Forrester’s rationale for this, according to VP Josh Bernoff, is that “Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product.”

Which IMHO is the equivalent of saying “If you work for us, we reserve the right to own your brain and your social/professional network and reputation.”

Here’s why that’s a bad idea all the way around — not just for research, consulting, and IP companies, but for news organizations and journalists, too…

Recently, PR maven Shel Holz rightly called bullshit on Forrester’s IP argument:

The notion seems to suggest that analysts who write about their work on their own blogs are somehow sapping Forrester of its IP. Maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t see how, particularly if those blogs link back to Forrester, bringing the company to the attention of new prospects.

Other companies with bloggers don’t compare because, Bernoff argues, their products aren’t about IP. I would argue that Microsoft and IBM are entirely about IP. Both companies encourage their employees to blog wherever they like. The companies link to those blogs on a page that links to all of the company’s bloggers. (Here are links to Microsoft’s and IBM’s employee blog directories.)

…I’m not inside the heads of Forrester’s leaders, so I can’t say how much of a factor the fear of losing analysts who build strong personal brands played in the decision. I’d be disappointed if it was a major consideration, since it seems petty and mean-spirited.

…If a cost-benefit analysis had been done, I can’t believe it would have led Forrester to adopt this policy. So why, then? It’s either a provincial and wrong-minded understanding of IP or a knee-jerk reaction to the Altimeter Group situation. Either way, it’s a mistake.

Here’s the comment I left on Shel’s post:

This reminds me of struggles that many journalists currently face with the news organizations that employ them (albeit in fast-shrinking numbers). Many news orgs prohibit or limiting not only employees having their own blogs, but also whether and how they use social media on their own time and accounts.

In the journalism world they claim this is to “preserve objectivity” (as if objectivity ever existed, or as if transparency doesn’t promote credibility more effectively). But it’s pretty obvious when you talk to news managers that they often view their own employees as competition when it comes to online media. And they prefer to keep their employees in a one-down position when it comes to personal branding.

Which is not only sad and shortsighted, but dreadfully counterproductive. Especially since companies that adopt this unfortunate mindset certainly aren’t offering financial compensation (say, a couple of years’ salary, or a guarantee of employment for the next 3 years) in exchange for employees giving up crucial avenues for making their own professional opportunities.

It’s bad business all the way around — but it’s especially unfair to the employees.

…Back in 2008 I explained why building a personal online brand and presence that’s under your control (not your employer’s) is the key to having almost any kind of professional career these days — but especially careers that involve media or communications in any significant way. See: Media Career Insurance: Your Blog

Later today I’m giving a talk at an entrepreneur’s group about how you can get more benefit out of social media by using hashtags. I’ve found that these can be exceptionally valuable tools to connect with topics and people. They also can help you make yourself (or a topic, organization, or event that matters to you) much easier to find and connect with.

I’ll be fleshing out these ideas in a later blog post. But for now, here are my main points I intend to make — Plus some resources I will to demonstrate…

HASHTAG MONITORING TOOLS

Hashtags are a radar screen to pick up early on trends, emerging issues, events, breaking news, etc. Business intelligence, spotting opportunities, troubleshooting, etc.

Use a Twitter client or service that lets your monitor hashtag. Twitter search, Tweetdeck, Seesmic Desktop, Monitter, Twitterfall (article by Paul Bradshaw), and Twazzup.

Why not just monitor regular search terms, rather than hashtags? Use both, if you like! But search terms tend to be more inconsistently spelled or phrased and thus are more difficult to search for. Still, it can’t hurt. If I’m really into a topic, I’ll usually start my radar screen by monitoring several search strings (hashtags and not) and then hone in on where most of the action is. But when a community forms around a topic, one or more hashtags tend to crop up.

USE HASHTAGS ROUTINELY

Great way to get known as a go-to person on a topic.

Great way also to find smart, interesting, or important people on topic of interest to you. And to encourage serendipity based on your interests.

