Consider this post a public service to save us all from further cringeworthy reads on the topic from ill-informed journalists unable to undertake even a modicum of research.
It’s fairly hard to see why some are so damned quick to rubbish the social media networks having such a significant effect on how society operates – not to mention impacting on the very industry employing them.
First we had this ridiculous piece in the Evening Standard from a Nick Curtis (he never did take me up on my kind offer to show him around a bit), then there was the sort of celebrity focussed mindless drivel we’ve all come to expect from the Daily Mail and now the should-know better Independent seems to have employed someone who receives signals from outerspace to come up with “evil, judgement-warping rays”!
I’ve introduced quite a few journalists to Twitter (and other social networks) over the past year or so. Those who explore and have the necessary inquiring mind (isn’t that a re-requisite of a decent journalist?) are now reaping the rewards with story leads, contacts and a community of practice which helps, educates and assists by utilising the most time-efficient tools available.
So I’ve come up with these ten steps to getting started which anyone tasked with writing about Twitter will find helpful.
1. Join and participate. Sign up in your real name with a bio and picture so the rest of us know who we are talking to.
2. How to behave. The oft-quoted cocktail party analogy is helpful. You wouldn’t sit in the corner under a blanket refusing to speak to anyone so don’t be a lurker. You wouldn’t spy on people and then reveal personal details in a newspaper (unless obvious illegality, hypocrisy, immorality etc.) so don’t do it here; you wouldn’t yell opinions rather than discuss, etc, etc.
3. Move out of your bubble. Read something other than those above. There’s a heap of opposing views here. HOW TO Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics & Luddites
4. Follow people who find it useful and watch how they behave. There’s a list of UK journos who found it before you here and I’d recommend some of the US experts such as Clay Shirky @cshirky, Pat Thornton @jiconoclast and Jeff Jarvis @jeffjarvis to give you a jolt out of print-think.
5. Don’t behave like a digital colonialist. Just because it’s new to you, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been there for quite a while – talk to the natives.
6. Download and use a client such as thwirl or tweetdeck. Using the Twitter site interface gives you about 20 per cent of the available experience and wouldn’t be a fair representation.
7. Find people who share your interests using tools such as Tweetscan or Tweetgrid and see who the important people in your locality are with Twittergrader.
8. See what everyone else is talking about and emerging topics by using Twitscoop.
9. Remember that celebrity is a very small aspect of the whole. There are serious news issues such as the coverage of the Mumbai bombings and the use of Twitter for campaigners in Egypt as well as more recently being the platform for the first pix of the Hudson plane crash to be distributed.
10. Finally, ask your readers/users. After all you are writing this for them and the last thing you want to do is alienate them. If you have a blog or website carry out some research in its usefulness there, if not use a public polling platform such as Ask500People.com. Here’s what my users say;
Dim Sum Digital 
Personally I think media professionals bashing these services are covering themselves from potential failure. There is a huge difference between the kind of engagement you find with stories and information online, that is fundamentally different to the way you handle things in traditional media outlets.
You need to take on another mindset, your points 2,3,5 demonstrate this very well.
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Personally I think media professionals bashing these services are covering themselves from potential failure. There is a huge difference between the kind of engagement you find with stories and information online, that is fundamentally different to the way you handle things in traditional media outlets.
You need to take on another mindset, your points 2,3,5 demonstrate this very well.
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hear hear! plenty other under-researched Twitter articles in MSM which grate – Bryony Gordon on Telegraph.co.uk, for example.
like point six especially. Journalists who only try Twitter via the main homepage and then proceed to moan about its uselessness, when they’re only following a few people and haven’t tried it via an application like Twhirl or Tweetdeck are especially annoying.
Twitter is what you make it. For journalists about to Twitter-rant: Don’t follow the people you find irrelevant; no-one’s obliged to Tweet personal details if they don’t want to; understand that most journalists on Twitter see it as a social and interactive publishing/research tool. And if you still hate it and want to moan about it then do some research before ranting.
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hear hear! plenty other under-researched Twitter articles in MSM which grate – Bryony Gordon on Telegraph.co.uk, for example.
like point six especially. Journalists who only try Twitter via the main homepage and then proceed to moan about its uselessness, when they’re only following a few people and haven’t tried it via an application like Twhirl or Tweetdeck are especially annoying.
Twitter is what you make it. For journalists about to Twitter-rant: Don’t follow the people you find irrelevant; no-one’s obliged to Tweet personal details if they don’t want to; understand that most journalists on Twitter see it as a social and interactive publishing/research tool. And if you still hate it and want to moan about it then do some research before ranting.
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very well put.
lets all boo web snobbery.
boo.
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very well put.
lets all boo web snobbery.
boo.
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Maybe you need to write one of these articles for journalists like Giles Hattersley in the Sunday Times writing about Wikipedia as well 😉
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Maybe you need to write one of these articles for journalists like Giles Hattersley in the Sunday Times writing about Wikipedia as well 😉
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I think it is a very sensible and a very well written post. I wrote a detailed post on “Twitter, Twitter: A Case for Social Media” on my blog, http://issuesinacademics.blogspot.com/ and I feel sorry that I hadn’t read your piece earlier to writing my post. Your piece is informative and it spells out its ideas with clarity.
Congratulations.
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I think it is a very sensible and a very well written post. I wrote a detailed post on “Twitter, Twitter: A Case for Social Media” on my blog, http://issuesinacademics.blogspot.com/ and I feel sorry that I hadn’t read your piece earlier to writing my post. Your piece is informative and it spells out its ideas with clarity.
Congratulations.
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yes, yes. Twitter gives us things to think about: communication, branding, society, psychology, language, etc. But, I am, personally, very tired of seeing “twitter” in every other update. Perhaps I’m following the wrong people, but I like following folks interested in technology, education, language, science, research, society, etc… so what am I to do. Please leaders, let’s get on with the party and quit twittering about twittering. Surely when mankind began using written language, most of his earliest writings were not on the topic of “now we are using written language, I wonder what this means… let’s write about it”.
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yes, yes. Twitter gives us things to think about: communication, branding, society, psychology, language, etc. But, I am, personally, very tired of seeing “twitter” in every other update. Perhaps I’m following the wrong people, but I like following folks interested in technology, education, language, science, research, society, etc… so what am I to do. Please leaders, let’s get on with the party and quit twittering about twittering. Surely when mankind began using written language, most of his earliest writings were not on the topic of “now we are using written language, I wonder what this means… let’s write about it”.
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