Are you a blogger? A reporter working on a multimedia project? Or maybe you’re a small-town journalist trying to get noticed in today’s social media savvy world. If so, this is the book for you. Offering practical advice and specific steps on how to utilize the most popular social media tools and sites – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Google+ – Social Media Tools for Journalists is a timely resource that will help all journalists remain afloat in the ever-changing sea of social media.
Social Media Tools for Journalists is the first book of its kind, an information-rich resource and guide for anyone who works in social media, anyone with a passion for news, and especially journalists. The book arms readers with all they need to get started on social media and develop effective strategies; then it goes further, giving clear examples of tools used by journalists at all levels—from traditional professional media to citizen journalists, bloggers and others—to help tell developing news stories effectively.
Answer the Public
Answering a question for searchers is key to getting your content to show up in search results. But how do you know what the question is? With Answer the Public, you can plug in a keyword and the tool will give you the most popular Google and Bing searches related to that term. Free and paid options are available depending on your needs.
BuzzSumo
If you have a topic in mind but are having trouble coming up with a headline, BuzzSumo can show you what headlines are performing best for that topic. You also can provide the URL for a competitor and see what headlines are working best for them. The free plan allows for 10 searches per month, but several paid plans are available as well.
Authory
This site calls itself “the perfect toolkit for every journalist.” Authory allows you to permanently back-up any articles you write, regardless of where they originally were published, monitor their performance on social media, and also set up a newsletter for your readers.
Broadcastify
This site collects and makes available public safety and other audio streams from across the country. Even better, with a small annual subscription, it gives users access to archived streams up to 180 days old.
Miro
This online whiteboard is a great tool for journalists who are collaborating with one or more team members working remotely (basically all of us). Users can provide instant feedback to avoid emailing back and forth or vote for favorite ideas to make decisions faster. Digital sticky notes and flowcharts are available, as well as a number of plug-ins that allow you to work with your favorite apps and tools within the platform.
XMind
When coming up with your next story, it’s important to keep ideas organized. XMind is a brainstorming tool that helps you make creative mind maps that can aid in efficiency, creativity, and collaboration.
Account Analysis for Twitter
Account Analysis looks at all of a Twitter user’s public tweets and provides analysis through easy-to-grasp visualizations. It’s helpful for anyone trying to learn more about another user. Use it when you want to make sure someone is legit before you embed a tweet in a story, fact-check a bold claim, or attempt to identify if a user is a bot or not.
Broadcastify
This site collects and makes available public safety and other audio streams from across the country. Even better, with a subscription, it gives users access to 365 days of archived recordings.
Currents
By monitoring Parse.ly’s network of thousands of high-traffic, premium content sites, Currents allows publishers to gain insights into what topics are performing best and the keywords audiences are using to find articles that they read. This measurement of attention, not just shares and searches, is key to helping journalists understand the attention habits of their readers.
Canva
In our opinion, Canva is one of the best graphic design apps available. Whether you need to create an infographic, a social media post, or an email banner, Canva has you covered and then some. Available on desktops and mobile, Canva has a “freemium” model: most of the graphics are free and others are available for a small fee (usually $1). The tool is great for design newbies, pros, and anyone in between.
Echosec
Echosec uses geofencing technology to provide location-based social media data from more than nine social networks. Journalists can use the tool to get a picture of events as they unfold in real time. The base tool provides Twitter data, while the premium version includes other platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
Flourish
Flourish is a data visualization tool that allows journalists to convert data into charts, maps, and more, no coding experience needed. Striking, mobile-friendly visuals can be created in a matter of minutes to help engage your audience. Flourish also offers free accounts to newsrooms that qualify.
TinEye
While TinEye has been around for a few years, its importance as a tool has grown as journalists have become increasingly vulnerable to fake news especially around imagery and photos. TinEye is an image search engine that uses image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. When you submit an image on the Tineye website it will scour the web to find out when and where it was used first. TinEye creates a unique digital signature or fingerprint of the image and matches it with other indexed images. This also allows it to determine whether the image has been digitally tampered with.
Google Dataset Search
Google Dataset Search, is a search engine from Google that collates data sources all over the internet. It has been created to help researchers, including journalists, locate online data that is freely available for use. Along with links to the results, it displays the datasets’ descriptions, publication dates, authors, and providers. It’s like a companion to Google Scholar, the company’s search engine for academic studies and reports.
Google Earth Studio
Use Google Earth imagery to create visually stunning geospatial videos or stills with this animation tool. Need to zoom in on a city map to show readers where a crime took place or the upcoming parade route? What about an aerial look at travel hot spots in your town? The tool is available in Chrome and is free for news, research, and education use.
Hemingway
Using natural language and writing readable content is important to making sure your story appeals to a broad audience. Hemingway helps you recognize common errors and lengthy or tough-to-understand sentences in your writing. In addition to helping you strengthen your writing, it also provides estimated reading time, a nice feature. The online app is free and a paid desktop version also is available.
IntelTechniques
IntelTechniques is a superb tool for investigative reporting. It’s essentially a one-stop repository of free tools that lets you search across dozens of social media and website platforms. It can be used to background a source, track someone down, or even investigate their public online life. For example, its Facebook search tool can show all the photos a specific Facebook user has liked or the videos they’ve been tagged in. It also offers a collection of tools that can be used for searching Instagram posts, documents, emails, reverse image, and video searches, and even mentions of phone numbers amongst others.
Conclusion
Discover the tools you need to do your job better and faster. Learn how to take advantage of social media in journalism using the most useful, time-saving apps and extensions for Chrome, Firefox and WordPress.