Rich Gordon talks about measuring digital success

I attended “The New Newsroom” conference May 15 in Chicago and walked away with some valuable insights from all of the presentations that I saw before catching the bus back to Michigan later in the evening. Rich Gordon, professor and director of digital innovation at Medill School at Northwestern University in Chicago, had one of the more interesting talks, focusing on Google Analytics.

Below are my notes from his presentation and posted above is video from his talk. Combined the two and it will be like you were there.

What Gets Measured Gets Done: Web and Social Analytics for Publishers
Presenter: Rich Gordon @richgor of Mendill at Northwestern University
Most measurable medium ever. Data being tracked on all devices, but also awash in data. What should we be keeping track of? Understanding analytics.

Key performance indicators to track: Links and content referrals, SEO and social media.

How well are you doing in networked audience development practices, and metrics, for locally focused websites. People consuming content presented to them on social media channels. If you understand how networks work you may be more successful in building an audience on the web and mobile.

Every biz on web should have set Key Point of Indicators (KPI) that are tracked consistently and regularly. These KPIs should be shared throughout the organization. Share data in the organization. And factor it into performances and personnel decisions. KPIs should align to business goal, so they will be different for every publisher and property.

Nielsen Net/Ratings counts 4,600 news and information websites. Of those, top 300, or 7 percent of total, get 80 percent of the traffic. Understanding networked audiences: research shows in any category of web content/websites, this pattern will exist. A small portion get a significantly disproportionate amount of the traffic. Network effects from links, search, social media cause a leader to become a bigger leader overtime because they build. “The rich get richer,” so to speak. Networks tend to produce “power law distributions” or our time, of attention. The 80/20 rule: A small fraction of the total number of nodes in the network. So, the more active on social media, the bigger your network will grow!

Basic metrics: size/scale (raw number of people/users/browsers coming to our site; loyalty/frequency (how often coming back); and audience engagement (once they do come, how much time are they spending there). Unique visitors/page views of size/scale; average visit duration speaks to engagement; site views speaks to loyalty.

Understanding online metrics and audiences, consider how technology works: every single server that delivers a page will drop a cookie that can be read. Cookies help us measure.

Unique visitors: Total number of unique people visiting a website at least once in a time period, usually once a month. People visiting the site more than one time in the reporting period are counted only once. Unique visitors really measuring computers or cookies, not people. Someone using 3 computers will equal 3 unique visitors, although really 1.

Visit session: If there is a gap of 30 minutes, then counts as a new session or visit.

Page views: Total number of times a web page is requested by a user. Counted only when page fully loads in browser window.

Bounce rates: Portion of visits that are exactly one page view. Not staying on site. Typically 60 percent.

Size/scale: visits

Loyalty/frequency: percentage of new visits

Audience engagement: pages/visits

Stay away from unique visitors. Doesn’t really mean anything, Rich Gordon says, even though common in measuring audience. Page views can be easily manipulated. It can reward site practices that users hate, so steer away from page views for measurable data. Bounce rate is more appropriate for direct marketing campaigns (if want to get them to a landing page and then track number), but strive for improvement over time. If you can get someone to your page for first time, need to figure out what else can serve them up to keep them on the site. You know they are coming for something they are interested in for first time, but key is figuring out how to keep them there.

Reason you have more readers online than in print because we have a strained distribution of users. Many come to the site once a month for something specific, or twice for something specific. It’s the 8 percent that comes frequently and regularly who you want to measure and target. Fans make up most of your page views but only 4.3 percent, and flybys or one time visitors 70 percent. In the end 90,000 copies sold a day, 200K daily print readership, 450K unique only equals 20,000 fans (but those people matter more than flybys).

What makes online platform different than print. Time spent on website lower than print. Average one minute online vs. 20 minutes reading print. Time spent too low on local news websites. But there is a problem with how time spent.

Google Analytics the standard for measuring time spent on web. But time spent on last page isn’t measured. It counts as 0 time spent if goes no where else on site. That’s why pages per visit better to track than duration. With GA: time spent from first page to last click on site (but not last page).

Where is our traffic coming from? Good to know so we know where to put our attention. Where does site traffic come from: search, links, social media. 35 to 50 percent from search, links and social media; local traditional media, 50 percent to 65 percent; local online-only site: 65 to 90 percent. Search is search engine; referral is links from other sites; direct is type url or bookmark; or campaigns, you get GA code to build traffic, such as an email newsletter.

