The following is a report of my personal experience with news distribution on social media in 2009.

My objectives of the distribution of news on social media are essentially:
- to drive traffic to my websites;
- to increase my reputation;
- to monetise through affiliate marketing links in the near future.

For several months in 2009 I worked to create and further develop my presence on Social Media, to create new blogs, to write for E-commerce Developer, to improve my general web presence, on the go live of the Social Network www.blomap.com and finally on the creation of the website for my Web and Social Media Agency www.SwissiteInternational.com.

What I really and generally found very useful was the possibility to distribute news through links to my post on Blomap, to blogs entries and to articles on social networks, micro-blogging platforms and news distributors such as Digg, Twitter, Friend-Feed, Facebook, Posterous etc.

All these websites are actually really helpful to spread the word and to drive traffic to the news.

My idea is to yield to the new trends of social media’s mutual communication in order to create a synergy of networks much more powerful and open to any expansion than a single community can be.

So I investigated and found that tools such as Open ID or Facebook Connect, Share it, Add This, Retweet button, Twitter applications or websites such as Posterous and Delicious can help a lot to quickly distribute news on several social media.

On one hand I decided to shortly implement these very useful tools in Blomap.com, on the other hand I constantly used these tools to distribute news I produced.

So once I published any post on my blogs www.chiarabolognini.com/blog, www.swissiteinternational.com/blog, and on www.blomap.com/Chiara_Bolognini I used the Share This button or simply copied and pasted the URL to share the news on the most important social networks where I have developed good networks.
Some url shorteners such as www.tinyurl.com were very helpful.

In addition to that, it is possible to post and have news instantaneously distributed on various social media through Posterous or Delicious.

Another way I distributed news is by joining and then by posting news on Facebook and Linkedin groups which could be interested in it. A short search for keywords gives me the opportunity to find several groups and make a selection. This allowed me to reach new audiences and leads traffic to the news on my websites.

Fan Pages on Facebook such as the Blomap Fan page and the Swissite International Fan page helped me create specific networks of people to which I constantly distribute my Blomap and Swissite International’s posts.

Finally commenting on some blogs helped me to drive traffic to my news.
Stats in fact demonstrate that most new users came to my posts on Blomap.com from some blogs I commented on and from Facebook.

Finally even distributing news of other online journalists helped me increase my position of influencer and created good expectations and interest in my own news as well.

So I am going to experiment with posting all possible news on topics that can be geo-localised on Blomap.com and try to involve new audiences by distributing the news on other social media.

In addition to that I am going to use some Twitter applications and Google trends to define the hot-topics and keywords. This strategy is essential to make any news distribution properly addressed.

What about you? How are you distributing news on social media and what are your objectives?

Disruptive technology delivers products which should not be compulsory technological products but just completely new products, breaking into the scene of new markets, being the turning point of life styles and practices.

Precisely, companies engaging in disruptive technology, are able to investigate these new markets and capture the niche of customers who are expecting and are in need of that disruptive technology. (source: The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen, Clayton M.).

From that point on, that technology has great possibilities to succeed in the case that the owner company is able to understand the laws which rule that technology and apply them.

Think about how many attempts at flight human beings made and how many times they died before being able to fly in airplanes transporting people and wares at high speed as is the case nowadays. Actually we had to understand the laws underneath, such as the law of gravity, in order to succeed in that disruptive technology (source: The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen, Clayton M.).

In addition to that understanding the kind of processes and practices to apply to the technology is essential. According to that small companies would have many more possibilities to succeed than big companies which would move as clumsily as elephants on disruptive technologies and as lightly as a butterfly on sustaining technologies which are existing products.

The reason for that is that big companies have developed efficient management, processes and practices and know their market of sustaining technologies to such an extent that they can easily measure their R.O.I.

On the other hand all these structured processes and practices do not find any application in disruptive technologies which need flexibility and cannot grow in existing measurable markets but in new explorable markets.

Given that, small companies actually have an intrinsic capability of developing and complying with disruptive technologies, evolving themselves together with the technology and the new markets, adapting to the new customers who are floating in a changeable state for a non determinable time.

