The live chat is, in a sense, the original social media – the Arthur Crudup to Twitter and Facebook’s Elvis Presley. I think I set up and conducted my first live chat in 2004, when I was a fledgling web producer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The technology has evolved somewhat, but the idea remains the same: Get readers into a virtual room with reporters, experts and newsmakers to ask questions directly.
Back in the day, we used the earliest incarnations of CoveritLive to hold text-based chats with readers. Nowadays, newsrooms have a lot more options to do this, including Google+ Hangouts, UStream, Twitter chats, Facebook chats and enhanced text-based options via ScribbleLive and CoveritLive.
In my recent travels for Digital First, I’ve been teaching a little bit about liveblogging and chats – and learning a lot, too. In what I hope will become something of a regular thing here at ZJ, I’d like to highlight the work of some of my DFM colleagues and pass along best practices and how-tos for any other journalists who’d like to try out what they’re doing.
At the York Daily Record (in York, Pa., birthplace of the peppermint patty with the same name), business reporter Lauren Boyer has become a community fixture. While she’s active on social media, her best successes have come from a couple of older-school engagement tactics: Live chats and real-life meetups.
In early February, Lauren started organizing weekly CoveritLive chats with members of the community, beginning with a live chat with a local CPA firm to kick off tax season.
“This initial effort had only 30 live readers — but they posted A LOT of very specific questions about their income tax filings,” Lauren says. “This motivated me to keep it up, figuring the quality of the discussion — providing a public service to those few readers who tuned in — was more important at the beginning as people start to catch on.”
Just last week, one of Lauren’s YDR colleagues, Sean Adkins, shared a particularly notable success story. Following a live chat with a local staffing firm, a local reader sent in her resume and was later offered a job earning $40K (now that’s community service!).
There are probably many opportunities for your newsroom to take advantage of free or inexpensive live chat tools. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
If a reporter has a big investigation or enterprise story published that got people talking, hold a chat with that reporter and/or some of the newsmakers involved in the story.
Hold regular chats with your reporters and columnists. When I worked at the Cincinnati Enquirer, we had chats almost daily with a staff member. From the TV writer to the food critic and the various sports reporters, all of these chats were on a regular schedule and usually got a lot of participation.
Open up a chat for your readers and staff to dish live during the big game/debate/local event.
Hold chats with experts in your community on topics of interest like taxes, health care, pet care, gardening, relationship advice, cooking, etc
Invite one or more local bloggers to participate in a chat about local issues or their blogging subjects.
This may be an old hat to some of you (much like the phrase “old hat”), so please share your experiences with live chats in the comments area. What tools do you use for your chats? What topics and people have worked best for you? What best practices could you share?
Lauren Boyer, a business reporter at the York Daily Record/York Sunday News, contributed to the following step-by-step directions for setting up a live chat between readers and panelists using CoveritLive. Many of these steps would also work for setting up a liveblog on your site where multiple staffers could contribute and readers can leave comments and questions.
Click the “sign in” button in the upper right hand corner and log in.
Click on My Account in the upper right hand corner. The Build tab on the home screen should be highlighted.
Fill out the information about your chat accordingly: Time, date, title and a link to where the chat will be displayed on your site (if you don’t have this yet, put in your home page and add the real link in later). You can schedule chats and liveblogs as far in advance as you’d like (and CiL recommends getting the file prepped and on your site days in advance, if possible).
Click Next. On the next page, select a category (likely News or Sports).
Embed Code
Customize your embed code to the size of the chat window you want (make sure it will fit into your online story or blog template). Copy the code and paste it into whatever platform you plan on using for the chat (this might be a story file on your website or an entry on your blog).
If you are embedding the chat onto Facebook, WordPress or other sites that don’t allow iFrames, check the right box under the displayed embed code to get a custom code for you.
Set Your Panelists
Under Additional Options, click Add Panelist/Producers. Under Add Panelists enter your guest panelist’s e-mail address and press the green plus sign. Adding Producers would allow another person (presumably a member of your staff) to have admin access during the chat.
Then, click the green “Send Invites” button at the bottom. Click “Save” at the bottom of the screen.
More Options
Under Additional Options, you have these options available to add to your chat or liveblog:
Enable Email Comments: Would allow users to email in comments that will show up in the chat console.
