Read Jeremy Stahl’s guide to tweeting during a crisis

I have long meant to add to my #twutorial series an updated list of resources by others that offer advice for using Twitter, along the lines of the advice I offer in the series.

That will come someday, but I’ll start with today’s excellent post from Slate’s Jeremy Stahl: Thou Shalt Not Stoop to Political Point-Scoring: A Journalist’s guide to tweeting during a crisis. I think the main head and subhead should have been reversed because the post isn’t about point-scoring. That’s just one (very valid) point in the guide on crisis tweeting.

A couple other key points:

• “Media outlets need to turn off their automated Twitter feeds to ensure that frivolous and/or off-topic items don’t get sent out by mistake.”
• “Use first-person eyewitness accounts and official sources like the Boston Police department’s Twitter account or official press conferences.”

Read the whole post. The advice on what not to do is as important as the advice on what to do, including this one: ”Do not pass on speculation.”

I may compile more such advice someday (updating this 2011 list of social media resources), or I may just curate others as people post them.

Earlier #twutorial posts

#twutorial post: How to embed tweets and follow conversations

Step one for using Twitter as a reporter: Master advanced search

Use lists, TweetDeck, HootSuite, saved searches, alerts to organize Twitter’s chaos

Denver Post staffers’ #theatershooting coverage demonstrates Twitter breaking news techniques

Hashtags help journalists find relevant tweets and reach more people

Advice and examples on how and what journalists should tweet

9 ways to find helpful people and organizations to follow on Twitter

To build Twitter followers: Join the conversation, tweet often, be yourself

10 ways Twitter is valuable for journalists

Updated Twitter time management tips

Don’t be selfish on Twitter; tweeting useful information is good business

What’s the best way to view Twitter’s users? 16 percent or 30 million

Twitter data shows journos’ ‘burstiness’ boosts followers

#Twutorial guest post from Alexis Grant: A simple Twitter strategy that will dramatically grow your network

#Twutorial guest post from Deanna Utroske: Tips for twinterviewing

#Twutorial guest post by Menachem Wecker: How to use Twitter to find the best sources

#Twutorial guest post by Jaclyn Schiff: How using Storify can help you find great sources

Getting started on Twitter: #twutorial advice for a friend

Should a journalist livetweet a funeral? If so, how?

Use Twitter for conversation about an event, not just promotion

How to verify information from tweets: check it out

In addition, these two posts that predate the #twutorial series cover some of the points I’ll make in the workshop:

Suggestions for livetweeting

Updated and expanded Twitter tips for journalists

 

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Excellent use of Twitter by Jessica Glenza in reporting story of sexual assault allegations and bullying of 13-year-old girl

Register Citizen photo

Jessica Glenza of the Register Citizen did some excellent reporting in a story published today about sexual assault allegations against two high school football players in Torrington, Conn.

A critical aspect of the story and of Jessica’s reporting was her documentation of cyber-bullying of the 13-year-old girl named as the victim in the alleged assault. The story includes screen shots of nine tweets (four of them pictured above) that attempted to blame and shame the girl. One of them was retweeted 21 times and favorited 13 times. Without the tweets themselves (some of them using vulgar language that the Register Citizen wisely didn’t water down), second-hand allegations or rumors of cyber-bullying would have weakened the story. The tweets make the bullying a well-documented fact.

I have asked Jessica and her editors to provide a detailed account (when they have time) of how they tracked down the tweets used in the story. Editor John Berry gave a quick explanation by email this morning:

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With Twitter archives now available, how would you use old tweets?

Twitter has made your archive of old tweets available.

For the fun (or embarrassment) of reviewing your first tweet and other early tweets or to find tweets from your early coverage of a story that’s back in the news, you should acquire and check out your Twitter archive.

Shea Bennett and Buffy Andrews give detailed instructions with illustrations, which I won’t repeat in detail here. Basically, you go to your Twitter settings, click the “request your archive” button and Twitter emails you a link to download the archive as a zip file. The zip file includes an html file where you can view the files and a csv file where you can get them in a spreadsheet.

