The 2011 Kiplinger Fellowship is all about social media. Fifteen lucky journos who land this gig will spend a week at Ohio State University (March 9-16) honing their social media skills and learning about the joys of SEO, strategic tweeting, and other wonders of the Interweb.

Fellows don’t have to pay anything – it’s all free, baby. The Kiplinger Foundation even pays your travel and lodging. Pretty sweet deal.

If you’re interested, then fill out this online application. The deadline to apply is November 30, 2010.

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn among other places.

For those who have Facebook profiles but don’t know how to use them, social media can be a drag. But don’t worry — Facebook just came out with a new help page that will aid you in better understanding how your media outlet can flourish on the site.

No matter if you work for TV, the Web or a paper publication, you should make sure your organization is represented on Facebook with a page. (You can make a Facebook page here.) Pages are different than profiles because they’re intended for companies and public figures — brands that could and should have a large presence on Facebook.

But once you have that page, it can be a mystery when it comes to what you do with it. Well, Facebook has come to the rescue. Recently the site has launched a special page for the media, with a specific tab just for journalists. It’s called Facebook + Media.

Here you’ll find best practices, learn how you can increase audience and drive traffic, and how to understand user insights.

In addition, you can learn about cool features like reaching your audience through their news feeds (every time your page is updated, that update will go out to all of your fans, just like a friend’s update), how to run promotions on your page and how to interact one-on-one with readers.

While the page isn’t terribly extensive (there is so much to do with a page, beyond what they suggest for journalists), it’s still a fabulous place to start.

Check it out — and let us know what you think. Do you have a Facebook page? Will this help you?

Amanda Maurer is a creative director at a start-up in Chicago. She focuses on social media and search engine optimization. You can follow Amanda on Twitter: @acmaurer.

I was tempted to call this blog post “10 Ways To Pimp Yourself Online,” but I worried that such a vague label might attract an audience with entrepreneurial aspirations of a different sort, perhaps of the (gasp!) street corner variety.

Since this blog is geared toward the journalistically-inclined, I suppose “building your brand” is a more appropriate description. In any case, here are 10 tips on how to increase your visibility so you can sell your skills, talents, and services….

1. Defend your turf

Sign up for social networking sites and claim your name before anyone else does. Try to be consistent with your usernames. I try to use my real name whenever possible – I set my Twitter handle as @emilysweeney. On Facebook, however, I wasn’t so lucky….another Emily Sweeney beat me to the punch, so I couldn’t use that as my Facebook URL. Don’t let that happen to you!

2. Master your domain

Buy a domain name that you can use as a “home base” – a place where you can post clips and showcase your work. I registered my name –  www.emilysweeney.com -  and I use that URL for my online portfolio.

3. Join a gang

Follow the advice of media maven Dan Schawbel, (author of the Personal Branding Blog)  and form “a Twitter mastermind group.”

“As you may suspect, certain groups of people on Twitter constantly promote and retweet each other. Some of them are in what are called “mastermind groups” — groups of individuals who are committed to helping each other and sharing knowledge amongst themselves. They are communities of supportive colleagues who seek to mutually help each other become more successful.”

Read more about that, and Dan’s other helpful tips, in his excellent column:

How To Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter

4. Leave your mark

While it might be tempting to spray paint your Twitter handle on a subway train, please don’t. There’s no need to vandalize. There are plenty of other ways to promote yourself. For starters, you can add your website URL and Twitter handle to your email signature, your blog comments,  and the taglines of articles you write. You should also put this 411 on your business cards, and all of your social networking profiles. Make bumper stickers emblazoned with your URL.

5. Get LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great resource to find people, and for people to find you. To make the most of LinkedIn, be sure to include all of your recent jobs and relevant experience in your profile.  Use descriptive keywords and post your Twitter account and website up there, too.  Select a personalized URL (See tip #1).  Once your profile is complete, start connecting with people you know and join some groups. Write recommendations for your colleagues, and participate in discussions.

6. Facebook

Facebook can be a great reporting tool – you can use it to find story ideas, background information and sources. It’s also another platform for you to present yourself and get more people to see your work. If you already have a personal Facebook account and profile, you might also consider creating a Facebook Fan Page.

7. Write, write, write

Raise your profile by contributing to media blogs and trade publications like Quill.

8. Tweet, tweet, tweet

Set up a Twitter account and snag your username (see tip #1). Use it to connect with colleagues and tweet links to your work and theirs.

