Clarity Strategic^TM

Last year, paper.li was noticed by Twitter users, and became a big hit! You probably know paper.li allows you to create a "newspaper" based on the content of tweets. They're by no means the only such service, but I'm only one man and, well, I wanted to make content digests and had to choose just one service.

The contributions don't even have to come just from people who follow you, or people you've been following. I'd be shocked if most people who create a paper use as their primary source of contributors anything other than a Twitter List – with tweets from appropriate hashtags as well. That's what I use. I have four papers:

• The #Akron Daily
• The 24-Hour Bully Stake-Out Times
• #GEEK and Proud!
• The Indie #ProWrestling Herald (comes out only on Fridays)

Each of these reaches out to a specific audience, to which I feel a connection. And you'll notice three of those papers make use of a hashtag (#Akron, #GEEK, #ProWrestling). Each of those papers draws much of its content from the people on a Twitter List I've created.

Every time – EVERY time – one of these papers comes out ("The #Akron Daily is out!"), I get a retweet, and often more than one. If you look at the before-after splits, meaning number of retweets I got before I introduced these papers, and after, you'd see I now get probably ten times the number of retweets I got before. Now, nearly everyone who talks about the return on investment you get from Twitter talks about retweets. If I were some kind of Twitter celebrity, even locally, I'd be buried in retweets from the "such-and-such is out!" announcements alone.

Personally, I didn't do this (making these papers) because I thought they would make me more popular. I wanted to experiment with them a little bit, find out what effects they had on their readership and on the larger Twitter community. This is why I created all four lists, even though my interest in two of them is as a hobbyist, not as a professional. I thought they might teach me how to better touch an audience.

And it's a really simple experiment, because paper.li papers create themselves. You're not creating the content (in general); you're not organizing it (in general); you're not positioning it on the page (in general). How DO you create it? You fill out an online form, in which you offer paper.li a Twitter List you've created, as well as keywords, hashtags, and individual people you want your paper to draw content from. Their engine then monitors these people's tweets, and designs a layout based on links, videos and photos they've posted on Twitter.

What could be easier? You're not a Web designer; you're not a writer/editor: you're a librarian. You're a curator. You're making sure your paper comes out the way you intended it to. And paper.li makes that simple. If you don't like the headline you can change it with a click or two. If you don't like an entry you can take it out.

The problem with such simplicity is that it can lull you into inaction. You let the paper come out when it's supposed to and you collect the retweets. That may not be a big problem on most days, but every once in a while you see a gaffe like this, where two consecutive articles give different stories on the same issue:

I'm here to tell you that's actually the wrong way to do this. You need to be an ACTIVE curator, if you want the resulting paper to reflect what you stand for. And this is REALLY important if you're doing social media for a small business, or you otherwise are promoting a brand. You want that paper to show the world that your brand is (a) competent, (b) in touch with what its customers like, and (c) aware of the latest trends and events related to the paper's subject.

You have to put in a few minutes a day, just a FEW MINUTES, to make sure the paper is what you envisioned it to be, because it reflects your intent – and it also is (and should be) symbolic of your brand. You create the thing to help you in some way; if you ignore it after you create it, you may not get the results you hope for. And that's why I'm here.

How to be an Active Curator:

1. Check the authorship of the tweets that create your paper. In recent weeks, the #Akron Daily has had the same person responsible for the featured article in nine of every ten issues. She's a good friend of mine, and I don't know what causes this phenomenon, but I can't have it and I've told her so. I substitute someone else's content for the featured article most days and will continue until paper.li chooses a bit more randomly. An audience that sees the same names over and over will stop watching.
2. Make sure the content is appropriate. Because my name is on that paper, I don't want people using abusive language in their tweets – no racism, no sexism, no violence (not even from the wrestlers). I see any of that and I take it out. I see it from the same person enough times and I block that person from contributing. Twitter only allows you 140 characters to make a point. Those characters must be used properly. I even take articles off my papers when the associated tweets have more than three hashtags. There simply is no need for that. (But I don't expect everyone to agree with me there.)
3. Make sure the content is on-topic, to the extent that it matters. These tweeters aren't working for you, and they will post what's interesting to them, and sometimes what interests them isn't aligned with the topic of your paper. If you allow too much of that, your paper no longer has a topic.
4. Each paper contains an "Editor's Note," and it's for you alone. I want people to be able to find me, and I want them to know why they should WANT to find me. So I fill that Editor Box with as much content as I can, laid out neatly and legibly.
5. Make sure the featured content is your own once in a while. These papers only use links, including photos and videos. Easiest things in the world to find once or twice a day. And if you find good ones, sometimes paper.li will choose yours over others'. You can also promote your own content to "featured article" if you want, though I wouldn't do it every day.
6. Make a few new friends, by retweeting and sharing their content, after it appears in your paper. I get new followers daily this way.

And with four papers, all the effort I have described above takes me a maximum of 15 minutes. If you have ONE, it'll take you less than five minutes a day, per paper, to do everything I suggest. That's if you move S-L-O-W-L-Y.

If you're trying to use Twitter to have more than a little fun, this will really help you!