Popularity rules. Whatever hashtag is popular for a topic, use that. Like ad keywords: Use hashtags that reflect the perspective of the people you want to connect with.

Be specific: Easier to get reputation as the go-to person on a specific topic like #coalash, rather than a general one like #environment. Use both if you’re not well-known yet.

Try using hashtags in a sentence. Less awkward and more intuitive than jamming them all at the end.

If you see a hashtag and don’t know what it means, try looking it up in Tagalus or WTHashtag. If you don’t find it listed, @reply to the people using it and ask them what it’s about.

START HASHTAGS!

This is a great First search Twitter to see if it’s already in use. Don’t overlap current hashtags. Then register via Tagalus to make it easy for others to look it up.

Or tweet: @tagref: [#hashtag] is [definition, link]

More detailed listings: WTHashtag wiki — another good place to register hashtags.

If you have a company or brand that’s short, start & monitor the hashtag for the company name.

LIVE-TWEET EVENTS

Find out the event hashtag in advance, follow it, and use it for all your event tweets (including pre and post). Great way to get followers. They tend to stick around after the event.

Example: I recently called an event hashtag (#futurej) for a Senate subcommittee hearing on the future of journalism. Promoted it by searching for “future of journalism,” told those tweeters about the hashtag, and thanked people who used it. It caught on — About 900 tweets used it.

DELICIOUS TAGS ARE COMPLEMENTARY

For your radar screen, if you monitor a hashtag on Twitter, there’s probably a corresponding tag on Delicious. Use subscriptions function for tags on Delicious to expand your radar screen. My current Delicious tag subscriptions.

I’ve written before about how the culture of traditional journalism tends to be rather insular, self-referential and — increasingly — toxic. This is especially true of the events that journalists typically attend, and the communities with which they typically mix.

Journalists mainly go to conferences specifically about journalism or specifically for journalists. While they also attend other events, this is usually for research or reporting — not to be “part of the crowd.”

…And that, I think, is a huge missed opportunity. Increasingly, community building and team building are becoming core skills for a career in journalism. The fast-shifting news business requires that journalists personally know and be able to work well with technologies, business people, marketers, community organizers, financiers, nonprofits and advocates, and other people from complementary fields. Every profession has its own culture and its own events. Attending these events — not just for aloof observation, but in order to join those communities — can be a great way to expand your career options.

Today and tomorrow I’m attending an event that represents a perfect opportunity to connect with geek culture. It’s She’s Geeky, a periodic “unconference” held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA…

The She’s Geeky site defines the purpose of this event as:

“A neutral, face-to-face gathering space for women who like to geek out. Attendees include women involved in all aspects of technology, including those who like to use geeky tools, not just coders, programmers and engineers. You don’t even have to be from the computer industry. You just have to be a woman who identifies as a geek.

From the perspective of a journalist who wants to connect more with geeks and geek culture, in order to build bridges that can support your journalism and your career, an event like She’s Geeky is especially appealing:

• Accessible. It’s not all going to be about hardcore coding or gadgets. There should be ample discussion at a level that most non-geeks (including journalists) can follow reasonably well.
• Unconference format. Attendees gather at the start of the event to define the topics of the day’s sessions. Also, these sessions are mainly for discussion and sharing, not lectures. This means that if you get there early you can propose a session or play a role in refining a topic. That’s a great way not just to get your own informational needs met, but also to get noticed as someone who wants to actively work with the community.
• Female culture. Most tech conferences are a heavily male playground. This affects not only the topics covered and event structure, but the tone of interaction. In my experience, conferences that are primarily oriented toward women in a given field tend to be more welcoming and less cliquish or hierarchical than events where male culture predominates. This means that even male journalists who are newcomers to tech culture might get more out of an event like She’s Geeky than an uber-geekboy rave like Gnomedex (which is fun, but maybe not for your first stop).

I’ll be live-tweeting She’s Geeky today and tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter, as well as @shesgeeky for the updates. You can also follow the conference hashtag #shesgeeky.

