Robb Montgomery

Last week I shared some tips for journalists using Twitter in a live Webinar for the World Editors Forum.

One of the examples I showed was how, as a solo video journalist, I was able to generate a lot of traffic and attention to a video report I filed in Cairo.

As a solo journalist I was able to produce a level of interest in my material that was second only to Al Jazeera.
OK. Second in rankings on YouTube - but those numbers are still a valuable metric. Al Jazeera is the Goliath of Middle East reporting output.

Because of my experiences in social media I had an idea how to combine the network effects of Twitter and YouTube. Twitter is about real-time and unstructured community creation and YouTube is all about search and liquid video. (Video that can be found and poured into any container out there . . .)

First, you must do the video journalism

As a solo VJ, I produced a curtain-raiser video report

• Con Air hd

at Cairo university in the week before U.S. President Barack Obama’s was to give his much-anticipated Cairo speech in Egypt on June 4.

The video featured several Egyptian’s speculating about the president’s first major address to the Arab world. It was done in a documentary style and I took advantage of my local knowledge and went to places that Cable TV reporters parachuting in from the outside either couldn’t go or likely wouldn’t go. At least not easily.

I did the journalism and made it highly original. But that is only the first step to succeed in our new journalism world.

YOU TUBE vs. Vimeo

Of course I posted the video to my Vimeo channel - that’s where the HD quality versions of my global VJ reports go.

VIMEO - for quality

But, again, high production quality is not enough. Producing findable content is what matters most to attracting viewers. In other words you must also have your content living in the environment where your community spends most of their time.
Yes, Facebook. But first you have to cross post the video to YouTube so your reports can be found.

YOU TUBE - for search

Time to Twitter

She’s the Man psp
I tweet a few times a day generally passing links and making observations about my environment and the day before the Obama speech, I turned my Tweets to focus on the preparations.

I started to notice that the trending topic #cairospeech was being used by people I was following. I started using that hashtag #cairospeech in my tweets about what I was seeing on the ground in Cairo.

This is important as it establishes who I am to people watching that trending topic. So when I add a link later to my video report - people identify me as a credible observer and not a fly-by-night spam linker or someone else posting only to pollute the channel.

Building a reputation when posting about trending topics is critical.
I notice that a popular Web site in Egypt - Cairo Live had linked to my report and soon my video was picked up by Global Voices.

This is still the day before Obama’s speech. And I soon collected a few hundred views on YouTube. So far so good.

I return to the streets to film more of the Obama preparations around town and arrive back at the hotel to file this tweet.

Now I am actively promoting to the #cairospeech watchers that I am in Cairo and will be sharing details from Cairo as an eye witness. It’s a bit like writing radio scripts. I my mind I am trying to paint a picture for people listening from far away.

Some of what I am seeing is what is being posted on Twitter, too.
I pass along this recent observation from links I see appearing in the #cairospeech topic stream. The English-language newspaper in Cairo is live tweeting the Obama and Clinton state visit.

My VJ Mentor, David Dunkley-Gyimah sends an @robbmontgomery reply on Twitter commenting about my Obama video report. I had posted a link to the video a few days before Obama’s visit and Daivid just noticed it. Cool.
This gives me a new opportunity to include a link to the video in my @reply to David and share it with the #cairospeech watchers.

A journalism professor takes note of this exchange and asks what the video is about.
Both of these exchanges take place as the president is making his address. I am aware that the timing of this is beneficial but I don’t realize just HOW beneficial until I start getting e-mail alerts that from YouTube telling me that people are flooding my Obama YouTube video with comments.

About 35 hours later - I Tweet that I have been observing the effects of combining Twitter and YouTube.

Pretty impressive and I hope a great social media tip that can help you get your reports to stand above the crowd when a big event happens.

I also made a nice audio recording of the President’s address suing my Zoom H4 recorder and am using Zoopy to embed the MP3 file in this post.

Event Horizon

I am busy now making plans to return to Europe and Cairo where I will be giving seminars and workshops about social media, video journalism and low-cost multimedia.

If those topics interest you as well, please contact me to arrange training for your group for later this summer and fall.

Or at least Tweet a link to this post to your own followers.