Link sharing efforts will help you increase referrals. Look at info and decide which traffic matters most, usually direct traffic.

Branded visits: People typing in url or bookmark, plus those typing name into search. Direct, plus search for (site name): A significant share of search driven visits are really direct visits in disguise. Add these to direct, deduct from search.

Social media: To what extent is social media referring traffic to your site? Look at percentage of referral visits and all visits by Facebook, Twitter and other social sources. Be smart about your social media strategy and you can increase referrals.

Which referrals are most valuable and give you the most engaged visitors. On average, 1.5 visits from search or direct, less by referral because coming for specific story. But if you are executing social media well and engaging your audience they will stay longer. Engage with them rather than auto headline feeds and give them other material to click on.

Engagements: visits staring on home page. Visitors arriving on home page should view more pages and not bounce. People who come through home page stay longer as they look for other things on the site. May want to track this on a regular basis to see if you have an appealing home page.

Also look at this metric on GA: Engagement level from mobile users vs. computer users. Pages per visit for computer users now higher than mobile. But we’re started to see tablet users, not mobile/phone, starting to look like computer users, spending more time on site. What does your site look like on a mobile device. Make it look good on a small screen and large screen and you’ll see the number of mobile go up and the gap between mobile and computer will get smaller.

Social media: Facebook insights
“Total reach” is “people who have seen any content associated with your page; “People talking about this” is people who have created a “story” (like, comment, share, answer question, respond to an event.) “Engaged users” actually click on your link; “Virality” is the people talking about it divided by total reach, or number of people who have seen it. If you can detect viral trends, then exploit it. Look at “likes” on Facebook (should grow over time and be tracked); Over 28 days: track engaged users, people talking about this and virality. Figure out what’s a good number of likes. Ask people to like your page and retweet your content, if you think it’s worth retweeting. Data shows people will respond, but don’t overuse the request.

Measure: followers, growth in followers, followers per 1,000 visits, retweets

Twitter
Follower: Following ratio. High means many people are listening to you and you are using Twitter mostly for distribution; low is you’re interesting to many people and using twitter to monitor your community. You want to be following as many as following you or you are just using it to push links, as you don’t care to follow people back and engage them in conversations.

Social media influence scorers: Klout, TweetLevel, PeerIndex and others. Each seeks to measure your influence on social media channels. Measures your activity and what happens after you tweet. Are people retweeing, favoriting, etc.?

Rich Gordon asking for access to analytics and compare it across industry to share outcomes and look at best practices to share. He thinks he can protect confidentiality, wouldn’t share data by name. It could also help outperforming sites demonstrate value for advertisers. Interesting to have metrics to benchmark yourself against others.

A productive month at the Southeast Michigan Media Lab

The month of April proved to be very busy for me as I worked with multimedia journalists, bloggers and readers as part of my new role as director of community engagement and editorial training for 21st Century Media, formerly Journal Register Company, in Michigan.

From a reader focus group at The Oakland Press that I helped coordinate with Community Engagement Editor Monica Drake and a workshop on legal issues for media in the digital age at The News-Herald in Southgate, to working one-on-one with bloggers and journalists, delivering presentations to community groups, and hosting live chats and workshops, there is usually something fun and interesting going on every day.

Two visits to The News-Herald netted a better understanding of how social media tools are used by journalists and legal issues they may grapple with working in digital media. The informal chat on social media was insightful for me because I learned that our reporters are embracing social media and using it to connect better and faster to our audience. I was particularly impressed with Dave Komer, an online editor at The News-Herald, who shared a story about reporter Jackie Harrison-Martin live tweeting from a crime scene and him pulling in her tweets for breaking news updates. I also liked how they connected their social media stream on Facbook with print readers by offering polls and sharing responses in print.

A week later, I returned to facilitate Michigan Press Association attorney Robin Luce-Herrmann’s chat on digital media legal issues. I livestreamed the presentation so reporters and editors across our chain could watch it live or a recording later, and I shared her PowerPoint on Scibd. What was challenging about it for me was figuring out how to make it all private. After consulting our ideaLab group, I discovered it was pretty easy to create a password-protected uStream channel and make the document private on Scribd.com.

