Nick Mazzarella

Before this course, I thought social media was primarily for personal use.  For me, personal use is composed of keeping up to date with the latest in the sports world, monitoring what friends are posting and sharing, and clicking on links to full articles if I’m interested enough.

Now, I think social media is a phenomenon whose benefits can be reaped when it comes to somebody’s professional life rather than just his or her personal life.  That’s where branding comes in.  Further, I found it interesting how different social media tools are not always separate from one another (I’ll explain below).

Branding

I’ve always known LinkedIn is important for networking and finding a job, but thanks to the “How to Build a Professional Student LinkedIn Profile” handout, I learned how to improve my page by, for example, coming up with a solid summary statement.

LinkedIn, though, isn’t the only social media site that can be used for professional purposes.  Early in the semester, Professor Fincham stressed the importance of looking official on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ since a potential employer might come across you on one of those platforms.

Speaking of that potential employer, would you feel comfortable hearing that he or she stumbled upon your social media accounts? Your digital footprint helps define who you are, so it’s important to post and share appropriate content.

Coming together

Facebook is different from Twitter, and Twitter is different from Instagram.  But these social media platforms do not always act independently from one another. Storify, for example, is a tool that “helps make sense of what people post on social media” and whose “users curate the most important voices and turn them into stories,” according to its website.  Users can insert into their stories a variety of elements that include Facebook posts, tweets, and Instagram photos, thus exemplifying how people can bring together different social media sites to join forces.

Hootsuite is another tool that allows for the coming together of different social media websites.  This “social media manager” is extremely useful from a business perspective. Using Hootsuite, companies can post updates to their various accounts, monitor what consumers are saying about them, and more –– and the best part is that they can do all of these things in a single window.  The need to open separate tabs for Facebook, Twitter, and the like no longer exists. Thanks for that, Hootsuite.

By Joe, Nate, and Nick

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You’re an aspiring sports journalist, but you don’t want to use social media?  “Sorry,” says Adam Schefter (above), an ESPN NFL Insider who has more than 4 million Twitter followers.  Twitter and Facebook play significant roles in the world of sports reporting, but you can’t just jump right into using these tools without learning the do’s and don’ts.  Check out our top 10 social media guidelines for sports journalists below.

1. Establish a unique voice for CBS Sports in the social space. (CBS Sports)

Don’t get us wrong –– as a sports journalist, your No. 1 job is to convey the facts to your audience.  But don’t lose sight of the fact that there are fun ways to do so.  Use social media in ways that separate yourself from the competition.

2. All allegations and rumors must be sourced to published statements from verifiable authorities. (Bleacher Report)

As a journalist/reporter, if you plan on tweeting or posting about a rumor or allegation, make sure you cite credible sources.  Otherwise, followers will not take you seriously.

When Marc Stein, ESPN reporter, hears rumors, he always credits his sources. And when other reporters reiterate his breaking news, they always make sure to cite Stein as the original news breaker/source.

3. Build and execute concepts for photoshops, illustrations, GIFs, and video content. (CBS Sports)

If text is the only multimedia element you’re using on social media, you’re doing something wrong.  Including photos, videos, and GIFs in your posts will catch readers’ eyes, and according to this site, “tweets with images receive 18 percent more clicks, 89 percent more favorites and 150 percent more retweets.”

4. Utilize strong creative, editorial and collaborative skills. (CBS Sports)

Using photos, videos, and GIFs is great –– no doubt about it –– but you still need to know how to write.  A text-only post that features poor writing reflects unprofessionally on you and your outlet, and it might take only one sloppy post for a reader to deem you not credible.

5. All quotations, paraphrases, and statistical analysis from other published works must be accompanied by attributions to original source material. (Bleacher Report)

As a reporter, a major part of the job is doing statistical research. When using these numbers in your articles/tweets/posts, it always requires an attribution to the source where you found the original information.When ESPN Stats & Info tweets an interesting statistic, it always credit the source of the information.

6. A useful summary has been and remains: ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’ (BBC Rule #1)

This rule is so over-arching and widely applicable to all journalistic disciplines that I thought I would included it regardless of the fact that it does not have a direct link to sports. It speaks to BBC’s understanding of the human condition to relay such a simple fact to their world-class journalists. It shows that they know no detail can be overlooked because even the smartest and most gifted journalists can be as stupid as a mat sometimes. There are a multitude of example that can be given for stupidity, but one video sums it up better than I could put into words. Remember, always go cordless with the pics.