Here’s my first tweet:

I’m signing up for twitter and trying to decide if it’s worth my time

— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) December 29, 2007

My decision five-plus years later:

Answer: Yes. Most days. RT me: “I’m signing up for twitter & trying to decide if it’s worth my time.” #myfirsttweettwitter.com/stevebuttry/st…

— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) February 26, 2013

My Digital First colleague Ivan Lajara immediately started Storifying first tweets as we started confessing them. Hashtags sharing first tweets included #myfirsttweet and #firsttweets (did you notice or use any others?).

As Mandy Jenkins suggested in a Google Group discussion yesterday, this would make a good local engagement project, asking people in your community to share their first tweets and Storifying them. You could choose some finalists and have the community vote for best first tweet, most embarrassing first tweet, etc.

That’s fun, and if you’re doing something like that in your community, please share some links and descriptions here.

By the way, I beat Mandy onto Twitter (by three days), but she beat me at examining her archive to note some personal and professional milestones that she had tweeted. If you’ve blogged, Storified or otherwise curated your early tweets (or seen such a compilation from someone else), please share those links.

I’m going to explore my old tweets and will probably do a couple of self-indulgent memory-lane blog posts (travel tweets for sure) in the next few weeks. But here’s my question for you (I’ll try to think of my own answers): What are some uses you might make of the Twitter archive, other than nostalgia or fun?

 

 

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#twutorial workshop for the Farmington Daily Times

I am leading a workshop this afternoon for the Daily Times in Farmington, N.M. I will use tips or techniques from many, perhaps all, of my #twutorial posts:

Step one for using Twitter as a reporter: Master advanced search

Use lists, TweetDeck, HootSuite, saved searches, alerts to organize Twitter’s chaos

Denver Post staffers’ #theatershooting coverage demonstrates Twitter breaking news techniques

Hashtags help journalists find relevant tweets and reach more people

Advice and examples on how and what journalists should tweet

9 ways to find helpful people and organizations to follow on Twitter

To build Twitter followers: Join the conversation, tweet often, be yourself

10 ways Twitter is valuable for journalists

Updated Twitter time management tips

Don’t be selfish on Twitter; tweeting useful information is good business

What’s the best way to view Twitter’s users? 16 percent or 30 million

Twitter data shows journos’ ‘burstiness’ boosts followers

#Twutorial guest post from Alexis Grant: A simple Twitter strategy that will dramatically grow your network

#Twutorial guest post from Deanna Utroske: Tips for twinterviewing

#Twutorial guest post by Menachem Wecker: How to use Twitter to find the best sources

#Twutorial guest post by Jaclyn Schiff: How using Storify can help you find great sources

Getting started on Twitter: #twutorial advice for a friend

Should a journalist livetweet a funeral? If so, how?

Use Twitter for conversation about an event, not just promotion

How to verify information from tweets: check it out

In addition, these two posts that predate the #twutorial series cover some of the points I’ll make in the workshop:

Suggestions for livetweeting

Updated and expanded Twitter tips for journalists

And I’ll use this Andy Carvin Storify acount as an example as well as this Denver plane crash.

Here are the slides for my workshop today (I may not use all the slides and probably won’t get to the case study that the last several slides cover):

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How to verify information from tweets: Check it out

Journalists should treat information we gather on social media the same way we treat information gathered any other way, or an assurance from Mom that she loves you: Check it out.

My #twutorial series hasn’t been updated since late October, but I always planned to do a post on verifying information gathered in social media. Given the errors some journalists made in reporting on the Sandy Hook massacre and in the original reporting on Manti Te’o's fake girlfriend, this feels like a good time to stress accuracy and verification.

The most simple and important advice I can give is that Twitter is like any other information source — documents, anonymous tips, news releases, press conferences, interviews, databases — it can provide valuable information or deliberate lies or innocent errors. Your job is to verify the information that looks useful. As with all the other information you gather, you can verify lots of different ways, and no single technique works for everything.

Some of the tips I provide here will be specific to Twitter or to social media generally. Some will be general verification tips applied to Twitter. And I’m sure I won’t cover all the ways you could verify information from tweets. As with all reporting, resourcefulness is essential. Develop some verification techniques of your own (and please remember to share them in the comments here).