Michigan Press Association attorney Robin Luce Herrmann talks to journalists on legal issues involving digital media.

Also that same day, I drove to The Oakland Press for one of two reader focus groups planned. The afternoon session saw people fill the room to capacity, but no one showed up for the evening meeting. Monica and I had created a survey using SurveyMonkey and I promoted it on The Oakland Press Facebook page and Twitter account. Nineteen people showed up in person. I found the results interesting, but, in the end, it was decided the sample wasn’t big enough to warrant any immediate action. It was still a worthwhile and educational experience to hear from the readers about their likes and dislikes concerning The Oakland Press. I was particularly pleased to hear them say they are willing to contribute to the news website and print publication by writing news releases, submitting photographs and sharing items for the calendar of events.

Readers, reporters and editors gathered for a reader focus group at The Oakland Press in April.

I made three trips to The Macomb Daily, all very worthwhile and leaving me feeling inspired by the efforts of others. The first visit was to talk about social media use in their newsroom, the second visit was to work one-on-one with Gordie Wilczynski and the third was to livestream and shoot a shorter video of the Macomb County All-Academic Banquet sponsored by the newspaper.

Community Engagement Editor Maryanne MacLeod and Online Editor Bruce MacLeod are both impressive and are doing a top-notch job of steering the newsroom’s efforts as they focus online and interact more with their audience through social media. Some staffers, however, confessed to me that when we were talking about social media and new media tools, it was like I was speaking another language. I then offered to return as often as they will have me to work individually or in groups with reporters to get them up to speed on social media and introduce emerging technology tools. Both Gordie and Gina Joseph impressed me by taking me up immediately.

I returned a few days later to work with Gordie on building his Twitter and Facebook followings, and Gina and I spoke about the social media tool NewHive and how she could use it to build and reach a wider audience. Gina has since created several NewHive expressions linked to her work at The Macomb Daily online, and yesterday I saw Gordie using Facebook to crowdsource a story. Both have impressed me with their enthusiasm and willingness to embrace social media.

When I wasn’t on the road traveling to newsrooms this past month, I was working with individuals at the media lab, recruiting bloggers, adding new bloggers to our news websites across Michigan, holding live chats, livestreaming workshops or presenting information about the media lab to groups and individuals. Some of the highlights include an informative live chat on Alzheimer’s disease and a chat on techniques on getting through grief at Mother’s Day. Both were hosted on ScribbleLive, with my Alzheimer’s chat seeing 1,353 page views and my grief chat garnering 807, but growing every day as people read the archived version.

ScribbleLive chats were also held in conjunction with workshops and featured livestreaming video. We held workshops on search engine optimization and creating video news stories. These were presented by Monica and Aftab Borka, a multimedia journalist and videographer at The Oakland Press, respectively.

Videographer Aftab Borka teaches a workshop at the media lab.

In addition, I met with blogging partners Chris Watkins, Adrianna Lypeckyj, Douglas Gill, and community contributors Linda Tubbs and Lori Maranville. Lori wanted to learn how to use Google Voice to create a sound slideshow on her church’s anniversary and Linda wanted help putting together a feature article, to be published at Heritage.com, on her nonprofit group’s efforts, highlighting a few of the standouts.

Also adding to a mix of interesting goings-on at the media lab was a workshop by Chuck Newman and his company on preserving and recording history through new media tools, a presentation about the media lab to Communities That Care in Ypsilanti and an in-person pitch to Bernadette Quist, director of the Dexter Area Chamber of Commerce, on me delivering a presentation about the lab at a chamber breakfast in May.

Members of Communities That Care

In between, I set up an account on Meetup.com to publicize the media lab’s workshops, edited a video from one of our workshops and created a Southeast Michigan Media Lab channel on YouTube to share videos. In addition, I created two RebelMouse pages and several NewHive expressions.

New social media tool NewHive my latest obsession

My NewHive expression on my favorite digital tools.

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As part of my role as a member of Digital First Media’s ideaLab, I am encouraged to experiment with new digital tools. My latest obsession is NewHive, which is still in beta and is by invite-only.

NewHive allows you to create “expressions,” which start off as blank canvasses until you add headlines, subheads, text, video, audio, photographs and other graphic elements. You can change font, use color, use shapes and draw shapes. In the end, you can make the page look like a piece of art, a newspaper page, invitation or any kind of creative expression you can imagine.

