Should I write for free?
I’ve noticed a bit of an upsurge in emails asking me if I want to be part of something exciting!, BIG! or fantastic!. These are, invariably, invitations from some massive corporation to provide professional copy for them – for free.
The way this model works is fairly straightforward. The company takes your copy, and that of several dozen other journalists or bloggers, hosts in on ad-heavy sites or syndicates it to larger media organisations and watches the cash roll in.
In exchange it gives you nothing of real value, beyond vague promises of link juice, raising your profile or potentially the odd bone thrown from central office – a DVD or trip.
There’s another model a step above this that promises revenue share – a split of the advertising revenue generated from the page on which your articles sit. This will literally add up to a few pennies a day.
I’m aware of a few services that have contacted me in the past, offering decent copy at under a penny a word. How can anyone make a living out of that?
Likewise, there’s a whole host of subcontinental outfits offering cheap content from skilled writers. The costs from a client side don’t really stack up when you look at everything, but you can bet there’ll be plenty of agencies weighing them up against employing a UK-based hack.
Now, the market and collapse of newspaper and online ad revenues is ultimately to blame for all of this – that’s globalisation for you. Simply put, there are not enough jobs out there for skilled journalists, or snappers for that matter.
But I’m extremely uncomfortable with the way certain companies are taking advantage of this. They are, essentially, using free labour and making money off the back of it. Where to begin with the moral ramifications of that one?
Journalism is a skill without compare in many ways, in that it’s extremely hard to put a value on writing. Most quality stuff rises to the top in journalism but, in the online arms race for more and more content, crap will suffice a lot of the time.
So it’s becoming harder for good writers to stand out in a crowded market. Quite simply, that market isn’t too picky at the moment.
You might provide an article for less than you’d like, but someone else will do it for less. And if they do it for half the amount you would, who’s to say that it’s only half as good? Certainly not the Community Managers scavenging out-of-work journos and bloggers these days for free copy.
I find it hard to blame any journalists who do provide copy for free – that nebulous offers of ‘influence’ and ‘exposure’ may be a valuable one further down the line.
And short of some kind of universal ‘all for one’ stand by writers of every stripe on the planet, refusing to work for free is a rather empty – if noble – gesture, I fear.
To an extent working for free – especially in PR, journalism, advertising – has always been part of the equation, but when companies actively go out soliciting free work from professionals it’s a bridge too far.
What’s to be done? Send a polite but pointed reply turning the offer down?
That’s certainly my choice, but I’m gainfully employed. Who could blame an out-of-work journo or freelance hack for taking a punt?
There is no answer: there’s demand and there’s supply – no amount of wailing or gnashing of teeth is going to do anything about it.
I’m reminded of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: the powerless and exploited workforces; the lowering of standards; the compromise of quality for a fast buck.
It’s not edifying, but it’s the economic system we live in. Manual workers have been exploited in the way for decades, centuries even. Now it’s the turn of professionals.
Adrian Chiles ‘ordered to shave beard by BBC’ – Beeb paranoia or PR stunt?
Truly has the world gone mad. What started off as quite an amusing aside relating to the unsightly stubble on Adrian Chiles’ face has turned into something of a media mini-storm, with the news that the Beeb has ordered Chiles to shave off his beard.
Bizarrely, famous beardies such as Noel Edmonds, David Blunkett and Justin Lee Collins have come out the woodwork to support the Brummie workaholic, who fronts The One Show, Match of the Day 2 and The Apprentice: You’re Fired.
What’s not clear is whether all of this is a bit of canny marketing or more evidence of a jittery BBC worrying about upsetting, well, anyone in a post-Sachsgate world.
Exactly what sort of problem sporting a beard poses is not especially clear to me, a beard-wearer for the best part of a decade. Telling a man his face au naturel is unsuitable for the workplace seems dangerously close to me to telling a woman to go home and put some make-up on, unless she wants a disciplinary.
But the fact that Chiles is rumoured to be in poll position to take over Jonathan Ross’ chat show, pretty much the strongest piece of showbiz real estate at the Big British Castle is interesting. It’s a good bit of exposure for Chiles at what could be a fairly crucial point in his career.
Chiles’ reaction to beardgate? “Women and many gay men have told me it looks good, so it’s staying.” Wonder what Christine thinks of it.
Stay or go? Vote in my poll!
Avatar reinvents a genre, and perhaps creates another
Fittingly Avatar seems to have become more of a phenomenon than a film, with a surrounding media clusterfuck/shitstorm depending on where you get your news.
I say fittingly because, as a film, there’s not a huge amount to Avatar. Its narrative and script are a hodge-podge of more influences than I could initially nail down, but there are bits of Aliens, Dances With Wolves, Braveheart, The Emerald Forest, Ferngully and Pocahontos in there.
I don’t think this matters though, the plot is a fairly loose framework that the greatest movie spectacle of all time sits on, and inevitably this overshadows everything else.
I think Avatar is more an experience than a film as such, and the mind-boggling FX combined with 3D make it an experience unlike any other. As such, it’s more immersive than any other film I can think of, and it blurs the boundaries between movie media and gaming more successfully than any video game port.
