So what exactly did you get out of social media?

We looked at forms, learned terms, met Baxter, developed a plan, blogged and tweeted over the course of 15 weeks.We learned about Klout scores (mine remains at 48/49) and Socioclean, and  LinkedIn. We checked out QR codes, “Storified” lap giraffes and met Baxter.

For the last assigned blog of the semester, I’d like you to reflect on what we did over the semester and what you learned. What was the most valuable thing you learned? Has your sentence changed? (Remember that post?) What is your advice to your journalism friends and colleagues about social media?What should they learn? What’s your favorite hashtag? (I have a lot, but i do like #jmcawesome.

For the record, you have three freestyle blog posts and this last assigned one. All are due by noon on Friday.

Is PowerPoint the problem?

The social media class began a round of presentations, and, in general, they did a good job. They were organized, they knew their stuff, their social media plans were developed. But  there was not much interaction with the audience. Many said before the presentations started that they hate to talk to their colleagues. “People don’t look interested. They just stare at you.”

Welcome to my world.

The speakers could have done a better job of connecting with the audience. If it was a two-person talk, they tended to talk to each other, not to the class. And students doing the presentations spent more time looking at the computer screen than talking to their audience. Little eye contact, even with me, who was interested in what they had to say, nodding and smiling.

Make yourself look at your audience. Engage. Be enthusiastic about what you are doing.

Is PowerPoint the problem? Is it a crutch?

Presentation Day

Today and perhaps Wednesday, the social media peeps will present their three-month strategies for a variety of organizations, Their challenge was to analyze what’s happening now, the problems and opportunities and develop social media goals and a workable strategy plan to help the organization reach those goals. They also had to come up with a way to measure whether the goals are being met.

In short presentations today, we’ll see how they did. The skill of presenting is an important one — though I know students often don’t like them — because it’s how the world works. We have to sell people on our ideas, on our way of doing things.

It’s a work day

The eager students and teams in JMC327 have a work day on Wednesday to, well, work on their projects.

Some tips:

• Read through instructions carefully. Make sure you include some research on what similar organizations are doing. Good ideas or things not to do.
• Check out the just-posted list of links under strategy and goals. You’ll find all sorts of advice — good advice — and ways to develop your plan.
• Remember goals, strategy to reach those goals and how you will measure success. Put this over a three-month period that works best for your organization.

Let’s go to Plan B with Storify

I had asked you to use Storify to create a story. But with invites slow to arrive, let’s go with Plan B. I have an account and we can put one together in class on Monday.

In the meantime, check out these Storify resources:

• Poynter post about Storify and its use in news. I found the dueling mayors in the snow storms to be really illuminating, at least on which mayor has the best handle on social media.
• Check out the Omaha World-Herald’s use of Storify in this wrap-up of Husker recruiting day.
• Here’s an example of Save the Children chronicling its advocacy day with a Storify.
• And here’s a Storify about using Storify from a Twitter chat with its founder.

After you’ve cruised through those social media examples, write a blog post about what you see as the potential for Storify. How could you use it? What do you think is the best use and why? This is your next-to-last assigned blog. (I know, you’re sad.)

Let’s storify

Curation is one way to make sense and make the best use of all the content on social media. We’ve talked about it in class. Now it’s your turn to storify.

You first have to request an invitation to join Storify. Once you’ve got a membership (it’s free), choose an event, an activity, something to Storify.

You should have at least one photos, one video and at least five to six Tweets as part of your curated story. For instance, you could do one on our visit to the Nebraska Humane Society. There should be an introduction and comments where needed. Be sure to let people know if you use their tweets in your Storify.

Due: April 13.

 

 

Pet project: Walking through social media at the Nebraska Humane Society

While I am not sure field trip is the best term for a college excursion, we are heading to the Nebraska Humane Society on Wednesday to talk social media analytics. Elizabeth Hilpipre has been and continues to be a social media explorer. She has developed a wonderful social media campaign, using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

She will talk to us about what she has done and what she has learned in her explorations. I will be live-tweeting some of the conversation. You will write a blog post on what you take away from the conversation.

Elizabeth has done much of this on her own. One of the lessons I want you to think about is the need to be constantly learning and trying new things. But there’s also a need for figuring out how the social media fits into your overall communication strategy. What’s the most effective way to tell your story, to engage with the people you need to reach? How do you tell you have reached them?

Blog Assignment No. 5: What do these journalism trends mean to me?

Journalism and media are changing and shifting under our feet. It is a constant challenge to figure out how to navigate in the constantly evolving landscape.  The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism keeps tabs on these changes with a yearly State of the Media report. The report has been grim for the past two years in terms of media jobs and revenue.

It’s still grim in some areas, but what we need to pay attention to is how people are consuming news and how that is changing. This relates to social media, of course, in how social networking is playing a role.

For your next blog post,

State of the Media Report, Percentage change in Audience

. I’d like you to read the State of the Media overview, major trends, key findings and a special report on mobile.  If you are in advertising, I would take a look at the online/advertising section.

