Tips for helping your career through promotion

This continues my series on professional networking.

If you don’t think promotion should be part of journalism, I understand. I did little to nothing to promote myself or my work in the first 20-plus years of my career. And I had a good career: rewarding mid-level editor jobs and senior reporting jobs at metro newspapers, top editor of a smaller newspaper.

I can’t think of a single self-promotional thing I did for the first two decades of my career, unless you count some internal boasting in newsroom chit-chat or an occasional humble brag to make sure the boss knew my role in a story.

I didn’t do anything to actually promote myself (that I can recall) until 1997. And I think my career since has benefited greatly from self-promotion, and from overcoming a strong journalistic resistance to promotion.

I decided in 1997 that I wanted to train journalists and get paid for doing so. I thought I had something to teach journalists after all those years of work, and I thought I would like training, and I could use the money. And no one would know that I was available to do training if I didn’t promote myself.

So I developed my first website, promoting my training services and posting workshop handouts online. I was taking a web design class under Father Don Doll at Creighton University, and my website was all about me and my training services.

But that was early in the history of the web and well before Google, so I also developed an amateurish flier promoting my services (design was never a strong suit of mine). I mailed that flier to newsrooms and press associations around the Midwest and landed three training gigs: with the York News-Times (a Nebraska daily not to be confused with the New York Times), the North Dakota Newspaper Association and the Minot Daily News. Since I was a former Minot editor and well known to the folks at NDNA, those gigs came through a mix of networking and promotion. But I didn’t know anyone at York, and that first training gig came from the amateurish flier.

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Really, Facebook? It’s Game Day?

Facebook greeted me with the stupid drawing and proclamation above.

I presume this is a promotion for the Facebook sports venture that Fortune’s Mathew Ingram described as a “grenade” tossed at ESPN. And Facebook continues to dominate people’s time like no other medium, so maybe this will be successful, too.

But here’s where it won’t succeed with me:

• I already knew there was a big football game today, so this post didn’t tell me anything useful.
• Since I already knew it was “Game Day,” the breathless proclamation was annoying.
• If I didn’t know what the game was, it would have been even more annoying because not knowing would mean I didn’t care (and, since it didn’t use the name of the actual name, not very informative).
• Action photographs of football interest me. But not amateurish cartoons.
• Twitter is way better than Facebook for live two-screen enjoyment of sports and other events (until it screws that up by using an algorithm to become more like Facebook).

I use Facebook as much as I do only because so many of my friends and family are there (many more than use Twitter). But I don’t think seeing all their updates about the game will enhance my enjoyment of it. And I’m guessing if I click that link at the bottom, I’m going to see lots of crap about the “Game” from people I don’t even know or care about.

I think I’ll just watch Super Bowl 50 (that’s its name, by the way) on TV.

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Social media bring out extremes in compassion and rudeness

Early in my years of understanding social media, I said it was a lot like other social interactions: face to face individually and in groups, on the phone and in email exchanges. I was right in many ways, but I hadn’t yet noticed how different social media could be at the extremes of interaction.

I’ve been fascinated the past couple years with how kind strangers have been on social media, and how rude they have been.

I don’t know how much this represents evolution of social media (or perhaps tweaking of algorithms that govern the social-media experience) and how much it represents my eventually noticing what was always going on. It certainly represents only my experience, rather than any extended research. And I’ll admit that my transparency about personal matters probably draws more support than many people when life turns difficult. And my willingness to engage with (OK, sometimes to provoke) the rude people butting in on conversations probably inflames their rudeness beyond the usual experience.

But I’m fascinated with the way that social media brings these responses, so I want to mention them both. I will note only briefly, with appreciation, the many people whose outpouring of support has uplifted and touched me the past couple of years. When I lost my job last year, the encouragement and support on social media (and tips and introductions to people who actually offered me jobs) were overwhelming.

But that support paled in comparison to the virtual hugs I have received since my lymphoma diagnosis last December. During my treatment, which has included some setbacks I won’t repeat here, the digital embrace on Facebook, Twitter and CaringBridge was tremendous. But it went beyond words of encouragement and promises of prayers. People I never or barely met in person, as well as friends of Facebook friends whom I truly didn’t know, even digitally, sent me a journalism game, a handmade prayer shawl, a personal note about baseball, headgear when my hair disappeared, and, I’m sure, other gifts I’m not recalling at the moment. A person I’ve met only digitally shaved his head in support of me and another person undergoing chemotherapy.

These weren’t just journalism friends who knew me through my blog and meetings at conferences (though the support from my journalism friends was amazing). But non-journalists joined my support network after seeing my blog posts or CaringBridge posts in their friends’ comments and likes.

I don’t want to go on too long about the wonderful extreme of social media, though I’m writing the first draft of this post on Thanksgiving Day, so it feels appropriate. To go on at length about the support could go beyond expressing gratitude to boasting about how beloved I am, or inviting more support. I mostly mention the positive extreme to provide the necessary contrast to the primary point of this post: Facebook trolls.

Consider other social situations: Political arguments are common, whether at an office holiday party, a meeting of friends in a bar or restaurant or a family gathering. But I can’t imagine one of those situations, even in settings that involve lots of drinking, where a stranger would decide to join a conversation that’s already under way and take it over, insulting the others in the group and even calling names, without ever making sense.

That happens to me multiple times in a week on Facebook, not just with politics, but politics and cultural issues are the most common settings in my experience. Who, in overhearing a political discussion in a restaurant or at a party where you’re mostly or entirely an outsider, would butt in, however certain you were in your position, belittling people to their faces and calling names? I’m not saying it’s never happened, but I can’t remember it. We’ve all been at parties of people we didn’t really know, perhaps a spouse’s office party or a business conference where we don’t have many friends. We hear people making absurd statements, but we don’t feel the need to loudly set them straight.

Not on Facebook. Again and again, usually in political discussions, people I’ve never heard of jump in and go off on rants like I almost never see in personal encounters. I’ll illustrate with two discussion threads from Facebook this week (and they could come from nearly any week).

Before I show these discussions, I should acknowledge that these situations don’t necessarily bring out the best in me. When strangers interrupt rudely, I am not as gentle in pointing out their errors as I would be with friends. As I might do with a stranger interrupting a dinner conversation in a restaurant, I sometimes suggest they return to their own tables. I believe I am patient in most of life’s circumstances, but I sometimes hastily return rudeness with rudeness. Which makes me rude, I guess. If the point it to bring people down to their level, it sometime works. But sometimes I just like to poke them because their responses are so predictable.

