6-2 Blog: Social Media Tools

Another fun assignment this week for this blog. My task: Choose three of the Social Media Tools presented on this website to try. Post links to your attempts. Share your thoughts about which new social media tools will reach audiences most effectively. Explain your rationale.

I selected to use Twitter, Instagram, and widgets. I used all three over the week, and have been using them for a long time both personally and professionally. As a public information officer for a school district, I utilize social media to help our communications efforts and reach, and I started using social media years ago as a news reporter.

I believe Twitter is very effective in reaching large audiences. It doesn't have the reach of Facebook, which has many more users, but it still has a great reach and provides the power of tweets going viral. I posted a tweet (see below) of a picture of a peacock I came across while running. It was not only delivered to my more than 1,000 followers, but since I used the hashtag #mydayinla, it was retweeted to another 37,500 followers, and some of those people also retweeted it to their followers. So my reach with one tweet was well over 40,000 people. That's great reach, especially considering I only have about 1,000 people following me. The key to twitter, is knowing how to properly use hashtags and utilizing pictures.

 

Love seeing these #peacocks on my runs! Beautiful colors. #mydayinla #arcadia #running #LosAngeles pic.twitter.com/xFHudYppD3
— Ryan Foran (@RyanPForan) July 26, 2014

Instagram can be considered the Twitter for pictures. It's a great social media for those who are really into photgraphy. It's similar to Twitter with the use of hashtags, which can help your photo be discovered and get a wider reach, but its down side is that there is no comparable retweet which limits your reach capability. You'll notice the same peacock photo was liked by just 13 people, and clearly seen and reached far fewer people than my Twitter feed. Instagram is a fun social media, but the reach and ability to go viral, especially for businesses, is far less. Instagram will need to add a sharing option for it to compete with Twitter and Facebook.

Widgets are great tools to add to any blog, like this one, and very effective to help with reach. You'll notice on the right side of this blog are a couple of widgets. One is to my Twitter account,  the other is a link to my blog archives. The other widget I added for this blog was one to add "pages". It was very easy to setup, and allows me to post more information on these pages (About, Twitter, Linkedin, 510 Class Blogs) to help inform my readers and classmates. It makes this blog more like a website, and allows for greater flexibility and customization. You can also use widgets to promote your social media sites, show calendars, web hit calculator, clocks, etc. I've used several widgets on my superintendet's blog to help promote our district's social media sites and other links of interest, including his Twitter account. I've found widgets to be very useful in expanding reach, and would recommend any blogger or web host use them to their advantage!

3-2 Blog: Unrestricted Web Publishing

Another interesting assignment this week that concentrates on sourcing, and examining the source of the source if you will.
This week's task: Choose an online news article published by Time, The New York Times, or The Huffington Post and track its cited sources. Visit each source online and evaluate its credibility based on the guidelines set in Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources. Draft a blog post that briefly states a potential impact of unrestricted web publishing through mass media as it relates to this article.

With the World Cup still in full swing, even though the Americans lost, I selected an article titled
This Is What Team USA Eats During The World Cup in the Huffington Post. It was interesting to me for a lot of reasons. I also found it interesting that there was no byline at the top of the article, rather this post at the bottom of it, "This interview has been edited and condensed. As told to Sarah Klein. Photo courtesy of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Courtesy: Huffington Post

It appears this interview was done by a writer who used excerpts of the article, and maybe not necessarily by Sarah Klein who conducted the interview. A lot of news stations, particularity in television, will have one person do an interview, like a producer or videographer, and then a reporter or another producer write or put together the story. I have done this on several occasions, and I'm not an advocate of it at all. Messaging gets lost, and it's often difficult to contact the source of the interview to go back and ask follow-up or clarifying questions. Unfortunately this technique is used to save time and resources, especially with scheduling issues. For this story though, it's fairly straight forward and nothing too significant seems like it could be lost or jeopardized in translation. 

At the top of the article it does state the person who is being interview for the piece and her credentials on why she is an expert and being interviewed, which I did find extremely helpful and it gave the story more credibility. 

It read, "We spoke with team dietitian and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics member Danielle LaFata, RD, a board-certified sports dietitian, about what it takes to fuel Team USA."

The link to her name went to her Twitter profile which I thought was a nice touch and further added credibility to the story. On her Twitter page you could read more about her and see what she is tweeting about.  

According to the standards from "Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources" (Montecino 1998) this story does seem to be compiled with information from a credible source. One of the criteria listed is, "Is there any evidence that the author of the Web information has some authority in the field about which she or he is providing information? What are the author's qualifications, credentials and connections to the subject? 

The above examples with the dietitian's information and experience does satisfy the standard that she is an authority in the field, and has the proper credentials to speak to what the U.S Soccer Team's diet is.  

The potential impact of unrestricted web publishing through mass media is dangerous and irresponsible. It happens a lot now, especially since mass media desires more and newer content as soon as possible, and is competing for quantity over quality when it comes to web traffic which drives advertising. Shortcuts on the web are made for that reason all the time, with the theory of less sourcing and more content. Sourcing often doesn't sell, it consumes too much time, but an extra few articles might. That's why it's consumer beware in the ultra competitive times of mass and digital media. 

Virginia Montecino, 1998. Criteria to Evaluate the Credibility of WWW Resources. http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/web-eval-sites.htm