Its set-up of introducing a human into an alien species via, well, an avatar that looks exactly like the blue animal people of Pandora smacks of a number of gaming set-ups, and the extended section where protagonist Jake learns how to control his avatar and learn the ways of the Na’vi people straight out of a gaming tutorial. Nothing really happens for about 45 minutes, it’s almost sandbox-y. When he’s sufficiently well-versed in the physical and mental demands of his new life, the adventure proper begins.
I suspect this is why Avatar seems to have had such a strange effect on people. There are stories in the press about people feeling suicidal having seen the film, when confronted with the mundanity of their own existence. And there’s an effort to set up a community based on the ways of the Na’vi tribe. People who have seen the film seem to displaying some sort of separation anxiety from the film, its alien people and their beguiling world.
Is this because of the immersive nature of the film and its 3D world? Or is it more about the disconnect between people’s aspirations and their real lives – a form of Marxist alienation made explicit by the themes and style of the film. It’s also tempting to ponder whether Avatar speaks to people on a much more insidious level concerning nature, instinct and id.
Inevitably, Avatar has been labelled variously as patronising, racist and dangerously subversive. It’s easy to understand why, there’s a hefty anti-colonialism anti-capitalist theme running through the film, and though it generally shies away from making associations with specific situations or races explicit there are some clunking lines that make the War on Terror its most obvious target.
Frankly I think most of the criticism of the film is borne of the inherent ideological threat, or stems from the modern bane of movie reviewers – the wannabe-iconoclast (Will Heaven’s witless articles actually display both) as all of the criticism I’ve read fails to land any meaningful blows on these scores.
Beyond that, sure it’s thin on plot and its politics hardly subtle, but as a cinema experience it’s in a league of its own.
I’ve always been a Cameron mark, barring a couple of travesties, because of his ability to transcend genres and redefine them. Aliens and the Terminator films all showed what could be done with a fine nose for pacing, timing and a sense of how to manipulate an audience.
And after what he’s done with Avatar – no film of a similar stripe can ever really be the same again, no Transformers or Terminator rehash can stand up to something like Avatar. The typical Cameron tropes of what makes a successful action film and cutting-edge SFX are present and correct in such a way that Avatar is affecting film-goes in a way never before seen, married to a relevant and pretty subversive message.
So, is Avatar a good film? I’m not sure yet, but it’s an unforgettable and entirely novel experience. Cameron has again reinvented a genre, and perhaps created another one.
What does Adrian Chiles look like?
Adrian Chiles seems be the word on everyone’s lips at the moment, with rumours abounding about his personal life and the MOTD2 and One Show frontman’s extraordinary facial hair pinging around the web.
Personally I like Chiles – even though he’s horribly overexposed and The One Show is beyond critical description – and have done ever since he made business news compelling viewing on Working Lunch about 15 years ago.
But his gingery, unkempt beard seems to have been the final straw for many people, who are busy voicing their displeasure on social networks across the land.
‘Tramp’ is the word that most frequently occurs in relation to the hirsute Chiles, and it’s probably the kindest. As a fellow beard-sporter I sympathise with him.
But as a human being I cannot help but recoil in horror at the reddish monstrosity nesting on his face. To my eyes he looks like an arctic explorer, lost and feral, forced to feed on the blubber from a whale carcass. What do you think?
Here’s some suggestions from around the web (the first three, and among the best, are from mates of mine) as to what the beardy Chiles looks like:
• Come on Chiles, have a shave. You look a mess, man. Far from the intended ‘rugged’, it’s more ‘hungover bear’.
• Flicked to MOTD2 during break in the snooker – aaaargh. Adrian Chiles has a beard. He looks like a homeless Henry VIII.
• Adrian Chiles’ beard makes him look like the violent alcoholic captain of a Victorian steamship.
• Adrian Chiles’ beard is ridiculous….is homeless? kipping on a mates couch? he looks like the leader of his own cult
• The unshaved look may be fashionable, but it still looks crap in orange on a chubby bloke
• Oh Adrian Chiles, with your big comforting face. It’s as if you have a massive battered old armchair instead of a head.
• Watching #MOTD2 wondering why Adrian Chiles has a beard? He looks like an obese bear grylls!!
• Adrian Chiles looks like he’s gone feral!
• I actually like Adrian Chiles, but he looks even more like a scrotum with that beard
• Also, #MotD2 appear to have dragged Adrian Chiles out of hibernation. WTF, dude? Don’t you wash before going on tv? Sheesh…
• I think Adrian Chiles has really got into #wallander – he’s looking more like Kurt every week
• Not at all sure about Adrian Chiles facial fuzz on #motd2 He looks like Oliver Reed in Castaway but without Amanda Donohoe in the nip.
• Adrian chiles beard on match of the day 2, what the fuck? Looks like a care bear sex offender.
• Adrian chiles’ beard makes him look like an ewok.
• Adrian chiles, sort your facial hair out, quite frankly, you look like a tit!
• Adrian Chiles’s head looks like a potato carved by an idiot.
UPDATE: Dave Quinn ups the ante:
• Adrian Chiles still has a beard. His head looks like a partly deflated volley ball that’s fallen into a Hoover bag.
UPDATE 2: Another!
• Is it just me, or is Adrian Chiles starting to look like a fat version of General Madine?
