Social media monitoring and analytics (infographic)

Not 100% sure who I owe a hat tip to for tweeting a link to this infographic about social media monitoring (I suspect David Thackeray though).
It is exceptionally useful, anyway, and I thought I would store it on my blog as it's a reference source I will probably come back to in the future.

The World of Social Media Monitoring and Analytics

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Definitely NOT another 'How Journalists Should Use Pinterest' post.

I've read various articles recently about Why Companies Should Be Using Pinterest (I haven't saved any of them, but Zemanta will no doubt provide the latest selection as I write this - it's like trying to put down a hydra). 
However, any social media wrangler in a newsroom knows a site has to be proven earn its keep before more than tentative attention is invested. And how do you even start to overcome this chicken/egg scenario? It's a Google+ sized problem for most of us. 

But this week I was asked to share some of my tips for using it, and as I started to set them down I realised that I wasn't thinking about how to use it as a journalist and 'drive audience' I was writing out my learnings as a user. I've set up various accounts and boards on titles I've worked on but I also use it myself, for all sorts of things.  "My name is Alison, and I'm a Pinner".

I found it very useful as a student, for example and these are the boards that consistently pick up followers because they're really niche (that was my first learning outcome).

I like Pinterest for sharing and driving lifestyle and Buzzfeed-style traffic - it’s easy to create boards, followers - once secured - are loyal; every time they log in, your content is highly visible, as it displays automatically on their homepage. But although it's a visual site, Pinterest is branching out, as it announced this week: 

Articles will now have more information - including the headline, author, story description and link - right on the pin. So when you find articles about things you're passionate about... they're easier to save and organise. 

And share, it should add. I like the idea; it takes away some of the issues around Pinterest's laid-back (to say the least) attitude towards ownership and copyright; it does have a certain 'if the user doesn't care, why should we?' attitude towards that. 

Thinking about how I use Pinterest (ie. without my work hat on) gave me some ideas about how you can use it with your work hat on. So here are some of my tips on getting the most out of Pinterest, written with my enthusiast's hat on. This is definitely NOT another 'How Journalists Should Use Pinterest' set of tips: 

1. Spend some minutes through the day reviewing http://www.pinterest.com/popular/ - you can see at a glance what’s hot (bit like Twitter’s trending list. 

2. Linking your social media accounts to follow mutual users offers a quick if haphazard community base that you can build on and tweak as you go. These people are already engaged with you on other platforms and are so likely to be interested in the visuals you pin 

3. It is female oriented, but there are football clubs doing their thing with success. Pinning badges with slogans and inspirational quotes from club heroes, that link through to more visual content, is likely to be more shared.

4. Joining a group (also called a community) board (you need to be invited to do so) dramatically boosts your own followers and drives repins when you’re starting out. 

There is a basic directory of group boards http://www.pinterest.com/groupboards/ but there's nothing as useful or discovery-linked as, say, Twello. 

You might need to do some speculative following and emailing of your appropriate pins to get invited to the board but once you do, repin numbers can shoot up. I was invited to join a popular 'Home' board courtesy of my 'Next Home Ideas' board - and my follower numbers have consistently grown since then for other boards too. 

5. Pinterest users may not realise it, but they are a content farmer’s dream. People will use the search facility to look for ‘cute puppy’ ‘lose weight fast’ ‘10 amazing [whatever] facts’. It's like e-How, but actually not annoying. 

6. A feature in print about someone who’d lost 10 stone for their wedding, that was pinned as ‘lose weight for your wedding, fast’ works across the Alpha Female categories of Food&Drink, Health&Fitness and Weddings, and is a quick, permanent, win.

7. Category boards search is your friend. If the audience isn’t using search, they go straight to the categories list.

Pinterest categories that attract significant followers and repins are all around lifestyle -

Home Decor, Animals, Food&Drink, Health&Fitness (just look a the Popular category to see just how much) and after that probably Hair&Beauty, Weddings and Women’s Fashion with maybe Travel too. 