Even better, customers’ behavior is going to be ever and ever changing. So technologies which will adapt constantly to the customers who will win.

Social media are that kind of disruptive technologies which are supposed to win more than others because of their complete adherence to customer interests. Actually, social media are made by people, by users.

The tools social media offers to users are meant to meet users’ needs for first hand information, interactivity, engagement, aggregation and further.

Several kinds of businesses are starting to be involved in social media because of that. E-commerce websites themselves are adapting their sales processes by involving users in the sales through web tools which let them discuss and rating products and retailers.

Apart from that, companies are wondering how to measure their investment on social media and are finding often no answers and results which can be comparable to those provided by investments on sustaining technologies.

In fact, social media are filling the gap in markets which have not been investigated so far and that makes Return On Investment far from being measured and analysed in the same ways as it is possible for sustaining technology.

Last but not least Social Media slips out steady rules and measurements because of the interactive nature it is made of which drawns a flexible and chameleon-like shape.

Nevertheless, measurements can be made.

It is all a matter of evolving the standard analysis methods and upgrading them to a flexible level much better at adapting to customers’ fickle behaviors.

Social Media triggers sales and revenue by driving an increase in reputation, notoriety, reciprocity, sense of efficacy, attachment to and need for a group.

After engaging in Social Media, website visits and social mentions multiply and revenues start slightly or considerably being boosted.

These impacts can be measured by crossing web statistics and revenue before and after Social Media campaigns.

Furthermore statistics would collect not only standard web stats but also data such as Twitter and Friendfeed followers, friends and fans on Facebook, Plurk, Diggs, Friendster, connections on Linkedin, Xing, Plaxo, blogs subscriptions, Posterous and Youtube subscription, comments on blog entries, link referrals, trackbacks and so on.

It is crucial to define new analysis methods and Olivier Blanchard by The Brand Builder defines Frequency, Reach and Yield as business metrics to measure Social Media. Watch out the video.
Business-oriented ROI for Social Media: F.R.Y. Metrics explained

Open publishing systems such as Wikipedia and Indymedia state the success of heterarchy which is termed by Axel Bruns in Gatewatching as “Rule by a diverse group, preventing the emergence of a single person, group in control or everybody (a hierarchy, a monarchy or a panarchy).

One of the aspects which I am questioning is the technical open side, which means that the open source publishing system is continuously revisited and readjusted by users, who can hopefully fix bugs and evolve the system.
Well, all of that is great and it would be great if applicable to all software, social media, news websites etc.
Actually, this is the sort of matter I would argue about.
To what extent could we allow the changes to be done by users in all this software?

The web tools are in general the foundation of new ways for people to aggregate and share knowledge and information. In other words structured and definite tools enable people of any sort to interact heterarchically. So the tools should be created wisely according to criteria related to the goal the whole system has been built to pursue.
This would prepare the ground for potential business.

Besides, tools should be provided in a shape which makes the users’ interaction much easier according to the well known usability principles which involve the easy to customise principle. This would provide all sorts of users with a democratic usage of the web tools and as a consequence an equal opportunity to share and interact.

All of the above is related to the fact that we should start thinking to the future, which is not today, obviously.
A future when people will need to get money by these open source systems in a more structured way, beyond advertising.
Actually this is a dangerous transition which all open system developers and publishers will be involved in.
On the other hand it would reduce the noise, canalise the viral spread of information and produce revenue.

However, imagine if one day we had to pay to use Wikipedia. What would happen?
It is a sort of scenario which could completely change the current roles of users and members and the entire open source folk themselves.
Let me know what you think about it.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, with the support of the BBC College of Journalism launched the working paper by Nic Newman ‘The Rise of Social Media and its Impact on Mainstream Journalism’ at Council Chamber, BBC Broadcasting House in London on 30^th of September 2009.

BBC Broadcasting House in London

Speakers and attendees

David Levy, Director of the Reuters Institute led the discussion together with Nick Newman himself, Controller Future Media and Technology in BBC Journalism, Meg Pickard, Head of Social Media Development at Guardian News and Media and Kate Day Community Editor at the Telegraph.