New forehead, new danger
This is my entry for the David Cameron – Airbrushed for Change website, which has been busy adapting Conservative Party print and billboard ads that showed a somewhat digitally-enhanced Cameron. The spoofs picture Call-Me-Dave Cameron next to a series of doctored slogans unlikely to feature in official Tory Party ad campaigns.
A slew of spoofs have hit the web to mock Cameron and Tory party policy, though it all seems to be in good fooling. Gordon Brown certainly seemed to think so when he unexpectedly slaughtered Dave over the poster on PMQs.
Those with a spot of historical election knowledge will spot the reference in mine to Saatchi & Saatchi’s infamous Demon Eyes ad from 1997. It seemed appropriate to adapt that original Conservative attack ad in having a pop back at Dave.
MyVillage steals my articles
I’m not really one for whinging about people using my stuff unattributed – as long as they’re not trying to make cash from it or I perceive it as something other than an honest mistake by someone not really au fait with netiquette.
A lot of the stuff I write gets syndicated out via feeds with varying, limited, amounts of the original text and a link back to the original article.
Generally I think this is fine, the idea being that you don’t extract the maximum value from the article, though I have my doubts about sites that exist simply to aggregate as much content as possible, regardless of accreditation.
I don’t think it’s good for the internet from a user experience perspective to have to trawl through sites crammed with aggregated content and optimised to the max, but that’s by-the-bye.
Where I draw the line is sites that make money from other peoples’ content. Which is where MyVillage.com, a local ents and listings site, comes in.
The site has dozens of subdomains representing areas around the UK and appears to be curated by a number of volunteer members.
All laudable stuff, but less laudable is the fact that the Liverpool section exists largely on dozens of articles apparently scraped from local blogs, including my own Liverpool Culture Blog.
David Bartlett’s Dale Street Blues blog is presented with a paragraph and link back to the original article, which is how you’re supposed to do these things.
But articles by me, articles from Art in Liverpool, articles from Paula Keaveny’s local politics blog, and the Birkdale Focus politics blog are simply reprinted lock, stock and barrel.
Look a little closer at other subdomains around the site and this seems to be par for the course – blog posts reprinted wholesale, presumably taken from RSS feeds.
To give MyVillage the benefit of the doubt, maybe they have come to an arrangement with the owners of blogs that have donated the articles. But they didn’t ask me, and Ian Jackson didn’t know anything about it when I contacted him.
This is, depending on how you look at it, either extreme aggregation or copyright theft. It’s an area that’s become increasingly grey as aggregator sites push boundaries of what is deemed acceptable and social network sites further blur what belongs to the users and what belongs to the platform.
But really anyone should know that this sort of behaviour just fucks up the internet for the people who play by the rules. When you’re using copy and images belonging to other people and trying to make money off them it crosses a line.
With the content arms race taking place around the web this sort of thing can only become more prevalent as sites churn out as much as they can – regardless of quality, duplication or legality.
For bloggers and small independent sites the web only works if everyone enters the same gentleman’s agreement not to break the rules. Without those rules the whole thing just falls apart.
• I’ve emailed MyVillage asking them to take my articles down and explain how they came to be on the site in the first place. They haven’t replied.
• UPDATE: Having changed my RSS settings the articles now show an excerpt. Still be reply or evidence of action from MyVillage
• My articles on MyVillage
2009: My year in Facebook status updates
Facebook has pretty limited options for marketing and all of that, but it can provide a fairly interesting insight into the life of a heavy user.
While I don’t spend a lot of time browsing stuff on Facebook, I usually have a window or application open so I can update it as and when.
I usually use it for sharing links but often update my status with something I think is interesting, amusing or bizarre.
Whether other people find this interesting or not is debatable, but as a way of keeping in touch it’s quite novel.
What’s more, it arguably provides an interesting view into how a website curator might interact with readers. Could there be a time, in the future, when individuals are appointed solely as the human social media face of large organisations?
It’s a possibility that interests me, particularly in light of the rise of brandividuals who come to represent a business in an online environment. Could curators be appointed just to sit on Hootsuite all day updating Facebook and Twitter with engaging stuff? Perhaps, perhaps not.
If nothing else it’s a rather more engaging way of explaining how 2009 appeared to me, particularly if you see how many references to popular culture you can spot.
I’ve stripped out all of the links and more prosaic ones, with plenty of music, radio, social media, TV and film references left in. Virtually all are quotes, posed for my friends to decipher.
It may not mean much to you, but in all likelihood it’s a lot more interesting than the media- and journalism-based round-up of 2009 I’d originally planned.
What’s on your mind?
’s hand is still grill-singed
wonders if anyone has recently swigged a can of coke and burped the word ‘bollocks’
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
is appalled by the duplicity of Little Chef’s senior management.
screams like a panther in the middle of the night
Stephen!
lacks the minerals and vitamins
has been sorely disappointed by Death Proof and Doomsday, two very bad films
is photoshopping pictures of last of the summer wine
just rasterised a JPEG
is very sorry but, he has to tell you that, you’ve got ringworm. Very infectious disease
what if Mike Catt was a cat?