Enable Reader Login Options: Make it so only logged-in users can comment. Login options include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or your own comment system.
Add Twitter Feeds: Add tweets from specific Twitter accounts or a running hashtag to the published stream. This is excellent for liveblogs, but could also work with chats.
Send an email invite to readers: Allows you to craft a custom email to send readers who wanted a chat reminder.
Add a Coming Soon Reminder: Enabling this gives you a special embed code that will have a box for readers to sign up for reminders when the chat starts. (Note: Make sure the link in your Location field is right!)
Notify your panelist
After you’ve set up the panelists in CoveritLive, let them know that they should have received an e-mail from an application called “Cover It Live.”
Tell them it’s important to save that email, as it has the link inside that they’ll need to click on at the time of the scheduled live chat. When they click on it, they will need to enter a login or username. It’s easier to tell them to enter a new username, since they probably don’t have a CoveritLive account (your staff, however, should have accounts).
Once they click on the chat link on the date of the chat, it will open what Lauren describes to participants as a “90s-style chat room” or an instant messenger window.
At Chat Time
Sign back into your CoverItLive account. Under My Account on the left hand side of the screen, click Upcoming. Locate your chat under CiL Events, click Launch Event Now.
Note: If you’re on an account used by multiple people, click Settings on the left-hand side of the chat console and change your display name to your name.
Only you and your panelist can see the reader comments coming in to the right side of the chat screen. To approve comments, thus making them visible to the public, click the green plus sign on the individual comment. To send a private message to the sender, click the yellow key sign. To block a user, click the red circle.
CoverItLive Chat Screen View (Image: CoPress)
Inside the chat, you have a lot of options for what you can do to enhance the reader experience, like adding polls, uploading media, adding trusted commenters (like other staff), displaying a scoreboard and adding in options on the fly.
Ending Your Chat
Just Xing out of the screen won’t do anything. Go under Tools on the left side of the chat screen, and click option that says End Live Event.
Afterward
Access Your Past Chats: Go to My Account > Completed Events. Select the event you want and click on the buttons along the top of the menu to see what options you have available.
Edit Entries: You can edit your chat after the fact here, if need be.
Save your Archived Chat: Keep this content around for others to see. You have the to either leave the chat on-screen for a user to replay or you can copy it all down as HTML and save it in a file in your CMS. This is a good idea if you want the chat to be searched by Google.
Check your chat stats: Log into the account and click Completed on the left side of the home screen. Click the button to select your event and click the “Statistics” button (looks like a pink, blue and green bar graph).
Hi all! I’ve been traveling a lot for Digital First lately to spread the gospel of social media to my colleagues. So, if you’ve seen my presentations before, you’d know that I make very wordy Powerpoints so that people who weren’t there to see me prattle on about my favorite things can still follow what we went over (also, they keep me on task in-session).
So here are some recent training sessions that might be of use to you, your staff (or students, if you teach). Please let me know if there’s anything out of date or if you know of new tools I should be touting around DFM and on the interwebs at large.
So your news brand has a Google+ account. Great. Now what? Maybe you’ve been sharing posts to see what works to stir up engagement and/or root in that SEO, but you’re thinking there has to be more (there is).
Since my overview of Google+ for news brands, I’ve curated some best practices and tips that can help your news organization get a little more comfortable using Google + and taking advantage of what it has to offer.
Being There is Half The Battle
You may have noticed that a lot of news organizations have somewhat abandoned Google+. This makes it prime spot on the social media map to make your mark.
“Google Plus users notice when a news org puts resources into the platform,” says Amy Duncan, Social Editor for BreakingNews. “They reward those news orgs by becoming regular commenters and content sharers on their pages. Simply put, if a news organization is willing to dedicate resources to Google Plus, it is very easy to become the best game in town.”
Choose Posts Wisely and Use Good SEO
You don’t need to post every story here, but be sure to post news you have exclusively or first in your local area, content you think will get a lot of people searching and talking about it.
When you post stories here, remember to use your SEO (search engine optimization) skills, as you want to help Google users find your story. In the text you post with your link, be sure to include the names, places and keywords people may be searching to find this info. Bold your headlines and any keyword phrases to add SEO value using these G+ specific shortcodes.
