Selling a property on social media

Lounge of flat for sale

I’ve put my money where my mouth is and am attempting to sell a property using social media tools.

After all, the whole idea sounds perfect. First advantage - no costly estate agents.  Second advantage - it’s easy. It took me six minutes to set up two ads on Facebook, with a selection of pictures. (Compare that time spent to placing an online ad on a newspaper website)

This activity was also fed into Friendfeed , this blog post will also publicise the sale and then twitterfeed will kindly syndicate to another new set of potential purchasers on Twitter.

I concede using my Flickrstream is possibly a bit random, but I figured that you just never know who might be looking to relocate and searching for pictures in the locality.

Free and easy then, but will it work?

I was astonished to get an email within hours of posting the ad - but opened it to see it was from another journalist wanting to know whether advertising on Facebook was working!

And to date, that’s my first and last inquiry.

So, it you’re reading this and would like to purchase a two-bedroomed genuinely spacious (trust me, I’m a journalist not an estate agent) apartment with views over the Peak District and just 12 miles from the centre of Manchester (in the UK) drop me an email to sarahhartley2004@yahoo.co.uk and we’ll come to some arrangement.

Video journalism: How do you manage it?

I’m doing a bit of research at the moment in the hope of learning from the experience of others when it comes to the work of video journalism.

By asking the question; “who in your organisation edits and processes video?” I hope to get some ideas on how to streamline the workflows of  busy newsrooms coping with this often time-consuming task.

It was interesting to see that the debate about where this activity sits is also featuring on David Dunkley Gyimah’s blog where he poses the question Digital Journalist versus Integrated Multimedia Video journalism which one’s the future?

And comments: “Some outfits however interpret digital journalism as video journalism so on a pedagogic level herein lies a crux.”

So far a few respondants to Twitter and Plurk have come back to me to say that the VJs themselves (generally print reporters who’ve been trained) now carry out the video editing and associated work to get their video reports online.

What’s your experience? Does your newsroom see it as the VJ’s job? Do you consider it as a production function and if so how do you manage that? Do you have a special unit which takes responsibility?

All responses gratefully reecive - by all means email me if you want to comment off-the-record. I won’t be blogging any individual’s experience (or naming, names) just seeking some wisdom!

Illicit affairs? Not me

Following on from the various comments I received yesterday, I’d just like to point out that the spokeswoman from illicitaffairs.com who shares my name is NOT me.

Yesterday’s PA story which made its way into the newsrooms of the country isn’t me moonlighting for websites of an adult nature.  Just so as you all know - I have no knowledge of the extra-marital activities of the UK.

Success in staying offline

Here I am back online after 14 days. Yes, I did keep to my self-imposed confinement and enjoyed all that the sunny town of Kalkan has to offer (surprise, surprise a lot of foodie stuff which will feature on my other blog soon).

Entering into a pact meant I couldn’t crumble as I didn’t want to get embroiled in his work issues on holiday any more that he did with mine. So online abstinence was the deal and we stuck to it.

There were some testing times - the celebrations which erupted when Turkey beat Croatia  with fireworks, convoys of cars and scooters, dancing and flag waving in the streets - were scenes just made for sharing. It took some serious restraint not to send a single tweet, utter or even a picture of the sheer joyous (and trouble-free) exuberance.

Perhaps surprisingly for a journalist whose first media is text it was the pictures (video) which seemed so unnatural. Snapping and sending to Flickr has been one operation for so long now that bringing my phone and camera home full of pictures to process feels like going back to a time when you’d drop your films off at Boots.

So, with an internet cafe on every street corner and free wi-fi i just about every bar and hotel, it turned into a  case of will power at times.

But I’m glad we did - until now. The daunting catch up has started…… the beach life is fading.

Goodbye Web 2.0 world

I’m preparing to go cold turkey and do 14 days straight without internet use of any type. Frankly the prospect is fairly terrifying.

My family has already started to set odds on how many days it will take me to find an internet cafe in the remote area of the world I’m sending myself to.

I can’t actually remember the last time I spent a whole day offline - it definatley wasn’t this year.