So far, I have three expressions. My first one was about the Southeast Michigan Media Lab. It features photos and video of the lab to give people an idea of what the lab has to offer.

My second expression was about me, how to connect with me on social media and my favorite digital tools. I like to share this with people who are just as excited about visual storytelling as I am.

My latest expression is an invitation to The Oakland Press reader focus group on Wednesday. I thought it would be great to share the invite on Twitter, Facebook and via email through a link.

The only drawback I’ve found, so far, is that it doesn’t appear we can embed it in an article page using our online publishing system. I have a request in now seeking help, as the embed appears to show up before it’s published on the page, but an error message appears after it’s published using TownNews. Despite this setback, what’s great about NewHive is that it can be shared using numerous social media tools. So, while we won’t get the online traffic, anything we link to. including article pages, will.

NewHive is an up-and-coming creative social media tool that I hope catches on. I especially like it to showcase creativity in photography and video. I think it’s also a great tool for journalists to use to showcase their work. Let me know what you think.

Blazing a new trail in community engagement, social media and editorial training

As I prepare to mark my one-month anniversary as director of community engagement and editorial training for Journal Register Company’s Michigan Group, I find myself questioning if I am doing enough. I’ve always been a workhorse and I’ve worked on deadline for 21 years as a former reporter, assistant editor, editor and managing editor. So, it has taken some mental adjustment to acclimate myself to a role that is more akin to a entrepreneur as I blaze a new trail in a newly created position that includes serving as director of the Southeast Michigan Media Lab. The lab, which was launched last year as part of my ideaLab project, is a training center for blogging partners, community contributors, freelance writers, student journalists and members of the community interested in learning digital media skills.

I’ve spent the last month building relationships and making headway on every responsibility cited in my job description. This includes recruiting 100 blogging partners for all of our websites. Luckily, this isn’t entirely my responsibility, as the community engagement editors across our Michigan group will be recruiting from their coverage areas, as well. So far, I’ve had some success with this task, bringing on board six and I have nine others nearly ready for a total of 15. I’ve also joined the Oakland Press Bloggers and Macomb Daily/Daily Tribune Bloggers Collaborative on Facebook, and I’ve been sharing with them links to free digital tools, webinars and workshops at the media lab to help them be more successful. I also have scheduled appointments to meet with two blogging partners and the group Communities That Care to provide individual instruction at the lab.

I am also charged with setting up live chats across our footprint. The first chat I have in the works is on cancer awareness, prevention and treatment, and it will be held noon March 21. I’ve lined up a doctor, cancer resource nurse, representative from the American Cancer Society and cancer survivor. Also in the works is a chat with editors representing all of our publications and websites. The chats will run on our websites across Michigan, and will allow for a text conversation between experts and our readers. These chats are in additions to the live chats I hold in conjunction with the workshops at the media lab.

Also as part of the community engagement component of my position, I held a reader focus group for Heritage Media in Washtenaw County and I am working with Monica Drake, community engagement editor at The Oakland Press, to organize a reader focus group in Oakland County. This involves an online survey, PowerPoint presentation, and conversation with key communicators and stakeholders in our coverage area. At the Heritage focus group last month, I connected with school leaders in Saline and now plan to meet Friday with a group of handpicked students to gauge their interest in news-sharing and blogging partnerships, as well as their involvement in the media lab. I’ve also reached out to Chelsea schools and hope to meet soon with students there.

At the media lab, I’ve been busy lining up workshops and recruiting presenters. I have four events planned in March and April on marketing blogs, search engine optimization, Google Drive and video production. Presenters include local staff, an Eastern Michigan University professor and an Internet marketing expert. Events pages have been set up on the media lab’s Facebook page.

In addition, I’ve organized newsroom training on “Excel for Journalists” for all of our Michigan properties. Mark Ranzenberger, who works at The Morning Sun and teaches journalism at Central Michigan University, will provide the training, with three on-site options combined with livestreaming video and a live chat for those who can’t make it in person. I’ve also been in contact with Robin Luce-Hermann, counsel for the Michigan Press Association, to present on “New Rules for the Digital Media Age,” a workshop she delivered in 2012 at the MPA convention on legal issues relating to the Internet and journalists. Plans are also in the works to have chats at each of our newsrooms on journalists’ and editors’ use of social media to engage and communicate with our audience.

