Here's a slightly revised version of the "Social Networks: Engaging Users With News" webinar I gave to a few hundred virtual attendees when I flew out to the Poynter Institute in May. It was part of the News University course I taught under the Knight Digital Media Center leadership series. The slideshow offers 8 different areas of social networking that news publishers (anyone from a single individual to a full newsroom) can leverage to engage people around news events in a more robust, interactive way.

1. Social networks: 8 ways
to engage users with news
Knight Digital Media Center leadership series
Poynter Institute News University webinar
St. Petersburg, FL, May 12, 2009
JD Lasica
Socialmedia.biz
jdlasica@gmail.com

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all sites in this talk have been tagged for later retrieval

3. Themes/words you told us
Here are some topics that are on your mind:

4. Today’s presenter
JD Lasica
• Social media business
strategist/consultant at
Socialmedia.biz
• A former editor at the
Sacramento Bee
• CNET named him one jd@socialmedia.biz
of top 100 media
bloggers in world;
blogging since 2001.

5. What we’ll cover today
1. Blue skies: new approaches to news
2. Google Map mashups
3. Instant social networks
4. Geocoding and citizen photography
5. The awesomeness of Twitter
6. Widgets: tapping into local conversations
7. Facebook & the news
8. Community video

6. Hashtag
Flickr photo by
prakhar
Today’s hashtag: newsu_sw
(for news university social web)

7. Making sense of all the new terms
http://socialbrite.org/sharing-center/glossary
“Social media:
Any online technology or practice that lets us share
(content, opinions, insights, experiences, media)
and have a conversation about the ideas we care about.
”

8. 1. Start with a blue sky
Flickr photo by
jonrawlinson
 Be open to new approaches
 Silicon Valley’s mantra: Fail often, fail fast (but
give it time to work)
 Launch pilot projects, get a toehold
 Rules of social media still evolving

9. New currency: Engagement
Meaningful metrics:
Not just page views
"We don't really care about
page views as much as we care
about comments. If we get
1,000 video views, that is
good. The comments are a
focus group with our
influencers. If they like it,
they'll spread it and that helps
get us to our objectives."
- Jake Brewer, PowerShift

10. Don’t do all the heavy lifting
Flickr photo by
Jason Means
 Partner with smart people. Use your community.
 Use free: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, CC
 Use open source: WordPress (and its plug-ins),
Drupal, et al.
 Steal good ideas. Build on what’s come before.

11. Tap into the sharing economy
Creative
Commons
• Rich source of free
commercial material.
• Flickr: 12.8 million Attribution
licenses
• Flickr: 8.6 million Attribution
ShakeAlike licenses
creativecommons.org
flickr.com/creativecommons

12. 2. Visualize news with Google Maps
Mash up your
data sources
Team effort: KPBS worked
with volunteers from San Diego
State University Geography
Dept. to cover the San Diego
County wildfires: a living,
evolving, interactive news story
in October 2007.

13. Google Maps & Google Earth
During the Mumbai attacks, “Jonathan” created this
Google Maps as a info-graphic like map of major landmarks in Mumbai.
breaking news tool Google Maps can be shared & used to update a story.

14. The power of map mashups
http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/
Everyblock
Boston
Charlotte
Chicago
Los Angeles
Miami
New York
Philadelphia
San Francisco
San Jose
Seattle
Washington, DC

15. 3. Instant social networks
Ning: resource
powered by crowd
As Hurricane Gustav churned
toward the U.S. coastline in
Aug. 2008, Andy Carvin of
NPR.org formed a Ning group
— Gustav Information Center —
and got scores of volunteers to
participate in sharing information
during the course of a single
weekend, largely through the
power of Twitter and Facebook.
The social network was then
turned into the Hurricane
Information Center and still
tracks storms.

16. Tap into outside experts
If disaster strikes, consider contacting an outside expert to:
• Set up a social network devoted to the subject
• Participate or manage your forums
• Showcase updates from his blog on your site (via RSS or a widget)

17. 4. Geotagging & citizen photography
Visitors to Flickr could see photos of the 2007 disaster taken from
Minneapolis multiple vantage points. Many new digital cameras and mobile
bridge collapse devices, like the iPhone, come with geotagging enabled by default.

