How to Storify

STORIFY:

How to curate

social media

ENTERPRISING | ENGAGING | ENTERTAINING | ENLIGHTENING

AGENDA


• What is Storify?

• Why use Storify?

• Be a social media player

• When to Storify

• How to use it

• Best Practices

What is Storify?


• Storify is a website that helps you present a story by curating social media posts, mostly through Twitter.

• Sometimes, the Storify IS the story on your site; other times, it supplements your articles.

Why use Storify?


• You help your readers sort through all the social media noise and share the best or most representative material.

• Sometimes, you can’t get to the scene fast enough. Let social media be your eyes and ears.

• Storify is a good way to capture the emotion of what’s happening in your community – people are worried about an impending storm; they’re excited their team is in the championship; they’re proud a local athlete is in the Olympics, etc.

Why use Storify?


“We did not intend for people to just throw together social media and create a scrap pile of tweets. The name is ‘Storify’because it’s about making stories. It’s about changing how journalism works to acknowledge the fact that everyone on the ground is potentially your eyewitness, and it’s about empowering journalists to draw from that source material.”

-- Burt Herman, Storify CEO and co-founder

Be a social media player


You have to consume social media, too.

• Follow the right accounts: Your Twitter experience is what you make of it. Be

sure to follow accounts that will inform you and have something to offer – local

and state police, other government departments (e.g. DPW), politicians,

businesses, colleges, active citizens, other news agencies.

• Share and listen: Establish yourself as a social media contributor – post

information people want (there’s traffic on Main Street; 2-hour delay for school),

with or without links back to your site; share a video or photo; tell them it’s a

beautiful day. Don’t just poke in during breaking news and expect people to

engage with you.

On the flip side of the coin, listen. Pay attention to what people are saying. Look

for news. Look for repetition to spot a trend.

Be a social media player


You have to consume social media, too.

• Pay attention to your

personal accounts:

I’ve heard of several

opportunities recognized

because an editor

noticed their personal

Facebook friends were

all talking about the

same thing. If your

friends are all talking

about something,

chances are your

readers are, too.

When to Storify


IMPORTANT!

• Your idea can be a good one, but it’s useless if no one is talking: You

need fodder. People need to be talking about whatever you want to gather on

social media. Poke around Twitter to be sure there’s a conversation before

you start building the Storify.

You can either wait for momentum to build around a conversation, or you can

get the ball rolling by posting something such as, “What do you think about

the new ban on plastic bags?” Suggest a #hashtag so it will be easy to find

the responses.

When to Storify


Look out your window

• Stuff that’s happening around you:

• Breaking news (can gather

your reporters’ tweets)

• Traffic

• Storm/weather

• Beautiful sunset/rainbow

• Local government decision

When to Storify


What’s on TV?

• Because we love to tweet while watching ‘Scandal’

• National sports

• American Idol

• State of the Union

• Award shows (Oscars, Grammys)

• Walking Dead

• Downton Abbey

When to Storify


National trending

• It’s not local, but man, people are talking about it.

• Pop culture

• State of the Union

• #Snowmageddon

• Holidays

• Big news elsewhere (e.g., Newtown)

• The left rail of Twitter = Trends

When to Storify


Local thing/person goes big

• Your community’s heart fills with pride!

• Local on American Idol

• Local in Olympics

• Business honored by industry

• Local actor in show

• Local attraction

highlighted in a

national magazine

When to Storify


Local Sports

• The kids are doing it, so should you

• If a game is lively on social media,

pull it together after as a recap.

• Applies to high school and youth

teams, all seasons

• Compile staff reporter/photographer

who live tweeted the game.

How to Storify


1) Create an account

Use a paper-wide username, email

address, password.

Follow the prompts and be sure to

connect the account to your

publication’s Twitter account so you

can easily notify people when

they’ve been “quoted” in your

Storify.

2) Do some homework

Before you create a new Storify, you

may want to poke around Twitter

first to be sure a conversation is

even happening around your topic.

How to Storify


3) Log in to Storify

4) Start a new Storify:

Click on “New Story” button in the upper right

corner to start a new Storify, or click on your

account icon and choose Profile to find

existing Storifies.

NOTE: The system will autosave as you go.

How to Storify


The left side of the screen is your timeline or story. The right side is where you find

your material. Think of the right side as your notebook full of quotes and the left is

where you’re writing your story.

How to Storify


headline

description

5) Fill in the fields on the left

Write a headline and description. You may want to add your newspaper website’s

URL so people who find your Storify through Storify know who you are.

How to Storify


6) Find information on the right

Work your way through the various

social media channels for content.

Twitter and Instagram are usually

the most successful because they

allow you to filter by location,

whereas with the other platforms,

you can only search for users or

keywords.

But if your topic is so specific that

a keyword would surely yield local

content, go ahead and search on

Facebook, etc.

How to Storify



STORIFY: You can add a Storify button to your browser toolbar (https://storify.com/tools) and when you see something online that you want to later use as Storify fodder, just click on the button. You’ll find the content under this tab, under Saved Elements. You can also search for material on other Storifies, either from your own account or others’ accounts.

