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Using social media to land a job

December 28, 2009 in blogging, career talk, Community, General Media, industry news, internships, social media

resumeAs student journalists master the different ways social media can be used to report news and strengthen a publication, tools such as Twitter, Facebook and personal blogging can play an important role in nabbing a job or internship.

Think of it this way — it’s a bit more complicated than just sending out a resume and hard-copy portfolio.

New media guru David Spinks says college journalists on a job search must develop a social media strategy to help separate themselves from droves of others on the prowl for a particular position. Spinks serves as the community manager for Scribnia.com, an online platform for both bloggers and readers, as well as the co-moderator of young professionals Twitter chat #u30pro.

“Social media provides a huge opportunity, ” Spinks said. “It provides an opportunity to build those connections that you wouldn’t have otherwise.”

A personal blog or portfolio site is a must-have for any aspiring journalist entering the job market. (Check out 10000words.net’s list of outstanding journalist portfolios).

“A blog has many values — you can write about anything, but it’s all about how you engage and connect with readers,” Spinks said. “It allows you to establish yourself and tell people about who your are.”

“It’s the differentiator between you and everyone else,” Spinks added.

Blogging frequently and with specific headlines to enhance search engine optimization is one key to attracting readers, but be sure to ask for reader feedback and to enable commenting on the site to create a dialogue.

A personal blog or portfolio site can serve as the corner stone to the online image that new journalists must shape, said Spinks.

“It’s really important that you shape a that image of yourself — that image that comes up when people seek you online,” Spinks said. “It’s up to you personally how you present yourself. Part of blogging and social networking is showing more of your personality and being more transparent. But then there’s the saying that you shouldn’t have anything online that you wouldn’t show your mother.”

Spinks advises that job seekers not to  overlook the networking aspect of social networking, using sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to build relationships.

“You should purposely seek out those relationships,” Spinks said. “When I was out looking for a job after college I would seek out the people who worked for the company through social networking before I applied, before I sent out my paper resume and cover letter.”

For more professional new media tips check out Spinks’ blog at davidspinks.com or the #u30pro Twitter chat at 8 p.m. EST on Thursday.


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New site hopes to connect student journalists around the world

August 20, 2009 in College Media, social media


Global Student Journalists is an ambitious, aptly-named new project by Anna Rodrigues, a journalism professor at Durham College in Canada.

Professor Rodrigues was kind enough to answer some questions about the site via e-mail.

The backstory:

About 18 months ago I began hearing from employers that they were looking for interns with skills in social media management. I didn’t think that Facebook or Ning would work in a classroom setting so I began thinking about a way I could teach online community management without using the social networks already out there.

Durham College has a department called the Innovation Centre and its job is to provide support to faculty through workshops and courses. This department also funds innovative classroom projects so I wrote a proposal and applied for funding to create an online social network from scratch in June 2008.

The funding was approved and an outside website developer was chosen to build the site in December 2008. The website finally went live last week.

The goals for the site:

-This network will be used in my classroom to teach about online community management. The work and comments that are uploaded have to be approved before being posted so my students will take turns moderating the site.

-I’m hoping students will be able to see the craft of journalism through the eyes of other student journalists from around the world.

-The Resources page will hopefully become a handy resource area for student journalists. I will be posting links to reputable journalism training on the web; stories of interest to student journalists, interviews with journalists etc

The global perspective is welcome, and hopefully Prof. Rodrigues will update us as the site grows. Check it out and register if you’re a student journalist. Since I’m not a student, I don’t have access, so maybe some student out there could share some of their experience with the back end of the site.


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SEC climbs down from teh stupid?

August 18, 2009 in social media, Twitter

Jack Lail points out that the SEC is “rethinking” their lame policy mentioned in this earlier post. Jack points to a bunch of the blowback the SEC has received from fans and Internet-savvy folks.

The SEC posted the following on their Twitter feed (ironic, isn’t it?):

To our Twitter fans, we have heard you. We’re working on clarifications to our policy and should have something done soon.

Just so we’re clear, this was the “draft” policy:

Ticketed fans can’t “produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or
disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including,
but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio,
reproduction or other information concerning the Event … .”

The best “clarification” I can think of would be the following:

We sincerely apologize to our fans for not getting the fact that paying customers who help promote our events are in our best interests as an institution supposedly promoting scholar-athletes. This policy has been deleted.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, since Div. 1 football without a real national championship is pretty lame anyway, but the principle stands: fans pay to support your teams. they “disseminate” information about games because they care. Trying to police their ability to talk to their friends during a game, or save a video of their experience to the web, or twitter their experiences to their followers is just a lesson in wrong.


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SEC goes with teh stupid: tells fans they can’t tweet

August 14, 2009 in Multimedia views, social media

SEC Logo

Image via Wikipedia

I continue to think that there is only so much stupid that can be brought to bear in the world of big-time college athletics. Sadly, the SEC is the latest to disprove my theory. (props to Jay Rosen @jayrosen_nyu on Twitter, for the head’s up)

Ticketed fans can’t “produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information concerning the Event … .”