18. Geotagging an art walk
An afternoon
with smart phones
Dan Gillmor took a class of
journalism students at Arizona
State University out for a stroll
and created a cool Flickr map
with more than 120 photos
captured with G1 smart phones.
“It was absurdly easy,” he says.
News organizations should enlist
community members with geo-
location capable devices to
cover designated community
events.

19. Citizen photography in Austin
Citizens took scores of photos of
the fire that engulfed the Texas
governor's mansion on June 8,
2008, tagged them, and posted
them to Flickr, left. At top: the
Austin American-Statesman’s
photo gallery.

20. Prop 8 mashup
An anonymous
publisher compiled
a mashup of public
campaign
donations records,
including the
donors’ street
address, and
published it.

21. Community photo albums
NewWest.Net
NewWest.Net created
a group pool on Flickr
for readers to add
photos to. People
have added more
than 16,000 photos.
http://www.flickr.com/
groups/newwest

22. Message for Obama
Crowdsourced
creativity
The UK’s Guardian invited
people to submit photos on
Flickr with a message for the
new president. They turned
it into a book using
Blurb.com and gave a
portion of the profits to
development in Uganda.

23. 5. The awesomeness of Twitter
China earthquake
Mumbai
Flight 1549
BusinessWeek: 40 journalists on Twitter.
Twestival: $250,000 raised for charity:
water in 202 cities on Feb. 12, 2009

24. Twitter Vote Report
Enlisting
watchdogs
NPR and techPresident
set up a site that let
users easily SMS, tweet
or phone in the status of
polling stations around
the U.S. The site
received about 10,000
submissions during the
election.
twittervotereport.com

25. Twittering reporters
Don’t ghettoize Twitter, Facebook into a ‘social media’ beat
@jamesjanega
James Janega,
Chicago Tribune
general assignment
reporter
@dsarno
David Sarno,
LA Times
business writer
@npr100days
David Greene,
NPR reporter

26. 6. Widgets tap into conversations
The power of widgets
Tap into the conversations that are
already taking place in your
community: Widgets let you post
tailored discussions -- both by topic
and by geographic location.
Create widgets for your business,
food, sports, metro sections.

27. Widgets

28. 7. Facebook & the news
Tap into self-organizing
communities
A group of students and
citizens, outraged at the lack
of free drinking water at the
new University of University
of Central Florida's stadium,
launched a Facebook group.
The Orlando Sentinel ran a
story and used Facebook to
spread the word. Stadium
officials reversed course,
installing 50 free drinking
fountains.

29. Facebook fan page

30. Facebook as a promotion vehicle
Facebook
Public Profiles
NPR has more
than 370,000 fans
and uses Facebook
as another
distribution vehicle.

31. 8. Community video
Video + chat =
engagement
Think of your site not just
as a way to showcase
your own journalism but
as a platform to connect
users with interesting
events taking place in the
community.
Streaming video tools
include Kyte, Qik and
Ustream.tv.
This is the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, student journalism channel.
http://www.kyte.tv/ch/109996-jmsnews

32. Bonus tip: Social news ecosystem
Digg: 35 million monthly unique visitors; 80
million outbound links per month; home
page story on Digg will send 20,000 to
200,000+ clicks
Facebook Connect: Each story shared on
Facebook is seen on avg. by 40+ friends.
Use it to authenticate comments.
Google Friend Connect: Just beginning,
with same potential for large network effect.

33. Closing thoughts
• Don’t forget: Fail often!
• Bring social media experts who are internal
evangelists into your editorial meetings.
• Create a feedback loop.
• Get the big bosses to begin using social
media so that they understand it.

34. Resources
Socialbrite.org
Knight Citizen News Network: kcnn.org
Social Media Club: socialmediaclub.org
BeatBlogging.org & NewAssignment.net
Spot.us: crowd-funded reporting
CiiJ: ciij.org/resources

35. Sites to steal ideas from
BlogHer.com
ProPublica.org
Lifehacker
Themediaconsortium.org
TechCrunch
Mashable
Rainforest Action Network (ran.org)
Truthout.org
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/sites

36. Readings
http://delicious.com/socialmediacamp/readings
Image: Universal McCann: Wave.3 report, March 2008

37. Thank you!
jdlasica@gmail.com
twitter: @jdlasica
Image: imagechef.com