TWITTER: This is usually the most successful platform from which to draw content. Within it, you can filter by Search (keywords); User (a Twitter username); Favorites (a Twitter username); Timeline (pull in a Twitter account’s timeline, so basically everyone that account follows); List (a Twitter list you or someone has created; a targeted collection of Twitter accounts). (continued on next slide)

How to Storify



TWITTER (cont’d): Within SEARCH, you can also filter by Type, Location and Language. Location is the most helpful.

Type in a keyword, then click on Location, type in a city/town and a map pops up with a radius from 1-25 miles.

Click on the slider at the bottom to narrow or broaden your search area.

Hit return in the Search box.

How to Storify



FACEBOOK: You can filter by Search (keywords within posts); Comments by URL (a URL with Facebook comments); and Comments by ID (a Facebook post ID #).

GOOGLE+: You can filter by Activities (essentially a keyword search) and People (Google+ accounts).

YOUTUBE: You can filter by Search (keywords) and User’s videos (YouTube account name). Be sure to watch the movie after you drag it to the left.

FLICKR: You can filter by Search (keywords) and User (the Flickr account name).

How to Storify



INSTAGRAM: You can filter by Tag Search (#hashtags/keywords); Location Search (town/city); User (Instagram account username). Note: It does not appear you can combine a keyword and location search, like you can in Twitter. It’s one or the other.

GOOGLE: You can do a Google search for content by using Web, News, Images and gif.

LINK: You can plug in a web URL to provide a link to a site or image. For instance, if there’s an image on your website you’d like to include, but it’s not posted on any of the social media platforms, you can right click on the image on your site, choose “Copy Image Location,” then paste it in to this Link “Embed URL” spot.

How to Storify



There are other, more obscure platforms from which you can choose.

Just click on this button to reveal the other sources:

How to Storify


7) Select posts to use

When you find material on the right that you want to use, click on it and drag it

to the left. You can delete it from the left later if you decide not to use it.

How to Storify


7) Select posts to use

As you’re going through the material, themes will emerge. You’ll start to see

how you can organize similar thoughts. You’ll start to focus on those themes

when sorting through the posts. You’ll start to see repetition and will either

choose more of the same to drive a point home or avoid repeats because

you’ve already gotten your point across.

It’s this process that you’ll learn to develop. The mechanics of the platform are

pretty easy. But just because you know how to work a video camera doesn’t

make you Steven Spielberg. You’ll figure out how to best curate the material to

produce a great “story” for your readers.

You’re a journalist – you already know how to do this!

How to Storify


8) Restructure your story

Once you have a bunch of posts on the left, rearrange them to appear in the

order you think makes sense. Simply click, drag and release in the new spot

you want the post to appear.

9) Add text/connecting thoughts

A Storify should not just be a dump of tweets. There should be a narrative, and

the posts serve as “quotes” supporting the narrative.

Click anywhere between posts to add text. A box will pop up. Just start typing.

How to Storify


10) Finalize

Delete unwanted posts by clicking on the X in the top right of the box.

You can style the text as needed.

How to Storify


11) Preview

You can see how the Storify is shaping

up by clicking on the Draft button and

choosing “Preview Draft”

12) Publish

When the Storify is done, click on the Publish button at the top….

And then select “View and

Publicize It.”

How to Storify


13) Notify people on

social media

A pop-up window

allows you to craft a

tweet to send to

people “quoted” in

your Storify. It

provides text, but you

can amend it. You

might want to

pointedly ask them to

retweet.

Check off all the

accounts you want to

“tweet at.”

How to Storify


14) Notify people on

social media

The goal is that the

people quoted will

retweet the link to

their followers. In this

case, the link brings

them to Storify.

If you want, you could

make note of these

users and later

@tweet them

manually, but include

the link to your article

page so you get the

traffic.

How to Storify


15) Grab the embed code

In the upper right corner of the page you land on after sending notifications,

click on Embed.

How to Storify


16) Grab the embed code

You can experiment with the

various options, but the best

ones are:

• Full header

• Story template

• No border

Copy the embed code.

17) Paste the embed code

Paste it into the HTML box of

either the EditUI article or the

digital article.

Check your site to be sure it’s

surfacing OK after you publish.

BEST PRACTICES


• Try different search words

Blizzard, snow, Snowmageddon, storm – try the various words people may use.

• Use competitors’ posts only when necessary.

• Write a catchy headline for your site. Two approaches:

STORIFY: What people are saying about the storm

vs.

Cleaning up after the blizzard

• Promote it on Facebook

Include the link to your site so you’ll get the traffic, as opposed to directly to

Storify.

BEST PRACTICES


• Don’t use posts that include offensive language.

• Take a look at the user’s name, handle and photo to be sure they aren’t

offensive.

*THAT* guy

MORE INFORMATION


If you have questions or suggestions, contact

Regional Digital Editor for GateHouse New England

Nicole Simmons

• [email protected]

• ghnewsroom.com/blogs/nicolesimmons

• @Digital_Nicole

• 508-626-3923

mailto:[email protected]

STORIFY:

How to curate

social media


How to Storify

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