A good resources to find all sorts of upcoming events for various fields is Upcoming. Also, as I wrote earlier, Meetup.com can be your gateway to many local communities that gather on a regular basis.

How are you connecting with other communities and professions — not just as an observer but as a participant? What strategies have you found useful? Please comment below.

(NOTE: I originally posted this article to Poynter’s

Earlier this week I wrote about the internal and external obstacles journalism schools face when trying to achieve collaboration with other academic departments (such as computer science). That spurred a pretty interesting discussion in the comments.

This discussion got me thinking: Right now, it’s becoming obvious to many journalists that our field sorely needs lots of top-notch, creative technologists. Developers for whom software is a medium, and an art form. Developers with a deep passion for information, credibility, fairness, usefulness, and free speech.

However, my impression is that, so far, it’s not nearly so obvious to most “geeks” (and I use that term with the utmost affection and respect, as do many geeks themselves) how they might benefit from collaborating with journalists, j-schools, and news organizations.

So if journalists need geeks, but right now they don’t need (or even necessarily want) us as much, the question becomes: What’s in this for the geeks? Why might they want to work with us? Where’s their incentive?…

There is a bright spot of opportunity: Many hardcore geeks (especially those who create free software, where the mantra is “free as in speech, not free as in beer“) share core goals with journalists — especially regarding public service and free speech. That’s a solid launching point.

One of the people whose views on bridging the journo/geek culture gap I respect most is my Tidbits colleague Rich Gordon, from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. He runs a pioneering program that offers scholarships to Medill’s graduate journalism program to people with education and/or expertise in computer programming. (This effort is funded by a Knight News Challenge grant — and they’re seeking a followup grant.)

In his comment to my earlier post on J-schools, Gordon wrote, in part:

“Journalism and computer science partnerships will work only if the two academic departments see these collaborations as equally valuable. In my experience, there are cultural and communication gaps that need to be closed.”

And in this MediaLab post, Gordon elaborated:

“Journalists and technology professionals do have two things in common. First, the best people in both fields really do want to change the world and make it a better place. Second, both believe that people want and deserve access to the best possible information. But there also is a substantial gap between journalism and computer science.

“Too many journalists don’t respect technology development as a creative activity — they think developers should just build stuff they want. Too many technologists don’t respect journalism as an intellectual activity — they think journalists just pump out content for their algorithms to process.

“Too many journalists really don’t like technology change; they blame it for hurting media businesses, threatening their livelihoods and diminishing the quality of news available in local communities. Too many technologists think it’s not their job to worry about the negative impact of technology innovation on media companies and journalism — and when they do think about the consequences, think only about information at the national and global level (which is broader, deeper and more accessible than ever) and not at the local level (where online news ventures rarely do the kind of original reporting that newspapers do).”

…I think that pretty much nails the key mindset differences that define this culture gap. But there’s also the organizational angle. I was discussing this recently with Brian Boyer (a programmer currently in Gordon’s graduate journalism program, and part of Medill’s Crunchberry Project team). He observed that generally news organizations don’t see themselves as tech companies. Yet, he said, geeks “want to work at a place where tech is at the core of the ideas. News orgs need to realize that they’re tech organizations now — they live and die by the Web.”

Given that context, I ask again: What’s in this for the geeks? How can we foster more mutual understanding and respect? What compelling reasons can journalists offer that honor geek values, culture, and goals? How can journalists demonstrate that we can and will respect talented, passionate geeks as full partners (or even potential leaders) in collaborative efforts — not pigeonhole them as IT lackeys?

I’m asking journalists to start from this point: “Journalism: So what?” I’m also asking geeks to speak up about how they view journalists: our efforts, our culture, our goals, and what might make us more appealing as collaborators.

Any ideas? Please comment below.

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/10/31/working-with-journalists-whats-in-it-for-geeks/feed/ 2 http://www.contentious.com/2008/04/10/new-j-skills-what-to-measure/ http://www.contentious.com/2008/04/10/new-j-skills-what-to-measure/#comments Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:02:27 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/?p=1578 Berbercarpet, via Flickr (CC license) Journalism sudents need the right tools — and skills — for the kinds of careers and opportunities they’re really going to be making for themselves.

