The 10 laws of multimedia

We can get ourselves into such a fluster in our hurry to add the latest innovation to our websites that we may lose sight of what exactly it's meant to be doing for our readers.

So it's probably a good idea to take a step back from time to time and take stock.

Deb Wenger has a report, on the Advancing the Story blog, of a talk given by multimedia expert Al Tompkins (pictured) to educators at the Poynter Institute listing what he calls the 10 laws of multimedia.

He told them: "To be great, multimedia has to make the story better than it would be in a legacy form.”

The rules include making the site interactive, being search engine friendly, and tapping into local passion groups.

“The most important reason to do multimedia is to improve the journalism,” Tompkins told the group.

Of course, many people have what they consider to be a good multimedia strategy but it's always good to look at what other people suggest doing. You never know, you might be missing a trick.

Friday round up

A selection of digital stories to see you through the weekend.

Tweetminster launches Media Watch channel

The people behind MP tweet-monitoring service Tweetminster have launched a new aggregation service for tracking UK News media, reports Journalism.co.uk.

The Media Watch channel is the latest in a number of launches for the site which also includes health, economy and environment channels.

The homepage of the channel has a "livestream" that includes all Twitter accounts of mainstream media sources and updates as they update.

Alberto Nardelli, Tweetminster founder, told Journalism.co.uk: "The idea behind channels is to make it easier for people to follow news, see what's trending in each topic or within each source, and also make it easier for people to connect with those driving the conversations.

"The longer term goal is an interactive wire - we'll be developing further channels around issues, networks, events and locations and also soon releasing APIs and feeds."

Five free SEO Tools for journalists

Many journalists see Search Engine Optimisation as "the equivalent of writing headlines for robots", writes Alfred Hermida.


But, he points out, it is key to helping readers find what they are looking for. He then provides five free SEO tools that can help journalists make their work easier to find on the web.


These include WordTracker FreeKeywords which provides alternative keyword suggestions with a weighting to indicate their use, and Google Trends which analyses Google searches and works out how many searches have been done for the terms you enter.





Survey reveals digital journalism is tough going but has lots of opportunity

Finally, The Guardian's PDA Blog has a summary of the annual Oriella digital journalism survey.

From the 770 journalists surveyed (from 15 countries around the globe including the UK), around 46% of journalists said they were expected to produce more work, 30% said they are working longer hours and 28% have less time to research stories.

But some 40% said they believed the web provided new opportunities with many looking at Smartphone applications and paywalls as possible streams of revenue. Twitter is also important with 41% running a Twitter feed.

What kind of Online Editor are you?

Whilst many newsrooms continue to experiment with their content to increase and retain readership, Folio Magazine has a story about one company that have developed a simple strategy to maximize their online efficiency.

They profile B2B publisher Questex Media, who have defined the key areas that editors are good at, and get their team to try and learn from each others’ successes.

Says Manager of Search Alison McPartland (pictured): "We want to show the particular strength or weakness in each editor.

"There are different ways to focus on how they're preparing content online and we want to highlight those differences. If someone is our top Optimization Editor, what is he or she doing that you could be doing?"

The team has developed four benchmark classifications for online editors which, in a nutshell, are as follows:

Acquisition Expert: Being particularly strong at drawing in an audience to their stories.

Optimization Editor: Driving the most traffic via organic search, using Search Engine Optimization.

Retention Writer: Having a high quality level of interaction with their reader, getting them to come back to their stories.

Engagement Enhancer: Innovating in the way readers interact with a story, providing RSS Feeds, blogs, comments and the like.

The article highlights how this feedback can prompt editors to raise their game, as well as engage in a little friendly competition.

One publication to benefit from this, Questex Media’s HotelWorld Network, is clear that it doesn’t use the data to set job titles but to identify what the readers engage with and why.

"By creating these different ‘categories' of editor, it's easier for us to see why a particular story or author performs well month over month," says Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Ricca.

"We don't use these categories as specific descriptors—meaning, we don't say things like, ‘Stephanie is the Acquisition Expert because she does X and Y and Chris is the Optimization Editor because he does B and C;' instead we use Alison's reports to get better at all aspects of what gets a reader to our site and keeps them there."

(Via Martin Stabe)