I got through to the darts quarters but was bowled by a small child at nets. Both feel like defeats.
newest spam email: Hurt her with your rod
latest spam email: Your sister is in danger
Maureen’s got five sisters…they’ve all got ass…one of them has eyes as big as Jolly Ranchers
Latest spam: Give her flash some porking
Let’s go to dolphinarium together
what’s happened to all my clothes, what’s happened to all my furniture?
three of my friends became fans of ‘chesty girls’?
Freaky eaters? Lock em in a shed with some lettuces for a weak and see how choosy they are. bloody idiots.
Edward de Bono is one of my tailored ads? What does that say about me?
ALPHABETTI SPAGHETTI!?
2 friends became fans of french knickers?
that hallowe’en goatie has come back to haunt me
is Rock Strongo
‘Sarcasm!3 friends are fans.Become a Fan’ Become a fan? I wrote the fucking book mate.
I just failed the quiz ‘how well do you know Robin Brown?’
I sin every single day
got into a youtube barney cos I said Shearer would knock roy keane out, which he obviously would. In fact, I think Desmond Tutu would knock keane out.
just watched a young lady having her piles burned off on embarrassing bodies. still in middle of hour-long retching session
kevin pietersen woke up this morning with ‘general stiffness’. don’t we all?
always thought byers was a little weasel
has dreamt of rubies
i wonder whatever happened to Tracey Jacks
4 games of cricket in 6 days. can my creaking knees, heels, shins and back handle it?
just wants a bit part in your life
the cruffatin liveth
Duck butter
let me go the the depths of your infinity!
dicks also fuck assholes, chuck!
can’t, won’t and don’t stop
six wickets – i’m back!
i am the fly
random vacuous update concerning food, TV or weather
is nobody’s fool. Plenty of people’s bastard, but nobody’s fool
Angry jealous spies/got telephones for eyes
Face or tits?
warm leatherette
I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass….
looks like i picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue
has gone from being Den Davis to Den Dildo!
long live the new flesh
Ameobi hat-trick. Bet not even Shola saw that coming
won’t you come on down to my rescue?
‘you bastard, you absolute bastard!’ ‘you slut, you absolute slut!’
i’ve decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands
There is radar in my heart I should have trusted from the start
i would like it if aung sang suu kyi were freed, but I’m not sure ticking a miniature ‘thumbs up’ sign on Facebook will help much
Dirty goat!
If there’s one thing on my mind, it’s gettin downstate
Fucken Prawn!
would like to protest in the strongest terms about everything
just when i though i could not be stopped, when my chance came to be king…
FACT, The Thing, tonight 11.30pm. Anyone?
beefy beefy mushroom
i love my drug bunny
Kruder & Dorfmeister radio on Spotify…like 2001 all over again
Is re-reading William Shatner’s TekWar
won’t you come to comfort me?
Surprised Eastenders didn’t save the ‘Stacey goes mad and gets carted off to the looney bin’ episode for Xmas Day
buswankers
Attempting Keith Floyd recipe – trout in newspaper. Expect to set fire to oven, poison self with new sort of newsprint or simply fuck the whole thing up completely
i got 96 tears and 96 eyes
is in love with a German film star
Needs a temporary secretary
Dont admire thieves… hey they don’t admire you, their time’s limited, hardrocks too
Stereo MCs DJ Kicks, brill
There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea is asleep, and the rivers dream…
Let’s get killed
Roast pork with suet pudding
everybody spread the word, i live in my sister’s basement
‘There is a specter haunting Europe…’
Boing boom tschak peng!
I have never met anyone who thinks the future is Knowsley
Facebook wants me to become a fan of MILFs
Ensanguining the skies, how heavily it dies
Relaxation is death
I wouldn’t let Grace Slick blow me
Pertwee-like hubris
Robin Frown
Death has come to your little town, Sheriff
Pass me the suitcase, baby I know it’s not that easy
kim the cleaning lady’s espousal of equal rights as explained via sexual positions would have enlivened my feminism seminars
Just saw a pigeon eating a fruit pastille
Wish I had an autumn almanac
Mama said knock you out
Jumper was inside out all day yesterday
ow my balls
is clinically a beast
Wish I could stop sticking out my tongue when I concentrate
People will be able to tell when I’ve had my nervous breakdown when I’m found slowly driving around Vice City, observing traffic lights and listening to Emotion 98.3 – tears silently tumbling down my face
some people call it a one-night stand but we can call it paradise
I can see a blue tit
You can do it put your back into it
is going to start calling everyone ‘kid’ from now on
trousers fell down on way to lark lane
Ham-fisted bun vendor
one drop of that could turn you all into hermit crabs
I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels
Ello bruv
Hello Nasty
Living a boy’s adventure tale
Smell the glove
Applying the hot teaspoon to the forehead of life
game over man, game over
“Joanna Lumley? She’s got a plastic arsehole hasn’t she?”
walking a fine line between love and hate
Headbonks
I hate lowering my balls into a hot bath – Become a Fan
Facebook privacy settings – what to do
A few thoughts on Facebook’s new terms of service changes, which have hit the net this week.
What this change boils down to, if you’ve been living on a small island for a while or using BT internet, is that your Facebook stuff potentially defaults to public if you don’t pay attention when going through the pop-ups.