I started one discussion Tuesday, sharing a link to a Washington Post story that labored too hard over whether Donald Trump’s many completely false statements are actually lies:

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Data visualization examples and slides for a class

I taught a class Monday in data visualization for Josh Grimm’s In-Depth Reporting class at LSU.

I’m no expert in data visualization, but I studied the use of interactive databases for the American Press Institute in 2008 and my students experimented with a variety of data viz tools last spring in my course on learning interactive storytelling tools. (I’ll add some links to the students’ posts on data-viz tools later, but I want to get this published now and I won’t have time to add links until later.)

My point in this class is that you can tell stories lots of different ways using data, and that you can teach yourself pretty easily how to use some effective data viz tools. I admire the skills of some data specialists I know, and hope some of our students will follow them into that specialty. But I hope every student (and professional) journalist develops data skills to find and tell stories routinely.

Examples I used in the class (and a few I didn’t have time to use):

• The Advocate’s map of New Orleans Police Department response times (using Google Fusion tables)
• The Advocate’s analysis of Bobby Jindal campaign contributions
• NOLA’s crowdsourcing effort to map New Orleans neighborhood boundaries
• NOLA’s Hurricane Katrina flooding map
• WBRZ’s Baton Rouge crime map
• The Marshall Project’s Next to Die
• The Star Tribune’s project on segregated schools in the Twin Cities
• The Tampa Bay Times’ animated graphic on Florida’s worst schools
• Bloomberg’s What’s Warming the World
• Bloomberg’s How Fast America Changes Its Mind
• Wall Street Journal’s Job Market Tracker
• Washington Post’s calendar of 2015 mass shootings
• Prison Policy Initiative’s States of Incarceration
• Los Angeles News Group’s Los Angeles Earthquakes
• Los Angeles News Group’s shark attacks map
• Redding Searchlight’s eagle map
• Washington Post’s smartest states map

Thanks to Kyle Whitfield, Mark Lorando, Tom Meagher, Maryjo Webster, Daniel Tedford, Kevin Dupuy and Michelle Rogers for providing these examples.

I collected information from the students using a Google Form and used it to create some data visualizations about the class using Infogr.am and Google Maps. I was running out of time and rushed through these pretty quickly, but you can make pretty simple graphics quickly using these tools. I elaborate a bit more here on some of them.

I wasn’t able to embed the resulting Infogr.am graphics in my free WordPress blog (they should embed on most websites). Here are some screen grabs of the graphics (with links below to the interactive versions):

You can see the interactive version of the graphic on devices here.

This pie chart, I noted, would be more effective with graduated shades (perhaps yellow to red) than the random colors assigned to each number:

In a graphic about the students’ use of social media, I tried different data viz tools offered by Infogr.am. This line chart didn’t work for me (though it might work for other detail). An effective graphic makes a point quickly and this one requires some study:

This horizontal bar graph also took a bit of work to understand, but quickly shows that the most popular social tools with the students are Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and that the students aren’t using Foursquare at all. The graphic on devices was filled out later, when I had 26 responses instead of 24.

I deliberately didn’t update this because it actually illustrates some points you need to check in doing data visualization: The data need to be accurate. My first take of this didn’t have fully accurate data: You can see that I only have 23 responses, instead of 24, on Snapchat and Instagram. Actually, I had 24 responses at the time, but failed to double-check my data before uploading it for the graphic. These are the kinds of errors you need to avoid and double-checking you need to do both before uploading data and after finishing a visualization project.

The most effective graphic on social networks, I thought, was this layered pie chart, where you can (in the interactive version, not the screengrab below) see how differently students use the social tools. It would have been more effective, though, with a gradual color scale, perhaps with yellow for 1, orange for 3 and red for 5, with shades in between at 2 and 4. But I was trying to show how quickly you can make a simple graphic. That’s the first step in data visualization. I’d expect such improvements in subsequent projects.

Moving to Google Maps, I quickly imported information from the spreadsheet of student responses to create a map showing where the students were from (that embed works here):

During the class, Deanna Narveson did a quick data viz project on social media engagement by Louisiana gubernatorial candidates:
https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js

Here are my slides from the class:

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Facebook and Amazon have a lot of my data, but they don’t know how to use it

A sponsored post in my Facebook news feed Nov. 13.

I can’t figure out whether all the data that Amazon and Facebook have about me is scary or laughable.

But I know this: Surveillance of my Internet use isn’t the best way to sell me stuff.

Several years ago, I noticed a vendor in Washington’s Eastern Market who sold purses for women made from hardback book covers. My grandmother, Francena Arnold, was a successful author of Christian romance novels, so I ordered her first and best-selling novel, Not My Will, from Amazon and had a purse made for Mom (I couldn’t find a hardback edition available today).

For months afterward, I got emails from Amazon urging me to buy other Christian romance novels, even though I’ve never read one that Grandma didn’t write. Proud as I am of her, it’s her genre, not mine. But I get that: I registered with Amazon and bought a book there, and their computer tells them that I might like these other books that people who bought Not My Will also liked. That’s probably a successful use of data most of the time.

Check out the suggestion above from Amazon in my Facebook feed today: Amazon or Facebook or both think I might be interested in buying Pete Rose’s book, My Prison Without Bars. It’s a 12-year-old book, and I don’t know whether I’ve ever ordered a baseball book from Amazon (I usually get my baseball books as gifts), certainly not one that showed any interest in Pete Rose.

Here’s why Amazon and/or Facebook think I might be interested in that book, though: I went to Amazon and grabbed a screenshot of the cover for an Oct. 31 Hated Yankees post mocking Fox Sports for putting Rose and Alex Rodriguez in its pre-game studio during the World Series. I called it the Fox Sports Image Rehab Clinic and posted memes making fun of Rose’s photobomb moment in the studio.

I think Pete Rose is a liar and an embarrassment to baseball, however well he played the game before he started gambling. I didn’t buy the book in 2003 and I’m not going to buy it today. But because I visited that page a couple weeks ago Amazon and/or Facebook think a gentle reminder might nudge me back there to finally buy it.

