2. What’s the same
• People online are no different from people
offline
– They want good, interesting relevant content
– They don’t want fluff
– They want it to get straight to the point and, if they
have time, the option to read more.
4. A double role for the journalist!
• This means the journalist is no longer just the
creator of a story, but also the curator.
• Creates - in terms of pulling together the story
and reaction from multiple resources - does
your story have words, audio and pictures?
• Curates - provides links to further reading, to
original sources, to differing points of view.
Don’t just think text - are there pictures, video,
audio?
5. Triple role for journalists
• As well as content and curate, there’s a third
element...
• On page and off-page SEO, code to help the
story reach out to the maximum audience
6. Writing for online
• Writing for online follows most of the basic rules
of good offline writing - accurate, insightful,
informative/entertaining (or both)
• Online also gives it the benefit of speed
“I keep six honest serving-men,
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When,
And How and Where and Who”
- Rudyard Kipling
http://blog.journalistics.com/2010/five-ws-one-h/
10. But we’ve all gone tabloid
• Sadly - or brilliantly, depending on your point of
view - we no longer have huge, epic
sentences and paragraphs that can spawn
hundreds of characters and many lines as a
journalist attempts to capture an incredibly
complicated issue - either by summarising or
by copying from the technical prime source and we now have more judicious use of white
space to capture attention spans and make an
article seem far more ‘readable’.
12. But have we gone too far
• Sentences of 30 or so words - a few lines - are
OK
• But what about these ‘list-like’ articles we see
now?
• “10 ways to boost your copy” followed by 10
one-line bullet points that end with a question
to boost ‘engagement’.
• Brevity taken too far - or the future?
14. How long should everything be?
• Google prefers - but does not exclusively
favour - long text so aim for 500-2000 words
(aka #longreads)
• Bear in mind people on mobiles may not want
to read 2000 words
• A variety of content can often be the best
strategy - long, short, list, picture, video, audio
• Headlines - around 60 characters
• Summary - up to 160 characters/55 words
15. Some writing tips
• Passive is the industry standard but online text
can appear more engaging if written using
active verbs instead
• Use subheadings (feel free to add keywords)
every 300-400 words, depending on article
length
16. Starting with the easy...
• Normal news story as usual
• Paragraphs of no more than 30 words
• Include links where possible to information
provided from quotes or other data
• Use relevant linking, not just click here.
• So... “The minister said in his press release...”
not “Click here to see what the minister said”.
• Can you embed video or audio content?
• You could also include full text at end of story
20. Images
• Have videos/images properly named, so “MP
Craig McGill resigns.jpg” not “Axxcc67.jpg”
• Make sure to fill out caption and ALT text info
• If trying to rank high in Google News, don’t link
to pic elsewhere. Embed on own site.
25. Remember...
• Search engines like approx 60 chars for title
• Description text gets around 160 characters
• Keywords, categories and tags are separate
26. Curating
• Two forms of curating:
– Material directly relevant to the story
– Tangential material that may be of interest to
readers
29. Finding out your keywords
• Keywords change per story. An MP resigning
would be “MP” “MP name” “resigns” “quits”
and perhaps the reasons for resigning
• Keywords are the words placed high in
headlines or intro pars. Google ranks by how
high up the words are.
• The more keywords you rank well for, the
easier it is for people to find you.
• What are your keywords?
31. Categories and tags
• All content on blogs can be specified into tags
and categories. No limit to either but there is
one slight difference between them:
– All blogs posts must have a category
– Tags are optional but further define the content
– If you ran an IT blog about Microsoft for example...
• Categories: XBox360, Surface, Zune, Windows
• Tags (for XBox360): games, hardware, news, reviews
• Tags (for Surface): hardware, software, rumours, review
– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cross-linker/
32. Linkbait
• The art of making content so compelling
people feel forced to share
•
•
•
Consider people’s emotions
What punches buttons?
Alternatively, what makes you want to punch the
author’s nose?
33. Linkbait
• Consider: an article where women talk about
not having children. Linkbait could include:
•
•
“People who want kids should be locked up”
•
“Children are only good as organ donors otherwise they’re just a drain on life & money”
•
“What woman has a life so empty and pitiful she
feels she needs children to feel fulfilled?”
“If motherhood is great, why are mums always
looking like they want to cry?”
34. Linkbait
• Consider: an article where women talk about
not having children (cont...)
•
•
“I earn £100K - because I had an abortion”
•
•
Why it’s OK to pity women who have kids
•
“People have kids to avoid working”
“I feel sorry for tired, bedraggled looking women
who stand at bus stops with their whining kids”
The path not taken: would you be happier childfree?
42. Seven basics of SEO for journalists
• Make sure that your keyword appears in the HTML title
tag of the page
• Use the keyword towards the top of the page in a bold
(or large) typeface
• Use each keyword 2-3 times on each article
• At least 500 words when possible
• Have a picture in the article
• Make sure your keywords are (at least) categories in
your blog and variations (if possible) are tags
• Don’t duplicate content across pages
44. Code behind the scenes
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml" xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/">
<head>
<meta name="description" content="A Vatican spokesman said the Pontiff will retire on February 28. It is not known why he is resigning, but the decision is
highly unusual as the vast majority of incumbents die in office." />
<meta name="keywords" content="Pope Benedict XVI resigns First Pontiff 600 years stand longer strength carry on" />
<meta name="channel" content="News" />
<title>Pope Benedict XVI resigns: First Pontiff in 600 years to stand down because he 'no longer has strength to carry on' | Mail Online</title>
<meta name="verify-v1" content="DXwlrsxbqxSv+FTFkWUfgflBvFJfx2YbNf/HmABrVyY=" />
<meta name="msvalidate.01" content="12E6B4B813EB44C9BFC8F6A21F1D01F5" />
<meta name="y_key" content="1a7e912afbfcab2f" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en" />
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="false" />
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />
<meta name="Rating" content="General" />
<meta name="doc-class" content="Living Document" />
<meta name="robots" content="noodp,noydir,all,noarchive" />
<link href="/xml/opensearch.xml" title="Mail Online Search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="search" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276884/Pope-Benedict-XVI-resigns-First-Pontiff-600-years-stand-longer-strength-carryon.html" />
<link href="https://plus.google.com/101913233771349778690/" rel="publisher" />
!
!
!
!
!
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="http://s.mol.im/static/bundles/all--75-build-399.css"/>
!
!
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="/coloursCss/colours-75-build-399.css" />
46. Google Author Rankings
• Set up an account with Google
• http://www.google.com/insidesearch/
features/authorship/index.html
• Also worth reading (though more technical):
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/
google-author-tags/
47. Targets for next week
• Take one story you have created
• Put the original online/Moodle
• What are the story’s keywords?
• What title and description would you give it?
• Could you make it interesting/engaging in
under 100 characters?
• Could you use the content of others to make
it better?
48. Targets for next week
• Could you write the story into 5-10 bullet
points that still tell the complete tale?
• Could you tell the story as an audioboo?
• If you were to rewrite the story as a personal
blog, how would you do it?
• Three ways you would link to the story to
make people click on it