7. The need for care applies at all times on all services. If statements are to be understood as facts they should be explicitly and plainly attributed to their sources. Any room for doubt must be waylaid by a clear indication of the source of the reported facts. (footballrants.com)

This lady, for some reason, tweeted that the Queen of England had died, when she indeed hadn’t. She mistook a “test” tweet as the real thing and thought she had broken the biggest story of the day. Instead, she got fired. That’s pretty stupid, kids.

8. Content must not be fraudulent, unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, offensive, pornographic, profane, sexually explicit or indecent. (Fancied)

As a reporter, you have an obligation to act with the utmost honor and respect. Any kind of offensive, vulgar or profane posts/tweets will hurt your credibility and public image.

Curt Schilling, ex-MLB pitcher and current ESPN analyst, was recently suspended for an offensive tweet that compared Muslims to Nazis –– and that’s not the only example of a tweet that received backlash.

9. Do not violate, plagiarize or infringe the rights of third parties including, without limitation, copyright, trademark, trade secret, confidentiality, contract, patent, rights of privacy or publicity or any other proprietary right. (Fansided)

With technology growing and the ability to share information, photos and videos becoming increasingly easy and simple, a reporter must be careful to only use items that are legal to share.

Recently, SB Nation and Deadspin, two popular sports websites, were suspended from Twitter for tweeting copyrighted GIFs.

10. ***DISCLAIMER: This is outdated!*** Do not break news on Twitter. We want to serve fans in the social sphere, but the first priority is to ESPN news and information efforts. Public news (i.e. announced in news conferences) can be distributed without vetting. However, sourced or proprietary news must be vetted by the TV or Digital news desks. Once reported on an ESPN platform, that news can (and should) be distributed on Twitter and other social sites. (ESPN)

By Connor Giblin and Nick Mazzarella

As Facebook grows in prominence for global news outlets, sports sites like CBS Sports are ahead of the game.  The characteristics of CBS Sports' Facebook page are present on other websites' Facebook pages.

CBS Sports

The brand we covered is CBS Sports, a national sports site. Their page has 2.2 million likes and posts links to their articles a few times every hour. Their engagement averages around 30 to 130 shares, but likes vary from five to 1,000 -- and some posts receive even more. Headlines aren't “click bait;" instead, readers can find hard-news headlines that consist of about 50 words.

Here’s an example of a post you’d see on CBS Sports’ Facebook page.

Bleacher Report

Bleacher Report’s Facebook posts (one post every five to ten minutes) come more rapidly than stories posted on CBS Sports’ Facebook (three to four per hour).  The two sites are both capable of receiving quadruple-digit likes, and both seem to garner a similar number of shares.  Further, perhaps the trend of linking to one’s own content is prevalent in the sports realm since both of these sites do just that.  It's worth nothing that both CBS Sports and Bleacher Report utilize sport-specific accounts on social media.

ESPN

ESPN –– like CBS Sports –– likes to include visuals in its Facebook posts.  Text with a picture or video is more likely to reel in a reader than text that stands on its own.  Those who analyzed ESPN’s Facebook didn’t find a relationship between the length of headlines and the number of likes.  Further, this group pointed out that engagement was dependent upon the content, which I think is a simple, yet great, point.  Those posting know what’s going to interest people and what’s not, so they should always be thinking about what’s going to accumulate a good number of likes, shares, or comments.

The FADER

The FADER also has a diverse audience, but their Facebook page only has 217,000 likes. Their posts, like CBS Sports, have plenty of photos, videos, and links to pieces on their website. The page posts every hour on the hour, so some articles posted late at night aren’t read as often. Their highest engagement comes from posts in the evening, generating over 1,000 likes. A hip hop magazine, The FADER gets a lot of traffic with fashion pieces. Their headlines are 40-60 characters and directly mention brands or hashtags. Some material comes at a price.

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is a newspaper concentrated with business. Unlike the other sites, headlines are curt and posts range from 250-1,000 words. Likes aren’t popular compared to the sports and fashion sites. 300 likes is abnormal. Posts on Facebook are free, but not all content on their website is.  They’re more exclusive compared to CBS Sports.