Google recommends asking questions of your followers when you post an update, and taking care to + mention the people and organizations mentioned in the stories (using @ before their name). You might even want to + mention people who may want to weigh in on your post, like experts in a field and/or certain active followers.
Like retweeting, take the time to share posts from your reporters and readers to your stream. For instance, if you see a G+ post from a staffer that might not be SEO-optimized, click “Share” and put it on your stream with better search terms included.
Make It a Priority During Breaking News
BreakingNews has made Google+ a core part of its social arsenal, winning it a dedicated following on the platform.
“In our experience, Google Plus is far from the ‘ghost town’ it is frequently described to be,” says Duncan, who manages BreakingNews’ Google+ account. “In fact, we have seen a very high level of engagement. According to All my +, each post on +Breaking News has received an average of 34 comments, 38 +1s and 27 shares. When a big story breaks, we see those numbers go through the roof.”
BreakingNews keeps posted content fresh by taking advantage of one of the key attributes G+ has over Facebook: The ability to edit after posting. It isn’t uncommon to see BreakingNews add updated info to the top of an already-posted G+ post, like so:
And this doesn’t just work for a curation giant like BreakingNews. Last summer, The Trentonian in Trenton, New Jersey (a Digital First newspaper) took to Google+ in its breaking coverage of a shooting in a nearby apartment complex. By using G+ in addition to the usual Twitter and Facebook to cover the news and crowdsource for information, Interim Editor Joey Kulkin got a big break on some insider info.
“Someone in one of The Trentonian”s Google+ circles wrote that she thought her cousin was the shooting victim laying in the parking lot. So I immediately latched onto her, and we kept in constant communication. She was really trusting and answered all of my reply questions. G+ is where she confirmed that the victim was her cousin about 10:20.”
Post During the Work Day
According to a February 2012 report from Simply Measured derived from the activity and engagement of the top 100 brands on the platform, Google+ is primarily used during work hours and not at home (which differs somewhat from Facebook, which has nighttime surges in activity).
86% of the engagement that takes place happens during working hours (5 a.m. to 5 p.m.)
89% of all engagement happens on the weekdays
Wednesday is the most popular day for brand posts and for user engagement with those posts
The highest engagement with brand posts happens between 9-10 a.m. local time
Google’s own best practices (released my way via a cheat sheet from a Google rep) say the most G+ users are online from 1 to 3 p.m. local time and say the best time to post are from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. local time.
Circles can work both like Twitter and Facebook lists. Create them not only to direct who sees your posts, but to help you monitor the accounts you want to monitor.
First of all, know that as a brand, you can only add people to your Circles if they are also brands or if they have already added you to a Circle.
You might want to create a Circle for your paper’s employees (or even smaller segments, like reporters and online staff), other news orgs, local companies and organizations and those who have Circled your brand on G+. Note: People who’ve added you, but whom you don’t reciprocally add to circles, will still receive your public posts in their stream.
Google recommends creating Circles of your most engaged users to direct your post to them specifically (in addition to posting updates publicly).
Jen Lee Reeves, Interactive Directer at KOMU-TV, uses G+ circles to organize sources and contacts.
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If you’ve built some great Circles, be sure to share them with your readers. Like a good Twitter list, if you’ve curated a Circle of local newsmakers, athletes or even your staff, others may find it interesting and useful as well.
Hold Hangouts With Your Staff and/or Newsmakers
The Hangout feature of Google+ is, in my opinion, the best part of the whole shebang. Hangouts can connect your staff and readers face-to-face, using tools that don’t require a lot of technical know-how or fancy equipment.
Though you can only have up to 10 people actually participate on camera in a Hangout, you can live stream Hangouts to the rest of your readership using the built-in “on air” functionality, which streams and saves the video to your brand’s YouTube page.
The New York Times, which was rated in January as the news brand with the most engagement on G+, doesn’t flood the site with updates, but it does hold a lot of Hangouts.
During March Madness, The Times had a hangout with three of its sports reporters and five Google+ fans, which it streamed On Air. Pick up some pointers on how to do this yourself by observing these steps they took to make it work:
Lots of promotion for the chat, on-site, on other social media and, of course, on G+.
