Posts tagged as:

Twitter

Why Twitter is worth the time

March 4, 2010

in Social Media

I can’t believe I’m still having to make this case. But I can throw a rock and hit half a dozen people in our company who –at the mention of Twitter– will huff, “I don’t care about what some stranger had for lunch!”

I think most of them know that something more important is going on but they don’t want to admit they might be wrong on the topic. And because they are NOT part of “the conversation,” they don’t see tweets like these on the Twitter page of Mark Neumann, a candidate for governor in Wisconsin, where our company operates a news network.

Neuman has almost 3,600 followers and some of them –who might not otherwise– might hit the link to our site to hear the interview with their guy.

PS: This is the kind of blindness that brings out the smart ass in me.

Tagged as: Twitter

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Why the caged bird tweets

March 2, 2010

in Social Media

This site is not live yet but you can get email notification. Assume the convicts won’t be tweeting directly. I’m trying to imagine how this won’t be a bit of a downer.

Tagged as: prison, Twitter

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Basic Twitter for Journalists

February 5, 2010

in Journalism, Social Media

“Still skeptical about Twitter? A webcast from the Columbia School of Journalism. Participants include: @BrianStelter (Brian Stelter, NYT media reporter) and @HeyMarci (Marci Alboher, author/journalist & senior fellow at Civic Ventures, a nonprofit think tank on boomers, work and social purpose), with @sreenet moderating

Tagged as: Twitter

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The art of the tweet

February 2, 2010

in Social Media

From a thoughtful –and useful– post by Tammy Erickson (@tammyerickson) on how to make Twitter fun for your followers:

  1. Don’t report banal details. Unless you’re observing a true breaking news event (and note: this term does not include what you or your child ate for lunch), skip it.
  2. Do interpret your experiences. How do they make you feel? What do they mean to you?
  3. Do share the oddities you observe. Look for things that seem unusual, out-of-place, surprising.
  4. Do share things you love – quotes, phrases, descriptions of events that brought joy to your day.

Her conclusion:

“Slow down, enjoy. Listen to the world’s music. Share the best of your experiences, but remember, 140 characters is a unique format — more like poetry or Haiku than news reporting.”

Tagged as: Twitter

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Can you cover the new using only Twitter and Facebook?

January 22, 2010

in Journalism, Social Media

Asking that question in one of our newsrooms will get you burned at the stake. The five journalists who will attempt to answer that question will be safely tucked away in a French farmhouse. With access only to Facebook and Twitter, they’ll try to verify the validity of stories (by cross-checking multiple feeds?) over a five day period. No smartphones, TV, radio or newspapers. They’ll be blogging their experiences but I couldn’t find a link. Will add it if I do.

Tagged as: newspapers, Twitter

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post.ly adds rich media to tweets

January 21, 2010

in Social Media

Tagged as: posterous, Twitter

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Tweeting from the slammer

January 10, 2010

in Politics, Social Media

I didn’t follow the story of the arrest and conviction of Jeff Smith last year. Here’s a couple of grafs from Wikipedia:

“Jeff Smith was a Democratic member of the Missouri Senate, representing the 4th district, covering the western portion of the City of St. Louis. On August 25, 2009 he pled guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and resigned his seat. He admitted his involvement, and attempted cover-up, in two federal election law violations committed during his 2004 campaign for Congress.

Each conspiracy count is punishable by up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. He resigned effective August 25, 2009 and was sentenced to 1 year and a day of prison. He also was fined $50,000. His lawyer requested Smith be sent to a prison camp in Marion, Illinois.”

This morning I learned from @chadlivengood that Mr. Smith (@jeffmsith7027) is on Twitter. Seems Mr. Smith emails his tweets to a friend who posts for him.

I’m a curious why he has access to email but not Twitter? Anybody help me out with that? Would love to interview someone with the federal prison system who could illucidate.

Are there lots of federal prisoners on Twitter? Is there a list somewhere? What –if anything– does this say about social networking? Do prisoners within the same facility follow each other? Would it be tacky to do @fakejeffsmith feed with humorus tweets. Yes, I’m pretty sure it would.

