Being a student puts you in touch with new resources, but it also makes you wonder how people in real newsrooms are actually using tools to reach out to readers. So I asked some of my former colleagues what are the most interesting tools they will try to use more frequently in 2013. The three most mentioned by them were Talkwheel, Commun.it and Storyful. This is why.
Talkwheel helps organize the influx of data for those who get many post comments and questions in social media. It is designed as if it were a dinner table, with lots of conversations stored in the same place. They can be filtered according to topic, time and amount of interactions. The pictures of the users in the wheel will show you the comments they made in Facebook, Twitter or other social media. Since interaction is important for the ratings of any big website, there is a potential there. Talkwheel has a free version available, although IBM sells a special one.
Commun.it is focused on Twitter and its purpose is stimulating engagement. It helps users with categories such as influencers, fans and engaged members. It makes it easier for you to detect lurkers and active members – and that includes the number of interactions via Twitter. This tool also shows you unreplied comments and identifies your most engaged Twitter followers, so you can address them instantly. There are paid and free services for Commun.it.
Storyful gets you the most popular stories of the day in social media. It is designed for iPhone and brings stories of the man on the street to attention. Some of them are worthy of a follow-up and others are basically to keep track of what is going on. The most important asset Storyful has in the human perception: their editors actually make sense of who are the credible citizens that become sources and who aren’t. It works a bit like Storify, but there is a team behind it to support their choices – it is not based solely in ratings to tell what is important or not.
Any other suggestions for good social media tools to use in journalism this year?
I am a journalist. But that is not my fault, I assure you. I am also from Sao Paulo, Brazil. That is probably my fault.