Journalists who blog and encourage their readers to comment can learn a lot from their audience. But if you really want to build an audience, says senior producer Shawn Smith of the Michigan newspaper site MLive.com, you also have to interact on social networks. On his New Media Bytes blog, Smith encourages journalists to use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to connect with people who share their interests. He’s also a big fan of social bookmarking:
Social bookmarking sites are the often-overlooked social networks. But these can be some of the most powerful. Try out the Mahalo Share Firefox Add-on and the Shareaholic FF add-on to make social bookmarking easier. After becoming a regular bookmarker, people will recognize your savvy eye for indexing the web. Just make sure you’re not only bookmarking your own stuff.
Guess I’m going to have to try it.
Filed under: 08. Producing for the Web |
Advancing the Story 
Thanks for the mention! Blogs and forums are also online social networks that should be engaged. They can be some of your biggest traffic generators and most loyal audience members. The nice thing about social bookmarking is it puts you in a position to get long-term traffic, helping people interested in certain topics find your content in the networks they use most. There’s a ton of them to try. have fun! 🙂