These give you access to people who are motivated to re-pin and share content, possibly it in smaller niche numbers but pins around celeb fashion and how to replicate it have worked well for me in the past. 

8. Pinterest categories are alphabetised so Animals is the first category anyone browsing the site sees. A great board of regularly updated, pinned animal pix linking to stories will capture the idle browser and also build up followers quickly.

It doesn’t have to be about cute puppies - true life stories are hugely shareable (although if you find yourself welling up at the amazingness of US animals, I advise running the tale - tail? - through Snopes.com before you believe a word) as people like to add their own comments under the pin. It also means you get user engagement and comments to reverse publish if desired.

9. Don't beware Geeks; they bring gifts of audience and sharing. The Geek category is very engaged. Doctor Who, Sherlock, Harry Potter, nerd affirmations... all these things are shared repeatedly. For newspapers with access to celebrity interviews, film reviews etc, or photogenic locations where shows or films beloved of the Geeks have been shot or have featured (hello, Cardiff!) it's, well, a gift.

10. Embedding pins within your own CMS allows you the opportunity to invite your audience back over to Pinterest to discover stories they might have previously missed, sign up, start following you, etc etc.

11. Because Pinterest has integrated Facebook login options and actively encourages users to follow that route, a user has to opt out of it cross-posting their activity onto their Facebook stream. And I guess there are many, many pinners who simply miss the 'Skip' option Facebook hands them.

So, from a media point of view, there's the potential of hitting two new audiences when someone repins you - once on Pinterest, and once on their Facebook profile.

12. Finally, adding the ‘pin it’ button to your bookmarks bar is the fastest way to pin something to your boards quickly from the Record site. It’s here http://about.pinterest.com/goodies/ under the apps. It makes life a lot easier!

And you can also add a Pinterest widget button to let users pin your stories off the site, of course, should your developers be feeling kindly disposed towards doing some coding.

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Here today... gone tomorrow content? Back up your work...

This is not so much of a new post as a republishing of something that already exists on a third party site but there is a reason for it beyond lazy blogging.
Yesterday, I found myself rummaging through Delicious as I needed to use various Twitter tools I've either used or which have featured on, for example, Mashable, over the years. They were all neatly saved in my tags, but when I came to use them something like half of them led to redundant sites. That included the well-established Mr Tweet, which I always thought was an excellent tool (if a little annoying with the DMs) and far better than Twitter's own recommends ofo people to follow.

Tips, tools, hints and advice: Reflecting on a presentation to LJMU journalism students

Today was spent talking with students.
First up were two groups of PR students from Edge Hill university, whom I spent the morning chatting to about the working ways of newspapers and journalists, and the different opportunities for PR professionals to operate more effectively in multimedia.
Then, in the afternoon, I headed over to Liverpool John Moores University to talk to 3rd year journalism students about my job, how newspapers and reporters operate (and how they should operate in an ideal world) the tools we use, ways to build their brand as individuals, options they could consider if they were looking to start up as entrepreneurial journalists and the opportunities and bear traps of job interviews and work experience. I've uploaded my presentation to Slideshare and embedded further down this post*.

Websites and apps I really need to find the time to explore further

Time is a precious resource. There is never any of it to spare during the working day; it zips past at weekends at super speed and creaks by during meetings and dental appointments at a glacial pace. All this means there are various online sites and applications that I don't have time to do anything with; or, if I do have the time, I am in an Inappropriate Place, like a Coffee Nation franchise (with 20 minutes wifi only, the tightwads) or on a train.

So I spend a lot of time saving things to my bookmarks with tags like 'must try' or 'to do' or 'looks good' that sit there untouched for, well, some time. Tonight I inched a couple of steps in the right direction - I opened my bookmarks and had a sort through. There were several apps launched as the Next Big Thing that had quietly died without ever becoming even the Next Little Thing, others than I had just incorporated into my daily use without conscious effort, and a few that I have as much chance of ever understanding and using as I do of flying to the moon.
But there were also several apps and websites I know I should make the time to try out properly. Some of them look very complicated to set up but I suspect a bit of planing at the outset will, ultimately, be rewarding.