Other times, when I have actually bought something from Amazon, I’ve seen ads for the same thing shortly afterward on Facebook. These were things that you’d only want one of. Maybe they thought I’d want to give them as gifts?

Another time I searched for an image to use in a smart-ass remark in a Facebook discussion. And Facebook kept showing me the same image for several days after that. (See my discussion of that below.)

It’s creepy that Facebook and Amazon computers know I showed an interest in the Pete Rose book and are trying to figure out how to sell me the book. But I’m not going to get scared until they figure out what to do with this data.

 

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Writing for social media: a class for beginning journalists

Learning the power of social media with @stevebuttry today. @ManshipSchool #manship2010

— Kayleigh Spilger (@mcKayleigh1) November 4, 2015

Six times last week, I taught a class that I first presented last spring when I was interviewing for my current job at LSU: writing for social media.

In the context of a beginning “Media Writing” class that we require of all Manship School of Mass Communication students, I teach the techniques of good writing in the context of social media. While my background is strongest in journalism, I apply the points of the class to other specialties within the Manship School: political communication, public relations and digital advertising.

This is going to be a long post, probably helpful only to mass-comm teachers (or last week’s students who would like a review). But that’s who I’m writing it for, and it’s long because I want to invite you to use some of my slides and points in your classes and/or to invite me to cover these or similar points in your own classes or in a workshop at your university or a conference. Of course, I could adapt the presentation to a professional audience, too.

I will tell about the class mostly through the students’ tweets. At the opening of the class, I assigned students to tweet about my points, ask questions on Twitter, make observations, etc. during the class, so they would be applying the lessons as they were learning them.

Many of my slides from the class will show in the students’ tweets. I will supplement with some of the actual slides that didn’t make it into their tweets. If you want the full slideshow (which I’ve already updated since the last of this week’s classes), I’ve posted it at the end of the post. I welcome and encourage teachers to use the materials here however they are helpful, or to contact me to discuss how to teach this topic in your class.

I’ll add context here and there, but mostly the students will tell the story:

Tweeting during class?! What is this, anarchy?!? No, it’s part of a lesson! #Manship2010

— Luke Henderson (@lukehenderson16) November 4, 2015

Platform shapes the writing

I start with a discussion of how the nature of a social platform and your audience there shape the writing on the platform: the privacy of Snapchat, the professional nature of LinkedIn, the heavily female user base of Pinterest, the 140-character limit of Twitter, etc.

Different platforms guides what content is written #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/NGDKwUFyJt

— Adrienne (@adrienneb0797) November 4, 2015

Snapchat seems to be the most popular app in MC2010 section 3. #manship2010

— Emily Saibara (@emily_saibara) November 4, 2015

@stevebuttry agrees: Each social media platform & screen has its own tone. Posts should be rewritten to cater to the platform. #manship2010

— Chelsea Rainwater (@chelrainwater) November 4, 2015

Your snapchat posts would be different if your parents and perspective employers saw what you posted. #manship2010

— Kristen Bertel (@kris10bertelTTV) November 4, 2015

“Everbody in my graduating class who is alive and not in prison is on Facebook.” –@stevebuttry #manship2010

— gabby (@gabby_spraggs) November 2, 2015

Fun fact: approximately 80% of Pinterest users are women #manship2010

— Harleigh Nunez (@harleighnoelle) November 4, 2015

@billypattersonn : our only proud male user of Pinterest. Just shows the wide dynamics of social media #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/Zo6wlgNj4X

— Rachel Nicole Price (@RachelNPrice95) November 4, 2015

Social media writing basics

Part of my introduction covered some principles of social-media writing that apply in all situations.

Social Media Writing Tips: Get to the point quickly. Keep it brief. Consider images. Consider tone. Rewrite. #Manship2010

— Chelsea Tassin (@ChelseaTassin) November 3, 2015

@stevebuttry tells us that being a good journalist means being good @ re-writing even more than writing #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/GGjirapBSx

— Rachel Nicole Price (@RachelNPrice95) November 4, 2015

“Social media are platforms on small screens for distracted people.. SQUIRREL!” –@stevebuttry #Manship2010

— Chynna Paris (@chynna_lsu) November 4, 2015

I admit it: I did shout “Squirrel!” in one of the classes to illustrate the many distractions people face as they multi-task social media use into their days.

“Social media is an attention-divided experience for people on a small screen.” –@stevebuttry #manship2010

— Destiny J (@thedestinyj) November 4, 2015

On social media: “Get to the point quickly to capture people’s attention,” @stevebuttry says. #manship2010

— Patrick Gagen (@PattyGagen) November 4, 2015

@stevebuttry says to analyze anything you retweet for reasons why you retweet them and how to model your tweets after them. #manship2010

— Bailey D (@baileyanne1410) November 4, 2015

Get to the point. Keep it brief. You don’t have to use all characters available. Did I do this wrong? #manship2010 #twentyfourcharactersleft

— Tori Travis (@tortrav) November 4, 2015

Don’t just rewrite essays… don’t forget to rewrite before you post on Social Media too @stevebuttry #manship2010

— Baele Hasbrouck (@Baele_LSU) November 4, 2015

To have a successful writing career, it is more important to be a better rewriter rather than a writer. #manship2010 @stevebuttry

— Victoria Barberio (@VBarberio95) November 4, 2015

“Before you post, ask yourself, is this what I want say?” APPLY THIS TO LIFE PEOPLE #Manship2010

— Ella Ruth Hill (@ellaruth6) November 4, 2015

How to handle opinions

We also discussed how importance context (and your bosses’ expectations are) in learning whether opinions are encouraged, allowed or forbidden in your job.

To say or not to say? Opinions can be dangerous but also necessary, find out where you stand! #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/84hSJbijjR

— HowIGotMyGrooveBack. (@IAm_SWIMS) November 4, 2015

@stevebuttry: Opinions and personality are not the same thing. #manship2010

— Mercedes Mayfield (@mmayfi2) November 3, 2015

It’s not a thou shall not express opinions ever type of situation. Know your media role. Know what’s appropriate. #manship2010

— Tori Travis (@tortrav) November 4, 2015

Writing for memes

Before discussing specific social platforms, I discussed writing for memes, which appear on a variety of social media (and teach writing lessons for a variety of professions).

