, really, but it is fascinating to see the site’s demographics and traffic from Quantcast. You can enter any site here to see Quantcast’s data. You should be familiar with the demos of your own website (or that of your employer) so as to have a better idea of the audience you’re aiming for.
• Twitter and status updating | Pew Internet & American Life Project – The actual Pew study (instead of just blog posts about it) looking at the demographics of those who share their status online across social media tools.
• Facebook’s 276% Growth in 35-54 Year Old Users | iStrategyLabs – It’s an older blog post, but this look at Facebook’s demos even in January showed the onslaught of new users outside the college-age crowd. Fascinating stuff.
• 10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media – Some are better than others, but journalism schools are mixing social media into their curricula. My own alma mater, Kent State, uses Twitter pretty extensively, but other schools are going very big in their experimentation (see Newsmixer).