Crowdmap - Real time mapping of crowd coverage of events/incidents. I signed up ages ago but have done nothing with it since other than create one map I later deactivated. Needs a project of some sort and I will have to get my head around what that might be. The examples on the site are all about disasters and natural incidents but I had hoped to use it for the Mathew Street Festival coverage. Events conspired against me on that one but it's definitely an app for the future.

Amplify - seems to be a cross-posting content clipper with aggregation, social media and multimedia integration. You get your own email address to post through and the microblog function gives you 1,000 characters and there's a blog platform as well. Beyond joining up recently and adding some Twitter friends, I've done nothing with it. Worthy pursuing though, I feel.

iMacros for Firefox - installed, running merrily away in the background of my browser. I do NOTHING with it. I couldn't even remember what it was for, but as it was filed in my 'very useful' bookmarks folder so I'm pretty sure it is one I should have a proper play with. Basically it does this: "It sits in your Firefox toolbar, and lets you record tasks whether they are oft-performed web development tasks, or simple tasks such as opening a series of tabs you use each day". So it's a time saver - once I have the time to use it.

Outwit - again, installed and sat at the top of my browser, a constant silent taunt to my inability to just knuckle down and learn how to use it. Outwit trawls and collates content so you don't have to; download its Hub (general content) Images or Docs and it dozens of data recognition and extraction functions fitting in a Firefox extension.

TimeFlow Analytical Timeline - a visualisation tool for temporal data, it does everything from plotting  events over time on a scrollable, horizontal timeline to allowing users to aggregate data by headers in the data sets, offers various views and seems, in short, to be useful.

The OS Open Space API - need I say more?

Maptube - for viewing, sharing, mixing and mashing maps online. I did actually use this (at least a year ago) and it is NOT complicated. But it does suffer from not being something I particularly connected with and so I forget it's there as a content creation option. Again, one for a project I guess.

deviantART Muro - Digital drawing programme that also has collaboration options built in. Loved this when I did a quick test but never went back to try it again. Must go back and explore further.

Simile - In terms of welcoming the new user, a site with the sub-heading Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments is not exactly reaching out with open arms to love you. But wait! there's more; Simile also "seeks to enhance inter-operability among digital assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, metadata, and services. A key challenge is that the collections which must inter-operate are often distributed across individual, community, and institutional stores. We seek to be able to provide end-user services by drawing upon the assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, and metadata held in such stores". On reflection, I now know exactly why I saved it but never did anything with the site. However, it is a really useful repository of myriad applications and addons, so I will be revisiting it in the future. With my dictionary.

Soup - blog/aggregator/pinger. On revisiting it now, I don't understand why some people rave about Soup; still, at least that's one I don't need to worry about finding the time to learn more about. Unless you know differently?

Socialmarker -a pan-site tool for adding web pages to social bookmarking and social news sites. There is a Firefox addon but since mine currently include Share on Posterous (occasionally used) Share on Tumblr (rarely used) Import to Mendeley (never used) and Share on Cliqset (used once to test) I don't think it's going to make any difference if I add it. However, I do think this is a site worth me spending a bit of time using before I decide whether or not it's a keeper.

Stripgenerator - (below) used it once twice, loved it. Never had sufficient time or wit to return - but I still think it's a great site and one I should use more. Ditto Xtranormal.

Time is an illusion... by alisongow

* The quote is, of course, Douglas Adams. 

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Graphs, charts and tools to monitor your Twitter growth and reach

After Hanoi-based Steve Jackson (@ourman) tweeted "Is there any online software that will turn your Twitter activity into a graph?" I had a look through recommendations he received in reply and I thought I'd give them a try, alongside some of the ones I use regularly, or ones I've stumbled across and meant to use.

Using comic strip tools to create content

Here's a quick idea for some fun website content that takes seconds to make, and which can really personalise a story and make it sing a little... add a bespoke comic strip.
This is my attempt, using Stripgenerator - it took me a couple of minutes from signing up to designing a character, to completing my first strip:

I wish... by alisongow


Or you can see it in its natural habitat, complete with sharing and rating abilities, title and description, at this link.




