#jpod: How journalists are embracing Facebook subscribe

It is two months since Facebook launched Subscribe, a feature which allows people to add a subscribe button to their profile and encourage other users to follow their updates.

Subscribe replaces fan pages for journalists and as a result of switching from a page to subscribe, many have seen subscriber numbers soar.

New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof has 350,000 subscribers; Benjamin Cohen, technology correspondent for Channel 4 News has 25,000, and Sky News’ digital editor Neal Mann, whose social media presence is fieldproducer, has more than 13,000.

In this podcast Journalism.co.uk technology correspondent Sarah Marshall speaks to Liz Heron, social media editor of the New York Times – who has more than 260,000 subscribers – about why she is encouraging all foreign correspondents at the title to add the subscribe button.

The #jpod also has reflections and advice for journalists from Neal Mann and Benjamin Cohen.

Podcast: Download

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

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – post to Facebook at 9am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm

When is the best time to post a news story to Facebook? That was a question answered by Nate Lanxon, editor of Wired.co.uk, at Friday’s news:rewired journalism conference.

According to Lanxon, these times to post on the Wired.co.uk Facebook page – which he considers a “behind-the-scenes fan club” for Wired readers – are best:

• First thing in the morning when you get into the office;
• Lunch time;
• 3pm;
• Between 5 and 5.30p.m.

There are more tips from the session on social media optimisation at this link.

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Tool of the week for journalists – Pinterest

Tool of the week: Pinterest

What is it? A bookmarking and sharing tool

How is it of use to journalists? Pinterest has been growing in popularity recently.

It is a virtual bookmarking system that can be used by newsrooms to curate and share news.

Indeed Liz Heron, social media editor of the New York Times (NYT), suggested at last week’s news:rewired conference that NYT will be joining.

When Heron was asked: “Are there any emerging platforms that NYT are excited about?”

She answered:

Pinterest is one up and coming platform, but we’re still figuring out what the community wants there and how we can deliver something new. You’ll see us there soon.

Journalism.co.uk has since created a Pinterest account and has used it to collate blog posts from news:rewired.

It is invite-only at the moment but we have a handful to share. Email us using this link if you would like one.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – using LinkedIn as a journalist

TheNextWeb has a post outlining some of the best ways journalists can make use of LinkedIn, such as by simply searching for contacts or looking at the financial results of companies of interest.

Journalism.co.uk has also recently compiled a list of ten tips for journalists on using the platform, and a podcast on making the most of the site which includes an interview with Krista Canfield, senior manager of corporate communications (consumer PR) at LinkedIn.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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App of the week for journalists: Blogsy, to blog from your iPad

App of the week: Blogsy

Device: iPad

Cost: £2.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? Blogsy is a blogging solution for iPad users.

In this post, Adam Tinworth, a blogger for more than 10 years, points out the problems with writing and posting from his tablet.

iPad blogging landscape has been a horrible, barren mess, with barely any decent blogging apps to be seen. Most blog platforms’ editors didn’t function in mobile Safari in any useful way. Blogging using the iPad was, at best, a challenge and, at worst, an impossibility.

He has tried and tested Blogsy, using it to write and file this post, finding that it “works very well”.

These videos teach the various swipe, drag and drop techniques.

Reviews: Blogsy gets four stars in the iTunes App Store.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – how to verify tweets

On Memeburn Peter Verweij has produced a great list running through the different ways journalists can verify the content of tweets and avoid being tripped up. These include using Twitter itself to crowdsource to verify information and also how to check the authenticity of images.

Tipster: Rachel McAthy

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link – we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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Is your blog in this PR database of 1.3 million blogs?

Press officers have long relied on databases of journalists in order to approach them for stories. PRs are now increasingly targeting bloggers, recognising their reach. One start-up has seized on this trend, creating GroupHigh, “a research engine” which crawls 1.3 million blogs in real-time.

Launched in April 2011 in Boulder, Colorado, the software allows PRs to search by keyword, location and blog traffic.

Listed in the Next Web’s top 20 social media tools of 2011, GroupHigh gets a ringing endorsement.

13. GroupHigh.com – If you haven’t tried GroupHigh yet, the next sentence might encourage you to do so. Ready? GroupHigh.com is the best blogger outreach research and engagement tool on the planet. The latest update (version three) makes it even easier for you to discover the most relevant blogs by keyword, style and receptiveness. Brilliant.