9. Volunteer

Contact your local SPJ chapter and offer to help out. You could serve on a committee, lead a workshop,  mentor a young journalist, organize a panel discussion…It’s a win-win: you’ll be doing a good thing, and it helps raise your profile in the journalism world.

10.  Network

Last but not least, make sure you get out there and mingle your peers. Attend conferences and training seminars. Need ideas? A good place to start is JournalismTraining.org and our very own Digital Media Events calendar.

Emily Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn among other places.

Sree Sreenivasan is dean of student affairs at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, a social networking whiz, and an all-around cool guy. He recently stopped by The Boston Globe to talk to reporters and editors about the joys of Twitter and how to tweet efficiently and effectively. He showed us some handy Twitter-related tools that journos can use to locate sources, find story ideas, and get more people to check out your work. Here’s a quick sampling:

1.) HootSuite – web-based service allows you to track tweets, manage several Twitter accounts at the same time, and schedule when your tweets will be posted (so you can tweet into the future)

2.) Twiangulate – Find out who the people you follow are following. Great way to discover new sources.

3.) FriendorFollow – Find out who’s following you back (and who isn’t)

4.) Twitcam – Live video streaming. Looking forward to trying this – sounds really cool.

5.) Twitpic – I use this service. Easy way to share photos and images.

6.) Search.twitter.com – Find trending topics.

7.) Monitter.com – Search tweets by location. Another site worth checking out is Trendsmap, which lets you view trending topics in any location, in real-time.

For more tools and tips, check out Sree’s Social Media Tipsheet and his Twitter Guide for Newbies & Skeptics.

…and YO – a word to the wise!  As you probably know, there are zillions of Twitter apps, tools and services floating around out there, and new ones are being created every day. Many of them require that you type in your Twitter username and password to use them. So be careful! Don’t hand over your Twitter housekeys without doing some due diligence first.  Before you type in your Twitter account information and password into any website, make sure it has a solid rep and has been reviewed by some reliable media experts (like Sree, or the good folks here on SPJ’s Digital Media Committee

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Emily “Spikey Em” Sweeney is a staff reporter at The Boston Globe. You can follow her on Twitter (@emilysweeney) and find her on LinkedIn, among other places.

Argentine journalist, Sandra Crucianelli knew something was missing when she attended the IRE conference in Miami in 2008. She couldn’t find a book on digital media tools for journalists in Spanish.

Crucianelli has now written the book in Spanish called “Herramientas Digitales Para Periodistas.”  It’s been published by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, and is available for free in a PDF that can be downloaded. Here’s the link: http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/hdpp.php

I looked over this online book and strongly feel it’s a great resource for reporters who work in Spanish language newspapers or online news sites.  It’s also handy for reporters who are learning Spanish in hopes of someday working in Mexico, Spain, and South or Central America.

The book includes chapters on accessing databases and official documents, using social networks, video conferencing, photo galleries and blogs.

Rebecca Aguilar is an Emmy Award winning freelance multimedia reporter in Dallas. She produces videos, digital slideshows along with her reports. She is currently working on an Associate’s Degree in Multimedia Development.  She can be reached at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com

Do you bookmark?

If not, you may want to give it a shot. It takes only a moment to do and it’s an easy way to save links you find interesting or use frequently. It’s also a great way to keep track of links pertaining to a specific topic or story idea.

While bookmarking links in your browser (in a listed menu or in a toolbar) is helpful, it can often become frustrating if you save links often. The list can easily become messy – even if one attempts to organize the links into folders.

So with the new year, try a new way of organizing links by using a social bookmarking site like Delicious.

At its core, Delicious is pretty basic. There aren’t any flashy pictures or bright colors, and the learning curve is pretty low. The beauty of Delicious is that it’s a Web site, and not your computer’s browser, which means you can access existing links and add new ones from any computer. You can tag or categorize each link easily, and share links with others with a click.

Once you sign in, you have several action options:

Save a bookmark: This option is located in the light blue box on the right side. Click it, add your link and press next. The following page is where you can leave a personal note about the link and tag it. Tags are quite helpful as they can keep you organized. You can create your own tags or use those that are suggested to you. You also have the option to send the bookmark to someone else via e-mail, share it on Twitter, or send it to a friend on the Delicious network. Press save – and congrats! You’re on your way to creating an organized, easily accessible list of bookmarks.

Go to a user: You can search for friends on Delicious much like other social networks. By connecting with others you can check out their links and share yours.

Explore a tag: Check to see how everyone else is tagging their bookmarks. You can sort alphabetically or by size. The tags you share with other users may be green.

