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"Vadim Lavrusik is a digital media student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is @lavrusik on Twitter and blogs at Lavrusik.com.\nJournalism is supposed to be a conversation, but often news websites don\u2019t provide the tools for that conversation to take place.  Implementing social media tools and allowing readers to connect to the organization through Twitter, Facebook and other networks, can make it easier for users to engage with the news content and their community members. However, some fundamental tools that allow readers to share content through social media are not being utilized. A recent study that looked at almost 200 newspapers and TV stations with Twitter accounts found that only a third offered readers a way to share a story link using Twitter, while 80 percent provided a Facebook sharing button.\nMaking it easier for readers to comment, take part in live chats and in some cases even contribute user-generated blogs can enhance the conversation and strengthen the relationship between the news organization and its audience. Here are a few tips on how a news website can become more social and examples of how some news organizations are doing it. Of course this isn\u2019t comprehensive, so we\u2019d love to hear about some innovative examples and successes about your sites in the comments below.\n1. \u201CConnect With Us\u201D Links and Directories\nThough many news organizations have a social media presence, their websites often bury the links that would allow readers to connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Featuring these links prominently on a site can ultimately build a stronger presence on these networks and bring more traffic back to the site.\nFor example, CNN and The New York Times, news organizations that have a very large presence on social sites, do not feature easy-to-find links on the front page for users to connect. Of course these sites have a lot of content to feature, but offering those social connection links prominently can help create a lasting social relationship that brings readers back to the site.\nSome news sites like The Wall Street Journal provide a Twitter link in their footer along with their other tools, which is a step in the right direction, but could be even more prominently placed. The Denver Post website includes a sidebar item titled \u201CFollow the Denver Post,\u201D which includes a link to its Facebook and Twitter pages and links to other connections.\n\n\n\n\nAnd although most sites offer RSS feed directories, The Los Angeles Times went a step further by building a Twitter directory of its writers' and newspaper Twitter accounts that also includes a stream of its various updates.\n2. Twitter Streams and Showcased Tweets\nAnother great way to make a site more social is by showcasing social media content. Slate Magazine hosted a Twitter Wine Tasting event several weeks ago, allowing attendees to discuss the wines being tasted by using the hashtag #slatewine and following the @slatewine account.\nSlate Group Chairman Jacob Weisberg said the aim was to also allow readers from around the country to tweet from their homes, as they tasted the wines.\nThe tweets were then showcased through a projection at the live event and streamed live on the Slate website for readers to follow. Weisberg said it created an opportunity to engage with readers locally and nationally through the social medium. It also brought some unique user-generated content to the site and aided in news gathering.\n\n\n\n\nHowever, publishing a live Twitter stream is something that many news organizations are hesitant to do, mostly because they cannot control the information that is published on their website. But Michael Turro, director of publishing technologies for a national consumer magazine publisher, said a fight for this kind of control may no longer exist.\n\u201CIt\u2019s a dire situation going forward and opening up and being social is a traditional publisher\u2019s best chance at sustaining relevance,\u201D Turro said.\nAs a result, some organizations are taking the middle ground by curating the best tweets. NPR asked readers to submit their best 140 characters in the comments section as a way to celebrate correspondent Scott Simon\u2019s approach to 1 million Twitter followers. The organization received some 200 entries and will showcase their 10 favorites.\n\n\n\n\n3. Live Blogging\nSteve Buttry, complete community connection coach at Gazette Communications, said a great way to engage the audience and make a website social is by hosting live blogging through CoveritLive. It not only allows for instant information from a reporter who is hosting it, but also interaction with readers, Buttry said.\n\n\n\n\nBlogs have long known the value of live blogging events.  The popular gadget blog Engadget, for example, routinely blogs live from industry events, such as key note addresses at trade shows.  Their 2008 live blog of an event at which Apple announced new Macbooks reportedly brought in a whopping 14 million page views.\n4. Creating a Social News Network\nMany larger news organizations, such as the Gannett Company, which owns USA Today, allow readers to connect with one another through the news web site\u2019s own white-label social network. Other sites, such as the Washington Post, allow readers to register using Facebook Connect. One major problem in the uptake of these social networks, however, is that many of the sites require users to fill out a mass of empty fields to register and connect, Turro said. This is often inconvenient for the reader who now must remember and track yet another Internet account and network.