PRs who pay for access can ask the database for “a list of every mum blog out there”, co-founder of the start-up Bill Brennan told Journalism.co.uk. You can then ask the software to “tell me the ones that have written about baby formula or home schooling in the last year”.

When I tested the software and searched for “UK bloggers”, left-leaning political blog Liberal Conspiracy was listed at number one (see screen shot below).

The location search works by “triangulation”: crawling the blog, its Facebook page and Twitter feed, Brennan explained.

Users can also filter by page rank, Facebook shares or Twitter followers and export the data to Excel.

Version three of the software lists blogs not bloggers, Brennan said.

We’ll probably add contacts for individual bloggers at each blog as part of version four.

GroupHigh is the co-founders’ second start-up. Their first foray was recipe search engine Recipe Bridge, which they sold to an Australian ad network.

Confident in their ability to build software to crawl the web and realising “it’s difficult to make money [from] advertising”, the pair “started to tap into the blogosphere”, Bill Brennan said, noting a changing trend within the PR industry.

It seemed like blog outreach was really becoming a staple of campaigns for their clients.

Brennan added that PRs were finding the big bloggers, such as TechCrunch, but “they were not tapping in to what we call the ‘magic middle’” of less well-known blogs.

The cost of using the software is likely to preclude bloggers from satisfying their curiosity and checking if their site is crawled. An annual GroupHigh licence for PRs costs $3,000 (£1,926), plus $1,000 (£642) for each additional user.

Below is a video demo of how GroupHigh works.

GroupHigh 3 Video Overview from Andy Theimer on Vimeo.

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Tool of the week for journalists – Formulists (use it before it disappears)

Tool of the week: Formulists

What is it? A tool to create smart Twitter lists (and more).

How is it of use to journalists? Formulists is a fantastic tool to create Twitter lists. Simply sign in with your Twitter account, search for a keyword such as “journalist” and Formulists will create a Twitter list of all the people you follow with the word “journalist” in their profile. Formulists found that 135 people I follow include the word journalist in their profile, for example. Here is the Twitter list.

But be warned: Formulists is shutting down. You can still create lists but they will no longer be automatically updated.

It is a real shame this tool is being pulled, particularly as Twitter lists are a great way for journalists to filter those they want to follow and focus on. If your “all friends” stream has become too busy, make it more manageable by creating lists based on keywords while you still can. Your lists will not be updated as you follow additional Twitter users but Formulists provides a great way to start creating new lists.

It is worth exploring Formulists as it allows you to do more than simply create lists, such as allowing you to search for new Twitter users by topic.

The Formulists blog also points out some additional Twitter filtering tools.

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#Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – How to check the score of your Facebook page

You can check the score of your Facebook page using EdgeRank Checker.

There is no charge to run a score search and find out the best and worst days for your Facebook page.

You can find out more on EdgeRank, Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm, by reading our guide on how to best post news on Twitter and Facebook.  Tip number five explains how EdgeRank filters your fans’ newsfeeds to give them the news that Facebook thinks they will be most interested in

You can become a fan of Journalism.co.uk on Facebook.

Tipster: Sarah Marshall

If you have a tip you would like to submit to us at Journalism.co.uk email us using this link– we will pay a fiver for the best ones published.

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App of the week for journalists: Tweetbot

App of the week: Tweetbot

Operating systems: iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch)

Cost: £1.99

What is it and how is it of use to journalists? If you are a Twitter-using journalist with an iPhone, this app is a must.

It is a cut above the rest as it has some really handy functionality that is absent in many other Twitter apps.

Tweetbot takes settings from the Twitter app on your phone, making for a quick set up for those with multiple accounts.

One of the really useful things for journalists is the ability to follow various lists as you mine for stories (as shown in the picture on the left). If you have found that your Twitter stream is too busy, lists are the best way of filtering.

You can also see conversations and retweets. By sweeping a tweet to the right you can see the full exchange of tweets.

The app has various customisable buttons and tap actions. For example, you can configure triple tap to reply to, favourite, retweet, or even translate a tweet.

Other gestures worth learning are double tapping on a tweet, link, or avatar which takes you to the respective details, and tapping and holding, which gives you options to share. This includes options to read it later (for example by syncing with Instapaper or another service) and to copy a tweet,  particularly helpful if you are using a timeline from one account and want to tweet from another.

Reviews: It gets 4.5 stars in iTunes App Store.

Have you got a favourite app that you use as a journalist? Fill in this form to nominate an app for Journalism.co.uk’s app of the week for journalists.

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