My favorite part of the day is @stevebuttry saying, “Let’s talk about memes.” #BringOnThePepe #manship2010

— Bailey D (@baileyanne1410) November 4, 2015

Never did I think I would be taking an educational look at memes in a college class. #manship2010

— Bailey Wilder (@bdoesmasscomm) November 2, 2015

Memes are a writing challenge. #manship2010

— Destiny J (@thedestinyj) November 4, 2015

I came to college for the memes #manship2010

— sofia (@tortillasofilla) November 4, 2015

Memes are important to media writing? Sweet! #manship2010

— Raegan Morgan (@raeganmorgan123) November 4, 2015

I always plan to update slides before a class where appropriate, and last week’s World Series win by the Kansas City Royals gave me some great memes to share along with the class (I wore my 2014 World Series t-shirt to Monday’s classes).

The art of memes with #Manship2010 and World Series winners @Royals pic.twitter.com/pvthKzAbiI

— Luke Henderson (@lukehenderson16) November 4, 2015

Guess you can say @stevebuttry is a Royals fan. #Manship2010 pic.twitter.com/wjhkjnSrmC

— Chynna Paris (@chynna_lsu) November 4, 2015

memes can fall into two categories; to be funny or to make a statement #manship2010

— Lauren (@laurrrandorder) November 3, 2015

“Memes are going to be of significant use in political communications.”-@stevebuttry #Manship2010 pic.twitter.com/8XueFomSCR

— Poot Cunningham (@TommyCunninghm) November 3, 2015

Hillary memes in #manship2010? Don’t mind if I do. pic.twitter.com/SEXQkm6odq

— Mercedes Mayfield (@mmayfi2) November 3, 2015

There exists an infinite supply of Hillary memes and they never get old #manship2010

— C Georgacopoulos (@cgxgeorge) November 4, 2015

Use less words and get to the point quickly. “Memes look for an instant reaction.” – @stevebuttry #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/AXSI8B6KCm

— Melanie Jo Smith (@wutthe_mel) November 4, 2015

Memes 101: they need brevity to be effective #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/hL8FJj7HEd

— G.M. Kelly (@gmkelly19) November 4, 2015

“A meme should give an immediate reaction” says @stevebuttry #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/MG8JITH0yY

— Baele Hasbrouck (@Baele_LSU) November 4, 2015

A note on updating old examples or visuals for a class or workshop: When I did this class last spring, I used some Rand Paul memes. Ben Carson and Donald Trump hadn’t yet risen to prominence in the Republican presidential race. I updated my slides for last week with memes about both. I’ll use the Carson memes in a later post about how he’s playing on social media and in professional media.

Font matters when it comes to memes #manship2010

— Karalee Hinz (@HinzKaralee) November 4, 2015

Error pages

I used error pages as another example of social-media-style writing in other contexts than social networks. For instance, the error pages of Clinton‘s and Marco Rubio‘s campaigns use humor in attempts to turn the error-page experience into an opportunity to volunteer or hear the candidate’s message:

“Public relations writing involves turning negative experiences into positive ones” – @stevebuttry #manship2010

— Hunter Lovell (@hunter_lovell23) November 4, 2015

Writing for Snapchat

Now we’re into the actual social tools, starting with Snapchat (which the students know much better than I do).

“Snapchat is a way to turn bad pictures into good Snaps” says @stevebuttry #manship2010

— Baele Hasbrouck (@Baele_LSU) November 4, 2015

journalism and snapsterpieces #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/dAMnzxXRIJ

— natalie (@NattyBHayes) November 4, 2015

Gathering material to write about

Though the course is about writing, I point out how closely writing and reporting are entwined. Making some points about using social media to gather material for writing, I use some examples from earlier blog posts about how the Denver Post used social media to get a great story and photos about a mountain lion staring a cat down through a glass sliding door in Boulder and a hard-news story about rape and victim-blaming in Torrington, Conn.

“You can’t write without good material” –@stevebuttry #manship2010

— Brittany Doucette (@Brittany_AD) November 4, 2015

Use the location search on Twitter to be able to find people that were present during disasters. #manship2010 @stevebuttry

— Elizabeth Ferrier (@_flizee_) November 4, 2015

I’d love to see my cat fight a mountain lion #manship2010

— Rachell (@RachellMikayla) November 4, 2015

Grab a screenshot bc in most cases tweets will be deleted if they are controversial #manship2010

— Margot (@mledet925) November 3, 2015

Tweets can disappear, but screenshots last forever. #Manship2010

— Elizabeth Ferrier (@_flizee_) November 4, 2015

This is what the players from Torrington looked like when they realized their tweets were on record. #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/KwvWXw8dHt

— Jaylin Goree (@jaylindgoree) November 4, 2015

I shared Andy Carvin‘s search tip for breaking news stories:

Using Twitter’s location feature in conjunction with a search for keywords like “WTF” can help with finding crisis eyewitnesses #manship2010

— Rachel Campbell (@rachelcaampbell) November 4, 2015

Visuals are important in social-media writing

In social media, I noted, words and your creative use of them can have a visual effect with or without photos:

“Words can become visuals with your creative use of them,” said @stevebuttry. #manship2010

— Tori Travis (@tortrav) November 4, 2015

Make your tweets into headlines #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/TOvoxAu4eV

— Rachel Nicole Price (@RachelNPrice95) November 4, 2015

Use the return key to make your words visually appealing. @stevebuttry G E A U X #manship2010

— Melanie Jo Smith (@wutthe_mel) November 4, 2015

I can use a return key as character on Twitter. Where have I been all of these years? Thanks @stevebuttry #manship2010

— Roxanne Kearns Dill (@roxdill) November 3, 2015

Cheat the Twitter system with hashtags and screen grabs. #manship2010

— Tori Travis (@tortrav) November 4, 2015

The tweets above refer to some creative use of returns and a screengrab from a court docket by the Boston Globe’s Hilary Sargent in her coverage of the Dzhokar Tsarnaev trial last spring. Here are two of my slides from Sargent’s tweets:

I show some examples of strong breaking news coverage in tweets:

@stevebuttry shows an example of an informative tweet, consisting of only a few words and a hashtag. #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/FzvKlhx7II

— Allie Dornier (@alliedornier) November 4, 2015

when tweeting breaking news, anything you know that is a verified fact is worthy of a tweet #manship2010

— alyssa brotherton (@alyssabrotherto) November 4, 2015

When breaking news on Twitter, ask the community for more information (pics, what they saw, etc.) #manship2010

— Victoria Barberio (@VBarberio95) November 4, 2015

When gathering information on social media, you should check to see if the source is genuine. #manship2010

— Allie Dornier (@alliedornier) November 4, 2015

I talk about how Twitter can help tell an unfolding story:

Turn tweets into a mini news story @stevebuttry #manship2010

— Peyton Short (@peytonshort_23) November 4, 2015

@roxdill: @stevebuttry: Every story is written 140 characters at a time. We just don’t think of it like that. @ManshipSchool #manship2010

— Roxanne Kearns Dill (@roxdill) November 4, 2015

I tell how Brian Stelter used text messages to tweet the story of the Joplin tornado when he didn’t have enough cell signal to make a phone call or access the Internet.