Look up a URL: Paste in a URL to find out what other folks are saying about it in notes and how they’re tagging it.

The top navigation bar is also quite straight forward: you can go to a list of your bookmarks (Bookmarks), see what your friends have posted (People) and view your tags (Tags).

Simple, right?

Now it’s your time to share – how did you save links in the past? Have you tried Delicious? What do you think?

Amanda Maurer is a digital news editor at the Chicago Tribune, who specializes in social media. She blogs at acmaurer.com; you can also follow her on Twitter at @acmaurer.

I am in Seattle today attending Day 1 of the Journalism That Matters event: “Re-Imagining News & Community in the Pacific Northwest,” which runs from today through Sunday.

Twitter hashtag: #jtmpnw, and I’m @jessdrkn.

This “un-conference” intends to explore new relationships between journalism and communities. This event is unlike traditional events or conferences with line-ups of experts telling attendess what they are doing — this is about attendees talking to each other.

I am hosting a table for my website on hyperlocal and community news start-ups, InOtherNews.us, and for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, of which I’m a director.

Seattle and the Northwest has become a hotbed of community/hyperlocal startup activity.  Some participants at this event are:

• Seattle City Club
• The B-Town Blog (from Burien)
• The Salish Sea Network
• The Tyee
• West Seattle Blog
• Xconomy
• YES! Magazine

Other event attendees setting up their tables alonside me in the commons area are:

• Asian American Journalists Association
• Cascadia Times
• Common Language Project
• Countywide Community Forums
• Department of Commnications, University of Washington
• Instivate
• KBCS-FM
• Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in Democracy
• KUOW Public Insight Network
• LocalHealthGuide/Seattle
• Master of Communication in Digital Media, U of W
• Media Island International
• Natural Oregon
• News 21
• Pedro De Valdivia — an artist who uses trash or discarded items for his Modern-Ecoism work
• Reclaim the Media
• Seattle Times
• Sustainable Seattle
• Washington Coalition for Open Government
• Washington News Council

Jessica Durkin is the founder of http:InOtherNews.us, a site that tracks independent community, local and regional news start-ups. She is interested in entrepreneurial journalism and the new paradigm. She is the mid-atlantic director (Region 3) of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Most of us have covered more than one trial in our careers.  We go through the same steps–go to the trial, watch the players at work, write what is said and done in the courtroom and meet our deadline. 

London Free Press reporter, Kate Dubinski took it one step further.  She recently used Twitter during a high profile case to give readers a play-by-play on what was going on during the trial. Here a few key points from an article she wrote for The Canadian Journalism Project. 

 1. She started with a few dozen followers and in the end had more than 1,000 followers on Twitter.

2. The newspaper had to assign two reporters to the case: One to tweet and the other to report it for the paper.

3.  Dubinski learned quickly how to prioritize information because she could only tweet 140 characters.

4.  She used links to Google images to show readers images of such things as the type of gun used in the crime.

5.  She also used links to direct followers back to the London Free Press website.

6.  Dubinski also says some of the followers became sources who gave her background information.

 Here’s Kate Dubinski’s story Tweeting a Trial which can teach many of us another way to use Twitter and get more readers interested in our news coverage.

 Rebecca Aguilar is a multiple Emmy Award winner.  She’s has spent much of her 28 years in journalism in television, but is now a freelance multimedia/online reporter based in Dallas. She can be contacted at aguilar.thereporter@yahoo.com

“The people have Tweeted.” And apparently they really like chewing Trident Layers gum.

When Trident recently paid for full-page ads in USA Today, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the maker of the new, multi-flavored gum may have made history. They’re the first company to “embrace real-time Web-branded conversations” as marketing tool in a mainstream print ad, according to Tim Leberecht of CNET.com.

But the ad — featuring a giant pink and red gum strip surrounded by 10 enthusiastic Tweets such as “Trident Layers. The gum that loves you back” — pushes Twitter toward a thin, transient pop culture line. At what point does a social networking site cease to be cool? I’m sure News Corp execs, who hotly dispute the notion that MySpace is now “uncool,” secretly wish they knew the answer to that question.

Less than five years ago, Rupert Murdoch spent $580 million in cash to purchase MySpace in 2005. But now advertisers are following users out MySpace’s digital door. Yet, between the spring of 2008 and the same period this year, Facebook nearly doubled its unique U.S. visitor total to 70.28 million while overtaking MySpace, which lost 3.4 million unique U.S. visitors over the same span.

