Social Media Monitoring for Journalists

Effective Monitoring Lets You: Check the pulse of what people are talking about in your

region

Effective Monitoring Lets You:

Catch a story before it breaks

Get on the ground insights and tips

Effective Monitoring Lets You: Find unique angles and new stories

Find new sources

Twitter:-There’s too much information – I can’t read all of it!You shouldn’t try to consume all of it – the key is to find tools to help you filter, browse and scan

-People are talking about mundane things like what they had for lunch – I don’t care!Yes, some people do, but many don’t and we will focus on finding those people

Blogs:

-They’re biased – I don’t want to know what they think!

-They don’t know what they’re talking about – they’re not journalists!Some are, some aren’t – either way they can be a valuable resource for understanding the opinions out there and finding new/interesting sources to talk about them

Using the right tricks and tools helps you cut down on the noise and use the tools for what you really need them for – getting tips and finding sources

Common Complaints

For Google and Twitter, we’ll look at tools/tips for:

1) Locating specific information or sources

2) Browsing and staying on top of news before it breaks

Twitter: “Micro-blogging”

• Short updates• Lots of links• Easy to identify influencers• You don’t have to be a member to use Twitter

search, but you do for the other features we’ll discuss

The Interface

Basic Conventions

1) Hashtags: A way to tag a tweet

Hashtags identify tweets with a particular topic, and make it easier to search for tweets on that subject

Basic Conventions

2) @ mentions: A way to tag a person

@ mentions show that a person is being talked to or about

Twitter Search:When you need to find

someone or something specific

Improving Twitter Search

The standard way to find tweets is by doing a search for a key term.

The results are good, but there are some tricks to get even more relevant results.

Tip #1: Click on Hashtags

Clicking on a hashtag automatically does a Twitter search for that hashtag so you can see all the tweets being tagged.

If you know the hashtag for a particular event, it is usually more effective to search for that tag than for a related term.

Tip #2: Use Advanced Search

Go to search.twitter.com and click Advanced Search

Now you can exclude terms, choose to see tweets only in Arabic or English, search by location or date, only look for tweets with links to articles, etc.

Tip #3: Use Search OperatorsInstead of using advanced search, you can type these search operators directly into the search box to get the same results

Twitter Browsing:To keep your finger on the pulse and get new ideas

Improving Twitter BrowsingIf you’re following useful and relevant people, your timeline (homepage) will often have useful stuff.

But you’re also likely to encounter information overload.

Plus, if you follow lots of people for lots of different reasons, you’ll need ways to zero in on the information you actually need.

Tip #1: Use Saved Searches

You can save any Twitter search and then toggle easily between your standard timeline and a feed of search results

Tip #2: Use Lists (Create)

Add Twitter users to a list in order to easily access tweets from a set group of people in one place

Tip #2: Use Lists (Find)

Find lists curated by other Twitter users and follow them.

You can toggle easily between your timeline and any lists you create or follow

Tip #3: Look at Regional TrendsTrendsmap.com lets you zero in on locations to see real-time trends

Tool You Should Know: Hootsuite

Follow multiple searches and lists all in one place.

Create an account at hootsuite.com.

You can also use TweetDeck to do the same thing. Go to tweetdeck.com.

Who/What is Important?

Evaluate authority by looking at:1) Top Tweets – Twitter’s algorithm for deciding who

is important

2) Who is being retweeted and @mentioned

3) Where a person is physically located

4) How many lists a person is on and who has listed them

5) The number of followers and ratio of following to followers

News and Blogs

Blogs and other non-mainstream news sources often have information first.

They can also offer new viewpoints and perspectives.

Google Search:Finding specific information or

sources

Tip #1: Use Advanced Search

Go to google.com and click “Advanced search” to see more options that allow you to narrow your search

Tip #2: Use Search Operators

Finds Results

Egypt protests Containing both “Egypt” and “protests”

“Egypt protests” Containing the exact phrase “Egypt protests”

Egypt OR Libya Containing either “Egypt” or “Libya” or both

Libya -prix Containing “Libya” but not “prix”

Libya ~protest Containing “Libya” and any variation or synonym of “protest”

Site:voanews.com Only from the website “voanews.com

Site:.gov Only from a “.gov” website

Tip #3: Use the MenusThe menus along the top and sides of a Google search let you narrow your results, or view them in different ways.

News, Blogs and Realtime (social media) are particularly useful.

Google Browsing:Staying on top of new

developments and ideas

Tool You Should Know: Google ReaderLets you keep track of all items published to blogs you subscribe to

Tip #1: Use an RSS ReaderLets you organize into folders, so you don’t have to look at everything all the time

Lets you search, with options to search within specific folders or feeds

Lets you sort by “magic,” which brings the most important items to the top

Tip #2: Subscribe to Searches (RSS)

For blog searches

For news searches

The search results will now appear as a feed in your RSS reader alongside any other blog feeds you subscribe to

Tip #2: Subscribe to Searches (Alerts)

Using alerts rather than the full feed cuts down on the amount of items you receive. Google uses its algorithm to send you only what it considers most important.

Google.com/alerts

Choose Deliver to: Feed to receive the alerts as an RSS feed rather than to your email inbox

Who/What is Important?

Evaluate authority by looking at:

1) Google Reader “magic” sorting

2) Who blogs are linking to and debating with

3) Who is being tweeted, retweeted and @mentioned

4) Where a person is physically located

How to Build Your New Sources1) Follow a few tweeters and blogs that you already know

and trust:@acarvin@sultanalqassemiglobalvoicesonline.org

2) See who the bloggers and tweeters you trust are trusting (linking to, debating, retweeting)

3) Follow a few lists/searches and start getting a sense for who pops up often as an authoritative figure