Speakers

The exact list of attendees was not made available, however most journalists involved in the discussion were respectable and valued mainstream journalists. A smaller group of younger people instead represented the current and upcoming online journalism industry.

The discussion

Most mainstream journalists´questions sounded in some way obvious and were slightly suspicious about the effective values of engaging in social media.
Actually, to find the non-sense of a highly populated world, which is increasingly threatening the mainstream media and journalism, makes strong sense and it is completely  understandable given the threat of potential unemployment or retirement and considering  broadcast journalism revenue.

Attendee

The obviousness of most questions is due to the inverted roles which have been developing in the media and technological environment: the progress is developing very fast, therefore people are not learning their profession from their parents. On the contrary, they are learning “on the field” and it is highly likely that they will learn eventually from their children.
In any case what people do not have to explain their children, they  struggle to explain to their parents.

So at some point it would be time to give up the weapons and to consider the generation gap among journalists as something acceptable and something from which it would be wise to start learning in order to stay as active workers in the industry and to make valuable room for new journalists.

Attendee

Learning and listening from everyone is exactly the success key factor of social media and blogs swarmed by online journalists. Definitely, the concept of first hand information has been developing against the concept of journalism as a lobby.

The value of engaging in social media

In view of this, most speakers´ answers were aimed at clarifying the value of engaging mainstream media in social media as an opportunity to listen to the readers´ voice and to learn what the readers, their final target group, really want.

To the questions “How is it possible to gain money from social media, what is the added value in the engagement in social media?” Kate Day gave a sharp though polite answer explaining extensively that the way is to be complementary and not to replace online and offline newspapers with social media.

Questions and answers

As a matter of fact the synergy of media channels is definitely converging on the internet. Starting from that point, that synergy is sharing its potential with the entirety of the same media channels and is redeploying in different media tools enriched through web functionality that are the most demanded products in the market. For instance  web mobile phones, web tv, online newspaper, e-books etc.

Actually the market and expenditure themselves are determining factors in such kinds of lobby issues and sweep away any possibility of ignoring the reality of social media as the main part of the global conversation, newsmaking and newsgathering.

People wondering if social media brings money to newspapers are easily answered that where are people, there is money.

Imagine an empty shop or better a shop where the clerks tell you everything about the shop but do not let you touch, explore, compare, get your own idea and under the best conditions enjoy a customer experience. It is highly likely that most people won´t buy and will left the shop to go to another shop where they would be free to do what they want. This is the current situation of newspapers which are being left to populate social media.

In addition to that, a pragmatic answer to the money matter was given by Meg Pickard, who said that social media users number in the millions, influencing other people and driving traffic to newspapers.

Multiple voices

Eventually the discussion itself demonstrates that becoming experienced journalists does not imply stopping making comparisons and swapping opinions with new journalists, considering them trustworthy and worth listening to.

As a matter of fact, not listening to them implies not listening to the crowd of voices which are enriching either newspapers or people´s lives through social media and blogs.

None can stop these voices from being raised and from pandemic spreading.

Multiple voices

In fact, newspapers are supposed to stop being one voice and start being part of the multiple voices, profiting from them and using them as a megaphone as Meg Pickard brilliantly said.

Pending answers

However, there are questions that mainstream journalists did not pose and that are still pending:

-          To what extent do online journalism, social media and blogs gain from being considered important by mainstream media?

-          Does this engagement imply a free pass to newsgathering through blogs and social media?

Well, you are invited to answer these questions.

New subject, new rules, new hopes

In conclusion, it would be essential to take into consideration that whereas it is true that online journalism is going to find its definition, as a completely innovative subject, it is also meant to stay open in order to meet people´s changing needs and progress as any successful and user-friendly web project does.

That implicates a rather impossible categorisation within the predefined mainstream media rules and schemes.

To sum up, this quote of Mahatma Gandhi describes the condition of things and conveys an expectant message: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Hopefully, many more online journalists, who are now playing the role of agents of change and innovators, will find a rewarding and fitting placement in this new industry in the near future.

Something stays, something changes

Other articles, videos and podcast about this topic:
- The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism by Caroline Beavon
- Social media and its impact on mainstream journalism by Dan Davis