I’m honored to be a presenter at the 2013 Tony Hillerman Writers Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My presentation, “Eat Your Veggies and Do Social Media: Necessities for Authors in the Digital Age” will provide basic tips on engaging in Facebook and Twitter, as well as blogging, which are now essential tools for book marketing. To learn more about the conference, whose other presenters include top authors Craig Johnson and Margaret Cole, visit Wordharvest’s website.
Regardless of the medium in which we’re working, journalists are all storytellers at heart. Storyify is a platform that allows us to tell stories about a given topic in the digital realm. The medium searches other social media sites—Twitter and Facebook posts, YouTube videos, articles accessed via Google, and others. It then allows the user to compile and arrange these posts. The user creates a headline and commentary throughout the posts to draw connections and create new ways of understanding the information. Of course, as a social medium of its own, Storyify then allows the use to publicize this “story.”
At New Mexico Magazine, we had success using this platform in two ways: 1) via tie-ins with our current magazine content that was part of a large event, in this case the state’s 100th birthday, and 2) to recap events of which, because of our publishing schedule, we could only provide advance coverage. Because the stories can be updated as an event unfolds, it can also be used to cover evolving stories. That the information is drawn from the public (via their Twitter posts, etc.) can be an excellent way to engage your audience; however, the public may or may not always be accurate as they report events. I suggest having your fact-checking goggles on as you filter content—if the information provided by tweets and posts doesn’t seem reasonable, don’t include it in your content.
Although it hasn’t yet earned the acclaim or number of users as Flickr and Instagram, 500 Pixels is a photograph hub of which you should take note. This site draws professional and excellent amateur photographers who create lovely online portfolios. The site sifts through the most popular images to give the ones with the best “pulse” and pushes them to the main page. Although 500 Pixels is a worthwhile community, for most social media users in publishing, the site may serve more useful as a place to find new photography talent rather than yet another social medium in which to participate.
Most simply, an Internet meme is a concept that goes viral. The popular “Sh** My Dad Says” You Tube videos that had millions of views—and spawned hundreds of iterations—is one example.
To gain traction in social media, tap into the memes. New Mexico Magazine has earned more Facebook likes and successfully engaged with its audience thanks to a campaign of images emblazoned with “This person loves New Mexico.” The New Mexico Tourism department had similar success by using the “Keep Calm and Carry On” meme. Their chile-loving audience loved images of green chiles with the statement like “Keep Calm and Eat More Green.”
These are national and international memes, but niche communities also have memes. Cottage Life, for example, has galvanized their audience’s love of all things chipmunk into a daily series of hilarious images, which their followers supply and love commenting on!
Whether you use a national or regional meme, one note of caution: The meme should be appropriate. For example, spoofing Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women,” which caught fire online, may not be fitting for your audience.
First, what is Klout? Put simply, the service is a way to measure online social influence. As with anything online the score is based on a complicated algorithm. Klout looks at the quantity of your followers on several social mediums, as well as the impact you have via those media (mentions, likes, comments, retweets, recommendations, etc.), to generate a score between 1 and 100. Users can also go on Klout’s site to give you “+K” in recognition of your influence in a certain area of expertise, which raises your score. Logging into Klout’s site will allow you to see your score. Hootsuite also displays Klout scores in user profiles.
Some online users think Klout scores are meaningless measures; others believe in them and strive to outrank their competitors. In late August, Klout retooled their system to better recognize real-world influence, so, if you’ve been tracking your score, you may have seen a boost (or a decrease) at that time. If you take stock in your Klout score, you can raise it by 1) asking users to grant you +K, and/or 2) encouraging interactions using the techniques I’ve discussed in other posts (offering “sharable” content, asking for open-ended questions and advocating for likes, etc.).
It’s always incumbent upon those of us using social media to prove ROI. My new favorite toy to track results is a dashboard called Cyfe. Still in Beta, the dashboard allows for five free widgets (paid options allow for more). Unlike other sites that allow you to monitor one or a few types of digital engagement, Cyfe allows you to track results in advertising, blogging, email delivery systems (such as MailChimp and Constant Contact), Google Alerts, web analytics, as well as social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest). This is suited for advanced digital users, but if that’s you, this dashboard can be a powerhouse!
If the social media bug bites you, here are a few resources to stay attune to the evolving field:
- Social Times e-mail: Media Bistro delivers this daily email to your inbox with the latest stories affecting the social media world. Stay attune, too, to Media Bistro’s AllFacebook and AllTwitter blogs. You can also follow Social Times on Facebook and Twitter.
- 10,000 Words Blog: This blog details the intersection of journalism and technology, and covers topics beyond social media. It’s a great source for all things digital.
- Social Media Examiner: This blog lives up to its tag line: Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle. This site goes beyond delivering social media news to demonstrate how these changes affect daily management. It excels in how-to posts.
- Convince and Convert’s One Social Thing: If you’re overwhelmed with social media news, sign up for this daily email. Social media expert Jay Baer curates the latest news and selects one article per day with the news you can’t miss.
What are your favorite social media resources?
Facebook Page managers may have noticed Insights displayed beneath each post. You’ll notice that the number of people who see a given post rarely, if ever, matches the number of fans you have. So how do you maximize the number of fans who see a post? One way is to buy sponsored stories, but if you don’t want to spend to gather fans, you’ll need to master Facebook’s EdgeRank.
EdgeRank is similar to Google’s search algorithm in that it attempts to deliver content most relavant to each user. You can read more about EdgeRank here. In general Facebook populates a user’s newsfeed based on three factors: affinity (how often a user engages with your page), Weight (the value of an interaction—e.g. a “like” has less value that a comment), and Time Decay (the time since the post was created).
To conquer this algorithm, you should have:
1. Fresh posts. At minimum, post once a day. To maximize the number of fans who see your posts, post more than once a day—especially because posts have a life span of around three hours.
2. Provide valuable content that galvanizes engagement. Remember: Don’t be afraid to ask for likes and comments to earn better engagement and thus better placement for your posts in users’ newsfeeds.
A lot goes into making a great blog, but today I want to share a few strategies that will make your blog gain traction in social media.
Several tips that will make your blog post successful in the social realm are just good tips in general
- Be useful. Give the reader something he/she needs—insider information, a unique voice, a new recipe, or a how-to tip.
- Post your blog regularly. Consistency is better than frequency.
- Solicit feedback. Conclude your post with an open-ended question that invites the reader to participate in the conversation either via a comment on the post, tweet, or Facebook response. Or create a post entirely based on reader submissions. (Arizona Highways has done this with photography.)
When you publicize your blog online:
- Convey a sense of urgency. The reader shouldn’t just need the info; he/she should need it now.
- Especially on Twitter, publicize the post more than once. Social media moves fast. Don’t let your readers miss out on the post just because they’ve missed seeing a tweet. However, you don’t want to turn off readers who follow your tweets closely, so in the different tweets, highlight a different aspect of the blog and phrase the wording differently.
My mom asked me to photograph each of five different day lilies in her yard—in part because she wanted to document their beauty and in part (I think) to keep me busy. Photographing them was more of a challenge than I anticipated. As their name implies, the day lilies only last a short time and they peak in the morning. So I would pick one each day and set up a makeshift studio to create the night-like conditions I prefer. Then I’d use a series of lengthy exposures and three different lights to bring out the unique beauty of each lily.
Which ones should make it into my Etsy store?