Anyway, this one is obviously not reportage (although I'm fairly sure I've channelled my cat's fondest wish accurately) but I do like it as an option for web journalists who want to add a bit of spark to an article or blog post, or who fancy having a daily strip in the best traditions of those ol' dead tree publications.


Stripgenerator offers free or paid for options. On the free one you get a selection of stock human and 'beings' characters - from dogs to aliens - plus limited build-your-own options which are automatically saved as 'my characters'. You drag and drop characters, objects, shapes, text or thought bubbles into your selected frames, title, tag and publish. Then you can share on various social networks, or embed. Plus, you could always make it, screengrab it and use it in print should you wish.


And it's not the only one - there are several comic-creating sites I have yet to explore but plan too, like Pixton and Toondoo and I'm currently experimenting with a full-on page turner using the Comic Labs Extreme website (which is for kids but I'm not proud - I'm uploading my own photos and video to use instead).
So, not rocket science or Pulitzer-winning perhaps, but a nice addition to have, nonetheless.

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Storybird: A collaborative storytelling tool for... journalists (and why not?)

I don't know if I'm late to the party with this but I've just discovered Storybird
and, let me tell you, it's an amazing website. So brilliantly simple, effective (and free - essential for me to try something for the first time) and engaging - I think it has great opportunities for journalists who want to tell, collaborate with others and share stories online.

In a nutshell, Storybird is a sharing site that allows you to make, illustrate and publish online your own stories. I signed up, skipped the 'this is how it works' video and plunged in to create my own story.
As I typed in text, images suggested themselves (I love that for Typical British Weather it offered me a little cartoon cricketer) and there are lots of artist illustrations to choose from. Most, but not all, are cutesy but since I'd only suggest Storybird be used to illustrate ligher-hearted articles (or as stand-alones) I don't think it matters.
Here's my first attempt (I only noticed the spelling error once I'd published it. Sigh)  UPDATE: Storybird suffered a 'server outrage' on Christmas Eve and emailed me to say my story was one of a dozen that had been lost. Irritatingly, instead of displaying a message that says this story is now irretrievable, it says it has been set to private. It hasn't - it simply doesn't exist any more. I would prefer if Storybird had made this clear, rather than pretending I'd made the story private, especially since I've been offline for several days, and therefore unable to do anything about that incorrect message.

Most, but not all, of the illustrations offered up are cutesy but since I'd only suggest Storybird be used to illustrate ligher-hearted articles (or as stand-alones) I don't think it matters. You can have collaborative Storybird tales, with multiple authors, and they can also be open-ended.
The stories carry embed codes and badges, which is a huge plus as far as I'm concerned. I'm definitely going to be using this on the Liverpool Daily Post site soon, as Arts Editor Laura Davis and I are plotting an Online Literary Festival (more of which anon). And I could see this fitting into the scheme of things brilliantly as one way for our readers to get involved.

Anyway, in case I haven't been quite clear on my feelings, Storybird is GREAT. It's in public beta so do sign up and have a go. I haven't been so thrilled with an online discovery since I made my first toon using Xtranormal.

Using animation to tell a news story

No, I'm honestly not suggesting a return to those horrible stilted avatars reading the news headlines, but I do like the idea of using some animation to bring a reader into a story - particularly if the story is the latest in a long running saga and a handy recap of the tale-to-date would be useful.

I made my first cartoon using Xtranormal today; I know it's a site usually used for making training and presentation tools, but I was interested in whether it might work for journalists.
It took me about an hour and I had a lot of fun doing it. As the clip embedded here explains, I chose an avatar (there's everything from corporate to robot avatars available but I fancied having blue hair) and gave it a voice (she's really plummy unfortunately) then started adding animations.

The script is translated to audio, and it does sound stilted, although when I played around with some of the words and punctuation it improved. I think if I'd spent more time on it I could have got it to flow better.
So I know it's not Toy Story but it does the job, and I was more interested in seeing how efficiently it worked, and how long it took to put together, than the style and content.