You may have noticed these “Oh hai, we’ve made some changes”-style pop-ups recently. If you weren’t paying attention and simply clicked through you may have opened up your Facebook profiles – Nazi fancy dress party photos, drunken status updates and NSFW links – to Google and co.
This, basically, means it’s all indexable by the search engines. Potentially, anyone can see what previously only your friends could see.
This is a pretty big deal, because potential employers will merrily check whatever public real estate you have on the web even though, for my money, this is highly unethical.
All of your public data can be harvested too: your geographical location, birthday (a particularly bad one to share), relationship status, work and education information…
This is all pretty reductive, and an absolute moral minefield. However, when hard clicks and hard cash come into play – the reason behind the Facebook shift – ethics tend to go out of the window.
So, is there an upside to this? Potentially, because any indexable real estate can be leveraged by the enterprising journo, PR or generic rampant self-publicist.
However, when I joined Facebook I acted in such a way that most people would when alone with their friends. I never thought it would all be publicly available, so I didn’t modify my behaviour. On other public profiles I’m aware of this and filter my public actions accordingly.
I don’t suppose there’s anything on my Facebook profile that would get me binned by an employer or associate, but why would I take the risk? And, frankly, I’m uncomfortable with anyone being able to access data I previously considered private.
Another issue, only just coming to light, is the murky issues regarding who owns all the stuff you’ve put on your Facebook page.
Facebook will say it does, or at least has some claim over it, but there’s not much set in stone to say that anyone can’t nab your Facebook pictures and blogs and use them to their own ends.
How do you fancy finding some of your photos in the Daily Mail aka the world’s worst newspaper?
So, there are two sensible alternatives. Delete your profile and start again, with a profile that is fit for public viewing. Or tell the search engine spiders to sod off.
For the sake of ease I’ve outlined how you go about doing this below.
Update your Facebook privacy settings:
1. Find ‘Settings’ at the top of your Facebook page
2. Find Privacy Settings
3. Untick ‘Allow indexing’
Done. Better safe than sorry.
30 invaluable free web tools for online journalists
The explosion of the web may have caught out newspapers and a lot of journalists, but early adopters have been able to thrive in an environment where one man’s threat is another’s opportunity.
Certainly the web has caused a lot of problems for media and journalists, but the tools to adapt to this changing market have been provided for us.
What’s more, the vast majority of the most important ones for bloggers, journalists, editors and even PRs and marketers are freely available, easy to use and – perhaps most importantly – free.
Some of these tools are suited to building traffic, some for measuring traffic, some for sharing or collecting information and others to add value to traditional content.
Some will suit you, others will not. A couple may even be irrelevant and I will make no claims for what they will do for your traffic, brand, revenues or social life.
But these are all tools that I use, in some cases vital tools, and if you accept the metaphor of modern journalist as media Swiss Army Knife you need to constantly develop your skills and make use of the largely free tools you have at your disposal.
There are, literally, thousands of them out there and it can be confusing as to which may be of help and which – in all likelihood – will not.
These are the tools and applications I find most useful and I’ve tried to keep the apps, and descriptions of them, fairly basic. There may be some obvious ones I miss out, which just means I haven’t got round to making use of them or I don’t consider them worth flagging up for starters.
There seems to be a lot of suspicion surrounding social media and Web 2.0 apps. All I have to say to that is this: They are tools. How, and whether, you use them is up to you.
The only criteria are that they’re predominantly free and they are basic, widely-available online tools or apps.
Anyway, without further ado here’s the selection. Dive in.
Twitter and related
Twitter is, to my mind, so important now for online media types that it’s got a category of its own.
The Web 2.0 Telegraph is the most fitting description I’ve seen of Twitter. Twitter is simply the platform of choice for important communicators interacting with one another: promoting links, sharing information, asking for help or shooting the breeze.
If you’ve built up good contacts in relevant fields on Twitter it’s the most important tool you will use.
• See: Twitter
• See also: Robin on Twitter
Twitpic
One picture is worth a thousand words, or 140 characters. Show Twitter followers what’s got your attention by connecting up your phone to Twitpic.
You can set up Twitpic so it directly and instantly feeds to Twitter, even old mobiles can do it.
• See: Twitpic
• See also: Robin on Twitpic
Twitterfeed
If you have multiple blogs and multiple Twitter personas you need to make sure the correct blogs are feeding to the correct Twitters. Doing it manually can be pain in the backside, so automating a feed to post to Twitter is worth investigating.
There’s some debate as to whether automated posting goes against the grain a bit on Twitter. As with anything, moderation and common sense are key.
If you’re using Twitterfeed you don’t want more than a couple of automated posts a day. A deluge of links will get you unfollowed. And Twitterfeed is no substitute for proper engagement on Twitter.
• See: Twitterfeed
• See also: Twitterfeed on Twitter
Hootsuite
If you manage multiple accounts it’s simpler to manage them from the same place, rather than logging in and out and juggling usernames and passwords.
I initially used Tweetdeck but it’s awkward and buggy. Hootsuite is easier to use as it’s on a webpage; simpler; customisable; and has useful add-ons like stats, URL shortening and scheduled posting.