So while many people would find the prospect of a fortnight away from the laptop/mobile/PC etc. a normal break, for me it’s exceptional.

I live my life online - that’s what I do!

I’ll also miss some important occasions. Firstly the DEN trip to Liverpool then the two awards we’re up for - the north west daily newspaper website and the Press Gazette Multimedia Publisher.

If I had internet access I’d know about all the above within hours of each event but now I’m reliant on someone texting me or catching up with a manic trawl round when I get home.

The break has also made it a necessity to depart from the usual services I use. In doing so I’ve come up with a sort of league table.

So here is the top ten online services according to current usefulness (to me);

10. First to go was the work email. No issues here, just set that out of office reply and breathe a sigh of relief!

9. Del.icio.us. Seeing as I’m not going to be online, this serves no purpose for the next two weeks and there isn’t any community as such to belong to.

8. Flickr. I love Flickr as a way to organise my pictures and I find it an invaluable tool for use with my blogging activity but I haven’t invested much time into making contacts so the community element isn’t so strong.

7. Seesmic. I haven’t used it enough to be truly part of the community and deep down still struggle with the front of camera bit. So the goodbye there wasn’t too much of a tug.

6. Utterz.  Although I find it a useful tool for occasionalreports on the go, the community aspect of it hasn’t yet grabbed me. The integration with Twitter and blogs pushes it up a bit.

5. Next were the two “work” blogs. Trickier. The one blog I can easily hand over to my excellent co-blogger but the food blog? Well it will just have to wait - I hope the 50,000 plus users will bear with me.

4. Home email accounts. This is how people I actually want to communicate with me get hold of me.

3. Plurk. Strange that this should be so high on the list as I’ve only just started using it. However it’s intriguing enough in its posibilities to make it almost to the last turn-off.

2. My personal blog. That’s why you’re reading this. It has also not been around for very long but has already put me in touch with so many truly well-informed and entertaining people that it’s invaluable to me.

1. Twitter. Yes it has to be the last to go not least because the final tweet will also update Facebook and Friendfeed. So there you have it - the easy integration with other applications is the clinching factor.

It’s also interesting to note that if I’d done this same exercise a year ago, many of these services wouldn’t have figured.

So as I wonder what next year’s list might consist of, it’s good bye from me - for now.

Train experiment complete

The week long transference to public transport was a success.

On four out of five commuting days I caught trains which were on time, had spare seats. Newspapers (Metro) were provided and only on one journey were there topless, skinny lads swigging lager.

I enjoyed the two mile each way walks and feel a lot better for them than sitting stressed out in a traffic jam. (Also lost 2lbs as well which is good as foodiesarah is in danger of being fattiesarah).

So far so good. But what of that one day I didn’t get the train?

Well that was Wednesday and Wednesday was a glorious sunny day.

At the risk of sound like Clarkson’s little sister,  Wednesday was the type of day soft top cars were invented for and it just seemed criminal to leave “Baby” on the drive and trudge off to the station.

(And yes I am one of those saddos who named their car but at least the name does have a certain irony. Those wanna-be grandparent conversations stopped after the purchase of a two seater.)

Also I had an appointment out of the office so had  to take the car to work. Of course. The drive through the hills with the sun beating down listening to my favourite music in a delicious half hour before being deskbound had nothing to do with it.

So, yes the train is a perfectly viable form of transport from where I live to where I work. Lesson learned.

But public transport will never give that opportunity for spontaneous enjoyment that only a form of personal transport (be it bike, car, bicycle) can provide.

Whether the extortionate financial and growing environmental cost of motoring makes that a increasingly guilty pleasure remains to be seen. 

Trains, pains and automobiles

It may finally have happened. The increasing price of petrol and the continuing nightmare commute home is pushing me to the train tomorrow.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hater of public transport in any respect, however, my experience of the local train route so far hasn’t been inspiring - the morning I had to step over someone who was asleep on the floor being less memorable than the cancelled late night train which led me to being attacked by a brick-throwing hoodie after being forced to fork out £50+ for a 12 mile taxi ride home.

So giving it all another try is quite a big step. Yobs and tramps aside, I think the downside to any public transport is having to be organised instead of dashing out when you’re ready straight into the car.