\n\u201CIf your aim is to build engagement with a user you need to be able to instantly provide that person with something familiar, something from their life on the web that makes them comfortable with your space,\u201D Turro said.\n\n\n\n\nUsing tools like Facebook Connect, Google\u2019s Friend Connect, MySpace ID and Twitter OAuth are helping solve that problem, Turro said. Using these tools and integrating them within the site design, such as using Facebook widgets, to build up site membership can create a sense of community.\nHowever, Turro said this doesn\u2019t mean that news organizations should stop being active in developing tools of their own that are specific to their audience. For example, in addition to being extremely active on Twitter, the New York Times has a social network called Times People that allows readers to share stories with other followers in the network, among other things. The site also recently integrated Twitter into the network making it easier for people to sign up and share across platforms.\n\n\n\n\n5. Social Share Buttons\nThough a simple concept, many news websites are still missing share buttons or provide only limited options. The audience, however, uses multiple networks. Providing the tools that allow them to share and engage your content on their networks will ultimately help you by spreading the content and give the site more exposure.\n\n\n\n\nIn July, sharing widget provider AddToAny reported that social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook now account for more than a third of all media sharing.  Making it easier for readers to share stories and other news media on social channels is an obvious way to allow visitors to be more engaged with content.\n6. Enable Social Commenting\nSimilar to providing an easy way to connect to the site through tools like Facebook Connect, requiring users to register another account to comment on an article can be somewhat burdensome \u2013 especially for one-time visitors who stumbled upon an article through search.\nAllowing readers to comment using their social usernames can be effective in building a thriving commenting community on stories, said John Cook, executive editor of TechFlash. This is why TechFlash, a product of the Puget Sound Business Journal, incorporated the Disqus commenting system, used by Mashable as well.\nCook said the system is more community oriented and allows readers to sign in using their Twitter, Facebook or Disqus accounts and sort comments by most popular. It also gives readers the ability to tweet comments, which allows the story to spread further.\n\u201CIt really gives a lot more control to the readers and makes it easy for a discussion to take place,\u201D Cook said.\n\n\n\n\nAs discussed by Mashable\u2019s Ben Parr, it would also be interesting to see Google Wave used as a commenting system, allowing users to discuss the content in real-time. Though it\u2019s early, there is a lot of potential there.\n7. Utilize User-Generated Content\nThough there are many ways to facilitate user-generated content on a site, the difficulty is making it a user-friendly experience for readers. Integrating social tools that are already popular with readers is one approach that can draw readers to engage in calls for photos, videos, blog posts, etc.\nSome large news sites have built their own communities for citizen reporters and reader-generated content, such as CNN\u2019s iReport or The Guardian\u2019s community page, which aggregates all the many ways a reader can contribute content and stay connected.  Not all news organizations have the resources for such projects, of course, but can still benefit from using outside social tools.\nThe Austin American Statesman website recently asked readers to submit photos that would help document a \u201Cday in the sun.\u201D To make it easy for readers to submit the photos, the Statesman created a Posterous account that allowed people to simply e-mail all the content, which would then get updated with reader photos after approval.\n\n\n\n\nThe Iowa Gazette allows readers to sign in using Facebook Connect and then asks them to submit news, photos and links. The paper uses Google Maps to map out the various postings of news from readers. The site was able to use mainstream tools and customize them for the needs of their audience.\nInvolving readers in the reporting process can create a collaborative process.  In a recent blog post, Dan Gillmor, the director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, argued that news organizations should be transparent with the information they don\u2019t know and provide a way for readers to help answer those questions.  One way, could be by integrating Paul Bradshaw\u2019s Help Me Investigative, a site that allows people to collaborate to investigate and share answers, within articles.\nMore social media resources from Mashable:\n- The Journalist\u2019s Guide to YouTube- The Journalist\u2019s Guide to Twitter- The Journalist\u2019s Guide to Facebook- 12 Things Newspapers Should Do to Survive- How Social Media is Radically Changing the Newsroom\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, enot-poloskun"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/09/15/social-news-sites/>