• See: Hootsuite
Bit.ly
Essentially anointed by Twitter as the link-shortener of choice, Bit.ly is probably the best too. It will take your long link and make it into a 20-char link that won’t eat up your 140 chars in a tweet.
A simple interface and some basic metric-tracking and sharing tools are the cherries on the cake.
• See: Bit.ly
Twitterholic
Looking a bit rough around the edges now but this is the tool I used to build a following on Twitter by finding people in similar places or with similar interests to me.
It’s always easier finding people who will reciprocate if you have something in common, an area where a lot of people trying to build a group of followers fall down.
• See: Twitterholic
• See also: Journalists on Twitterholic
Social bookmarking sites
Using social bookmarking sites simply to try and drive traffic can be fruitless and potentially damaging. All have unique communities and all are different, even if they don’t initially appear to be.
If you’re representing a brand you may want to think twice before submitting ill-fitting links to Digg, Reddit and Fark. If you’re not going to engage or observe how things work, don’t bother.
Also be aware that chasing traffic, as an end in itself, can be somewhat self-defeating. Choose your bookmarking carefully.
Digg
Using Digg to its maximum potential – in terms of traffic – takes time, effort and patience. As with Twitter, it’s about building a community and using that community to promote your links.
I think Digg has a fairly narrow band of opportunities for editors or journalists. Funny, techy or sporty stuff seems to do best as Digg users tend to use it to share distracting, fun stuff.
The obscene amounts of traffic The Onion and Cracked get from Digg seems to bear this out.
Occasionally I happen to write something I think will do well on Digg, and I make sure I write a header and description that will appeal to Diggers.
A well-placed story on Digg will send you hefty amounts of traffic, and it’s good for in-bound links too. Also bear in mind the reason it’s there – it’s fun.
• See: Digg
Delicious
Of very little use for generating traffic in the way Digg and Reddit are, Delicious has probably grown into the most pure social bookmarking application.
It’s beautifully simple and, because it’s searchable, is a great repository for valuable information.
It tends to be used by people working in media, PR, programming and marketing so it’s a gold mine of peer-approved guides and information in these areas.
• See: Delicious
Not a million miles away from Digg, Reddit has an arguably broader focus and is easier to get into for newcomers.
Reddit’s community is not to be messed with however. Get a link submission wrong and you’ll know about it.
• See: Reddit
Fark
Digg on speed, or maybe acid. Fark consists of ‘not news’ chosen by a community and as such a very difficult tool to wield with any success.
In fairness Fark is not a tool at all, but can be used as such. Many international media have successfully harnessed Fark as a tool to drive vast amounts of traffic.
A story on the front page will deliver tens of thousands of hits over a very short space of time, which often leads to servers being ‘farked’ – brought down by the deluge of traffic.
A very good understanding of the community is required, and there’s a good opportunity to sharpen up your headline-writing skills. Only the very best stories and write-ups are greenlit, but the resulting traffic can be huge.
• See: Fark
RSS, alerts and readers
Tracking the websites that are important to you, and sharing your own content with readers is an important element of the online Swiss Army Knife.
Netvibes
I say Netvibes because it’s the one I use and I think it’s smart, but any reader or personalised home page will do – they’re essentially much of a muchness.
If you’re in media or PR you need to keep up with events on a daily basis. That means browsing potentially hundreds of feeds a day.
Grabbing an RSS feed and displaying it in your reader alongside 50 others is a lot easier than going to those individual sites.
Add-ons like widgets, increased sharing abilities and clever use of APIs from other apps like Facebook and Twitter means you can potentially browse, and interact with, all the relevant bits of the web from one page.
Most have a public setting too. As a result I have a public homepage on Netvibes that displays all my various online real estate around the web.
• See: Netvibes
• See also Robin’s public page on Netvibes
Tabbloid
Takes your feeds and displays them in a newspaper format. A bit clunky, and there are a few similar tools out there, but handy if you get square eyes looking at a normal reader.
Can also be used as a promotional tool to round up your output on a regular basis.
• See: Tabbloid
• See also Tabbloid sample
Feedburner
Allows you to track and edit your RSS feeds, share links and embed ads in your feed. No earth-shattering, but provides far more control over RSS feeds.
• See: Feedburner
Google Docs
Put e-documents online, quickly, easily and – er – freely.
• See: Google Docs
Google Alerts
Track a developing story, stay abreast of any news concerning particular companies or trends or steal a march over others on breaking news relating to your chosen keywords.
• See: Google Alerts
Twitterfeed
Again. See above for details
Multimedia
There are a hundred ways to tell a story these days. Use images, videos and music to bring yours to life.
Youtube
There are half a dozen good apps out there that will allow you to upload and share videos, but for simplicity’s sake I’ve gone with Youtube.
Youtube as a platform is only really as good as your videos, but as a tool it’s probably more versatile than you’d think.
Most obviously it provides some fantastic, free, embeddable multimedia content. If you can’t do something with that you’re probably in the wrong job.
Insight actually provides some useful metrics – the one measuring the attention span of watchers per video for one – while playlists, audio beds and annotations allow for some personalisation.
Add a customisable channel page and Youtube becomes a valuable tool in branding and hosting.