Hence I’m now spending some time looking at online timetables and working out a minute-by-minute execution of all that needs to be achieved in the morning.

So far, it looks like I’ll get an extra 20 mins in bed, get more exercise by having a further three to four miles to walk, will have half an hour each way to catch up on some work, conveniently walk past my favourite smoothie place and so potentially have a less stressful start and finish to the day.

Looks good written down but lashing rain could still change the script.

Maybe I’ll update later in the week with the reality.

 

Survey of newspaper VJs

Top VJ  David Dunkley Gyimah contacted me today because he’s carrying out a survey of newspaper journalists turned VJs.

He’s looking at how much take up of video there has been among regional newspapers and the sort of experiences that VJs are having when they return from their training to actually do the job in a newsroom.

He says: “Their names/backgrounds will be kept anonymous, so if you are a VJ and our paths have crossed I’d love you to get involved.”

The responses will be collected into a powerpoint (which I hope to be able to share at some point) as part of a WAN presentation in Sweden next week, but for now you can find out more  at his informative blog here. 

How involved should a journalist be?

The topic of reporter involvement came up at a recent broadcast debate I attended and it’s been playing on my mind ever since.

Initially I was thinking about the role blogs could play in allowing a reporter to be more reflective of their work and the opportunity for greater transparency about any involvement in a story this would lead to.

The debate as far as broadcast journalists go seems to centre around what is on-screen i.e. is the reporter part of the story, bringing their own experience of the issue to light in that very public way that filming allows.

An example given was of a reporter covering a story about lack of bin collections. She was one of those in the street where the collections hadn’t taken place so her experience was just as valid as anyone else living there.

The rule of thumb applied that being part of the story was acceptable, providing it wasn’t gratuitous.

“Invest yourself in the story, yes – but not in a gratuitous way.”

Jonathan Maitland, Media Guardian, May 12^th.

But I started thinking more about what the reporter is doing off screen. Perhaps the involvement, or otherwise, should be made clearer to the viewer/reader/user when it isn’t quite so obvious.

American news organisations seem to feel the need to be more upfront on this issue. I found this, frankly bizarre, example where a reporter had carried part of someone’s scalp to the local coroner during an interview with the dead man’s relative.

The reporter then agonises over whether his journalistic integrity has been affected by this act in this blog post and says: “In my gut, I suppose I knew I was crossing some journalism ethics line, but I couldn’t think of anything better…”

His editor finally rules:

“I believe a different reporter should have taken over the reporting once the first reporter became part of the action. I believe a fair and objective observer is needed to tell a news story the right way, and anyone who is a character in the story should not be presented as objective.”

This type of ruling is completely at odds with the regular sight at the moment of television journalists covering the China earthquakes telling us viewers that they couldn’t stand-by, that they feel so moved they have helped search the rubble for survivors.

It’s hard to imagine that anyone could remain so uninvolved that they wouldn’t lift a rock off a crushed child - but should this then become the story? Is the plight of so many victims and the enormity of the disaster not more newsworthy than the TV man’s actions? Does this type of activity move us further into the realms of reporter as celebrity?

I don’t have the answers. This is one of the those blog posts I hope could generate some debate but I do wonder what the next progression in this could be.

Would the so-called embedded war journalist be expected to participate in a battle for instance?

Robert Fisk has something to say on this topic. In the preface to The Great War for Civilisation he says “…we journalists try - or should try - to be the first impartial witnesses to history.”

Update to slideshow

I’ve updated the slideshow on UK local/regional newspaper activity to include a few GMG initiatives.

They are ( to save you trawling through the presentation again) the use of Twitter in a campaign mix for the M.E.N’s Save Sven campaign, the use of video and UGC in the Reading Evening Post’s Keepy Uppy campaign, the use of interactive maps at both the Rochdale Observer (fuel prices) and the M.E.N for traffic problems.

I’m sure there’s more to come but in the meantime, thanks very much to all those who’ve contributed so far. There’s been a lot of really interesting points made and it’s great to hear about the exciting inititiaves going on around our industry.