AVON39 The Walk to End Breast Cancer NYC 2016

Take a look through photos of the two-day 39 mile walk to end breast cancer, which took place October 17th and 18th in New York City. The route took walkers through uptown, downtown, along the west side, back along the east side, into Brooklyn and back, over a bridge to Randall's Island, and finishing mile 39.3 at Pier 84.

SMO/SEO: Today Knows The Way To Go

The Today Show not only maintains its social media presence on a daily basis, but it also refers live show viewers to its site every day at least three times in a show day; the starting point to its online search-ability. 

On socialmediatoday.com author Steve Rayson discusses what exactly is SEO and its connection to a site’s SMO. (http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/social-media-optimization-smo-seo-7-key-steps). Search engine optimization (SEO) is the use of certain strategies in order to increase the website visits by improving your search engine rankings. Social media optimization (SMO) can be used in order to improve a site’s SEO.

In his article Rayson highlights the “5 rules of social media optimization” by Rohit Bhargava, trend curator and founder of the Influential Marketing Group. These rules highlight attributes that Today.com has already grasped: Increase in linkability, make tagging and bookmarking easy, reward inbound links, help your content travel, and encourage the mash-up.

Each Today Show segment has its online page to provide additional information on the story or provide interested viewers with links to story-related sites (seen in classic Today orange font). Their social media pages provide links to other their other accounts as well as ways for their audience to get involved in the conversation.

Tagging and bookmarking for the site is readily available. With your personal browser you can bookmark any page. At the bottom of each article visitors can readily share the article on Facebook, Twitter, or Email. The ‘more’ label, located just near the shareable links, gathers generic hashtag words to supply visitors with relatable stories to the one they are currently viewing.

Since Today is a variety morning show, it covers enough topics to be linkable to various different sites online. Topics the show covers include: lifestyle category, food, headline news, public health, or entertainment. All of these topics can and DO relate to other sites across the web, giving Today the ability to let its content travel and make an online presence. As of now the site’s greatest asset is stories traveling through social media. There is room for improvement in traveling content, perhaps making articles available to other sites covering these topics in order to promote Today.com.

One way in which this could happen relates to the last of Bhargava’s five rules, encouraging mashups. Though Today.com does allow the embedding of their videos for outsider use, they could increase this use by posting ways in which viewers can use Today clips on their own blogging sites to show credibility about a topic. This would improve viewer run sites while simultaneously increasing Today.com site awareness.

According to the Google trends, The Today Show is a highly searched site across the U.S and Australia. General interest has decreased overtime since June of 2012, but has maintained a decent presence in search field.  

In general, Today.com is improving their SEO through their constantly improving SMO as their show increases its use of social media and new technology on-air and online. There is room for improvement specifically in the idea of rewarding inbound links. If a viewer uses Today.com content, the site should promote the pages (of credible value) on its social media accounts in order to spark discussion on a topic as well as generate an interest in Today.com.

Test Project Soundslides

Infographics

Brush up on some quick Bean town facts with this Boston Infographic (with my own original background photo) and fasts courtesy of The City of Boston (cityofboston.gov)! 

Audio Report (Samantha Nicles and Lauren Popovich)

Listen in for the inside scoop on Good Morning BU on BUTV10. The first and only live news program on BU's very own television network. Samantha Nicles and Lauren Popovich report on why the show has been so successful for student's careers and academic goals. Alumni from Good Morning BU have gone on to work for Channel 7 News Boston, NECN, CNN, Fox News Channel, and many more media outlets.

Super Blood Moon, Super or Not?

Today Taking and its Multimedianess

The use of multimedia journalism today helps news sites quickly and efficiently inform audiences of the importance of a story. Seeing as The Today Show is a television news program its use of multimedia is spans from their live show to their website and social media accounts. When discussing multimedia we must look at the sites use of convergence, parallel reporting, evergreen stories, and user-generated content. Today. com fortunately covers each with flying colors. 

Today.com's use of convergence can be found in each section of its site. Displaying a majority of its posted stories with written text, photos, and video. Using these media tools, creators of today.com are able to successfully inform site viewers of a story that aired on television earlier in the day, week, or month.

As seen in the above screen shot of a recent news story covering this adorable panda, today.com flowed text in between photos, tweets, and video. The elements displayed as such make it easier for the reader to obtain the information in a timely and equally entertaining fashion (with the use of coordinating photo and video) 

Today.com succeeds in its parallel reporting the same way it does convergence. If viewers miss a story they are aware (as the reporter states) that they can read or watch more about it on today.com. In the example below, the video clip from the show is posted among the article text. 

Here site viewers have the option of simply playing the video they missed or reading the quick article and viewing photos, if they aren’t able to watch the clip.

Today, as a family-oriented morning news program, supplies its viewers with many evergreen stories for their day-to-day life. With reports (and their today.com article pairings) that discuss health benefits, tips for parenting, or new ways to create a quick healthy lunch for your kids, today.com maintains a variety of stories that remain relevant for a long time. These stories (such as the ones below) pull viewers into the Today site, even with a simple Google search of these topics. Today thus creates their site-stickiness with these evergreen stories that will then lead viewers to explore the site further.

Not only does the Today Show involve its viewers and outside audience members in the live show, but they also generate stories from their lives. User-generated content, or “crowdsourcing” takes on a different role on today.com. Stories aired on Today come from videos sent in my viewers, such as this adorable little girl catching a fish. 

Or more user-generated content can also be found in tweets prompting viewer opinion on a story. Today enjoys using ordinary people to create news for other ordinary people to see. The show even has viewers writing in about a tragic event that their family has gone through with hopes of being selected for the Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb segment, “Everyone Has A Story,” in which Kathy Lee writes a song about the tragic event and its performed by broadway singers for the family live on the air.

By using real world people in their multimedia coverage today.com brings in an audience of viewers that feel this sense of reliability. Using multimedia journalism, the Today Show and today.com have both maintained a sense of interactivity with its viewers, prompting audience to watch , talk, and read the stories it generates on a daily basis.