I’ve also been busy seeking training for myself, logging onto the webinars “Pinterest and Instagram for Journalists,” “Overview” and “Branding for Journalists” by the Reynolds Center and Poynter, and attending training at The Oakland Press on Omniture. And for good measure and to stay active in the field, I shot and produced video of the “We Love Dexter” video launch party and interviewed Capt. Keith Colburn of “Deadliest Catch” for a podcast, both of which were posted on Heritage.com.

ideaLab goal morphs into job at Journal Register Company Michigan Group

My cubicle at the Southeast Michigan Media Lab.

When I was named to the Journal Register Company’s ideaLab in summer 2010, I had no idea that the goal I chose would morph into a full-time job, but it has and I am really excited about the fun in store for me.

As managing editor of Heritage Media-West, my ideaLab goal was to “incentive coworkers to learn new technologies and understand the value of digital. Train coworkers to utilize new tools by showcasing the strength and potential of each offering.”

My new job title is director of community engagement and editorial training for Journal Register Company’s Michigan Group. And among my responsibilities is to head up training efforts in video, developing partnerships, pertinent online tools and SEO for all of Michigan.

This is in addition to leading the community engagement team across the state, running the Community Media Lab, which has been renamed the Southeast Michigan Media Lab, as well as directing blogger recruitment and training across the state, working with editors to recruit citizen journalists, developing a regular live chat schedule for all of our websites, and monitoring and training staff in social media usage.

Had this position, which is newly created, been available 2 1/2 years ago, I wouldn’t have even been considered for it. It’s only through my ideaLab training, networking, collaboration and individual efforts have I become versed in everything that is now expected of me in my new role.

In fact, I was so green to the digital world in the summer of 2010 that I didn’t even know how iTunes worked and what an app was for a smartphone. But still upper management saw that I had an enthusiasm, curiosity and passion for moving journalism forward in a digital world. And through regular conference calls with our leader, Jon Cooper, and his team, members of the ideaLab were encouraged to play, experiment and make use of digital tools — from Storify, Dipity and uStream to CoverItLive, GeoCommons and Many Eyes — in our storytelling. We were equipped with a Netbook, smartphone and iPad, and given 10 hours a week to do our own thing. This led to many discoveries for me and a passion for visual storytelling.

Last April, my ideaLab project — which had focused on podcasting and the phonecasting application ipadio.com and culminating with a virtual walking tour of Saline historic sites — changed direction as I launched the Community Media Lab in Ypsilanti, Mich. A month or so later, I put forth a proposal and my lab was among a dozen across the United States approved for funding by Digital First Media, the company that manages JRC and Media News Group, as part of an effort to open media labs throughout our footprint.

I initially set up the lab so that my staff of reporters would work four-hour shifts and I would put in a full day every week, working one-on-one with members of the community interested in becoming community contributors, blogging partners, or simply wanted to become more familiar with social media, digital photography, or wanted to create video or podcasts.

In the last 10 months, we have helped senior citizens and businesses set up Facebook pages, chambers of commerce, nonprofits and political organizations establish a presence on Twitter, and helped create a YouTube account for a local business to showcases its product demonstration videos. We have taught individuals associated with nonprofits and businesses how to write news releases using AP Style, and helped students and local writers set up blogs so they could partner with us at Heritage.com.

We also have hosted a slew of workshops on marketing, social media, editing audio, citizen journalism, the Freedom of Information Act, news writing, photography, video, column writing, Google Drive for collaboration and online safety, and these workshops have been livestreamed via video with a simultaneous live chat with our audience. Workshop leaders have included myself and staff from across our company, as well as professors from Eastern Michigan University, and marketing, public relations and social media experts.

In my new role, we are expanding the lab and hoping to attract participants from across Southeast Michigan. The goal is to provide a learning-based environment, as well as a vehicle for the community to document and chronicle the important events that will shape their history, using our newspapers and websites, if they choose. The lab is a community service and no one is charged for our help or for entrance to a workshop. It’s also open to anyone, with no obligation to contribute to our publications. Someone could walk in and sit down at our blogging station, check email and work on a personal photo slideshow or video, with or without our help, if he or she wanted.

