During week 7 we finally demonstrated how to post a YouTube video on a blog (rocket science, this), and we went over creating and embedding a Google map again. (For examples scroll down through this blog).
Our students did a great job of creating and posting original video. I think the exercise supports why I believe that video is most often a supplementary part of modern digital journalism. If you're stealing time from work reading news, watching a lot of long and heavily produced video is a risk for your average viewer.
Also, uploading and editing video longer than 30 seconds can be a chore for both you and your bandwidth. Try breaking up videos into segments, posting multiple clips and narrating your way from asset to asset.
We looked at Google Analytics and broke down both traffic sources (incoming websites and referrals) and search engine keywords that were sending readers our way. We found out that Facebook and Twitter sharing, as well as sites such as Reddit and StumbleUpon, were taking up an increasing share of the referral pie.
Search and SEO is still king, but less so. (Also, Google has been discounting SEO keywords to give less weight to so-called "content farms" and those trying to game it with less-than optimal news content, which I think is a good thing for our business. You can read more about that here).
We talked about how Google+ might not be the best place to find your friends, but it is a good place to post your content. Google search gives news found on Google+ a little more weight. (Some news organizations are experimenting with Google+ Hangouts -- live video chats with reporters -- but we don't get it, yet).
Finally we talked about "live tweeting." If you're at a breaking news event, why should you give away the milk via Twitter when readers should be buying the cow by reading your whole story when you post it?
I think live tweeting is good for you. It establishes you as a news authority and source, even if you're giving up scoops, angles and details to the competition. In the long run it will reward you with both credibility and followers. And it helps you organize the roadside markers of a story, even photos that you've tweeted. You can use those to help you construct a final take. Finally, in most cases you'd never be able to write a complete story as fast as you'd be able to tweet developments. Give people some news. They'll come back for the narrative.
Our homework was to write a post, aggregated is okay, post it to Facebook and/or Twitter AND get someone to comment on it (either directly on your blog or on Facebook). Not as easy as it sounds!
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