Man I thought I was outdated for still having Twitter linked to my texts. Turns out it can help you in a crisis #manship2010

— Rachel Nicole Price (@RachelNPrice95) November 4, 2015

Twitter helps your writing

I tell how Twitter’s 140-character limit can help your writing:

Twitter will help you become a better writer. It will challenge you to rewrite and make a more concise point. #manship2010

— Tori Travis (@tortrav) November 4, 2015

If your parents yell at you for being on Twitter all the time over Xmas break, just remind them youre becoming a better writer #manship2010

— Rachel Nicole Price (@RachelNPrice95) November 4, 2015

140 characters gives great practice at getting to the point. #manship2010

— Destiny J (@thedestinyj) November 4, 2015

Even in long writing, a succinct point is important

Toward the end of the class, I make the point that even in longer writing, such as books or political speeches, they should use social-media writing skills to make a memorable, brief point. I use those slides separately in an accompanying post.

“What is the tweet you want people to remember out of a long piece?” #manship2010 @stevebuttry

— Abbey ⚓️ (@AbbeyH113) November 4, 2015

‘Be your best self’

In the questions at the end of one class, I passed on this advice from a friend (though I couldn’t remember who). If this is your line, please identify yourself and I will credit accordingly:

Be yourself on social media, but be your best self! Thanks for the advice @stevebuttry!! #manship2010

— Bailey D (@baileyanne1410) November 4, 2015

Other students’ tweets

We wrap up the course reviewing the students’ tweets and praising them for some that illustrated the very points I had been teaching. You’ve already seen some of the best, but here are some others that I liked:

Notes from Writing for Social Media. Thank you @stevebuttry loved the presentation #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/wTEHp7qPML

— Abbey ⚓️ (@AbbeyH113) November 4, 2015

“Twitter helps you get to the point.” #shoutoutstevebuttry #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/7CGs2eDfbJ

— Payton Ibos (@paytibos) November 2, 2015

Repping KC in #manship2010 #Crowned pic.twitter.com/OUA0arGhWo

— Call me Mr.President (@MeesterVidrine) November 2, 2015

Pic of teacher taking a picture. #manship2010 pic.twitter.com/iXv9UIUtxH

— Gavin Dietz (@DietzGav) November 2, 2015

@SteveButtry stated, “accuracy matters,” while speaking to Manship students about opinions in social media. #manship2010

— Audrey Dawson (@adawso71) November 4, 2015

I don’t actually plan to boast/complain of being blocked, then later whitelisted, by Twitter for tweeting too much. But someone asked whether there was a limit on how much you could tweets, so I confessed to hitting the limit back in 2012:

@stevebuttry was blocked from posting when he hit the 100 tweet per hour limit, but was later whitelisted. #twitterVIP #manship2010

— Chelsea Rainwater (@chelrainwater) November 4, 2015

Unrelated advice on posting photos in social media

If  you look at most of the photos posted above, they could use some tighter cropping. I’ll confess that I don’t edit all photos that I post to social media. The swift posting of live-tweeting in particular doesn’t allow much time for editing photos and keeping up with the story. But editing doesn’t take long. I’d say a quick crop and adjusting the brightness of a dark photo are usually worth the time.

Slides from the workshop:

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Facebook has lots of data on me, but not much understanding

My Facebook profile photo

Whether you regard Facebook as a beneficial, benign or sinister force in media, your vision probably rests in part on the value of all that data the digital behemoth has about us.

At least 10 Facebook posts this week by me, or posts on my wall by friends, have included some combination of the words Royals, Mets, World, Series, baseball and #TakeTheCrown. And I’ve “liked” many more posts and comments by friends who share my excitement and interest about the World Series. And my profile photo on Facebook shows me wearing a Royals hat. That’s a lot of data telling Facebook what I might have been planning to do tonight.

I do show some political interest on Facebook as well. But any posts I’ve made about the current crop of Republican presidential have been critical or sarcastic in nature and tone.

But when I went to Facebook tonight (to post something about the World Series), Facebook suggested I let my friends know I’m watching the Republican debate. Um. no.

I’m not worried or optimistic that Facebook knows what to do with all that user data it has.

Earlier posts about Facebook

(starting with one just two days ago):

Facebook sucks, except when it doesn’t, like on my birthday

Updated tips for Facebook engagement by newsrooms

Lots of precedent for media dependence on Facebook, including cautionary tales

Why does Facebook keep ignoring my choice of ‘most recent’ posts?

‘Remember when?’ photos have great engagement potential

Facebook engagement lesson: ‘It’s about community’

Community fun drives Facebook engagement

Jeff Edelstein’s Sandy engagement shows how to use Facebook during a big story

Facebook news-feed changes mean newsrooms need new engagement strategies

Facebook engagement tips already working for Register Citizen, Middletown Press

Correction on AP photos: Newsrooms don’t have rights to post them on Facebook

Why does Bill Keller write about Facebook without trying to understand it?

Facebook engagement tips: Use breaking news photos and calls to action

Engage on community Facebook pages, not just your page

Romeo and Juliet on Facebook: great fun and community engagement

Reach out through Facebook to gather information on tragic stories

 

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Facebook sucks, except when it doesn’t, like on my birthday

I whine a lot on Facebook about the user experience there. But not on my birthday.

(Well, a little the morning after my birthday, but more on that later.)

