eNetworking 101: The Blog: Being Social #39

This edition of Being Social is overdue for a number of reasons, including problems with Google's Blogger product which is used to produce Being Social. (This is a good time to remind ourselves that a product that is free - which describes most social media products on the Internet - means that the company may not be as responsive when a problem occurs because you're not paying them.)

So onto this issue...!

Likely you've seen customized daily newspapers being published on Twitter through a service called Paper.li. As the site says, Paper.li turn "Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds into online newspapers in just a few clicks." Here is the paper that I've created, as an example. A new edition is created every day and the older issues are archived. (These is also an option to create a weekly paper.)

Why are these daily papers useful? And who are they for? We can't look at every article (URL) that appears in our Twitter feeds, so it is likely that we miss information that we want to see. Paper.li searches our Twitter feeds - based on the criteria that we set - and then creates a paper with relevant news. Therefore, the first person that this paper is for is you. Considering that you have followers with similar interests, then others will also find your paper to be useful.

The paper I created was originally geared to surface relevant stories from a conference I was attending. The paper helped to keep me informed of blog posts, etc., that I might have missed. While it didn't pick up every URL mentioned during the conference, it did ensure that I saw a lot more information than I would have otherwise. Since the paper was promoted in my Twitter feed, others also could use the paper in order to ensure that they had not missed information from the conference.

If you have looked at these paper.li papers, it is likely that you have seen some that have made sense and a few that have not. Therefore, for this issue of Being Social, I want to focus on how to create a worthwhile paper.li.

Below is a screenshot of the form used to setup a paper.li. Notice that it only asks for a few pieces of information. That makes it very easy to setup as well as easy to create something that isn't useful.

Two of the questions are easy - the title for your paper and what language you want the articles to be in. Since your paper will be promoted through Twitter, keep the title short. If you select a title that you don't like, you can always change it. As for the language, paper.li will only look for articles in the language that you select. I would suggest that you make this the primary language that appears in your Twitter feed or "any language" if that is okay with you.

The other questions - filters - are where you need to do some thinking and perhaps some work. When I created my paper, I wanted it to use specific Twitter lists and Twitter searches. However, I found that my Twitter lists weren't focused enough and so I had to create new Twitter lists. Yes, this took time and the result was a better daily paper.

Knowing that paper.li is using my Twitter lists has also made me aware of who I'm following in those lists and whether the links they include in their tweets are worthwhile. Again, this has caused me to edit my Twitter lists to add and delete specific people.

What else do you need to set or do?

Update frequency - daily or weekly - daily is preferred.
Time of day to create the paper
Background image

Once created, remember that you can tweak all of the setting...and you should tweak the setting, especially the filters. It is unlikely that you will get these filters correct the first time. Pay attention to content of the paper and then modify the filters until the paper produces what you want.

How many articles should the paper contain? The tweaking that you are doing with the filters is so the paper contains enough news, but how much is "enough"? I don't know if there is a good answer to that question. It seems, however, that if the paper contains articles from 20+ news spotters that the contents will be satisfactory. The more news spotters, the better...but don't have so many that the content isn't focused around those things that interest you (or the people that you want to read your paper).

Will every article be on target? No and that's generally okay. If an article is too far off target, you can use your editorial powers to remove it. (This is done on the paper itself and can only be done by the paper's owner/editor.)

If you haven't read a paper.li, I hope you will go to the paper.li web site and search for a paper that may be of interest. (You can search the paper titles.) You can also look for paper.li URLs in your Twitter feed. Reading a few paper.li's will help you understand how they operate and see those that work will (or not).

Comments? If you have a comment about this issue of Being Social, please email me or leave a comment in the blog. Thanks!

Look for the next issue of Being Social soon...

FTC Disclaimer: eNetworking 101 is an Amazon affiliate and receives a small commission if you purchase a product or service from an eNetworking 101 Amazon link. (Trust me, I'm not getting rich off of Amazon.)

Labels: Being Social, Tips