Anyway, it made me think: why shouldn't we incorporate more animation in our websites? I don't mean some 'toon cat informing us of a moider in a local suburb, I'm thinking more about the options to introduce some fun back into what we do, and what we provide for our audience.
I'd love to see reporters being given time to make multimedia content - soundslides, cartoon, blogging, timelines, wordclouds - to compliment the words they have to churn out every day.



So, this is my first cartoon, made for free on a free site which offers paying customers more characters, audio, sets and other options.

Testing some audio-blogging tools for journalists

Mobile podcasting can be a real boon for newspaper journalists on a breaking story - it's a quick, easy way to get a story out. For the listener, it feels fast, real, and engaging - and it's also a simple way of filing copy back to the office.
I guess we're all too attached to our lovely, weighty prose but there are always more apps coming along to to make podcasting easier on-the-go so it's worth giving it a try.

The latest one arrived yesterday courtesy of a tweet from The Pauls (Kinlan and Rawlings, creators of FriendDeck, among other things) who asked for testers for Friendboo - a new FriendFeed podcasting tool. In their own words:

FriendBoo is a super simple audio blogging application built for the users of Friendfeed. All you need is a Friendfeed account and a regular phone.

It's in very early beta so a few gremlins were unavoidable but it's looking promising. I reckon regional newspapers with FriendFeed sites could potentially use this as an easy 'audio-comment under stories' option for readers.
I like it because it's a unique, dynamic addition to a site that is, for many users, a simply a nexus point for information from other sites. Probably more importantly for the developers Robert Scoble is also a new fan.
So, after a couple of tests I thought I'd see how it compared with other sites I've used.


PROS: Simple dial-in; available for UK and USA users; established commenting facility; cross-posting; fast, embeddable; sharing options, decent sound quality.
CONS: Early beta means inevitable hiccups; not the prettiest embed.
Friendfeed account required.

Undoubtedly the most popular site (for now - it's amazing how faddy the web is) - is Audioboo which I tried out for the first time using an iPod touch with external mic (cost me £19.99 from Apple and works brilliantly with the Skype app). The embedded player looks lovely, and the sound quality is excellent but it's really restricting its audience to App-olytes right now. I've synched my Nokia to the Audioboo account but I've never managed to get it to work properly.
*UPDATE: Sarah Hartley's instructions on how to 'boo from a Nokia are here



PROS: Ecellent sound quality; very simple; cross-posting options; photo-adding; rating and comment facilities, fast, free, attractive embed.
CONS: Unavailable for non-iPhone users (does work with iPod Touch with external mic); doesn't feel as much of a social media option as the others.
Audioboo account required.

For non-Apple users, Ipadio is a good option. Discovered this back in May and although I've not had cause to use it since I have kept it at the back of my mind as an exciting new site. The sound quality is good and the embed is very nice, although I don't like the 'second phonecast' text. What's the point of it?



PROS: Simple to use, low-cost, good sound quality, embed and subscribe options, fast-loading site, short PIN, fast upload, cross-posting; free service ('right now' according to the blurb).
CONS: Dont like the 'Another fine phonephlog' cross-post text;
Ipadio account required

And, for nostalgia sake, I returned to Utterli, a site I loved right up until the moment they stopped taking calls from the UK because of costs. Using it with my laptop I recorded and uploaded an Utter in seconds (I think the limit is a 10 minute podcast) but mobile-podcasting isn't an option so that makes it pretty limited.

Mobile post sent by Alison using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

You upload with text, video or photos if you wish, and others respond via audio or text. It's a nice idea, and I wish the phone option still worked.

PROS: Free (from laptop); easily embedded, cross-posting, photo and video uploads supported, good social media opportunities, community-building.
CONS: Not available on mobile in UK; not always great sound quality.
Utterli account required

So, which would I use? Right now I'd say Ipadio is the most functional although - like Audioboo - it's more about broadcasting than conversation. But I think Friendboo could be very good once it's ready to launch and the threaded conversation opportunities are far greater. Look forward to seeing how it develops.