On my birthday yesterday, I was overwhelmed by the well wishes of friends, family, former colleagues and people I’ve never met who somehow connected with me digitally. It’s a wonderful experience and a challenge to keep up with just “liking” each birthday wish, let alone responding to them.

I spent my birthday in the hospital, starting my second stem-cell harvest, so it’s been doubly meaningful (I’m back for more harvest today). A hospital is a boring place to be a patient, never festive on the oncology floor, no matter how kind and attentive the staff (and the staff at Our Lady of the Lake have been terrific).

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Michelle Rogers shares links showing newsroom transformation

Michelle Rogers

I asked Michelle Rogers to share some links that show the work of the Redding Record Searchlight under the Four Platform Newsroom.

Michelle Rogers was a colleague of mine at Digital First Media, and I’m pleased she has found a new home as Content Editor at the Record Searchlight. In a companion post, her editor, Silas Lyons, answers some questions about the Four Platform Newsroom. Here are the links Michelle shared with me:

Shaping Our Future portal

Facebook group for Shaping our Future

Get Out portal

Facebook group for Get Out

Buttry comment: Facebook groups are great places for engagement about topics or within niches. I belong to several Facebook groups that include some of my most meaningful discussions on Facebook. For an excellent example of a newsroom using a Facebook group to improve its journalism and engagement, read about ProPublica’s Patient Harm group. Back to Michelle and her links:

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Updated tips for Facebook engagement by newsrooms

This week I saw a post from a Digital First Media newsroom in my Facebook news feed, and was surprised to see it there. I “liked” dozens of DFM newsrooms during my time there, but don’t particularly care to follow their news that much now.

So I decided to unlike the page. And, while I was at it, I went into the list of pages I liked and decided to unlike a bunch more — at least two dozen, maybe three (it was probably an oversight that I didn’t like all 75 DFM dailies and some weeklies). And most of them, I had no idea I was even following because, well, they never showed up in my news feed. In fact, I’m not sure how that one showed up the other day because I hadn’t seen it in ages. I only recognized two or three of the ones I dropped as occasionally showing up in my feed.*

That illustrates a problem for news brands. I know every one of those newsrooms I unfollowed has staff members faithfully posting all of their stories, or several stories they think have the most appeal, to their Facebook pages daily. And most of their “fans” never see most of their posts.

The most recent estimate I’ve seen of the percentage of fans seeing a typical post was 16 percent, and that was in 2012, and the figure has certainly dropped as Facebook has made several algorithm tweaks, all designed to make it harder for non-paying brands to get their posts seen.

Maybe the number is something like 10 percent these days, but it will frequently be many of the same people, and probably 70 to 80 percent of your fans almost never see a post. They’re surprised when you show up in their news feed, as I was when my former colleagues’ post showed up this week.

But Facebook traffic is growing in importance for news sites. Parse.ly reported last August that Facebook drives 70 million page views a month to news publishers, second only to Google and more than twice as much as Twitter.

In addition, Parse.ly reported this month that stories with a higher Facebook referral rate have a longer shelf life, attracting traffic over more days than stories that don’t get strong engagement. Higher Twitter referral rates also help shelf life, but not as long as on Facebook.

So Facebook is an important source of news-site traffic, but engagement on Facebook is more complicated than simply posting links there (since most people don’t see them).

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What’s the next mobile (huge opportunity news media can’t afford to squander)?

Graphic from State of the Media 2015, Pew Research Center

I try not to say “I told you so” here (in fact, I just checked and the phrase never appeared on this blog until now).

But, as I read the State of the Media 2015 report by the Pew Research Center, I am struck by the growth in mobile advertising, from $416 million (with an m) in 2009 to $19 billion (with a b) in 2014. In five years, that’s an increase of 4,500 percent, and mobile advertising has surpassed print newspaper advertising, which is just under $17 billion.

I told you so. Back in 2009, when smartphones were still new, tablets were not even new yet and no one dominated mobile advertising, I called for news organizations to pursue a mobile-first strategy. We had a chance then. Digital giants like Google and Facebook were fumbling around in mobile. We could have and should have been the mobile leaders in our communities and in digital media.

I advocated making mobile the top priority at the company where I worked in 2009 and subsequent companies, and publicly on the blog and at media conferences. Maybe I provided a nudge here or there to increase mobile awareness, but I can’t think of a single legacy media company that became anything close to mobile-first.

Pew’s 2010 State of the Media report (covering 2009 developments), not only didn’t have any sections dealing with mobile, the word didn’t appear in the overview, major trends or online summary essay. The only reference to “mobile” in the key findings section was to distinguish Internet radio from using radio in your car.

In this year’s report, the lead is: “Call it a mobile majority.” The report focuses heavily on mobile media and notes that 39 of the 50 leading digital news sites get most of their traffic from mobile devices. And the report tells who’s dominating mobile advertising: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pandora and Apple combine for 64 percent of mobile display advertising. Not a news organization in the group.

By the way, Google’s CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, proclaimed a “mobile-first” strategy in February 2010, less than three months after I urged news organizations to take that direction. Guess who moved faster and smarter down the mobile path.

My point here is not to boast, though I will do that later. I think the opportunity was obvious back then and I wasn’t particularly insightful to notice it. My point is to help colleagues in the news business learn from a huge mistake and pursue similar opportunities if they exist now.

Opportunities in 2015

So what are similar opportunities now? I don’t see anything with growth potential as huge and obvious as mobile and social media were six years ago. Someone smarter than me might see opportunities I don’t list here, but these are areas with potential to grow in use, with possibilities for news and revenue:

Wearables. The Apple Watch has made a splash but doesn’t seem to be the must-have multi-use product that the iPhone became when it debuted. Google Glass didn’t take off, but I suspect some glasses-like product will return. Fitness devices are popular, but it would take a big change in their use to provide a significant opportunity for news and advertising revenue. I think these products and other wearables that may follow together present an opportunity for news organizations. But you need to move quickly and creatively or the tech companies will dominate here, too.

Location. I still think location-based news, advertising and commerce remain an area with great potential that no one has mastered yet. (I had hopes for Foursquare, but it never took off the way I thought it could.)

