In the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of teaching lots of people about online journalism.
First, a guest lecture at the University of Lincoln about blogging. Then, a six week stint in New Zealand where I taught at Whitireia Journalism School.
Even more recently, again at Lincoln, I lectured a group of first year students. I was hoping I’d be able to plant a few seeds for online.
Usually after such sessions, I’ll notice a flurry of students signing up to the likes of Twitter and Wordpress etc, announcing their existence with a nice big post or tweet. This excites me — it’s good to get started as soon as you can.
But too often these people give up. I’m pretty sure it’s because they don’t get an instant return on their investment.
“Does your blog get you work?” they’ll say.
“Yes,” I’ll reply.
“Great! I’ll start one tonight!”
Problem is, many of these people will just make that one post. And, if they’re not writing the lead for tomorrow’s New York Times, they’ll swiftly give up.
I’m busy preparing some materials for my book (more on that another time! Woohoo!), and in my section about social networking tools, I plan to make it very clear that it will take time for any of these services to bring any rewards. And, indeed, even when they do, you might not necessarily know it.
What’s important, though, is that you keep at it. Use Twitter for chit-chat with colleagues or potential colleagues. Don’t turn up with a direct message to your favourite editor with something like “HI! CAN I WORK FOR YOU? THANKS!”. It won’t work.
Likewise, don’t expect the world’s media to be knocking down your door once you’ve posted a nice long introduction post on blogspot. It won’t happen. I was just contacted by a student the University of Westminster who asked how to get people in the media to read his blog. Here’s my response:
Hi XXXXX,
Cheers for getting in touch … noticed lots of people finding my site via your lecturers blog!
There are lots of things you can do. Personally, I think most effective method is to find other bloggers that write about the same things you do. For example, if you write a sports blog, then find others who do the same — same sport or same team or same competition etc.
Then, leave comments on their blog linking back to yours. Almost all blogs allow you to add your blog address when you make a comment. Chances are the blog owner will click through to your blog out of curiosity. Also, other people reading the blog will see your comment too and can also click though… and so on.
Even more effective, is finding posts by other people and discussing them, making sure you link through. For example, I wrote a post recently (http://daveleejblog.com/2008/11/time-lapse-video-of-nytimes-election-night/) that just simply linked to something else I liked.
This is a quick way to get noticed. In time (and you need to be patient), they may start linking to you… and then you’ll be getting loads of readers.
Hope that helps mate, and good luck!
It’s obvious advice for some, but if you’re faced with stats that say “10 views” each day, you may feel at a loss.
So my advice to everyone is: Take your time. Keep plugging away. Treat your online relationships like your real life ones.
You don’t go up to random people and say “Hello there would you like to be my best friend?”, do you? No, you slowly meet people, get to know them better and then who knows, they might end up being your best mate ever. But not if you rush it.