Using old and new media for breaking news

A crane fell down in Liverpool today, crashing onto an apartment block, and I knew about it within seconds, from two sources.
One was eyewitness who rang the Echo - it being the kind of local paper that people do still ring when things happen - and the other was Thom Shannon sat in an office near the scene of the accident, who twittered what had happened:


Within seconds Thom and Stuart Robarts at FACT had photos online via Twitpic and Flickr (Thom used a rather ingenious method of combining iPhone and binoculars to get a shot) before photographer extraordinaire, Pete Carr, heard about the news and headed off with his kit.
His photos are here.
The Echo and Post had great copy, a map, images and video on the websites but it was taking too long to cache, so we made sure the papers Twitter streams kept up constant breaking news with links back to our copy, while retweeting locals who had images on Flickr and other sites.

There was the inevitable 'who needs newspapers' tweet...



Need newspapers? maybe not, but a lot of those on my networks wanted journalists to ask the questions they wanted answers to. After all, everyone knew one fact - a crane had fallen onto flats - but it was journalists from the Post&Echo who were trying to fill in the details.
So you have...



followed by...



Scores of people were asking if anyone was hurt, were people trapped, just what had happened - and we were able to answer those queries only because we had reporters on the ground, in the office making phone calls to the emergency services, and talking to the HSE, among other. We managed to wrongly credit @FACT_Liverpool on the Echo's changed front page but since the story broke as the print run was in progress, it was inevitable a mistake would creep through.

Anyway, it was a good way to combine as many different strands of storytelling as possible. Traditional print, mixed with online social media, staff video and photos, and broke the news, then kept updating the story, very effectively.

I also put together a quick Dipity Flipbook of a feed grabbed from Twitter Search, which should update itself in the future.

crane collapse - Twitter Search on Dipity.

I could have made the search term wider but you'd be amazed how many tweets contain the word 'crane' without it ever being in reference to "Any arm which swings about a vertical axis at one end, used for supporting a suspended weight", let alone collapsing ones.

Using Slideshare for a blog post

A while ago I wrote a blog post on the lifecycle of a news story, that our editorial training editor suggested I turn into slides, as a potential teaching tool.
I messed around with the idea and then showed my attempt to an old mate, Glyn Mottershead, Professional Tutor in Newspaper Journalism at Cardiff University and general star (find him here ).
He performed ppt kungfu on my slides, and I finally got around to uploading it to Slideshare...

Lifecycle of a News Story

View more presentations from Alison Gow. (tags: journalism web)

New Dipity - me likee

While I was in New York my invite to preview the upcoming incarnation of Dipity dropped in the inbox. Which sorta killed me, as I wanted to start playing with it immediately - but I had Manhattan's shops all around me.
In the end Manhattan (and my marriage) won but now I'm back home I've had a chance to look around the new Dipity and I like it a lot - especially the extra embed options, the fact that it can display full screen, and the added services that can be fed into a timeline.
I also can't wait for the new Twitter feed to go live - that will be a great way to display a breaking news story.
So, while I start playing around with things (and I have big plans for Liverpool and Everton timelines this week) I've skivved off a proper blog update for a couple of days. Instead, here's a Dipity timeline (anonymous but not created by me) of the the Wall Street Crash. Take it from me, I didn't see a single stockbroker who appeared to be even considering tightening his or her (Gucci) belt.

Learning from liveblogging

I'd love to know how many of the UK's regional newspapers have run liveblogs this year; it seems as though real-time coverage and participation in almost everything (public spectacles, event TV, sports, political rallies to name a few) is on the increase when it was hardly in evidence 12 months ago.

I've been pondering this as the Newspaper Society is planning an article on the Post & Echo's liveblogs, and contacted me for some information, plus I also received an email from CoverItLive's Keith McSuprren with links to two liveblogs of the Emmys.

The New York Times liveblogged the event on its TV Decoder blog. It reminded me of the Guardian's entertaining television liveblogs and has great knock-about comments from readers/viewers who are interacting with the host and each other.