Transactions. This was a huge failure of the thinking of news organizations, which thought narrowly about advertising and subscriptions as the ways you made money. News media companies would be healthy now if we had developed effective local digital marketplaces that sold products and gift certificates, made reservations and otherwise make local cash registers ring (beep, actually, but some clichés don’t update). I think local transaction-focused advertising and local search (which should go together) still hold potential, though giants such as Google and Amazon have snapped up some of the opportunities I used to see there.

Social media. News organizations have mostly done a miserable job using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram to engage their communities, expand their audience and generate revenue. They can certainly benefit from improving their performance with those established social tools. But if social media presents a huge opportunity today, it’s probably in some newer tool such as Snapchat, Yik Yak, Periscope, Meerkat or something yet to come out (with a limit of one post per day, I don’t see a great opportunity for news organizations in This.).

Video and podcasts. We still have not developed all the video possibilities for content and revenue. And, as the Pew report noted, podcasts are making a comeback.

Live coverage. Few news organizations have embraced live coverage routinely, as I have advocated, and fewer still have made serious, creative efforts to develop the commercial possibilities of live coverage (including entirely commercial live content).

Memberships. I have always thought membership was a better way to get community revenue than paywalls. We’re seeing some small membership efforts, but I think we can do more.

Events. News organizations are working on developing events as a supporting revenue stream. I doubt they can become the primary source for many news operations, and the bigger they get, the more they present potential conflicts between promotion and news coverage. But they need mention here as a revenue source that can and should grow.

Native advertising or content marketing. I put this last not because it has the least potential, but because news organizations are working harder on this than some of the others. I don’t think we’ve developed all the possibilities here, though, and I suspect that potential advertisers don’t really need news media to get these messages out. Public-relations and advertising companies and corporate communication departments are working on reaching potential customers directly with their messages, and I suspect they will succeed more and faster here than news organizations will.

What other areas have potential that news organizations should explore? I’m sure I am missing some.

Just as mobile received scant attention in the 2010 Pew report, don’t look for a lot on these topics in the 2015 report. Only podcasting gets its own section. Pew reports annually on how the media are (newspapers continuing to decline, mixed results for TV, yada, yada), and the media aren’t pursuing any of these opportunities aggressively enough.

My mobile vision in 2009-10

Six years ago this week, when I published my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection, a vision for a different kind of media company, I cited the important of the mobile opportunity in my introduction:

We need to look at mobile opportunities and email opportunities as well as print and web. And we should watch for new opportunities as new technology presents new ways to connect. We should explore every possibility for providing people the news and information they want when they want it, whether that means email, text message, RSS feed, Twitter feed, social media, iPod, game device, GPS device or some other way of interaction.

In retrospect, my original C3 plan should have had a stronger mobile emphasis, though mobile opportunities were clear in parts of it, such as my suggestion about driving. The urgency and potential of the mobile opportunity became more clear to me later in 2009.

On Aug. 31, 2009, I called on newspapers to help local businesses pursue mobile opportunities. I said we should take the lead in developing mobile coupons and other forms of mobile commerce:

We need to devise ways to help local businesses sell their products and services to people on the move. We need to teach local businesses how to connect with people who are always connected. We need to develop mobile formats for news content, community information, databases, calendars, advertising and other services for users and for businesses. …

We spend too much time reliving the mistakes we’ve made in the past. Let’s not make mobile one of them.

By Nov. 20, 2009, my “mobile-first strategy” had taken clear shape:

News organizations are belatedly, reluctantly and often awkwardly pursuing “web-first” strategies. As we fight these web battles, I am increasingly coming to believe that “web first” is what the military would call fighting the last war. News organizations need a mobile-first strategy. …

We can’t waste that much time in mastering the mobile market. We need to start thinking mobile first. Now. The world is moving swiftly to smart phones and we can’t afford to be as far behind this time (in truth, it’s too late to be ahead, but not too late to pursue opportunities that can lead us to a prosperous future). We need to make mobile innovation the top priority and the first thing we think of when we plan change in our organizations.

(I should note that web-first meant content would be published online before in the print edition, and that the organization should start thinking first about the web, though most didn’t, regardless of what they were saying. When I say we must shift to a mobile-first strategy, I’m not talking about where content appears when, but about the priorities of the organization: what you place first in your thinking and acting.) …

If we wait until nearly everyone has some sort of smart phone, someone else will be filling the roles that we can and should fill. …

Whatever your role in your media organization, consider how you would change your work, your priorities and your thinking to support a mobile-first strategy. This will either be our future or our next squandered opportunity.

My next mobile-first post elaborated on how news organizations should change their work and structure. Here’s part of what I said about technology, sales and marketing:

Technology

… Don’t think of apps just as devices for delivery of your content. Apps should become a revenue source, too. Just as newspaper and television companies help business customers produce advertisements for their products, a mobile-first organization is going to help business customers develop mobile apps to promote their businesses and sell their products and services. Many of the aspects of the mobile-first approach will require shifting resources from current print, broadcast or web operations to mobile operations. But development and deployment of commercial applications will produce revenue to support eventual expansion of mobile operations.

Development of commercial applications will need to stress applications whose content can be updated easily by merchants. For instance, if a local pizza parlor has an application for ordering pizzas for pickup or delivery, the operator should be able to update prices or add new ingredients or menu items easily from an office computer, so that applications will update automatically when a user next opens the pizza application.

Sales

Sales staffs need to listen to consumers and businesses and learn how to help businesses serve the mobile audience. In the early stages of a mobile-first organization, sales efforts will be focused heavily on educating and training business customers on mobile opportunities and our organization’s role in connecting businesses in our community with mobile customers.

Traditional advertising was intrusive and often unwelcome. You open your newspaper to continue reading a page-one story and photos of women in bras attempted to catch your eye about the lingerie sale at the local department store. Or you tune in the evening newscast and ads for local car dealers shout at you between the news reports. We still need to sell those ads because they deliver value for businesses in traditional ways and because they are the revenue streams that keep us operating today. But mobile revenue will keep us operating tomorrow and, as I have blogged before, we need to learn how to help businesses pursue mobile opportunities.

Mobile commercial content will be convenient and responsive, rather than intrusive. Search advertising provides the answer that the potential customer was seeking. Location-based advertising should not be intrusive or people will devise ways to turn it off. Our community apps and sites need to provide location-based tabs such as “shop nearby,” “dine nearby” or “nearby entertainment.” The user can ignore those tabs if she knows where she wants to go and just wants information on parking, for instance. But a user who clicks on such a tab welcomes our help (and the help of businesses paying us for access to these customers).