Picking up on my post yesterday, Univ. of Florida journalism professor Mindy McAdams challenged me (and her other readers) to translate my quick list of what j-schools should be teaching into a something more testable and measurable that could be translated into a curriculum.

Here’s my first shot at that:

• Content management systems (including blogging tools): First, I’d have the students run a group blog on a topic of their choosing for a year to get comfortable with the content and commenting apects of blogging. (A group blog is likely to get more activity and discussion than individual blogs.) This blog should be based on an expandable, customizable tool like WordPress. Then the students should be taught the basics of information architecture, and from that figure out how to expand or customize their blogs to deliver or integrate new kinds of content or services. This could be as simple as finding and installing WordPress plugins to add features, or integrating content from other places (such as Flickr or del.icio.us). The goal would be to get them to not just understand, but demonstrate that on their own they can envision, research, evaluate, and act upon options to do more with their content online. There’s a lot you can do without getting too geeky. They need to gain the confidence that many options are within their personal grasp — they don’t always need to get permission or beg someone else to do things for them.

There’s a lot more on my list, of course…

• Mobile tools and mobile media strategies. These students all have cell phones anyway. Require them to subscribe to mobile news and information services, and critique the quality of the service and user experience. Also, require them to create whatever kind of content their phones support (photos, video, audio, GPS data, even just SMS to Twitter, etc.) and post or stream it from their cell phones. Include participatory exercises based on SMS or MMS to include students who don’t have data plans on their phones. Free services like NowPublic, Flickr, Qik and CNN’s iReport could be especially helpful and even fun for your exercises.

• Social media. The point here is to help students learn a key tool for engaging communities, while also gaining experience with how influence works and information travels through social media. I suggest starting with whatever social media services most of the students are already using (like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter) and explore both the one-to-one and group interaction options through exercises. For groups, it’s probably better to get them involved with existing, active groups on these services — rather than try to start a new group from scratch. Where possible, use both web-based and mobile options for these services. They should learn to use these tools for community outreach, story/issue research, and promotion of their work.

• Economics and business theory/models. Journalism students should be taking courses in the media business that offer the fundamentals of historical, current, and emerging media business models. They should learn what budgets and balance sheets look like, how grant funding and investment works, and how to evaluate the economic environment they’re operating in — including how it’s changing. Get them used to seeing the big picture and looking ahead. Practical skills could include analyzing the economic environment of the local community, spotting emerging trends that could offer journalistic or other media opportunities, and writing a basic business plan to capitalize on those opportunities.

• Business skills. This could involve evaluating and estimating revenue options from grants to investors to advertising to subscriptions to partnerships and more, as well as knowing what steps to take to pursue that funding. Example exercise: Develop a strategy and action plan for increasing online revenues for the campus or local daily paper — including calculation of expenses and revenues, and a timeline for implementation. In addition, they should be aware of what it takes to start and run a business — requirements for taxes, healthcare, getting SMS shortcodes, working with advertisers, etc. No part of the business that supports their journalism should be alien to them.

• Management skills. I’m envisioning this both from an entrepreneurial and organizational perspective. In all exercises, put the students in a decisionmaking role and guide them through learning how to manage time, resources, and people — whether employees, collaborators, or community members. For instance, if a class project is increasing online revenues for the campus paper, divide that mission into sub-tasks, assign someone to manage each part of that project, and require them to make decisions and delegate. Teach them how to use tools like Basecamp to coordinate team efforts. In fact, it might be a good idea to coordinate projects with other j-schools around the country or world, since increasingly in the media business project teams are widely distributed. The point is to encourage them to take charge of the process, not just to pigeonhole themselves as content creators.