Meanwhile, MySpace fired 30 percent of its U.S. staff in June amid an ad sales slump. Advertisers are expected to spend $520 million this year at MySpace or 14 percent less than in 2008, while Facebook’s worldwide ad sales are projected to rise 20 percent to $300 million this year, according to the research firm eMarketer.

As Matthew Flam wrote about MySpace in a June story at Crainsnewyork.com: “Some observers feel that with a home page ad that reads ‘Meet Russian Women’ and a Wild West atmosphere that has resisted efforts to transform it, MySpace will never get its buzz back.”

None of which is to say that social networking sites suddenly become uncool by partnering or associating with advertisers. (In Twitter’s case, Trident concocted the ad and its team discovered the positive gum Tweets via a Twitter search, according to Leberecht of CNET. Trident then used the Tweets after seeking permission from the Twitter users who posted them.)

Just look at Burger King. Its brilliant marketing push for the Whopper, conceived by MDC Partners’ Crispin Porter + Bogusky, offered a free coupon for the burger to any Facebook user who “defriended” 10 people. Facebook users dropped a whopping 233,906 friends for the Whopper, which lead Facebook to ask Burger King to take the app down.  The ad agency behind the gimmick told The Wall Street Journal that the controversy generated 32 million news articles and media mentions.

Ultimately, it might not be so difficult to tell which Web sites will cross the line into cultural irrelevancy. Few companies succeed when they assume they’re indispensible. Most of all, Web sites must continually innovate and adapt to users’ wants and needs. As Charlene Li, founder of the research firm the Altimeter Group, told the LA Times in June, “The speed with which a company like Facebook is able to innovate and keep things fresh is the key to survival in this space.” 

Scranton-based communications professional Daniel Axelrod spent five years as a full-time newspaper reporter before moving into public relations in April. He is president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Keystone Pro Chapter, which covers most of Pennsylvania, and 2009-10 vice chairman of SPJ’s national Digital Media Committee.

Interactive timelines are a great visual way to inform and engage users about your news topic.

Dipity timelines can do more than display simple text. Adding photos, links, and pulling in RSS feeds are just a few of the fun features you can play around with.

Timelines created in Dipity can be displayed using a standard linear graph or in ‘Flipbook’ mode which is similar to a multimedia carousel or ‘List’ which displays the content in a cataloged format.

Whether you are detailing a series of events that lead up to a major news event i.e., the spread of the swine flu, or providing a historical and chronological display of events i.e, the History of the New York City Marathon timelines are no longer confined to the boring textbooks of yesteryer.

HOW TO START CREATING YOUR OWN DIPITY INTERACTIVE TIMELINE

Go to Dipity and create a free user account.

Click ‘Add a Topic’

A window will appear asking you to choose a method to craft your timeline: Web search, RSS Feed, Blank.

To begin creating a standard timeline choose Blank.

The window will allow you to give the timeline a Title, Desciption, upload a timeline profile picture, add SEO tags, pick a theme, a timezone, and allow you to determine who you will allow to view your timeline.

I would suggest picking a free theme and allowing anyone to view your timeline.

To start creating events on your timeline click the blue button ‘Add an Event’.

A new window will appear that asks you to include a:

• Title
• Date
• Description
• Upload a picture or paste an image URL
• Add a link
• Include the location of the event (Dipity will generate a map for the location of the event)
• Add a video URL

Once you click ‘Save’ the event will be added to your timeline which you can view in the standard Timeline format, as a Flipbook, List or on the Map.

You can always go back and edit or delete any of the fields by clicking the event located on your timeline.

You can click ‘Add a Source’ to feed other online account data into your timeline i.e., Flickr, Tumblr, FriendFeed and Yelp, to name just a few.

Once you have completed adding in all your ‘events’ you can embed your Dipity timeline into your website, blog, or Facebook. Dipity will generate a customized embed code when you click ‘embed widget’.

Dipity is also social media savvy and allows other Dipity users to comment on your timeline and has Twitter, Facebook and a host of other social networking apps to help you spread the word about your cool new timeline.

Still have more questions? Check out the Dipity FAQ.

If you experiment with the RSS timeline feeds you’ll discover that Dipity automatically pulls in the images embedded into your posts or articles. Personally, I think this is a great feature – one less field for me to fill in!

Examples of Dipity interactive timelines:

• All things SPJ
• H1N1 Vaccine
• Apollo Timeline

Hilary Fosdal is the Interactive Content Manager for Barrington Broadcasting Group. She blogs at hilaryfosdal.com and tweets @hilaryfosdal.