Social Media | Getting news to come to you

In the year 2010 there is no reason to wade through millions of headlines about Tiger Woods’ shenanigans when all you want is news that has an impact on you. Here are some easy things you can do to save time and customize your personal news experience. This information will work for anyone but my intention here is to help farmers understand social media so all the links and references are to Ag related news sources. Read on!

RSS Feeds

Most blogs and popular websites like Yahoo, BBC, MSN and Google feature RSS, but what is it?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a really simple way to stay up to date with new content on your favorite websites.

Instead of visiting individual websites to see what’s new, you get automatic updates from many sites in one place. It’s a real time saver if you follow lots of different sites. And because you don’t have to supply any personal information to use it, RSS ensures your privacy too.

With RSS, you choose to receive updates from websites through ‘feeds’ and ‘readers’.

An RSS feed is:

• A news article, blog, audio clip, or video clip delivered strait to your reader
• simple as clicking on the RSS logo and confirming that you want to subscribe to the feed.

An RSS feed reader is:

• a central place to grab and store all feeds, so you have multiple updates in one place.

Using RSS is as easy as 1,2,3.

1. Look for sites that support RSS – this is the RSS Logo:


2. Subscribe to the feed you’re interested in
3. View the updates via your feed reader.

I suggest you use Google Reader for managing your feeds. I like using google because you can view the same information in many places. I read my news articles on my home computer, work computer, and my phone. I read mostly from my Motorola Droid but there are readers available for iPhone, Blackberry, and any phone with a mobile browser.

Most email applications double as RSS readers. Here are some tutorials on how to use popular email clients as RSS feed readers:

Microsoft Outlook
Yahoo! Mail
Apple Mail

A note on subscribing to a feed.
Most of the time when you click on the RSS icon it is going to take you to a page with a bunch of text all run together. At this point, copy and paste the URL into your news reader. For example, if you click on the RSS logo on the upper right corner of this page it will take you to a page with this URL: http://dinogiacomazzi.com/feed/ Just copy and paste that URL into your reader and you will be subscribed. Some web browsers will do this automatically for you.

Here is a list of some Ag oriented websites I subscribe to.

A Dairy Goddess’s Blog
Advocates for Agriculture
Ag – its not just a job, it’s an adventure!
American Farm Bureau: Latest News
Dairy Today
DTN Grain Market Summary
Truth Be Told – Trent Loos
Western United Dairymen
Gate to Plate Blog by Michele Payn-Knoper

You can also check all the links to news sources I have listed on the right side of this page. Many of them have RSS feeds, just look for the logo.

Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a very useful tool for searching news by keyword. Google Alerts allows you to set up searches, then whenever it finds something related to your search it will email it to you. For example, I have a Google Alert set up for my name, “Dino Giacomazzi”. Whenever my name is posted on a website or is in the news, Google sends me an alert via email. The cool thing is that it keeps track of what was sent in the past and only sends new postings.

I use Google Alerts to find news like “HSUS + Dairy”, “smelt + delta + water”, “animal welfare”, “milk price”, etc. I also use it to track pieces of legislation by number, “AB 1960″ or ‘”jobs bill” + water’.

It is important to be fairly specific with your searches or you will get hundreds of results.

Facebook
Facebook has many uses beyond looking at pictures of your friends drunk at a party. Facebook is a great place to find peer recommended news. Many people post links to news articles they find interesting. Chances are since this person is your friend or associate you may be interested in that article also.

First place to go in Facebook for news is the “News Feed”. This is where you get to see what your friends are posting. The news feed is a mix of status updates, links, videos, and other stuff. Facebook provides a way to filter the noise of the news feed on the left side of the page by clicking on “links”. This will show only posts from people who have included a link to another website. Much of this ends up being some sort of news…or a joke, either way you win.

Other ways to get news and information from Facebook are: becoming a fan of a page, joining a group, or joining a cause. These three options are places where people are having conversations on specific topics like Humane Watch, where people are talking about how crooked the Humane Society of the United States is, or Farm2U where consumers can ask farmers questions.

There are millions of Pages, Causes, and Groups in Facebook. Use the search box in Facebook to find things that interest you, then join in the conversation.

Here is a short list of some things I find useful in Facebook:

Save California’s Milk Supply – a Cause
I Love Farmers…they feed my soul – a Group
Animal Agriculture Alliance – a Page

This is a very short list. I am currently subscribed to hundreds of Groups, Pages, and Causes on Facebook.

Twitter

I don’t have time in this tutorial to explain what twitter is and how to use it but I will just say that twitter is a great source for news. Here are a couple of ways to find news via twitter:

1. Learn hash tags being used by people in agriculture and set up searches to monitor them. The most important hash tag is #agchat. Just type #agchat into twitter’s search box and you will see postings by hundreds of farmers from around the globe. Many of them are posting links to news.

2. Use Twitter’s “List” feature to follow people who post information your are interested in.

3. Find people tweeting links to news you are interested in then subscribe to their twitter feed with your RSS Reader.

Social News Communities

There are many websites dedicated exclusively to sharing news articles with groups. I haven’t personally gotten into these yet but I find it necessary to mention them here. The major social news sites are:

http://digg.com/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.mixx.com/

So there you have it, several options for bringing news you can use strait to you.

Now here is the most important part…once you have found some news of interest to you…SHARE it with your friends. That is what social media is all about. Sharing information.