I have been looking for some way of collecting and archiving links to keyword or hashtag-based social activity on a WordPress blog for some time. I am sure there are lots of different ways of doing this, but I thought it might be useful to share one way I found on our ‘buzz’ page for the news:rewired event at City University London 14 January 2010. Obviously it will work best with tags that are fairly unique, but there are probably other useful things you could do with this on your beat (let me know if you do!).

The page uses the WordPress Lifestream plugin, which is actually designed to collate a blogger’s personal activity on various social media sites. However, it also has a feature to include a generic feed (under ‘Add a feed’, you will see a list of various sites but also a generic RSS feed logo – that’s the one you want) which can be configured to display an alternative icon to the generic RSS feed one.

So all I needed to do was to obtain RSS feeds of searches of the sites I wanted to include, add a new generic feed for each using the appropriate search result feed and upload and link to the appropriate logos. You can use the icons that come with the Lifestream plugin, create your own, or use some as I did from sites like iconspedia.

Unfortunately, obtaining the RSS feeds I needed was not as straightforward or as obvious as it should have been, so I will go through each one here.

Twitter: This was the easiest feed to find – just go to http://search.twitter.com/ and enter the keyword that you want to search for. When you get the results, look for the “Feed for this query” link at the top of the right-hand column. I searched for #newsrw so my feed url was http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23newsrw (the %23 part is # hex encoded).

Delicious: This offers an RSS feed for tags (but not for general search results as far as I know). The format in this case is http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/tag/newsrw?count=15

Flickr: Pictures with particular tags can be found like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/[yourtag]/. A feed icon appears on tag pages, so the URL I wanted is http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=newsrw&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

AudioBoo: This is the format you need: http://audioboo.fm/tag/[yourtag].rss – in our case http://audioboo.fm/tag/newsrw.rss

YouTube: Format: http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/[yourtag].rss (so the feed we wanted is http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/newsrw.rss)

Qik: At the time of writing, we couldn’t find an RSS feed for a search of Qik. Here’s one workaround: search the site for your keyword and make a note of the URL of the search results page (in our case http://qik.com/videos/public_search?query=newsrw). