Basically, the blog is at the centre of all the social networking I do for my work. Its style follows one of the conventions of blogging in that it is a tool used to link out to other sites - and to converse directly with anyone else interested in those issues being highlighted.
As you know, now we exist 'within the web', our profiles weaved into different sites - we are no longer just 'on the web', we are part of it.
Conversations carry on across more than one website and a blog can be used as the conduit by which you can move people around those sites and talk over all the issues on all those sites. You still with me?
So, for an on-going story like the local implications of the credit crunch, rather than covering every story, I can blog and just link directly to the story I'm interested in, thereby crediting the source of the story and not wasting time getting caught up in the minutae of that story.
How is that done?
One way is to use an account on a social bookmarking site like delicious.com to aggregate related stories [tagging them via the same word 'jobs'] and then link across to that feed or aggregation via the blog.
Eg:-
So here are all the stories I've tagged 'jobs' since we entered the credit crunch last year.
Then, whenever I blog about a new round of redundancies or such like, I add to the foot of the blog post 'tag: jobs' which is clickable and takes the reader to the feed.
I'm not going to blog every time a firm announces redundancies, [like the story of 8 jobs going a local store because it is too parochial] but it is still important and so I bookmark the story because that's another 8 jobs going in the locality.
People seeing my tag for 'jobs' on delicious.com can take a feed [or join my network but that's another story] from my delicious account and, every time I add a relevant bookmark, they are notifed - and so I do not even have to blog about the story, they are automatically notified. Then it's up to them whether they read it.
This is akin to micro blogging, giving making snippets of information [or 'content'] out of things. I like the adage 'making content out of process'.
An example of that is like the way I've taken a feed of a delicious account and added it to our account http:/twitter.com/bbcwrexham and so every time I add a bookmark to Delicious it automatically promotes the link on Twitter. Eg:- http://twitter.com/bbcwrexham/status/1222454410
I've done the same with blog posts so now those followers on Twitter also know what I'm blogging about and / or bookmarking. They'll get the headline and link to click for more if they are interested. A link to the Twitter account is also highlighted in the blog.
And, therefore, people who visit the blog can see that I'm microblogging on Twitter. So, as you can see, I'm also pushing people around all my sites to get a better feel about what I'm doing or things I think will interest them.
The reason I do this because the people who read the blog, may not be interested in ALL snippets I give out on Twitter and vice versa in the blog, but they may click the occasional thing that takes their fancy.
I do the same with the photo sharing website, Flickr.com, taking a feed of photos and making them viewable in the blog in the right hand navigation.
This came about because to get in touch with someone on Flickr, and Twitter and other blogs for that matter, you sometimes need to have an account yourself.
So it made sense to populate the account with some things - content - to hopefully bring people back into our site / blog - a teaser if you like. Again this is part of the ethos of social networking, you have to give something to get something.
I know this all sounds involved and time consuming, but once the systems are set up it's cohesive and not at all time consuming.
In fact, if anything, it makes me a more efficient blogger and journalist, it keeps me in touch with the audience [and them with me] and it gives me a direct line to them to get some initial feedback, a quote, or an immediate overview of a corner of my patch I can't easily get to.
And I haven't even mentioned the use of a feed reader that automatically notifies me every time my fellow bloggers or webmasters update their sites with content that will interest me - and which can trigger an idea for a blog or a story for my colleagues, aka news journalists.
As you know, now we exist 'within the web', our profiles weaved into different sites - we are no longer just 'on the web', we are part of it.
Conversations carry on across more than one website and a blog can be used as the conduit by which you can move people around those sites and talk over all the issues on all those sites. You still with me?
So, for an on-going story like the local implications of the credit crunch, rather than covering every story, I can blog and just link directly to the story I'm interested in, thereby crediting the source of the story and not wasting time getting caught up in the minutae of that story.
How is that done?
One way is to use an account on a social bookmarking site like delicious.com to aggregate related stories [tagging them via the same word 'jobs'] and then link across to that feed or aggregation via the blog.
Eg:-
So here are all the stories I've tagged 'jobs' since we entered the credit crunch last year.
Then, whenever I blog about a new round of redundancies or such like, I add to the foot of the blog post 'tag: jobs' which is clickable and takes the reader to the feed.
I'm not going to blog every time a firm announces redundancies, [like the story of 8 jobs going a local store because it is too parochial] but it is still important and so I bookmark the story because that's another 8 jobs going in the locality.
People seeing my tag for 'jobs' on delicious.com can take a feed [or join my network but that's another story] from my delicious account and, every time I add a relevant bookmark, they are notifed - and so I do not even have to blog about the story, they are automatically notified. Then it's up to them whether they read it.
This is akin to micro blogging, giving making snippets of information [or 'content'] out of things. I like the adage 'making content out of process'.
An example of that is like the way I've taken a feed of a delicious account and added it to our account http:/twitter.com/bbcwrexham and so every time I add a bookmark to Delicious it automatically promotes the link on Twitter. Eg:- http://twitter.com/bbcwrexham/status/1222454410
I've done the same with blog posts so now those followers on Twitter also know what I'm blogging about and / or bookmarking. They'll get the headline and link to click for more if they are interested. A link to the Twitter account is also highlighted in the blog.
And, therefore, people who visit the blog can see that I'm microblogging on Twitter. So, as you can see, I'm also pushing people around all my sites to get a better feel about what I'm doing or things I think will interest them.
The reason I do this because the people who read the blog, may not be interested in ALL snippets I give out on Twitter and vice versa in the blog, but they may click the occasional thing that takes their fancy.
I do the same with the photo sharing website, Flickr.com, taking a feed of photos and making them viewable in the blog in the right hand navigation.
This came about because to get in touch with someone on Flickr, and Twitter and other blogs for that matter, you sometimes need to have an account yourself.
So it made sense to populate the account with some things - content - to hopefully bring people back into our site / blog - a teaser if you like. Again this is part of the ethos of social networking, you have to give something to get something.
I know this all sounds involved and time consuming, but once the systems are set up it's cohesive and not at all time consuming.
In fact, if anything, it makes me a more efficient blogger and journalist, it keeps me in touch with the audience [and them with me] and it gives me a direct line to them to get some initial feedback, a quote, or an immediate overview of a corner of my patch I can't easily get to.
And I haven't even mentioned the use of a feed reader that automatically notifies me every time my fellow bloggers or webmasters update their sites with content that will interest me - and which can trigger an idea for a blog or a story for my colleagues, aka news journalists.
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