Canada's National Post used CIL to liveblog and the contrast is quite apparent.
It engages the post-event reader just as much as those participating at the time - it's compelling, entertaining and, possibly a more attractive commercial option for sponsors as well.
The posted comments show how invested the online audience was in the Times' offering but it just doesn't have the same longevity, or presence, as the Post's.

The Post & Echo run liveblogs fairly regularly; the last one saw me part-hosting the whiteknuckle ride that was the Everton FC v Standard Leige UEFA cup match. I was only doing a 30 minute stint but it was incredibly intensive.
The footie liveblogs are great for fans without access to radios or TV (some are overseas, some trapped at work on a night shift) and their demand for information is relentless - believe me, if you think ringing in copy on deadline to a news editor is intense, try finding the team sheets for a UEFA cup match with a clamouring audience.

So, some things I've learned to make my liveblogging easier:

Preparation is vital
Before you start, ensure you've banked information your readers are likely need so you can upload it with minimal delay. For the Tall Ships that meant knowing links to any webcams and shuttlebus times in advance; for La Machine, a timetable of the giant Spider's performances. Being able to respond very quickly to queries on these issues (which tend to come right at the beginning) sends a message to your audience that your blog is the source of information they need. You'll get constant queries for this information and can just refer them to the top of the blog.

State your objectives for readers
Newcomers don't necessarily know what a liveblog is, they may have just Googled some keywords in an attempt to find information and wound up on the blog. So a welcome and introduction which states exactly what's going on then users' expectation levels are set. For example, football fans won't expect kick-by-kick coverage but will understand it offers broad reporting, colour, photos and fan banter.

Advertise your activities
Share what you're doing with the liveblog. As in 'Our photographer is downloading the images now - they should be up here in the next 5 minutes' or 'we're planning to live-stream this event starting at xpm'... it lets users know there's a structure in place for the coverage and makes the liveblog feel more as-it-happens. You can also plug upcoming related content in the newspaper, let people know how they can get involved or point them towards photosales.

Remember it's a LIVEblog
Some liveblog software have timelines to show what time comments are posted. If there are lengthy gaps between when you post, promote readers' comments or upload content the existing audience could start leaving and new arrivals might not bother hanging around. If things quieten down it can be a good time to ask questions, promote a poll, or maybe post some links to relevant copy on yours or other websites. If you don't keep it looking fresh and active you're inviting a 'is this thing on?' comment appearing from a reader...

You can't please everybody
I feel an obligation to blog readers when I'm either filing for a liveblog or helping produce one. After all, we've offered them a service, they've bothered to come and use it, so we have to listen to their opinions, criticisms and observations.
There's no point ignoring critical comments or refusing to upload them; accept not everyone will like what your doing and let those that do respond. I think every liveblog I've been involved with has attracted at least one comment along the lines of how useless newspapers are now compared to what they were, and how we should be doing real journalism.
Don't post defensive replies - it looks petty, and blog readers are just as likely to shout down the naysayer for you. And don't promote comments that contain language you'd refuse to accept in the printed paper.

Blog readers want images
They really do and if you fail to deliver they may well get annoyed; the clamour for images on a liveblog of an event is daunting at times.
During the La Machine liveblog our Flickr group photos were an invaluable resource - as was the special text line for spectators to send their cameraphone pix. YouTube is great - a recent search for Steven Gerrard produced a host of (very professional!) '10 greatest Gerrard goals' type video packages, which the BBC and SKY may not be too happy about but hey... liveblog readers waiting for kick-off would love to have a link to them. Livestreaming is a great option; readers aren't too fussed about the quality - they just want to experience something as it happens.

So those are some of the things I've learned while liveblogging. Personally I love doing them - you really feel a part of the event you're covering, you're providing a service that people enjoy, appreciate and get involved with, and it means you get to break news. It's also a great way to change minds in the newsroom about the value of interaction - when you ask something and a response is straight away, it brings home the fact that newspapers have an audience with answers as well as questions.

