21 Apr 2010
by Stephin Musing, Social Media, Tools of the trade, advertising Tags: advertisers, Facebook, fanpages, Social Media, twitter
Imagine you are an advertiser and you know you should be using tools like Twitter and Facebook but whenever you go to either site to set it up, you get overwhelmed and bewildered and you talk yourself out of it. You’re busy. You don’t have time to invest in this. You’re doing just fine without it.
Along comes your ad rep from your local newspaper and he/she has something new to offer you outside of the usual banner ads and 3X5 print ads and corner peels and interstitials (inter-huh?). This time they mention something about helping you get on tools like Twitter and Facebook. And after they do that, they tell you that for a nominal monthly fee, your business will be in prime real estate, beachfront property on their very heavily-trafficked website (Yay, AP says I can type ‘website’ now! Oh wait, I’ve been doing that for years.)
Well hell, what a deal! Sign me up!
Okay, now imagine you are me. You’re @stephromanski (I’m testing the WP plugin for @anywhere there, sorry) and you’ve begun getting these businesses set up on Twitter and Facebook. Once they’re good to go, the business person will be in charge of their own destiny there and they can tweet and/or post status updates as much as they want.
But here is your minor dilemma: You know they’ll mainly be using one of those tools, either Facebook or Twitter. So if they choose to use Facebook for all their updating, you have to feed those updates to their Twitter account so that those tweets will populate your advertiser Twitter List widget that sits on the prime beachfront property. BUT if they predominantly use Twitter to update, you have to rely on a dodgy Facebook app that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t for feeding tweets to their Facebook fanpage.
Which is the better option for the businessperson who is usually too busy and may not fully “get” how to use the tools? Which way would be easier for them?
The argument for having them use Facebook is that they are already likely to have a personal Facebook page and perhaps they sort of know their way around it whereas Twitter is completely foreign to them. I know @ev addressed Twitter’s usability at their Chirp conference and I found myself nodding furiously at that whole section of his speech.
On the other hand, if the advertiser is not on either tool, which is the best way to guide them? Fanpages are kind of a bitch to work with, IMO. It seems like it would be harder to teach them (oh yes, in addition to setting them up, you must then spend an hour or so with them and teach them how to use it) to get to and update the fanpage then it would be to teach them to open up Tweetdeck where they can handle everything.
Is it six of one, half dozen of the other? Do you tackle each advertiser individually, gauge their needs and guide them accordingly? Do you set up a system of ‘This is how you’re going to do it’ to save time?
These are the questions flying around my head right now. Any input in the comments would be greatly appreciated 
13 Apr 2010
by Stephin Musing, Tools of the trade Tags: Commenting
For all the fuss we’ve made over commenting in the past year (and by ‘we’ I mean my newspaper), the funny thing is that since we’ve turned it back on a little over a month ago with strict moderation, we’ve had a grand total of 13 comments.
We said we would only turn them on for certain stories. Our biggest fear this whole time has been whether yours truly will be able to manage the moderating duties along with my other duties. I often pictured myself buried under an avalanche of PENDING COMMENT emails and did everything I could to push for the use of excellent self-moderating systems like IntenseDebate or Disqus. Instead, we use the quaint Town News commenting system and so far have not shut off commenting for any story – because we’re not really getting many. We actually get excited when we see the PENDING COMMENT email. But I think for right now, we’re going to just opt out of allowing commenting on certain stories when or if commenting picks up and just leave them open on everything at the moment.
Of the 13 comments we’ve received, 9 of them are in response to an editorial or letter to the editor – 3 of those from the same person. The other four are reactionary to local stories.
I find myself surprised. Did we turn it off for too long? Are we too strict? Are the readers put off by the rules? Are we just not writing stories that are comment-worthy? (I say ‘no’ to that one, we’ve definitely written stories that we thought would have oodles of comments.) Do people just not realize they can comment again? We do place the commenting on a separate tab within the story. Maybe that’s a roadblock. Have we done a poor job of promoting the fact that commenting is back? Maybe readers are just mad at us for taking it away in the first place.