The SEC is getting some blowback for their policy. Not from the media, but from fans. If I were a fan paying premium prices to watch the tenant-farm system that is big-time college athletics, I’d be miffed too.

Of course, this isn’t the first, nor will it be the last, episode in the continuing series of “college athletics attempts to deny reality.” The NCAA has propagated the stupid for a couple of years now related to journalists reporting from games.

Now that one of their own has turned their attention to the fans, will there be some sort of “grasp of the obvious” coming from the heads of various sports entities? I doubt it.

To be clear, we haven’t seen this kind of push back from the NCAA at EIU, since we’re not in the conference with the big time money deals with major networks. Thankfully, we can practice new media coverage so far.

But rather than just castigate the SEC for their stupidity and short-sightedness, here’s a proposition for how to make lemonade out of the new media lemons you think you’ve been given: create a place on your site, or the site of your corporate broadcast overlords, where fans can upload their videos, tweets, whatever, to add to the texture of the games. In other words – surf with the wave, not against it.

Why does this seem so hard for some to get?


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On twitter & the media

March 5, 2009 in Academics, College Media, Community, General Media, industry news, Twitter

For little over a year I have been interested in this thing I’m sure many of you have heard about called twitter. I started off curious how this, then relatively new, social media tool might be used by college media. It wasn’t until I threw caution to the wind and started tweeting did I really understand why people were using twitter.  I used twitter for myself, not the paper or any attempt to pretend I was a media organization.  While I like twitter, I still see many media and businesses not using it how I, a user, would like it to be used.

I spent the past few months talking to other twitter users, attended a few tweetups and along with my own preferences have compiled a list of things media organizations and companies should do, and not do when using twitter.

1. Do NOT use twitter as an RSS feed! I removed the NYT and both my local papers because all they did was push out headlines to their stories.  Don’t know why but this really bugs me as a twitter user. If all you are doing is pushing your stories you are not using twitter right.

2. Do NOT push out a ton of updates at one time. I greatly dislike getting up in the morning or after a long day coming home to find my twitter feed filled up with a ton of updates from one media or business. I don’t mind it from my friends, they aren’t selling me something or just trying to get my eyeballs on their site. When a media/business does this it comes across as pure advertising. Personally, I think 2-4 GOOD updates a day works for me, though nothing is wrong with just one a day either! It is all about finding balance.

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Social media policies

March 2, 2009 in Twitter

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

Taking a short break from working on the dissertation, here’s one thing I gleaned from the conversation at the Associated Collegiate Press convention in San Diego: social media needs some guidance.

I’m not talking about guidance for the wider social media community. I don’t care who you’re following, or what you tweet or don’t tweet.

I’m talking about social media guidelines for college media organizations. We spent way too much time in S.D. talking about how to use Twitter – as a journalistic tool, marketing tool, and educational space – and it’s clear that the guidance is still being worked out.

The concern for most people was this: “how do we ensure quality on our Twitter account?” Since Twitter is an instant communication medium, it runs counter to traditional journalistic (print, especially) dogma that everything must be run through an editor, a second set of eyes.

It’s part of your brand (@thepittnews on Twitter is representing the Pitt News on that network, for instance), and you don’t want someone destroying your brand with some ill-advised tweets.

Also, I had the idea that individual Twitter accounts should be placed next to the bylines of individual journalists (like @schuster1600 for David Schuster at MSNBC), but the question came up: What if they use the account for personal communications that should not be affiliated with the news org.? That’s a good question.

My initial response is to only allow social media networks affiliated with the news brand to be used by “trusted” users. The immediacy is the key to services like Twitter or CoverItLive or Mogulus. Remove the immediacy, you remove the value, IMHO.

But for college media, that can be a particularly sticky situation. We need some guidelines. Some (ugh, I always dread saying it) policies. I’m looking out for good “professional” journalism policies for social media use, and I’ll keep you updated on those. In the meantime, if you have suggestions for what should be part of a “social media use policy” for college media outlets, drop it in the comments, or e-mail me at scmurley -at- gmail.com.

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How college media uses Twitter

February 23, 2009 in Twitter

We recently complied a list of student media in the Twittersphere. This is an analysis of how those outlets are using Twitter and what we can learn from those who are doing it right.

For simplicity, I tried to group all variations of Twitter use into five basic categories.

The above chart is the breakdown of 50 student media outlets on Twitter (via the CICM list). It excludes Twitter accounts that have made very few updates or haven’t updated in months. Below are the categorizations for reference:

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Combined Twitter List!

February 4, 2009 in Twitter

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

After some conversations with Andrew Dunn from College Rag , we’ve combined two college media-specific Twitter lists into one for an extra dose of Tweeting college media. The list is here at College Rag. Go to this form to add your college media outlet.

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College Media twittering

February 3, 2009 in College Media News, Twitter

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

Inspired by an e-mail on the CMA Listserv, I just put together this short list of college media outlets who are on Twitter, just from those who are following CICM. I know I’m missing folks, so if you would like to add your college media outlet, fill out this form to add it to the list.

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