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Use Twitter for conversation about an event, not just promotion

Twitter is a lousy promotional tool. If you use it to promote an event, you probably will be disappointed. But it’s a great place for conversation. Start a conversation about your event on Twitter, and you should get some promotional value.

A friend planning a journalism event recently asked my advice about promoting the event on Twitter, because he doesn’t use Twitter much. I responded first with some general advice about getting a new Twitter account rolling.

Here I’m going to address the specific question about promoting the event.

I’m not saying my friend shouldn’t send out some promotional tweets. You should and they will help. Twitter should be part of your promotional toolbox. Send out promotional messages on Twitter, just as you do on your website, Facebook, email, snail mail and any other communication means you use.

But even before Twitter came along, one of your best means of communication was word of mouth. And Twitter is the modern word of mouth (or thumb perhaps) for many of its users. While Twitter users may be a minority of your target audience for most organizations, they are a talkative minority, and every promoter wants to be part of the conversation among talkative slices of your target audience. And in a journalism group, the Twitter use will be high because it is such an important tool for journalists.

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Should a journalist livetweet a funeral? If so, how?

They stand, silent, in salute to their brother, #CHP Officer Kenyon Youngstrom. #CHPfuneral twitter.com/DMJreports/sta…

— Daniel M. Jimenez (@DMJreports) September 13, 2012

I’ve seen two excellent blog posts recently about livetweeting funerals:

• Deborah Petersen, a Digital First Media colleague who is Social Media and iPad Editor for the Bay Area News Group, blogged about her colleagues’ Twitter coverage of the funeral of a California Highway Patrol officer shot in the line of duty.
• Mathew Ingram of GigaOm blogged about livetweeting the funeral of a friend.

not sure if this is appropriate or weird, or possibly both, but I am going to live-tweet my friend @michaelocc‘s funeral #remembermocc

— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) October 20, 2012

Mathew is a journalist but was livetweeting as a tribute to his friend. But the anger you can read in the comments on his post underscores the sensitivity of this practice for journalists (who usually aren’t tweeting about our friends’ funerals). Someone named Rich commented:

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Getting started on Twitter: #twutorial advice for a friend

A friend who hasn’t used Twitter much asked some pretty basic questions that I thought might make a couple of #twutorial posts.

This post will focus on getting started using Twitter. Tomorrow I’ll cover event promotion.

I appreciate when people candidly ask for help, so I have edited my friend’s email to protect his identity. He was referred to a couple of specific event, but I have edited the references to make them more generic.

I’m afraid I’m one of those who has trouble grasping the concept of Twitter so I wonder if you’d take some time out to deal with challenged folks, such as me.

I have a personal twitter account but have contributed very little to it except to promote a journalism conference. Haven’t a clue if it registered with many because my followers number the fingers on my right hand. And maybe a few on my left hand.

I do follow a few tweets but infrequently. A couple of baseball players, some about the news biz. But it’s not convenient. I have to be sitting at my desktop and go through the steps to see the activity on my account. By then, I’ve lost interest. So, how do I see tweets in relatively real time? I do not have a smartphone (is that it?).

Besides my desktop, I have an android-based tablet (Iconia Acer) based on wifi, an iPod Touch (wifi), and a simple cellphone which I’m not keen about loading up with dataplans to see twitterers. Ergo, I have to work pretty hard at reading tweets. Is that the way it is?

So, that’s the basic situation I’m in.

Now, I want to set up an account for another event. It is coming to the time when we must start promotion. I think I know how to set up an account but if you could give me a “101” on doing that, I’d appreciate it. Then, how do I let all those editors, reporters, publishers know about my tweets. Do they find me? Do I find them? If so, how?

We’re in the process of modernizing the website and it will be equipped for twitter feeds but I’d like to get a head start on it.

Excellent questions, all. I’ll start with the Twitter 101, then do a separate post on event promotion.

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#Twutorial guest post by Jaclyn Schiff: How using Storify can help you find great sources

Thanks to Jaclyn Schiff for this #twutorial guest post:

Jaclyn Schiff

A story breaks and you want to build a Twitter source list to help you track developments.

So what do you do?