The New York Times' Lens Blog

CBS Sports

Connor and I analyzed CBS Sports, which is active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  The brand has 2.2 million likes on Facebook, and at the time of our analysis, its last post was 30 minutes ago.  CBS Sports mainly uses the site to link to its own content, as an average of three to four stories appear on the feed per hour.  In addition, it’s worth nothing that basically all Facebook posts are complemented by a photo or video, so it’s never really just text.  In terms of engagement, we estimated that the number of shares on a post ranges from 30 to 130, while the number of likes can either fail to reach double digits or surpass 1,000.  Moreover, the headlines on CBS Sports’ Facebook posts are direct hyperlinks to stories on its site, and one that we polled is 53 characters long.  This headline was straightforward in that consumers were able to know exactly what they were going to read about.  Lastly, we found that there isn’t necessarily a correlation between length of posts and engagement.  Instead, engagement is dependent upon the nature of the content at hand.

Here’s an example of a post you’d see on CBS Sports’ Facebook page.

Bleacher Report

The next brand that was analyzed was Bleacher Report, so we’re continuing with the sports theme.  Bleacher Report’s Facebook posts (one post every five to ten minutes) come more rapidly than stories posted on CBS Sports’ Facebook (three to four per hour).  The two sites are both capable of receiving quadruple-digit likes, and both seem to garner a similar number of shares (far less than the number of likes).  Further, perhaps the trend of linking to one’s own content is prevalent in the sports realm since both of these sites do just that.  Lastly, it’s worth nothing that both CBS Sports and Bleacher Report utilize sport-specific accounts on social media (i.e., individual accounts for different sports).

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook presence is not far off from that of CBS Sports’ with respect to the number of stories posted per hour.  However, despite The Wall Street Journal’s 4.25 million Facebook likes compared to CBS Sports’ 2.2 million, CBS Sports receives more likes on individual posts.

The New York Times’ Lens Blog

Just like CBS Sports does, The New York Times’ Lens Blog uses Facebook to link to its own content.  CBS Sports (2.2 million) has many more likes than the Lens Blog (434,019), but this is understandable because the Lens Blog is a branch of something larger (The New York Times).  Further, since we are dealing with a photo blog, it makes sense that each Facebook post incorporates a photo.  This is relatable to CBS Sports in the sense that –– like I said earlier –– that brand also utilizes multimedia elements in its Facebook posts.

ESPN

Heading back to the sports world, ESPN –– like CBS Sports –– likes to include visuals in its Facebook posts.  Why not, right?  Text with a picture or video is probably more likely to reel in a reader than text that stands on its own.  Those who analyzed ESPN’s Facebook didn’t find a relationship between the length of headlines and the number of likes.  Further, this group pointed out that engagement was dependent upon the content, which I think is a simple, yet great, point that those posting on social media for these brands should remember.  Those posting know what’s going to interest people and what’s not, so they should always be thinking about what’s going to accumulate a good number of likes, shares, or comments.

The FADER

For last Tuesday’s #DayInThePride, my beat was Hofstra University’s Frank G. Zarb School of Business.

One of my closest friends at school is an accounting major, so my journalistic instincts made me think that he could help me in my reporting –– and he did.  He provided me with a quote about his experience as a Hofstra business student, but that’s not the only thing he did.  He also helped me obtain a quote from the chair of the accounting department, who was more than willing to discuss the program’s highlights.  I’m glad I thought to call my friend because without him, it would have been more difficult for me to come in contact with a faculty member.  Further, he informed me about something neat: Changes in stock prices are reflected rather quickly on the ticker in the School of Business thanks to the school’s proximity to New York City.

There were also certain things that I completed without the help of my friend.  I talked to quite a few random peers and asked the following question: “What do you like about being a student in the School of Business?”  I posed such a vague question on purpose so that interviewees –– rather than being forced to discuss a specific topic –– could talk about whatever they’d like.

I appreciate the fact that I was given the opportunity to be a correspondent for this year’s #DayInThePride!

Check out my Storify about #DayInThePride below!

Virtual reality is coming to a newsroom near you, according to a recent conference at Hofstra University.

On Wednesday, Oct. 7, the “Immersive Media and the Future of Non-Fiction Storytelling” symposium was held in the NewsHub of the university’s Lawrence Herbert School of Communication.