Tagged as: prison, Twitter

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Jonathan Brownfield: Sports Photographer

December 29, 2009

in Interview, Photos, Social Media, Sports

Jonathan BrownfieldI don’t remember how I happened across Jonathan Brownfield. One of those six degrees of Twitter things, probably. Jonathan is a professional sports photographer and has shot games involving “our” teams so that was probably it.

Along the way he mentioned visiting family in Missouri over the holidays so I tweeted him with an invite to stop by for lunch/tour/interview.  Today was the day.

Here’s some background from one of Jonathan’s websites (for those that take a pass on the interview):

“While in high school, I started working as an assistant for Sports Illustrated photographer, David Klutho. That marked the beginning of my career as a professional photographer. This lead to having over 20 photos published in Sports Illustrated.

When I started college I began working for the University of Missouri Athletic Department and became their Head of Photography. Besides shooting, I coordinated a group of photographers to make sure every home event was covered.

During my sophomore year I was recruited by Hooters to photograph some of the local girls for the 2008 and 2009 calendars and the 2008 Miss Hooters International Beauty Pageant.

I currently shoot sports for US Presswire.

Now days my work is regularly seen in USA Today, ESPN Magazine, and in the LA Times.”

Did I mention that Jonathan is 23 years old?

I made a list of questions to ask a professional sports photographer only to discover that Jonathan has branched out from that (still a passion but now kind of a weekend thing). I rambled on with my questions so I’ve chopped the visit into two, 20-minutes chunks. The first one is mostly bio and social media. The second finally gets around to some sports stuff.

AUDIO: Interview Part 1

AUDIO: Interview Part 2

I was very impressed with Jonathan. Accomplishing what he has at 23, it would be easy to conclude one’s poop is odorless. He is what your grandmother called “a nice young man.”

You can see some of his photography here. He blogs here. And he’s @johnnybond86 on Twitter.

Tagged as: audio, Twitter

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Monsanto Twitter silence on AP story

December 13, 2009

in Advertising, Social Media

I just spotted (in Google Reader) an Associated Press story about Monsanto with the headline: Monsanto seed business role revealed. Here’s the first graph:

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

I was curious what the twitterverse was saying about the story and found an endless stream of links and comments. No surprise there.

I’ve been following one of Monsanto’s Twitter feeds (@monsantoco) for a while and dropped into see how they were responding to the story and the Twitter buzz.

monsanto-twitter

Nothing since Friday morning at 9:10. Hard to draw any conclusions without know more but with almost 3,000 followers, why wouldn’t you use Twitter to “engage in the conversation.” If not now, when? If not Twitter, how? If you’re going to use social media to tell your story, you gotta be there if/when the story gets unpleasant or be conspicuous by your absence.

Depending on the serious of the AP investigation, there are probably lots of emails and phone calls and maybe even a few meetings, to decide if/how/where to respond to the story.

If anyone on Learfield’s senior management team are reading this, take a few minutes at your next meeting to talk about how you would respond to a big, negative story about our company.  I really think we could engage quickly without making our lawyers all jittery and nauseous.

Disclosure: Monsanto is an advertiser on at least one of the radio networks owned by the company I work for.

UPDATE: Monsanto did get a response up last night. And linked to it from Twitter. Probably hard for a company that large to move any faster.

Tagged as: Twitter

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Learfield Sports Twitter List

December 1, 2009

in Learfield, Social Media, Sports

I started noodling around with Twitter in March, 2007 (I had to go back and look). I’ll be the first to confess that Twitter is/was damned hard to explain. So I could hardly be surprised when some most all of the Learfield Grown-ups pooh-poohed the idea when I told them about it.

With the able assistance of JJ the Amazing Intern, I compiled a Twitter list of our university partners. And as far as we can determine, they ALL have a Twitter page and most feature a prominent link on their home page. Ahem.

For some reason I can’t find an “official” Twitter page for Indiana University but assume they have one. Hit the comment link if you find it.

Given the large and enthusiastic fan base, Twitter is a near-perfect tool for touching that community.

Tagged as: Twitter

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