One of the things on our mind is how to cut down on story discovery time. Honing in on what’s important for your audience right now can be a very time-consuming process.
With that in mind, here’s our list of the most effective tools content discovery tools around. They’re all very simple to use and capable of making a fast impact on your workflow or content. Just click on the titles for a direct link.
1. Google News
Google News is still very much relevant today thanks to its large range of sources and ease of use. Set up your filters to follow the topics that you’re aligned with, add in lists of sources that you want to follow or alternatively set up your own list of sites that you track, your own personalised news service. All stories are populated based on Google’s algorithm.
Check back regularly to see the breaking stories in your area of interest, diving further down to get the juicier trending stories that you can follow up with. It’s an easy way to stay on top of your area but can be labour intensive during setup.
Google News’ strength is substituting dozens of open tabs into one trending feed of thousands of sources, while also providing a quick snapshot of the ‘biggest’ news items in any country at any time.
2. Reddit
The front page of the internet. Every topic imaginable is covered in this diverse democracy of thoughts. Set your subscriptions for subreddits and watch good stories in your topic area getting populated on your feed. The key is constantly updating your filters to have new and strangely named sub-reddits that are trending. Keeping an eye on the “Hot” and “Rising” subreddits is the best way to do this. Like Spike, stories at the top in Reddit have been ‘socially validated’.
3. WeFollow
WeFollow is a great way to build a Twitter list for a specific area. Type in the topic, the more specific the better, set the location and find a list of influential Tweeters on that subject. This allows you to quickly amass a feed of trendsetters on your topic and find the important tweets and stories. With some research, you’ll be first to the trending news, and save time scrolling through dozens of tweets to find relevant content. Remember to revisit WeFollow regularly to refresh the Twitter list as new people gain traction within the area.
4. Facebook lists
While Twitter lists are by now a well-utilised tool by online journalists, their Facebook equivalent sometimes gets overlooked. Yes, Facebook does have an option for users to build lists of the pages and personalities that they’re interested in.
If you’re a local reporter, find the pages of local organisations and media outlets and put them into a list. Coupled with well-researched Twitter lists, it should make for a powerful story discovery channel.
Statements are increasingly issued early on Facebook. Reports, pictures and first-had video footage of news events are all uploaded to Facebook every single day. Reporters from any beat can all easily catch these posts in once handy place, with a little organisation.
Learn more about Facebook’s interest lists here.
5. Spike
Spike helps you find great stories quicker. You can drill down into the topics, find your area of interest and location, then see a feed of the most popular stories on the internet as determined by the billion plus users of Facebook and Twitter. It’s a great way to filter out all the noise and get straight to the biggest stories in your niche.
One editor of a large US political news site describes it as “a powerful tool for a newsroom like ours.”
And the best thing is you don’t even have to be logged in to find stories with it. Quickly find trending stories by setting up Spike Alerts, an email alert that can be sent at regular time intervals (e.g. every 30 minutes) on the topics, keywords and locations of your choice. It’s really easy to sign up for, too.
Please feel free to add any other tools in the comments below, or let us know on Twitter @NewsWhip.