Live Stream and Vimeo may be more obvious, and going forward will come into their own, but for ‘quick and dirty’ Youtube is good enough for most.
• See: Youtube
• See also MotorTorque on Youtube
Flickr
Please be aware of what Flickr is not – a free image bank. If you’re going to use Flickr to source images you need to have a thorough understanding of Creative Commons licences, and some form of contact with individual authors.
Also, Flickr is not a link-building tool. Any links are nofollowed and business accounts are frowned on.
With that in mind Flickr can be invaluable for finding good quality images to accompany articles and is also a pleasantly simple image storage and presentation tool.
Image sets can be presented as embedded slide-shows, which can be a great visual dimension to a story alongside a static image.
Flickr can also be used to create links within photographer communities and can be used to promote photographic work.
Again, its largely self-policed by one of the more righteous online communities, so ensure you know what you’re doing.
• See: Flickr
• See also Robin on Flickr
Pixlr
Essentially an online Photoshop but cheaper (free actually), faster and simpler. Great tool that’s good enough for most photo manipulation.
• See: Pixlr
MPEG Streamclip
Good tool for video file conversion and some very basic editing features. Plays virtually anything. Can also be very good at capturing online videos if that’s your thing.
• See: MPEG Streamclip
Spotify
Weren’t expecting that one were you? But any new free app should be considered for the possibilities it provides.
A few brands have flirted with playlists, and I’ve done a couple of articles involving playlists to accompany articles.
There may not be a huge amount more scope than that, but Spotify is a free resource that offers free access to millions of tracks. Who saw that coming a couple of years ago?
• See: Spotify
• See also Crucial Three article on Liverpool Culture Blog
Morgue File
A good free image-bank site. The value of a good image to accompany an article can make all the difference. If you have access to a free image bank you’ve really no excuse. Remember to add a credit and check licenses though.
• See: Morgue File
Stock Xchng
Another great free image bank, with a premium level.
• See: Stock Xchng
Mash-up and added value apps
Add value to your content with embeddable mash-ups and media that complement your content.
Dipity
Great for building timelines for events that can be embedded. Connect up RSS feeds to feed a topic or add manually.
The added value it can bring to a running story is not to be underestimated – it’s shiny and it’s useful, especially if you’re using your own content to build timelines.
• See: Dipity
• See: Dipity US car industry timeline
Google Maps
Google Maps should be subtitled ‘not just maps’. Any amount of mash-ups can be created with the API, but it’s just as easy to create interactive co-operative maps using the site itself. Also works well with Google Earth.
As with Dipity, you can add value to content and tell another dimension to a story. A no-brainer for travel reports and write-ups.
• See: Google Maps
• See: Half Map Half Biscuit
Cover It Live
The ability to cover an event live on a self-hosted platform can be invaluable. Cover It Live allows administrators to host guests, guide discussions and moderate reader comments.
While Twitter may be a more obvious platform for micro-blogging, Cover It Live can be embedded into a web page, customised and managed in terms of who can contribute. Images and video can also be embedded in the stream.
Again, it can add another dimension to traditional coverage and bring live events to life.
• See: Cover It Live
Xtra Normal
A tool that allows you to convert to text spoken by an animated character may be gimmicky, but it can be fun.
Any blogger worth their salt should be able to think of something at least funny to do with it.
If Xtra Normal had been around 20 years ago we could have had animated reports of Gerry Adams speaking to the UK via an animated avatar.
• See: Xtra Normal
• See: Worried about acid erosion? on AdTurds
PollDaddy
Encourage user feedback and drive user-generated content with a poll – it can provide valuable insight or be used to drive original content itself.
Easy to configure and embed, you can stick it in the middle of an article one day and write a follow-up the next day based on the results.
• See: PollDaddy
• See also: Ten worst adverts of 2009 on AdTurds
Metrics, web editing and SEO
If you’re running a blog or website you want to be able to track its performance over a number of metrics. A basic understanding of SEO will benefit any journalist too.
Google Analytics
Or any decent analytics package that allows you to track, compare and dig down into various metrics.
Analytics will do all of that and more – you can’t seriously run a large website without something at least as powerful and detailed as Google’s statistics tool.
Analytics can be used at a very basic level for tracking your traffic and website performance, or can provide intricate details into what’s going on in the deepest reaches of your site if you drill down.
Makes a great pairing with Adsense.
• See: Google Analytics
Webmaster Tools
Webmaster Tools allow you to get your hands a little more dirty with the intricacies of web design and SEO.
If there are any obvious problems with the navigation and accessibility on your site, Webmaster Tools should flag them up, along with some SEO information on backlinks and keywords than may give you a different perspective on how your users – or search engines – view your site as opposed to how you view it.
• See: Webmaster Tools
Adsense
Making money from a blog or website can be something of a double-edged sword. I don’t have Adsense on any of my personal blogs, but do use it on other sites.
Simply put Adsense offers the ability to make money from your blog or site with a few clicks.
Style your ads, decide on what keywords you want to include on your ads, settle on placements and Adsense will generate code for you. Stick the code in your blog, verify your account and watch the cash roll in.
Don’t expect vast sums unless you’re doing thousands of impressions a day, and bear in mind the downside of changing your blog to a money-making device.