• Marketing, advertising, and SEO. In addition to taking a marketing basics class oriented toward media products and services, j-students should learn the basics of search engine optimization — since findability generally translates into traffic, engagement, and revenue for most media ventures. Exercises can include learning to use Wordtracker to optimize headlines, stories, and metadata to increase both traffic and relevance; using Google Analytics to analyze traffic patterns to a news/info site (such as for the campus paper) and suggest strategies to boost traffic and engagement; developing and running Adwords campaigns (with a modest budget) to promote a class project; researching niche ad networks that might help support various types of coverage or beats, etc.

• Community engagement and management. This is perhaps one of the most marketable skills any journalist can have for the next several years or decades. The point is to get them used to creating news as part of a conversation, rather than simply as a one-way product for publication. It’s about promoting constructive public discourse through active engagement. Exercises could include participating in an active community forum; working as a volunteer moderator for an active forum where contentious topics arise; taking and active role in editing and discussing a Wikipedia page of interest; helping to coordinate (not just cover) local events like town hall meetings, conferences, or festivals; participating in or running local meetup groups, etc. These experiences tech how to handle conflict, foster consensus and diversity, produce events, and demonstrate respect and understanding for communities in order to build credibility. In this respect, working through local government, advocacy groups, social service agencies, neighborhood associations, and ethnic or religious groups could be as valuable (maybe more valuable) than working through journalistic or media organizations.

…I realize that my list sounds like a hell of a lot of stuff, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what today’s journalists really need in order to take advantage of current opportunities, spot emerging opportunities, and take charge of their own destinies (rather than relying on a paternalistic news org to shelter them while they write, write, write).

I realize also that there may be resistance in journalism schools to much of what I propose, for reasons ranging from “we’re not a vocational school,” to IT staff resisting implementing the kinds of tools I’ve mentioned, to the need to integrate curricula more closely with business schools, to the tenured faculty who must teach at least some of these topics not knowing or caring much about them.

I’m not saying this would be easy. But I do think what I’ve outlined, in addition to teaching core journalism skills and values, is what today’s j-students really need to prepare for the kinds of careers they are most likely to have — and the kinds of media they can play a key role in inventing or developing.

Thoughts?

(And thanks, Mindy, for making me think this through more.)

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2008/04/10/new-j-skills-what-to-measure/feed/ 18 http://www.contentious.com/2007/11/14/feed-overload-ditch-the-guilt-embrace-serendipity/ http://www.contentious.com/2007/11/14/feed-overload-ditch-the-guilt-embrace-serendipity/#comments Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:49:34 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/2007/11/14/feed-overload-ditch-the-guilt-embrace-serendipity/ Here’s what my feed reader looks like right now.

I’ve lost track of how many RSS feeds I subscribe to in my feed reader — somewhere between 100 and 200, I’m guessing. But that doesn’t matter, because despite the volume it’s surprisingly manageable and rewarding. The secret, I’ve found, is to let go of any sense of obligation to keep up with all that content.

It’s simply impossible to keep up. There’s too much stuff published online every day — hell, every minute! Why feel pressured or guily about not being able to achieve an impossible ideal?

Here’s what I do…

Four or five times a day I browse my feed reader. About half the time my goal is to keep up with my world; the other times I’m following my “beats.”

To follow my world, I first scan my “ego surfing” folder where I track references to my name, my projects, or new contributions to blog-comment conversations I’ve joined. I check this first not just because I have an ego (hey, let’s be honest), but because this is an area where I’ve found it pays for me to respond quickly.

After I’ve reviewed the latest “me news,” I click “mark all as read” for that folder.

Then, time permitting, I peruse either my “friends and colleagues” folder (where I track the blogs of people I know) or my “news” and “local” folders, to see what’s going on. For these I generally just scan the headlines. Of those, I’ll probably read just 2-5 posts out of the latest batch of fresh content. If the headline is cryptic or otherwise non-intuitive, I’ll probably pass right by — which shows the importance of writing clear, intuitive headlines for anything published online. It’s not just to lure people into reading, but to provide at least a bit of a useful update to people who won’t read the whole post.

And again, after I’ve reviewed that folder, I click the all-powerful “mark all as read” button.