Your next move probably includes using a combination of Twitter search, Topsy, Listorious, Twiangulate or similar tools. Looking at who your major sources are following and conversing with can also be helpful.

Here’s something else you should do: search Storify.

Most journalists think of Storify as a platform to use only after sources and content have been identified; a good place to go once you have the story and want to convey it. And yes, Storify is a great storytelling tool, but it’s a goldmine of sources too. All you have to do is search.

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#Twutorial guest post by Menachem Wecker: How to use Twitter to find the best sources

Thanks to Menachem Wecker of U.S. News & World Report for this #twutorial guest post: 

Menachem Wecker

Self-portraiture used to be something that artists tended to gravitate toward when they couldn’t afford models. There are exceptions, of course, such as Rembrandt, who painted himself as a startled, young man, yet too small to fill his smock, and continued to study his own features even as a mature artist — a good deal stockier and more severe in his gaze. But even when the 17th century Dutch painter peered through the mirror, he was listening rather than talking.

Without naming any names, some social media ninjas, gurus, and other self-declared experts have given social media a bad name for their incessant babbling about themselves. It’s true. Twitter, Facebook, and all the other social tools are great platforms for people who like to trumpet their own fleeting thoughts. But even more importantly, social networks are unprecedented machinery for listening. That’s particularly true for journalists.

But specifically when it comes to Twitter, there’s listening and then there’s listening. I’ve long contended that social media networks are the closest thing I can think of to a crystal ball. It might be sexier to be a ninja or a guru, but mining the search-engine optimized Tweets of millions of users is actually far more valuable to a journalist. Some people turn to social media to reinforce what they already think they know. Others take the social media plunge with an open mind, knowing they will find things they never knew to even seek.

That’s true of sources as well. As the education reporter at U.S. News & World Report, I spend a lot of time talking to prospective and current students, digging for consumer-focused higher education trends. It would be a cinch to just call up the communications offices at colleges and universities across the country rather than hunting for sources on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. But there are a few reasons I try to use that path only as a last resort in a pinch.

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#Twutorial guest post from Deanna Utroske: Tips for twinterviewing

Deanna Utroske

Thanks to Deanna Utroske for contributing this #twutorial guest post about the art of the Twinterview. Before we start with the guest post, I want to note that Ivan Lajara has Storified lots of Twitter tips for journalists shared in yesterday’s #dfmchat. I also thank Cynthia Parkhill for sharing two links relating to Twitter use: Summarizing takes practice and  Best crowdsource ever: Cat ears hat.

Twinterview v. To arrange or conduct an interview, the exchange of questions and answers, via Twitter

Twinterviewing, in broad terms, is any use of Twitter to initiate, facilitate or conduct an interview.

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#Twutorial guest post from Alexis Grant: A simple Twitter strategy that will dramatically grow your network

Alexis Grant

Shortly after I posted my Monday call for guest #twutorial posts, I saw a Facebook link that took me to an Alexis Grant post encouraging people to use a “Notice-Me” list. I have cited Alexis’ advice before in this blog, including her tips on using Twitter lists, her job-searching blog posts and blogging tips. So I sent her a direct message, asking if she’d like to share a blog post for my #twutorial series.

She quickly agreed and shared the post below. She gives sound advice, though 90 percent feels a little high to me. (Not saying she’s wrong; I think she uses social media smarter than I do. My point is that everyone should develop your own social media style and decide how to apply the advice you receive. Even if 90 percent feels high to you, too, the rest of the advice here is outstanding. Whether you’re following my tips or Alexis’ or someone else, you need to apply them in a way that fits your style.)

If you’re looking to use Twitter more strategically, check out Alexis’ networking course, Become a Twitter Power User, starting Monday.

Sometimes simple changes make a BIG difference. And what we’re about to talk about today falls into that category. It’s a simple, easy way to make the most of your time on Twitter, yet it’s vastly underutilized.

If you use this tip consistently, your network will grow dramatically — and you’ll gain quality followers, ones that actually interact and click. (Even new research supports this.) Even better, you’ll attract the attention of influential people, ones who will help you reach your goals — whether you’re looking to connect with new sources, sniff out scoops or help your blog gain traction.

So what is this easy tweak?

Using the @mention.

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