I will be publicizing our efforts on all of our social media accounts, including The Oakland Press, The Macomb Daily, The Morning Sun, Heritage Media, Advisor Source and The Voice newspapers. Our workshops have attracted up to a dozen people at times and a small online audience, but I would like to double or even triple that number as the year progresses.

My hope is to encourage members of each community we cover to get involved in sharing the news, much like they do on social media. I also have a goal of recruiting 100 blogging partners across Michigan.

When I first started as a reporter in 1992 in Dexter, Mich., educators, parents, local business owners, church leaders and volunteers with nonprofits wrote news releases and shared photographs with The Dexter Leader about every facet of the community. This supplemented my local reporting of city government, the schools and police news, as I was the lone reporter for the newspaper. Dexter had an actively engaged community who took pride in their town and wanted to share news about it. We see this today in the communities we cover, but more so on Facebook and Twitter because of the immediacy and convenience factors. My goal is to re-establish these relationships and develop more news-sharing partnerships. Anyone can start a blog, Twitter account or launch a Facebook page, but they won’t have the same reach — online and in print — that we do in our communities.

So, why not take advantage of that? I think the key is letting people know that we want them to think of us when they hear of breaking news or a touching story in their neighborhood or school. We invite you to share your own story or guest column; take a photograph while cleaning up debris after a spring storm; share video of the winning shot in the varsity basketball game; create a Storify compilation of local chatter on Twitter about the mayor’s State of the City address; create a timeline of the community’s 150 years; create a map pinpointing all of the community’s landmarks; or hold a live chat on an issue impacting your community.

Contact me and I’ll walk you through the process, help you learn a digital tool to achieve your goal and connect you with the local editor who will share your contribution. Let’s work together and build community. Message me on Twitter.

Giving back to the Heritage Community Media Lab in Ypsilanti

As we end 2012 and I reflect on the successes of my ideaLab project, the Heritage Community Media Lab, what I am most proud of is the relationship we’ve had with a few regulars to our lab and their efforts to give back to us for helping them learn new media skills.

Michelle Rogers, managing editor of Heritage Media West, leads a workshop at the Community Media Lab.

Chris Wechner, director of marketing for The Ultimate Analyst, had this video created and posted on YouTube by someone on his team as a way of giving back to the lab. The video is an amazing promotional tool. Chris has come in for workshops on writing news releases and contributing content in visually interesting ways, and has received individual, one-on-one instruction from several Heritage Media-West staff members working shifts at the Community Media Lab.

I have found Chris to be a strong supporter of the lab who wants to give back just as much as he takes. He has helped promote our workshops with a couple of blog posts. Here’s one post on his partner’s blog, ActiveRain. Chris also wrote a post after attending my workshop on his Michigan Marketer blog.

Bob Cummings, a community blogging partner with Heritage.com, who writes the blog “A Look at Spirituality and Health,” is also a frequent visitor to the Community Media Lab who gives back regularly. Bob has written very supportive email messages about our efforts, and expresses his gratitude for the help he receives when he visits, as well as the value of our workshops.

Joe Baublis, who is an active commenter on our coverage at Heritage.com who has also written guest columns and letters to the editor, attended my workshop, “Contributing Community Content in Visually Interesting Ways,” and created this amazing video posted on YouTube.

I love that all three gentleman have so much enthusiasm for the Community Media Lab that they want to give back and support our efforts. It’s rare to find that, and to have three people with the motivation to do so is incredible to me. And I am so grateful.

While their efforts have been extraordinary to me, the time workshop volunteers have donated to the Community Media Lab has impressed me, as well. Sarah Rigg, a freelance journalist and editor, has taught two workshops and just signed on to teach a third; Eastern Michigan University professors Michael McVey, Carol Schlagheck and Toni S. Jones; Eastern Echo adviser Kevin Devine; social media maven Leslie McGraw; Oakland Press photographer and videographer Doug Bauman; Oakland Press Community Engagement Editor Monica Drake; Arborwiki Editor Edward Vielmetti; Adrian College journalism professor Renee Collins; public relations professional Char Luttrell; and Ypsilanti Courier Editor Krista Gjestland have all led workshops at the lab since our launch earlier this spring. Topics have ranged from editing audio in Audacity, writing news releases, AP Style and Google Docs to Citizen Journalists and FOIA, column and narrative writing, blogging and photography.