In a separate folder I monitor my feeds from people I follow on Twitter, as well as my friends and groups on Facebook. That’s more efficient for me than actually taking the time to visit those sites. And when I’m done scanning, I click “mark all as read.”

Did I miss a lot of detail? Sure. Do I worry about that? No. Why? Because I know the really important news will either emerge as recurring themes in the headlines or hit me through other channels such as e-mail, phone calls, or conversations.

All of this takes me 5-15 minutes per session, typically, depending on how much is happening. So figure a half-hour per day to keep up with literally dozens of sources tracking the world from my perspective.

I also follow a variety of “beats.” A couple of times a day I’ll scan my feed folders related to projects or topics I work on daily: Contentious, E-Media Tidbits, citizen journalism, and environment/energy.

Usually I’ll give each of these folders a quick scan just before I start work on those projects — such as looking for something to cover in Tidbits or to linkblog for Contentious via del.icio.us. I do this to find something very fresh and intriguing to write about or to inform my perspective on my work. It’s basically a tool for following my “beats.”

Again, I first quickly scan the headlines. I’ll usually check out at least the summaries or first few paragraphs of 5-10 items per folder; and of these I’ll usually linkblog 2-3 per session. And when I’m done scanning, I click “mark all as read.” This takes me about 5-10 minutes per folder — generally about a half hour daily.

Finally I have a few folders that I only glance at occasionally when the mood strikes me: relationships & sex, life overhaul, PR & marketing, etc. I look at them maybe 2-3 times a week.

Add it all up, every day I spend about an hour per day scanning my personal and professional “radar” through my feed reader. I’m not trying to catch every detail; I’m just seeing what’s up. I feel zero guilt about all those posts I didn’t read. I’m not even trying to read everything. This isn’t a research project; it’s life.

Generally, the goddess of serendipity smiles on me through this process. Somehow I tend to find exactly what I need to stay connected to important news or insights from many of the people I care about — far more so than if I tried to contact them all personally or visit their sites individually.

And in my work, I find this process usually gives me just what I need to be enough ahead of the curve in many areas to justify my consulting rates while keeping me interested and energized.

Embracing serendipity, believing that I always will find what I need or can use, makes it easy to get rid of the guilt of not reading everything. It’s more about riding the current than treading water. And it’s more fun.

What do you feel or think about what’s in your feed reader? How do those emotions or perspectives affect your process (what you do) in your feed reader? Does the overall process feel rewarding or fun? Why or why not? Please comment below.

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2007/11/14/feed-overload-ditch-the-guilt-embrace-serendipity/feed/ 10 http://www.contentious.com/2007/10/05/ask-and-you-shall-receive-with-help-from-social-media/ http://www.contentious.com/2007/10/05/ask-and-you-shall-receive-with-help-from-social-media/#comments Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:00:59 +0000 Amy Gahran http://www.contentious.com/archives/2007/10/05/ask-and-you-shall-receive-with-help-from-social-media/ Facebook Discussion on the Facebook group for Tidbits readers.

This Sunday my colleague Barb Iverson and I will give a workshop called “Web Productivity and Tech Tools Workout” at the Society of Professional Journalists conference in Washington, DC.

We’ve mapped out several cool topics to cover. This is the first of a few posts that will serve as “living handouts” for that workshop.

In my work as a journalist, consultant, blogger, trainer, and speaker, I’ve often found that the smartest thing I can do is surround myself with smart and relevant people. Therefore, for me, the main concrete benefit I’ve experienced from participating in social networking sites is the ability to quickly share knowledge with a trusted network of friends and colleagues.

I currently use two popular social networking services: LinkedIn and Facebook. One very useful feature of both services is that they allow you to easily pose questions within your personal network of contacts, or to other selected groups. Yeah, you could do this by personal e-mail, but it would be a major hassle.

Here’s how this can help your work and career (especially if you’re a journalist), and the basics of how to do it…

THE TOOLS

LinkedIn Answers: Available to any LinkedIn user. Here’s the FAQ.

