Microblogging and social media are blurring the lines between the different publishing platforms and it is increasingly unclear which way is best to get your message across. The old adage, that you should tell people once, and then again, and then again, doesn’t really cut it anymore. Each of these platforms potentially allows you to propagate your message many times and to different audiences, automatically. Or alternatively this can cause death by repetition, as the same message gets repeated too many times and subscribers simply drop you or suppress your feed (you didn’t know they could do that?). Ever watched those trailers for weeks and weeks, only to miss the entire series because you eventually tuned out? Timing is everything. I discovered recently that gmail has a ‘mute’ button, which is a cool way to suppress email frivolity and ‘reply to all’ conversations.
I foresee an increasing number of tools that give users the ability to regain control of their screen life, primarily by suppressing inappropriate or annoying content. ‘Stylish’, primarily for geeks, allows you to represent information on a website in a different way, highlighting what you want to see. ‘Adblock’ removes unwanted adverts, like pop up blockers, so much so that pop ups now seem to be a thing of the past. ‘Unlike’ buttons and similar ways of unsubscribing from annoying feeds or persistent messaging are the future.
If your stuff has not got long term value or importance and you don’t care who owns it, save yourself time and publicise it entirely through your favourite social media platform – websites are not the best way to engage socially – they’re for antisocial types. Reserve your website for durable content, which will have archival value and you may need to be able to demonstrate to funders or to retrieve easily, and preferably which is reasonably text rich. If e.g. you are posting only images from your phone consider instagram (a treat to use), or if you are using an SLR, and you think you can take a good snap, try flickr (the pros do) or perhaps picasa.
Shoving a poster on your website without any accompanying text is a recipe for not getting found by the www, as your message may not be able to be translated from pictures to words. Equally linking a video with a pointless “You should watch this:” isn’t going to impress your readers or your funders.
Over at NEWS dot OurLocality we DELETE duplicate content on the http://news.ourlocality website.
We also DELETE ‘messages’ (check the definition) that look like they should be on facebook or twitter (e.g. contain Check out this great website: link).
We DELETE items that have more than one exclamation mark or use the comic sans font (unless these are used ironically), mix different fonts, colors and sizes and daft justification.
We DELETE stories that use poorly sized media (for no other reason that it messes with our template and design) or if we don’t like.
The Editor’s decision is final.
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