Write a blog post reflecting on what you have read.  What does all of this this mean for you as a future journalism professional? What does it mean as a citizen? Should we change what we are teaching? How can you be prepared to face this new media world? What skills do you think you need?

 

Here’s the last set of terms

MySQL:
MySQL is currently the most popular open source database server in existence. On top of that, it is very commonly used in conjunction with PHP scripts to create powerful and dynamic server-side applications.

Free-software projects that require a full-featured database management system often use MySQL. For commercial use, several paid editions are available, and offer additional functionality. Some free software project examples: Joomla, WordPress, MyBB, phpBB, Drupal and other software built on the LAMP software stack. MySQL is also used in many high-profile, large-scale World Wide Web products, including Wikipedia, Google and Facebook.

What is a Database?
A database is a structure that comes in two flavors: a flat database and a relational database. A relational database is much more oriented to the human mind and is often preferred over the gabble-de-gook flat database that are just stored on hard drives like a text file. MySQL is a relational database.

In a relational structured database there are tables that store data. The columns define which kinds of information will be stored in the table. An individual column must be created for each type of data you wish to store (i.e. Age, Weight, Height).

On the other hand, a row contains the actual values for these specified columns. Each row will have 1 value for each and every column. For example a table with columns (Name, Age, Weight-lbs) could have a row with the values (Bob, 65, 165). If all this relational database talk is too confusing, don’t despair. We will talk about and show a few examples in the coming lessons.

Why Use a Database?
Databases are most useful when it comes to storing information that fits into logical categories. For example, say that you wanted to store information of all the employees in a company. With a database you can group different parts of your business into separate tables to help store your information logically. Example tables might be: Employees, Supervisors, and Customers. Each table would then contain columns specific to these three areas. To help store information related to each employee, the Employees table might have the following columns: Hire, Date, Position, Age, and Salary.

Learn MySQL
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL

http://mysql.com/why-mysql/white-papers/mysqlwp-enterprise-2.0.php

http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/dispelling-the-myths.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Open_source_database_management_systems

DIGITAL CURATION:
What it is:
Digital curation is the selection, preservation, maintenance, collection and archiving of digital assets.
Hot to use it:
It is the process of establishing and developing long term repositories of digital assets for current and future reference by researchers, scientists, and historians, and scholars generally.

Sources:
http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/index
http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/229/183
http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/98706/next-trends-from-ona-curation-entrepreneurship-the-real-time-web/
Use in social media/media/advertising:
In Twitter, people use curation to promote and link to stories, research stories and identify trends.

TRANSPARENCY:
What is it?
Transparency, essentially meaning openness, means different things to different people, even in the context of social media. It can refer to being transparent about relationships in social media posts, like revealing clients or affiliate link. To other people, it means another opportunity to interact in a customer-seller relationship, by checking each other out before a purchase and having an increased feeling of knowing each other. Still others take it to the extreme of living totally public lives, which might be what social media is leading toward.

How does it work?
Social media makes it a lot easier for all types of people and organizations to be more “out there” in the public. Therefore, there is an opportunity to be a lot more open and transparent about your actions and thoughts.

What’s an example of it used in social media, media or advertising?
One example we discussed in class is Dell linking to their own exploding laptop and acknowledging the problem instead of trying to ignore it. Another example could be a retailer posting about the reasons behind a late delivery in order to make their customers aware.

A few links:
Social media transparency: How realistic is it? [http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/77818]
Transparency in 140 characters: [http://technomarketer.typepad.com/technomarketer/2009/01/transparency-in-140-characters.html]

How can social media transparency help your business? [http://www.ultimatemarketingonline.com/blog/socialmedia/how-can-social-media-transparency-help-your-business/]

An era of total transparency [http://www.socialmedia.biz/2009/11/16/an-era-of-total-transparency/]

CPC–Cost-Per-Click:
Definition:
The amount of money that is paid per click by the advertiser when an ad is clicked on a website.
Synonym of pay-per-click.
How to use it:
Websites use advertisements on pages and the number of clicks that an ad receives determines how much money the advertiser has to pay for the ad.

Examples:
Any of the advertisements in bold underneath the search bar on Google, Bing, Yahoo or on the side of the page in Facebook. (AdSense, adCenter, etc.)

Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_per_click

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6297

http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/cost_per_click/

CREATIVE COMMONS:
It’s basically a way that you can post your stuff, and license it. With that license, you’re posts are copyrighted but you can allow people to use your work as long as they give you credit.

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative  works available for others to build upon legally and to share.[1]  The organization has released several copyright-licenses  known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy to understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. This simplicity distinguishes Creative Commons from an all-rights reserved copyright. Creative Commons was invented to create a more flexible copyright model, replacing “all rights reserved” with “some rights reserved”. Wikipedia  is one of the notable web-based projects using one of its licenses.

Links:

Homepage

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ

Missing some terms?

My careful plan to crowdsource the series of social media terms did not exactly go smoothly. We’re missing some of the entries. for those working on studying for Monday’s test, Hacks/Hackers provides definitions for almost all the words on the list. True confessions: It’s where I went to find the list.

Schedule: Test Monday. No class Wednesday.