#Tip: Try these tips to boost your hyperlocal Facebook page

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Pictures. Personality. Timeliness. Tips and tools for building online communities can sometimes seem rather general but blogger and journalist Ed Walker decided to put them all into practice for his hyperlocal site Blog Preston.

See how it worked for him and the detailed highlights of what made his month long campaign a success in this blog post.

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: Bookmark this list of resources on statistics and data analysis

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The ability to understand data and statistics, or at least turn them into a story, is a central skill in news and investigative journalism. The helpful folks over at 10,000 Words have put together a list of books and resources that can give journalists a solid foundation of the basics.

If you want to find out more about getting started in data journalism this recent Journalism.co.uk podcast features some expert advice. Keep an eye out for more information about data journalism on Journalism.co.uk in the future.

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: Use YouTube Time to quickly link to a specific point in a video

If you have ever wanted to link to a particular point in a YouTube video, you might be aware that you can add the time to the YouTube URL.

For example, add ‘#t=10m03s’ to the URL if you want the video to start at 10 minutes and 3 seconds.

If you find you cannot remember the code, there is a quicker way. You can simply enter the link in YouTube Time and the online tool will do the rest.

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#Tip: Take a look at this flow-chart guide to Leveson

The DCMS has released a flow-chart guide to help bloggers and publishers understand the regulation criteria following Leveson.

Image by the Department for Culture Media and Sport on Flickr. Some rights reserved

You might also enjoy Martin Belam’s alternative flow-chart to help understand how Leveson works for bloggers.

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#Tip: Know where the video mic is on your iPhone

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If you are an iPhone user and shoot video, do you know where the microphone is that records sound for video?

If you have an iPhone, 4, 4S or 5 and you think it is at the ‘bottom’ of your mobile, close to where your mouth would be when speaking on the phone, you are wrong.

The video mic on the 4 and 4S is the small dot next to the headphone socket (see image above). On the iPhone 5 the video mic is close to the camera lens.

The three models have a separate microphone for video, Marc Settle, who trains BBC reporters in using iPhones to shoot video, has pointed out.

As Glen Mulcahy, innovation lead at Irish broadcaster RTE, explains in this helpful post, Settle demonstrated to him that the video mic is not where many people think it is.

The advice comes after Mulcahy led a session on mobile journalism at Friday’s news:rewired, a conference run by Journalism.co.uk.

Read Glen Mulcahy’s blog post for more and for pictures of the mic locations.

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#Tip: Planning for a breaking news situation

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The old idiom that “news spreads like wildfire” is slightly out of date when Twitter users around the world can hear of the same event in an instant, and newsrooms need to be able to react just as quickly.

Fast, accurate reporting is more important than ever, so R.B. Brenner put this article together for Poynter  on creating a plan for breaking news situations.

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: Videonotes can streamline online research

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Keeping track of notes when researching a story can sometimes be a struggle, especially when they refer to online resources. Videonotes (not to be confused with VideoNote) can help to ease the process by letting you tag notes to any video from around the internet, as this article from The Next Web explains.

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: Social media mistakes journalists make in a crisis

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In light of the recent events in Boston and issues that regularly arise when covering crises and breaking news stories on social media, Slate magazine’s social media editor, Jeremy Stahl, has drawn up some advice on what a journalist should or should not tweet during a crisis situation.

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: Timeless tips for video journalists

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We might be hurtling ever forward into a future of digital possibilities but sometimes the old advice is still the best. It’s why print journalists are taught Orwell’s five rules for effective writing, published in 1946, and also why video journalist Cyndy Green chose to highlight the unearthed ‘hints to newsfilm cameramen’ by Paul Desdemaines Hugon, news editor at Pathé News, from 1916.

She offers some of the best snippets of advice, as well as linking to where the full transcript first appeared on the web, but you could probably skip the bit about sending a telegram to the editor once the negatives are shipped.

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: Try storytelling tool Cowbird – which now has embed option

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Cowbird has released a new feature that allows you to embed a single story into a blog post or news story.

Cowbird is a storytelling tool which allows users to create multimedia stories with audio, images, text and other features.

An email was sent to Cowbird users earlier this week making them aware of the “long-awaited and much-asked-for single story embed”.

You can now embed any Cowbird story anywhere on the web, using our handsome story player (complete with audio, connections, sharing, handwriting, and more).

Just click the ‘Retell’ button on any Cowbird story, select the ‘Embed’ tab, and grab the code.

Recent examples of Cowbird stories can be found here.

Cowbird first came to our attention at Journalism.co.uk when the National Geographic used it to allow people living in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to tell their own stories, in their own words and pictures.

Mediashift wrote this article: How National Geographic used Cowbird storytelling tool to tell a reservation’s whole story.

Cowbird is also included in our list of 14 visual storytelling tools.

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