Published a piece on their site after the fact, featuring the video from the chat (now in their own video system to boot). This final post was also posted to G+ for those who couldn’t tune in live. This pretty simple final step is key, as it makes more readers aware of what you’re doing on G+ and how they can get involved in the future.
Try it out! Hold a Hangout with a few of your local reporters to talk about a local issue, live stream an editors’ meeting, bring in a couple of city council candidates to talk with your reporters on camera, bring in a few readers while you’re at it.
If you really want to make it interactive, team the Hangout up with a Twitter or Cover it Live chat, where a staffer on camera can relay questions from the readers who couldn’t join in on the camera chat.
Alex Byers, Senior Web Producer at Politico, offered this helpful tip for Hangouts:
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Hangouts also work well as an internal meeting tool. The spread-out Digital First engagement team does this for our staff meetings. I even used G+ to conduct my fantasy football draft last fall.
Don’t Just Duplicate Twitter and Facebook
For one thing, it can take a lot of time to replicate the same updates on three tools. Also: These tools are different from one another and their audiences expect different content and approaches. Switch up what kind of content you post to where based on the engagement you get from what you post on each channel.
Also, consider mixing up the order of your social workflow.
“Many Google Plus users use Google Plus in addition to Facebook and/or Twitter, if Google Plus is always the last place you publish, these users will notice, especially in a breaking news situation,” says Amy Duncan. “Not only will your Google Plus page become redundant to users in the context of your other online presences, but it will also become redundant on Google Plus itself, if your competitors are consistently beating you to the punch.”
Not every news outlet can afford to dedicate a staffer to Google+ like BreakingNews, but it’s worth testing out some timing changes to see if it works for your site.
Post More Photos and Videos
In their report I mentioned earlier, Simply Measured found that brands really benefitted from posting a cornucopia of media instead of just story links.
Interactive content, made up of video and photos, continues to not only be the most frequently posted content but it also drives the most engagement. For the Top 100 brands, it makes up over 65% of engagement happening on Google+.
Verify your Google+ page by adding links on your About page to your site’s front page, other social media accounts and any notable blogs, site sections or other links you want to highlight.
Include your paper’s physical location and an email address and/or phone number on your profile somewhere.
Use All My+ to track your brand’s engagement on Google+. When you try something news, run a comparison here to see if it worked.
If you want to see just how and where an individual update traveled on Google+, click the arrow to the right of a post to get the option to “View Ripples”. On every post that has been shared on G+, you can see who else shared it by looking at this actually pretty awesome visualization.
Interact in Your Comments
I shouldn’t have to tell you this – it IS a social network, after all. When you reply to commenters or want to thank those who spread your post around, be sure to + mention their name (much like you would on Facebook). Add +1s on the comments you want to highlight for others to note.
Ask Your Readers What They Want
Honestly, you should be doing this on every social channel you use as a brand on a fairly regular basis. When you try something new, ask your followers what they thought of it. Post open-ended questions like, “What would you like to see us do here?” Include a note on your About page asking for feedback and ideas.
The New York Times’ social media crew did this early on with their use of Google+ to mold a strategy over time.
So we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Google+ (in June). While many journalists and news brands have embraced the platform, many more either waited to hear more from the canaries in the coal mine or signed up only to abandon it for more engaging pastures.
In short, Google may not have a lot of engagement going on (yet), but it does help your readers find your stories in Google searches, so that’s a good enough reason to invest some time on this platform as an individual and as a brand.
I’d like to pass on some best practices and tips for using G+ for reporters and brands, so please share your tips and success stories in the comments.
First, let me introduce (or re-introduce) some of the basics.
Google made Brand Pages available last fall. Much like Facebook Pages, this allowed for companies, organizations, causes and the like to have a customized G+ presence that’s separate from a personal profile.
To sign up for a Page, you first need a personal Google+ account to serve as an administrator. You’ll need to be logged in to that account in order to follow the directions to set up a Page. Mashable has a very helpful slideshow walking through the Google+ Brand Page signup steps, if you feel like you need that level of detail. Otherwise…
Setting Up Your Profile
1. Sign up for your Page (only after making sure no one else has set one up for your site already)
2. Choose your category. It is suggested that media sign up as “Products or Brands”, but you might also opt to be a local business. The local business Pages differ in that they tie your G+ page to your newsroom’s location, which could be a bonus if you have public space (like a community media lab at Digital First newspapers).
