#Podcast: Growing social media communities

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This week’s podcast looks at:

• How Future builds social media communities before launching a new product;
• How a wedding title retains brides-to-be within their social media communities after their big day;
• Tips on community building from the Guardian, which this week passed the 1 million followers milestone on its @Guardian flagship account.

Journalism.co.uk technology editor Sarah Marshall speaks to:

• Katherine Radarecht, group publisher at Future 
• Victoria Joy, online editor at YouAndYourWedding.co.uk, an Immediate Media title
• Laura Oliver, community manager, the Guardian

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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#Tip: Remember these 4 lessons from ‘the digital edge’

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Brian Moritz spent ten years as a news reporter before beginning a PhD focussing on the evolution of journalists’ routines at Syracuse University. As this article from the Knight Foundation-affiliated MediaShift Idea Lab explains, he spent the last semester flying drones, building virtual reality environments and using 3D printers.

“The future is here,” he says, and details four key lessons for journalism students to take from living life at the cutting edge of technology.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip: Become a better smartphone photographer

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Here are 12 tips on becoming a better smartphone photographer, as shared by CNN iReport.

The tips are from an interview with multimedia journalist and iPhone street photographer Richard Koci Hernandez.

Advice includes never to use the zoom on a phone camera, and to lock the exposure and focus.

The full list of tips is here.

(The post was published in September but the advice is obviously all still relevant.)

Update: And here are a further 10 tips on mobile phone photography, these from the Best Buy Mobile site. And five tips from Yanik’s Photo School site.

Hat tip: Marc Settle, who tweeted about all three posts.

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#Tip: Become a Google Analytics Real-Time addict

If you use Google Analytics to track traffic to your news site, make sure you use Google Analytics Real-Time, which tells you the number of people on your site right now.

It shows referrals (such as those coming via Twitter) and you can also see how many people are reading on a desktop, tablet or smartphone device.

You can access ‘real-time’ via the main dashboard in Google Analytics.

The content breakdown, which shows the percentage of visitors reading on desktop, tablet and mobile, is accessed by clicking on the ‘content’ tab (below ‘real-time’). It is a relatively new feature which was announced at the end of March.

Have a go – but be aware that it is rather addictive…

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#Podcast: The rise of microvideo in online news

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The rising tide of microvideo apps for smartphones is an increasing feature in online and mobile news reporting. This podcast looks at what is driving this change, some of the different platforms being used and what this could potentially mean for how news is received and reported in online and mobile forms in the future.

We speak to:

• Michael Downing, founder and CEO, Tout
• Jim Brady, editor-in-chief, Digital First Media
• Neha Manaktala, chief operations officer, Vizibee
• Marc Settle, trainer in mobile journalism, BBC College of Journalism
• Michael Anastasi, vice president and executive editor, Los Angeles Newspaper Group

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

We will have more on Journalism.co.uk next week from the podcast interviewees on this subject.

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#Tip: Watch video of social video panel from Social Media Summit

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The BBC College of Journalism has posted video on YouTube of a panel on creating social video, which was held at the Social Media Summit in New York last month.

The panel featured Roy Sekoff, president and co-creator of HuffPost Live, Katherine Zaleski, managing editor of NowThis News and Olivia Ma, head of news and media partnerships at Google+. Watch the video below to hear more about some of the different approaches being taken in making video a more social experience for news consumers, across platforms.

And here’s more on HuffPost Live as well as NowThisNews, on their approaches to social video,

Hat tip: Paul Bradshaw, who also posted the video on his Tumblr

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#Tip: Video of data visualisation tools tutorial at #ijf13

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At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia late last month, a tutorial was delivered by freelance information visualiser Gregor Aisch, on three key tools for building data visualisations “on a shoestring”.

Video of the workshop has been uploaded to YouTube by the festival and is also embedded below. The tutorial covered three platforms: Datawrapper, QGis and Tableau.

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#Tip: Sign up to Journalism.co.uk’s weekly podcasts

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A bit of self promotion here, but each week at Journalism.co.uk we produce a podcast looking at topical issues in journalism, often focused on digital innovations, tools and techniques.

Recent podcasts have included:

• Snow Fall and beyond: A look at long-form online storytelling
• How journalists can gather news from diverse communities
• Managing user-generated content in breaking news
• Getting started in data journalism
• How magazine publishers are innovating in online video
• Then and now: Two years of the New York Times paywall

The podcasts are published every Friday on the Journalism.co.uk homepage and our blog. All Journalism.co.uk podcasts are also published on our SoundCloud account, and you can sign up to Journalism.co.uk podcasts on iTunes.

The subjects covered in the podcasts should provide journalists with inspiration and practical tips, as well as give the opportunity to listen to what colleagues at news outlets across the world have to say on a range of subjects.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Tip: Follow this series on advice for editors

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Steve Buttry has started a series and hashtag on advice for editors (or #advice4editors) as a personal addition to his work as digital transformation editor at Digital First Media and Journal Register Co.

Although it is aimed at new editors in DFM newsrooms it is equally applicable to editors elsewhere or pretty much anyone in the field of journalism: breaking habits, the importance of listening and leading by example may be obvious characteristics but having them illustrated in a newsroom context makes them more applicable – and somehow more real.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link.

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#Podcast – Snow Fall and beyond: A look at long-form online storytelling

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Following last month’s the Pulitzer prize for New York Times sports reporter John Branch, the author of Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, and this week’s Webby Awards which also recognised examples of beautiful long-form storytelling online, this week’s podcast looks at some of the exciting ways newspapers and others are telling in-depth stories on digital platforms.

The podcast addresses some of the issues which arise when bringing together long-form narrative with powerful visuals and interactivity, including the sorts of stories which best suit this approach, the benefits for audiences, journalists and news outlets, and the need for experimentation, even if on a smaller scale.

We speak to:

• John Branch, sports reporter, the New York Times, who won the Pulitzer prize for feature writing last month for Snow Fall
• Benji Lanyado, journalist and interactive designer, now also working on a new start-up
• Dan Zak, reporter, Washington Post, who authored The Prophets of Oak Ridge
• Sarah Sampsel, director of digital, mobile and new product design, Washington Post

Podcast: Download

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

We will have more on Journalism.co.uk next week from the podcast interviewees on this subject.

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