As described in the C3 revenue approach, we need to be sure we don’t fall into the trap of focusing just on advertising. Some of the best mobile opportunities will go much deeper than simply delivering business messages to an audience. We may make the sale, using a customer’s credit card (or possibly an account with us that taps into a credit card, checking account or prepaid balance). We may make a reservation or enroll a user in a class or a business’s preferred customers club. We may send the business an inquiry from the customer.

We also need to be careful not to use just a single mobile tool, such as a mobile web site or iPhone application. Some businesses may want to sponsor breaking news alerts, reaching the text-message audience with a link to the company’s web site or to its enhanced listing in our business directory. Some may want to sponsor a podcast or an email newsletter, reaching people wherever they access email.

Sales staff will need training in how mobile opportunities can work and how to teach a local business to pursue those opportunities. While we need to be willing to invest heavy sales staff time in landing accounts and in training businesses to use their apps, we also need to design self-serve mobile accounts that the business customer can change and update after we get them launched, as described in the pizza example in the technology section.

We need to develop pricing that helps businesses use our mobile services. We can’t discount services that we know will be valuable. We need an affordable base rate, with most of our pay based on performance as we deliver for our business customers. For instance, in the pizza example, we need to charge a reasonable fee for development of the app. But most of our revenue will come from pizza orders (of course the app needs to record orders accurately for both us and the business customer). We may collect the revenue ourselves from customers’ debit and credit cards, taking our cut before we pass most of it along to the pizza parlor. Or the merchant may collect the money (in this example, we might want to leave an option of paying cash) and we invoice for our fee. Or we may use a third party such as PayPal to handle the transaction.

More and more, we need to sell customers into a full range of services. We sell them an enhanced listing in the business directory, so we can connect them with customers searching for the services they offer. We help them determine the best way to use our services to move the customer toward the transaction or to actually make the sale. We sell them location-based premium listings. We develop an app for them and help them deliver the app to the phones (or other devices) of the right customers. Yes, web, print and broadcast advertising will be part of the package for some customers, too, but we can’t just call on our usual suspects. Location-based advertising will appeal to some merchants who haven’t been interested in reaching the full community through a newspaper or TV ad, but absolutely want to reach the person who’s nearby at lunch time.

Marketing

News companies know how to market newspapers and newscasts. We shouldn’t stop marketing those products and our web sites, but the mobile-first organization will have a mobile-first marketing department. The community knows about the legacy products and will continue to find them with a reduced marketing effort.

We will need an aggressive (and vastly different) marketing effort to tell the community about all the ways we serve your mobile audience. The effective marketing strategy needs at least a two-pronged approach: sophisticated and witty to alert the savvy mobile customer to our services and simple and educational to teach the new or confused mobile customer how many jobs we can help her with. …

We need to work aggressively in sales channels to get our apps onto people’s phones. Obviously we need to use iPhone’s App Store. We also need to connect with local retailers selling phones and other mobile devices, perhaps offering free apps that introduce and promote our apps or offering to load our package of apps on each phone sold (perhaps as part of a deal that includes advertising for the retailer). We can offer classes in the community on how to use our location-based services and our applications. …

I continued on the theme in 2010:

• I suggested an idea for a mobile project news organizations could undertake to engage their communities effectively on mobile devices with news and revenue opportunities. I had proposed the project for Gazette Communications and the 2010 Orange Bowl, where Hawkeye fans would be in Miami in large numbers, out of reach of our newspaper and TV station, but carrying their phones. The company didn’t give it a try. I outlined the idea publicly and on the blog for the 2010 American Society of News Editors conference, but I’m not aware of anyone who tried it. I followed up the post outlining the project idea with a Q&A from questions the editors asked.
• I used Gordon Borrell’s projections for growth of mobile revenue (they were actually conservative) to show how huge the opportunity was.

More recently, I stressed the importance of mobile in my advice for new Digital First Media editors and in Project Unbolt and in the INMA’s Culture Change blog. But culture changes slowly, and I can’t point to a legacy media organization that has excelled in mobile the way that it should.

I wish I saw an opportunity today as huge as mobile was in 2009 and 2010. Without a doubt, Google, Facebook, Apple and the other digital giants were going to seize huge chunks of that $19 billion. But news organizations had a chance to beat them into the mobile space and grab a big part of a revenue stream that has surpassed newspaper advertising.

We acted too timidly in our pursuit of mobile, and we spent energy on defensive measures such as paywalls. I’m not saying the opportunity has passed. But catching up usually isn’t as lucrative as leading the way.

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Lots of precedent for media dependence on Facebook, including cautionary tales

I blame Facebook’s crappy iPad app for this blog post.

I actually thought of the topic for this post before falling asleep around 11 p.m. That’s when I read the New York Times story about the Times and other news organizations considering and negotiating a deal to publish content on Facebook rather than on their own sites.

I have a busy day planned today (even if I am stuck in the hospital, I’m working and I have class today, plus many other chores awaiting me). So that post might have gone unwritten.

But something woke me up around 2 a.m. If you’ve spent much time in the hospital, you understand. And before trying to get back to sleep, I tried to answer a question on my iPad in a Facebook discussion. And Facebook’s iPad sucks so bad that I had to abandon the iPad, then redo and finish my answer on the laptop. And then, I had to blog about Facebook. Piss me off in the middle of the night when I’d rather be sleeping, and I will blog about you, even if I have to finish grumpy in the daylight.

Part of my initial response to skepticism about the wisdom of getting into bed with Facebook would have been to note that newspapers have been dependent on (at the mercy of?) other businesses my whole career. Other media are dependent, too, but I will focus here mostly on newspapers. Part of my argument would have noted that the dependency on Facebook was likely to cause problems (as it has before), but I was probably going to come down on the side of saying I might be exploring or testing such a relationship myself if I were the New York Times, BuzzFeed or National Geographic, the companies apparently in such discussions with Facebook.

But then I got pissed off at the Facebook app in the middle of the night, and thought of how dependence on external carriers was a bad decision for the Kansas City Star and Times decades ago, and I had to start blogging in the middle of the night about why publishers should be cautious about increasing their dependence on Facebook.

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