We’ll continue to futz with the process and make adjustments as needed. Perhaps we’ll work on a small marketing plan to promote commenting. Perhaps the comments will pick back up and I’m just being impatient. I guess months of fear-mongering over them made me expect too much right out of the gate.
18 Mar 2010
by Stephin Newsy, Tools of the trade Tags: Commenting, comments, newspaper
In May of 2009, I wrote about theindependent.com shutting down commenting completely. I had high hopes that the conversation on our stories could be better handled by taking advantage of ‘Tweet This’ and opening Cover It Live discussions on hot topics, and of course the good old Letters to the Editor.The impetus behind the decision was pretty much what gives any online or newsroom editor gigantic headaches: trolls and idiots incapable of participating in a reasonable discussion.
The decision also came down during a year of layoffs and pay cuts, as well as a transition to yet another new owner in the space of two years. In short, 2009 just sucked balls.
We worried and fretted about having the manpower to read and approve every single comment post before publishing it, as dictated by our new owners. We’re a small paper with a small staff. It just didn’t seem feasible.
Nearly a year later, and we’re ready to give it another try. We never found a better way to promote conversation in the community than via commenting. We tried different Cover it Live shows and while we love Cover it Live, we’re finding that it doesn’t *quite* get the level of conversation we want. Timing is an issue. Most people work during the day when we have our shows, and so we found it difficult to grow our audience (special events being the exception.) Finding a formula that drew people in was another problem.
No, commenting just seems like a better way to get our finger on the pulse of the community. But we still have manpower issues.
After speaking with several of our sister papers who allow commenting, here’s what we’re doing:
- Commenting will be open only on select stories – at first. We need to get a handle on what the workload will be like, mainly for me because I’m the “first line of defense” as they say.
- Commenting WILL be strictly moderated, meaning we (read: I) will read every single comment and approve/deny it for publishing. When I am not available, the “second line of defense” takes over the job. That will either be our New Media Director or our Senior Writer – depends on who’s free. When it’s after hours, comments will just be queued until the following business day.
- We will not respond to complaints like, “My comment didn’t get published”. Frankly, we just don’t have the time. Yes, we are pretty much going to deny any comment that uses vulgarities, name-calling, or troll tactics.
- One of us will be semi-active in the commenting. Since we’re reading them all, we’re pretty sure questions about a story will crop up and we will do our best to answer them. We have the access to the authors of the articles, so we’ll do our best to clarify.
- Comments will be on a separate tab within the story.
- No comments will ever be allowed on crime, accidents or trial stories. Ever.
Here is the quick policy people will see when signing up (a more detailed policy will be available as well.)
- Use your real name. If you aren’t willing to post your name, don’t post your opinion. If it’s not good enough to have your name by it, it’s not good enough for anyone else to read.
- We read EVERY comment before it is posted. This may take a while. Relax. If you don’t see your comment right away, don’t worry. We’ll read it, make sure it doesn’t break the rest of these rules, and then post it. It won’t happen right away.
- Be nice. This is a civil conversation. You don’t have to agree, but don’t be mean. No name calling, profanity, hate speech, personal attacks, threatening or violent comments, sexually explicit or crude comments, or anything just plain rude. A good point doesn’t need to include calling someone a “moron” or “white trash”.
- Be factual, as much as you can. Don’t throw out comments you can’t verify. Don’t spread rumors or lies. That doesn’t help anyone. And don’t throw any libel out, either.
We will allow opinions some might find offensive. We will allow conversation that is strident in tone. We will allow criticism of public officials. And we will allow opinions some may find offensive about tough social issues around race and sexual orientation, as long as they don’t break the rules above.
This is a community conversation, but The Independent is controlling it on our site. Therefore, we set the rules. If you don’t like them, we’re sorry, but they are the rules. Although the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows for freedom of speech, Congress is not in charge of this site. This is a privately owned Web site.
The opinions are those of the author and not the administrators, moderators or the paper, and therefore the Grand Island Independent will not be held liable.
So there you have it. I’m actually glad to be bringing them back, although I’m slightly wary about having to moderate every single comment. I wish we didn’t have to do that, but we don’t have much of a choice.
We’ll see how it goes! I do still have my whip and jackboots and I’m ready for all the nazi-mod comparisons.
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