We have several workshops set for January and February, and our friend Chris Wechner is teaching a couple. Sign up on our Facebook events page, and come check out the Community Media Lab in Ypsilanti.

A discussion takes place at the Community Media Lab workshop, “Contributing Community Content in Visually Interesting Ways,” Dec. 12, 2012.

Practice Makes Perefect at the Community Media Lab

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Nov. 4 will mark a milestone for the Community Media Lab, which is my ideaLab project for 2012. It will be the seven-month anniversary of when I launched the Community Media Lab, its blog on WordPress, as well as a Facebook page and Twitter account, to document our work, share it with the public and start a conversation about it. Since then, we’ve had more than 100 posts written by myself and our news staff, who work four-hour shifts in the lab, and nearly 3,000 page views.

I was fortunate in that my project was chosen this year, along with a handful of others, for funding through our parent company, Digital First Media. We have two computers for web surfing, experimentation and blogging, and another for video editing at SPARK-East, a business incubator in Ypsilanti. We also recently purchased two MacBook Pros, an iPhone and Smart TV to facilitate our work.

While the main focus of the lab is to teach technology tools and reporting skills to members of the community so they can share their voices and document the important events, traditions and news in their communities in partnership with Heritage Media, we also want to reach out to nonprofits, businesses and individuals to help them feel more comfortable using technology.

The Community Media Lab is still a work in progress. I am pleased with everything we have accomplished so far. From hosting a couple dozen workshops on everything from writing press releases and working with local media to choosing the right blogging platform, using social media and editing audio for podcasts, we’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of local educators, professionals and experts in various fields. We have livestreamed their workshops using uStream and a webcam on our Netbook, and simultaneously hosted live, interactive chats using CoverItLive to engage our online audience. We have also posted our presenters’ PowerPoints using Scribd, and promoted their workshops on our website, Facebook pages and through Twitter.

While the efforts we make associated with hosting workshops in the lab are fun and professionally rewarding, as we use new technology to connect with our audience, working one-on-one with the public is personally rewarding for me. For example, I helped a business owner set up a YouTube account so she could share product demonstration videos. She had hired a professional videographer to create the the videos, but wasn’t sure how to get them in front of an audience. I walked her through the process of setting up an account for her business on YouTube and uploading the videos. I also worked with a senior citizen, who didn’t feel comfortable with technology, to set up a Facebook account to communicate with family and friends, and an account on Craig’s List to sell a car. Both were grateful to receive individual instruction and afterward felt more comfortable using technology.

At our workshops, we’ve seen merchants interested in setting up social media accounts to market their businesses, bloggers seeking to improve their writing skills and people associated with community groups, clubs and marketing firms wanting to learn how to write the perfect press release. Journalists and students have learned about the Freedom of Information Act, how to edit video and audio, and how to improve their photography and video editing techniques. Workshops set in December will include “Blogging 101″ and “Contributing community content to your hometown newspaper.”

Last week, a freelance journalist, who feels more comfortable putting pen to paper, attended one of our workshops on blogging and decided to take the plunge. It was rewarding to see her take baby steps into the digital world and begin her journey as multimedia journalists. We set up an account on WordPress and she plans to write about social injustices. Once she gets started, I’ve encouraged her to share her work on our blog roll at Heritage.com.

There is still so much more to do, though. Our Community Media Lab isn’t widely known. I’ve had business cards created so reporters could pass them out at meetings and events, I’ve created fliers promoting our workshops, and recently I was a local “celebrity” guest at a business opening in Ypsilanti, where I was given the opportunity to promote the lab. My plan is to do more community outreach and take our lab on the road. Community Engagement Editor Erica McClain and I would like to present the Community Media Lab Roadshow, visiting chambers of commerce, senior centers, teen centers and schools across Washtenaw County, educating people about the lab and how we can help them.

Beyond promotion, I’d like to recruit students interested in writing, photography, videography, podcasting, social media and animation. The Community Media Lab can serve as a training ground for them, with their work shared on our website and some repurposed for print. If you know of any students who may be interested, please put them in touch with us through our Facebook page or have them stop by our lab at 215 W. Michigan Ave. in Ypsilanti.

In the meantime, we will continue our daily efforts in the Community Media Lab, with a journalist or editor there between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday working with individuals, experimenting with technology or reporting and editing, and hosting regular workshops free and open to the public. After all, practice makes perfect.