Note: If you sign up as a local business, you have a few more hoops to jump through. If it gets to be too burdensome, you could always be sure to put your physical address and contact info on your About page.
3. Set up your name and website. You’ll also be asked to pick a sub-category of your main category (above) here. If you signed up as a Brand, you can pick Media, if you signed up as a Local Business, you’ll likely want to pick “Other”.
4. Set up your photo and tagline. The tagline is only 10 words – so be informative and search engine-friendly (i.e. “Local news source for XX, XX and XX” is eight words). The name and tagline shows up in Google searches for your paper’s name and, if you use good keywords, would show up in searches for “‘city name’ news”.
How the Denver Post shows up in search
Remember your account photo will show up as a small rectangle apart from your page to your Circles and in Google searches. So, it should be immediately noticeable as a news brand account – so maybe it should be your logo or something similar.
5. Set up your Introduction: Check out the Google search example for the Denver Post (above). The next line of text that shows up after the tagline is from the beginning of the Introduction, which also appears under the About tab when people go to your Google+ Page. Write the beginning with this in mind.
Some examples:
New York Times: “Welcome to NYTG+, The New York Times’s hub on Google+ for news, conversation and community.”
Boston Globe: “The Boston Globe is Boston’s leading newspaper. Our new website is subscription-only, but links from Google+ (as well as other social networks and search engines) provide free access to the article. ”
San Jose Mercury News: “The San Jose Mercury News provides the latest business, sports, entertainment and breaking news in Silicon Valley and beyond.”
In this space, you might also want to add the address and contact info for your news outlet, what you intend to do with the Page, how you’ll moderate comments and ask for feedback on how to use Google+.
6. Add Recommended Links: Here’s where you’ll want to highlight your other social media accounts and some particular work from your staff on your site. Link to your site’s Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest or whatever other social accounts you use here. Feel free to also add links to your most popular site sections, notable staff blogs, big stories or series you’ve published and links to your mobile alert and/or newsletter subscription sign ups.
A properly set-up profile is what makes Google+ effective for an individual journalist looking to establish a brand online or cement their brand in a Google search. You need to have the right info on display to ensure people can find you in a Google search by looking for your name or some keywords like what you cover or where you work.
First, signing up. To do this, go to plus.google.com. If you have a Gmail, YouTube or Picasa account already, you can sign in with that Google login info here and be on your way. If not, click on “Create an account” and it’ll walk you through the steps.
Should you sign up for a work-only Google+ account separate from your personal account? That’s up to you — and your employer’s social media policy. If your employer says they own your social media accounts and followers, you’ll definitely want to set up a separate account. For Digital First Media employees, this isn’t an issue. One downside to setting up a different account is that you’ll need to toggle between both accounts when you use any Google tool, which can be a pain.
Setting Up Your Profile
1. Set up your name and profile image: Be sure to use your real name and a photo of yourself. You’re a journalist and you want to be found, right?
2. Write your Introduction, Occupation and Work History with search in mind. Your account will show up apart from your profile in Google searches, like so:
Your occupation and first listed employer will show up right after your name in searches, so make sure your occupation is descriptive (say Business Reporter, Tech Reporter, Crime & Court Reporter, for instance, if you have a set beat) and your employers are in the right order.
The beginning of your introduction also shows up in search, so keep that in mind. In your introduction, you can be as personal and descriptive as you want to be. I’d recommend describing what you do, what subjects you cover and what geographic areas your work covers – at the very least.
As for where you’ve lived and work history – you don’t have to get detailed if you aren’t comfortable doing so. Keep in mind, however, that it might help a past source or reader know you’re that same guy they knew back at your old employer if they find you here.
3. Set and verify your work email account: This seems trivial, but could be huge. On your profile setup, it will list your Gmail account, but it also has an option for a work account. This is where you need to add the same email address that is linked to your byline on your website, which should help to link your story and G+ profile in search, like so:
Once you’ve entered and saved your work address, a link should show up to the right of it asking you to verify the email. (This might not show up right away, so check back later if it isn’t there right off.) Click it and it will send you an email to verify the setting. A checkbox will show up next to the email address if it has been verified.