A Dipity TimeTube of La Princess

And another great excuse to use Dipity... this time it's the TimeTube application that I'm trying out. This has taken all the YouTube videos with the keywords I selected (La Princess, La Machine) and worked it into an embeddable display of videos.
This is a really nice way of displaying the giant spider videos in one place - I'm going to try to embed it on the live blog now; fingers crossed it works.
I've used the small format of TimeTube here for display purposes - the customary larger embed was also available but I found when I posted the Everton FC Timeline here it didn't display well on the blog because of all my 'furniture'.
The full-size La Princess TimeTube is here

Building a Yahoo Pipe

Today is a good day; I have successfully built a working Yahoo Pipe.
It's not especially pretty but it is, I think, quite clever; it filters all the latest news, photos and quality blog posts from the world of Fashion for the Girls Behaving Stylishly team to place on their blog as a widget, and to help them spot trends quickly without having to trawl the web.
Building a pipe is nowhere near as complicated as it looks and as an information-sharing tool for journalists it has myriad possibilities.



The reason I finally got around to building a pipe was that I spent a day on a training course run by Paul Bradshaw, whose post on building Yahoo Pipes mashups is here.
Paul walked the class through every step of building a pipe and successfully de-mystified the whole process to such an extent that, in addition to the Liverpool FC pipe I created in class, I logged at home and created the fashion one.

How I did it:
1. Registered with Yahoo Pipes (as with Flickr, you need a Yahoo id to use it) and clicked 'Create a Pipe on the homepage

2. Dragged a 'Fetch Feed' onto the graph area. It then looked like this:





3. Ran advanced searches through Google news for 'fashion', 'style' and 'models', narrowing the search parameters by using the search field filters

4. Once I was happy with my Google news results I right-clicked the RSS feed and scrolled to the 'Copy Link Location':




5. Returning to my pipe, I right clicked in the url space of the Fetch Feed box and pasted my Google News RSS link



6. Next step: Find some fashionista-type blogs. I went to Technorati.com and searched for 'fashion'. It found me some fashion blogs but also threw up related tags including one for 'fashion experts' which seemed promising; clicking that link took me to host of blogs by fashion experts. I right-clicked on Subscribe and copied the url to the Pipe feed as before.
Then I added a Flickr feed from the Pipes menu and a 'Union' from the 'Operators' section on the left, to link all my pipes into one. Finally, I took a 'Filter' and a 'Unique' from 'Operators' to screen out sweary and/or duplicate posts, and added a 'truncate' option to the fashion pipe so I only get the latest updates.



The next step is to make a widget for the pipe using Widgetbox.com (I'm thinking leopard print for the background).
Of course, the easiest thing is to share the knowledge so the rest of the team can build their own Yahoo Pipe and put it a Reader to easily follow breaking news and events in the areas they cover.
So, Yahoo Pipes may look forbidding but it's definitely worth having exploring; it is much, much easier than it looks.

Everton FC's stadium plan for Kirkby on Dipity

This took a couple of hours and I had hundreds of stories and photos to choose from. I've just used an intro and then linked back to the story on wwww.liverpooldailypost.co.uk
I've blogged about how much I liked the idea of using Dipity to tell stories before, so I figured I ought to put my money where my mouth was...
Videos are being embedded separately - if I hadn't been doing this for the website I would have also included independent bloggers, other websites and news sources as well, but this is such an incredibly controversial issue I kept it simple, using only Post and Echo copy and images.
Still, I think it looks quite good:

Testing TimeTube

This is a great tool! It's Dipity's TimeTube, which basically lets you search for keyword tags on YouTube and displays the findings on a timeline, a la Plurk (but left to right this time).
The Liverpool FC one works particularly well (lots of great goals for fan bloggers, for example) but I've plumped for Mathew Street videos here as you get some music while you watch. Which is always nice.
I heard about it via Caroline Middlebrook on Twitter, and I can think of lots of ways to use the TimeTube on newspaper websites - this is something to revisit with colleages tomorrow for sure!