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Facebook primer for journalists added

On June 4, 2009

In case you didn’t notice, I’ve added a new Resources link to the site. I’ve linked to some of the basic social media primers I’ve been creating to help Enquirer staff get acclimated to Facebook and Twitter – with more to come.

The Facebook for Professionals manual, in particular, should come in handy if you’re new to Facebook and want to know more about its setup or if you’ve been using it primarily for personal reasons and want to make a privacy wall to start using it to make professional connections.

The two charts are diagrams of Facebook and Twitter home pages to explain what’s there and how it works.

In the future, I hope to add more intro information for RSS readers, Digg, Publish2 and more. Stay tuned.

Google has the new “must have” persona

By Mandy

On May 27, 2009

In Social Media, Surviving

Sorry I’ve not been posting any “real” posts for awhile. Like everyone else in the journalism business, I’ve taken on more work than I can really handle, which makes me dead inside by the time I get home. I have still been scouring my usual haunts for helpful links and news, though, so you’ll see a lot of that.

Anyway, in the forever since I posted, Google has been tinkering with their services – making a new option available that could rival Facebook to be your “must have” social media profile. The Google Profile essentially allows you to control your presence on Google searches. You can enter all the info you’d want to make available when someone Googles you: Your name, your city, what you do and links to all of your social media accounts. When you have it all set up, you’ll get something like this when you search for yourself on Google:

If you have a Gmail or Google account, you already have the means to set this up. If not – get a Google account already (they have tons of tools you could be using). When you are signed in to Google, go to where it says My Account. On that page, you can go to edit your profile.

Add a photo, add the cities you’ve lived and what you do for a living (or what you did before you were laid off). Google has a nifty search built in to the profile page that searches for your accounts on tons of social media sites, blogs and other web services. Claim whatever is yours and give it links to anything it is missing – thus making an easy hub for all that online work you’ve been doing.

That’s it! Now you’re easy to find on Google – even if your website has terrible SEO.

A catch-up on recommended reading

By Mandy

On May 21, 2009

In Recommended Links

These are my recommended links for the past couple of weeks (sorry, I’ve been busy!):

New ‘WSJ’ Conduct Rules Target Twitter, Facebook – These rules for WSJ staff could and should be applied at any news organization. You want your reporters to be out there in social media – but there’s so much potential for disaster if they don’t conduct themselves very well. These are good rules to live by.
Why journalists deserve low pay | csmonitor.com – Not that I’m advocating to be paid less, but they have a point: If we can’t find a way to provide unique value in this new world, the pay may not last long.
Twitter’s Big News has Huge Implications for Search – Website Magazine – If this plays out, web pages could be ranked according to user interest and relationships rather than relying on incoming links and SEO. In short – you should start promoting your content on the social web as if your job depended on it (cause it might).
How a 1995 court case kept the newspaper industry from competing online – Excellent analysis about the early days of newspapers getting into online communities – and royally screwing it up for years to come thanks to fear established by Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy.
The Top 7 types of Twitter avatars :: 10,000 Words – I always stress to the reporters and brands in our company that they HAVE to get a Twitter icon. I don’t care what it is – but it can’t be the default. I wouldn’t assume the person tweeting was any sort of professional if they didn’t have an image of some sort.

The Diggbar: Friend or foe to news sites?

By Mandy

On April 13, 2009

In Doomsayers, Social Media

When Digg released its Diggbar a couple of weeks ago, I had a “Where’s the outrage?” post all ready to go. Now I’m cautiously optimistic it isn’t the end of the world (so I’m glad I never hit ‘publish’) – though I’m very much on edge.

Digg, as most people know, is a social bookmarking site and social hub that is an unbeatable traffic driver for news content sites. People share, rate and comment on news stories (among other links) and thus, visit your site when you’re “dugg”.

A couple of weeks ago, Digg launched the Diggbar, which makes it easy for Digg users to shorten and post links to Digg, as well as jump from story to story within the Digg umbrella. The big WTF moment, came when we all noticed that all of Digg’s links no longer went to the original content providers’ sites, but rather linked back to Digg. When you’d click the link on a story on the Digg site, it wouldn’t go to the story directly, but would open the page inside of an iframe at Digg’s site. Oh, crap.

At that time, TechCrunch noted that this would not affect most content providers’ web analytics and advertising displays, though it could impact the original source’s ranking in Comscore, Google and more. This had this news website editor weeping for the death of linkbait – and wondering when we’d begin to discourage our users from Digging our stories.

But maybe I was all worried for nothing. Last week, Digg set out to dispel the rumors of their alleged thievery, assuring we naysayers in the publishing world that their new gadget wouldn’t hurt us in SEO rankings, traffic and analytics. As Digg’s John Quinn put it, “Digg continues to have a symbiotic relationship with content publishers, and we anticipate these ongoing improvements will only enhance publisher traffic as more people discover and share content on Digg.”

Don’t get too relieved just yet. Mashable notes that when perusing Digg, users now have to click twice to see the real link (or three times if they read Digg in an RSS reader). This may lead to even more proliferation of Digg links over original links if readers opt to go the easy route and just use those shortened Digg links in their blogs and social media tools. Also, despite their claims, Digg URLs are showing up in Google and goofing up our SEO.

This has led some content providers to block the Diggbar. Engadget, for once, decided to block it last Friday, stating, “We believe that the work of content creators should be protected and treated as the unique product that it is, and that an end-user’s experience shouldn’t be tainted with a “catch-all” tool which diminishes context.”

Mashable weighed in over the weekend with the pros and cons of the Diggbar. The biggest pro, of course, is increased site traffic from eager Diggers…but it may not outweigh the cost of the impact on SEO. I suggest you take a read before you get fired up and ready to call your programmers.

In short, the jury is out. I expect to see more hubbub as the Diggbar becomes more and more popular. And Digg isn’t alone, Facebook is already redirecting traffic back to itself from your shared links. StumbleUpon is soon to follow. There may be a battle brewing between social media sites and news websites over these new tactics – so stay tuned.

Dispatches from the living amongst journalism's walking dead

Tag: facebook

Recommended reading for June 8th

Recommended reading for May 26-27

A catch-up on recommended reading

Recommended reading for May 6th

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