The conference, according to a press release sent out by the university, was meant to “explore the use of virtual reality, interactive documentaries, and other emerging forms of media to engage audiences in new ways.”

During the “sandbox” portion of the day-long event, students were able to experience firsthand the latest virtual reality and interactive tools.

One of these tools is Google Cardboard.  Some may assume that any sort of virtual reality experience will be costly, but one can simply build –– not buy –– a cardboard viewer.  After that, according to Hofstra freshman Jordan Laird, all you need is a smartphone with virtual reality apps to place inside the viewer.

Google Cardboard also offers a plastic viewer.  Granted, it’s more expensive than its cardboard equivalent, but it might be worth the extra money for somebody who desires a higher-quality immersive experience.  Just like the cardboard viewer, a plastic viewer requires a smartphone and cannot operate without virtual reality apps.

The third and most expensive tool on display was the Oculus Rift.  Users are required to hold the aforementioned tools to their heads, but the Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset.  One of its uses is to get a more immersive experience while playing video games.

This gamer played “Alone,” a horror video game that was designed for the Oculus Rift

Asked how the tool works, Laird explained that cameras on the computer sense sensors on the Rift.  This is how a user’s movements are registered.  One of the problems, though, is that it’s not always easy to track one’s head, which is necessary for him or her to move around in “space.”

In order to add to the virtual reality experience, the lens of the Rift has two different images so that everything can be seen in three dimensions.

Leading the “sandbox” portion of the symposium was Professor Jackson Snellings.  He teaches in the School of Communication, and he’s also an instructional designer for the university’s faculty computing services.

Snellings explained how new immersive technologies can change the ways in which we consume media.  Rather than having to be in one place, people can, for example, watch a play anywhere.

Also a member of Brooklyn Research, Snellings touched on a new technology that could benefit journalists.  The tool can employ up to 30 cameras at once in order for a storyteller to record an entire environment –– something that’s not feasible with just one camera.  Journalists will no longer have to worry as much about missing out on a shot while capturing another.

This year’s Hofstra men’s basketball roster will feature returnees like Juan’ya Green, Ameen Tanksley, and Brian Bernardi, but there will also be some players putting on a Pride uniform for the first time this season.

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Hofstra’s 2014-15 season ended in heartbreaking fashion.  In the CAA semifinals, William & Mary’s Daniel Dixon hit a three-pointer with eight tenths of a second left to beat the Pride in double overtime, 92-91.  But don’t worry, Pride fans –– the new additions to this year’s team will assure you that you won’t have your hearts broken again come March.

Ibrahim Djambo, who transferred to Hofstra following his junior year at Clemson University in South Carolina, was forced to sit out the 2014-15 season due to NCAA rules.  The 6-foot-10 forward, though, is eligible this year and will give the Pride a much-needed frontcourt presence.  The senior from Mali averaged just 8.8 minutes per game at his former ACC school, but his role will likely increase since Hofstra has only one other true post player who has more than one year of experience under his belt.

Before the 2014-15 campaign even began, Hofstra was making noise.  Last October, head coach Joe Mihalich earned commitments from two class of 2015 players –– Justin Wright-Foreman and Desure Buie.

Wright-Foreman, a 6-foot shooting guard from Laurelton, New York, is a pure scorer.  In an AAU game against the Ohio Basketball Club, he dropped 48 points.  ESPN notes “his ability to play above the rim and make momentum-changing plays in the open floor.”

His fellow freshman is Buie, another New York City product (Bronx).  ESPN described the 6-foot point guard as “perhaps the best true point guard in New York City” in 2014-15, so although he’s not the scorer Wright-Foreman is, he can find his teammates in good spots.  In his senior year at Wings Academy, he averaged 10 assists.

Other players will get the bulk of the minutes at the guard positions, but since Hofstra will graduate Green and Tanksley next year and Bernardi the year after, Buie and Wright-Foreman are poised to be Hofstra’s future backcourt combination.

Hofstra made another splash this past May when it announced that Denton Koon, a graduate transfer from Princeton, had joined the program and is eligible to play immediately.  The Liberty, Missouri, native scored a career-high 23 points at Columbia on Feb. 22, 2013.  He’s dangerous behind the arc, too, as he shot 16-37 (43 percent) from three-point distance in his sophomore campaign.

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