• Pose any business-related question except requests for contacts, either to all LinkedIn users, to your personal contact network, or to selected people within your contact network. (Personally, I find I tend to answer only questions that come from my network, I don’t browse the public questions, but YMMV.)
• Questions remain live (can accept responses) for seven days.
• People can choose to respond publicly or privately to you.
• You have the option to display on your LinkedIn profile the questions you’ve asked or answered. This could help demonstrate your expertise and helpfulness, as well as the quality of your network.

Example: On Thursday I posed this question via LinkedIn Answers, “Which online tools or services do you find absolutely indispensable for organizing and doing your work, especially for work in the news/media biz?” As of this writing, I have 13 public responses (plus some private ones) from my network — all thoughtful and useful. I’ll summarize them later.

Facebook Questions: Very similar to LinkedIn Answers, except your questions need not be business-related. You’ll need to install a Facebook application for your account to pose questions to your network. Each has its own features and interface, including privacy and response options. Several question applications can be found here. I use MyQuestions.

Example: I posed the same question as above to my Facebook friends using Facebook MyQuestions. I have a smaller and different Facebook network than on LinkedIn. As of this writing I have one answer via this system. YMMV, of course.

Facebook Groups: Rather than occasionally contact your existing network, this allows you to form an ongoing community of interest around anything — an issue, an event, an activity, a site or blog, a geographic region or community, etc. This is useful if you want to foster an ongoing sense of mutual interaction and sharing, rather than just occasionally posing questions. Facebook Groups FAQ.

There are already tons of Facebook Groups, so don’t reinvent the wheel. Before you start a group, see whether an existing group is already looking at the things you want to explore, and if the character of the community suits you. It’s always easier to join a conversation than start one.

As an experiment, last night I started a Facebook group for Tidbits readers. (Poynter’s E-Media Tidbits is a team blog that I edit.). As of this writing it has 48 members and several posts. I think this could be very useful for honing this blog’s content strategy, finding new contributors, and making sure we’re serving our community.

HOW & WHY JOURNALISTS CAN USE THESE TOOLS

• Connect with relevant communities. This is especially true of Facebook groups. It can enhance your reporting and help your work gain traction. For example, check out the savvy way the Orlando Sentinel connects with its community via Facebook groups.
• Developing story ideas. While many journalists are fiercely competitive and therefore secretive about story ideas, the truth is that most story ideas aren’t very original and therefore don’t warrant secrecy. Reaching out to your network or a community can be a fast way to find useful, unexpected angles, anecdotes, sources, and leads.
• Explore career options. Asking questions through these tools can help you gain context and insight on beats, types of work, your industry, your work, or your abilities. This doesn’t necessarily mean shopping for a new employer; it could mean evolving your role within your company. More information is better, since it helps you steer your career (rather than the reverse).
• Support and fuel your projects. If you regularly publish a blog, column, news stories, editorials, etc., a social-media network or community can help pool people’s energy, creativity, and insight. This can make your job easier by giving you good ideas, having a sounding board, and developing a fairly safe space for critique. Although many journalists are loners, in fact our work improves when we don’t try to do it all ourselves.
• Humility and transparency. Too often, IMHO, journalists lose credibility in their communities because they prefer to hold themselves apart from public discourse. They ask their questions and conduct their research in private, they strive to conceal their own views, they only publicly present packaged answers (in the form of stories), and they generally don’t acknowledge or engage with critics.Actively engaging with your community, listening to them, being transparent with them doesn’t “lower” you in any way. In fact, it demonstrates respect and enhances credibility. Sure, it’s uncomfortable at first (just one day into the Tidbits Facebook Group, and I’ve already had my credibility challenged), but you learn to take it in stride — and it has a lot of benefits.

…OK, that’s enough on this topic for now. I’ve got other stuff to cover, I’ll revisit this.

]]> http://www.contentious.com/2007/10/05/ask-and-you-shall-receive-with-help-from-social-media/feed/ 4