• See: Adsense
Google Trends
Stuck for blog topics or want to research a trend? Google Trends is a good way to track what’s popular, although Twitter Trends can be used in much the same way.
Comparing two or three different terms can be instructive if writing about brands, TV programmes or pop bands.
Trends also pairs up well with Insight, an advances search facility currently in Beta, which allows you to drill down into search data over different periods of time or by region and country.
Both are probably of more use to marketers, but keyword searches and tracking can also be useful for giving a fresh perspective on an article, creating unique content, driving Adwords campaigns or simply finding out who is currently winning out of Doctor Who and Star Trek.
• See: Trends
• See also: Who is winning out of Doctor Who and Star Trek?
Website Grader
A good all-in-one tool that will grade your site against others in terms of traffic, search engine placements, page rank and a dozen other metrics.
Can provide a good introduction to basic SEO and an insight into what you may be doing correctly or incorrectly.
• See Website Grader
Platforms
If you’ve not made the leap you’ll need a platform on which to host your blog or site. Make sure you pick a good one.
WordPress
So far in front of other blogging platforms it’s not even funny. WordPress hosted or self-hosted is easy to figure out, has an interface so intuitive it’s almost beautiful, good support and a peerless range of plug-ins.
If you’re a journalist you need a blog. If you need a blog, use WordPress. That is all.
• See: WordPress
Tumblr
Ultra-simple blogging platform that makes the easy-to-use WordPress look like quantum mechanics.
Tumblr’s simplicity and efficiency is its greatest strength, so if you need something that works out of the box and don’t need the extra bells and whistles, look no further.
• See: Tumblr
• See also: Robin on Tumblr
Promoting yourself
Much as it pains me to say it, you need to be a brand these days, and that means at least providing people with the means to browse your skills and experience.
I use this blog to do that, but there are a couple of other tools around the web worth a look.
I’m not actively searching for freelance or seeking a new job, so I’ve not got much out of LinkedIn so far.
If and when I do I’ll no doubt investigate further as this is what everyone uses. I’m not clear how much business actually gets done on LinkedIn, but for now I’ve got a page on there with the basics on.
• See: LinkedIn
• See also: Robin on LinkedIn
ReTaggr
Unsure about ReTaggr at the moment, but it does what it says on the tin – essentially an online business card.
• See: ReTaggr
• See also: Robin on ReTaggr
• Image by Noodlepie on Flickr via Creative Commons
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Comment is free… but talk is cheap
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Regular readers – there are regular readers, right? – will know that I reserve a special scorn for The Guardian’s Comment Is Free section; a comment and opinion subdirectory that collects viewpoints from across the political spectrum.
In itself, a section like this is laudable. It exposes people to new viewpoints, attitudes and lifestyles that the print version of The Guardian does not. Its strapline is ‘Comment Is Free… but facts are sacred’ – a quote from Grauniad progenitor CP Scott.
It’s a broad church, features some fascinating articles and regularly generates some vigorous debate.
However, I feel that that concept has been somewhat bastardised to create a deliberately provocative and emptily heated section of the website, where drivel like Sarah Palin’s climate change invective is published without comment.
Another recent article on video games relating to rape was similarly witless, and pulled apart by Comment Is Free regulars. And I think that’s the point.
It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that much of Comment Is Free constitutes link- and flamebait, dog whistling, tail pulling – whatever you want to call it.
It’s like the post on a forum that exists simply to irritate, the equivalent of poking a bee’s nest and running away. In web parlance it’s known as trolling.
It exists to provoke, and provoke it does. There are regularly hundreds of well-informed, well-written and well-argued comments on Comment Is Free posts, coming from many points of view.
Thousands of words of user-generated content, lots of outraged inbound links, lots of return traffic from people keeping tabs on the latest debate.
The Guardian’s site has become a slick SEO machine, as evinced by its URL keyword stuffing and habit of publishing several permutations of the same story, and perhaps a bit too good for its own good.
It’s clever, but it’s a step too far for me. I can’t believe that a lot of Comment Is Free isn’t simply designed to rile up The Guardian’s own readership, the very people who buy the newspaper, in order to generate more copy, links and hits from them.
Is this what happens to a newspaper’s content when too much thought is given to chasing traffic and the holy grail of user-generated content? Is it OK to debase and undermine your moral weight and editorial line in search of more web traffic?
Is the trade-off worth it? Crap, often dishonest, generally lazy, frequently hysterical and badly-structured arguments and articles in exchange for a few more hits, and a bit more cash?
There are other symptoms at other papers – the Indie seems to print a diet of increasingly outlandish lists, while the Torygraph recently printed this beauty, a disingenuous piece of phony conspiracy-theory outrage about Google gaming its own algorithm.
The Telegraph article is breathtaking in its dishonesty, but The Guardian is the worst – a serial offender that sticks two fingers up to its own readership every time it wittingly publishes another bad article.
I’m all for a broad church, I’m all for challenging viewpoints, and I’m all for user interaction – but it’s come to something when the newspaper is the troll.
Written by Robin Brown
December 21, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Posted in Journalism, Media, The web
Tagged with comment is free, cp scott, sarah palin, seo, the guardian, the independent, the telegraph