4. Set your privacy settings: You can set the visibility of each area of your profile separately. You’ll want to make sure your Introduction, Occupation and Work History are public for search. Make sure you’ve checked the box at the bottom for “Help others discover my profile in search results.” The rest is up to you. (See it)
5. Link your other online accounts: On the right side of your About page, you can and should add link to your other social media, blogging, curation and writing accounts. What you might consider adding here: Twitter, Facebook (if it’s got a public element), your personal website (if you have one), any blogs you write and your Delicious/Diigo account/public Google Reader shares, etc. (See It)
Below this is “Contributor To”, where you can connect to all the places where your work is displayed online. If you have a reporter/author page on your news outlet’s website, add it here. If not, add a link to an on-site search for your byline.
Recommended Links is where you can add any other links you might want to highlight, like information resources relating to your work, go-to sources for your reporting, favorite sites, etc.
Back in the day, we used the earliest incarnations of CoveritLive to hold text-based chats with readers. Nowadays, newsrooms have a lot more options to do this, including Google+ Hangouts, UStream, Twitter chats, Facebook chats and enhanced text-based options via ScribbleLive and CoveritLive.
How to Set Up A Chat Using CoveritLive
By Mandy
On April 24, 2012
In Community Engagement, How Tos
Lauren Boyer, a business reporter at the York Daily Record/York Sunday News, contributed to the following step-by-step directions for setting up a live chat between readers and panelists using CoveritLive. Many of these steps would also work for setting up a liveblog on your site where multiple staffers could contribute and readers can leave comments and questions.
First: Go to coveritlive.com and create a (free) account.
Embed Code
Customize your embed code to the size of the chat window you want (make sure it will fit into your online story or blog template). Copy the code and paste it into whatever platform you plan on using for the chat (this might be a story file on your website or an entry on your blog).
If you are embedding the chat onto Facebook, WordPress or other sites that don’t allow iFrames, check the right box under the displayed embed code to get a custom code for you.
Set Your Panelists
Under Additional Options, click Add Panelist/Producers. Under Add Panelists enter your guest panelist’s e-mail address and press the green plus sign. Adding Producers would allow another person (presumably a member of your staff) to have admin access during the chat.
Then, click the green “Send Invites” button at the bottom. Click “Save” at the bottom of the screen.
More Options
Under Additional Options, you have these options available to add to your chat or liveblog:
Notify your panelist
After you’ve set up the panelists in CoveritLive, let them know that they should have received an e-mail from an application called “Cover It Live.”
Tell them it’s important to save that email, as it has the link inside that they’ll need to click on at the time of the scheduled live chat. When they click on it, they will need to enter a login or username. It’s easier to tell them to enter a new username, since they probably don’t have a CoveritLive account (your staff, however, should have accounts).
Once they click on the chat link on the date of the chat, it will open what Lauren describes to participants as a “90s-style chat room” or an instant messenger window.
At Chat Time
Sign back into your CoverItLive account. Under My Account on the left hand side of the screen, click Upcoming. Locate your chat under CiL Events, click Launch Event Now.
Note: If you’re on an account used by multiple people, click Settings on the left-hand side of the chat console and change your display name to your name.
Only you and your panelist can see the reader comments coming in to the right side of the chat screen. To approve comments, thus making them visible to the public, click the green plus sign on the individual comment. To send a private message to the sender, click the yellow key sign. To block a user, click the red circle.
CoverItLive Chat Screen View (Image: CoPress)
Inside the chat, you have a lot of options for what you can do to enhance the reader experience, like adding polls, uploading media, adding trusted commenters (like other staff), displaying a scoreboard and adding in options on the fly.
Ending Your Chat
Just Xing out of the screen won’t do anything. Go under Tools on the left side of the chat screen, and click option that says End Live Event.
Afterward
Access Your Past Chats: Go to My Account > Completed Events. Select the event you want and click on the buttons along the top of the menu to see what options you have available.
Edit Entries: You can edit your chat after the fact here, if need be.
Save your Archived Chat: Keep this content around for others to see. You have the to either leave the chat on-screen for a user to replay or you can copy it all down as HTML and save it in a file in your CMS. This is a good idea if you want the chat to be searched by Google.
Check your chat stats: Log into the account and click Completed on the left side of the home screen. Click the button to select your event and click the “Statistics” button (looks like a pink, blue and green bar graph).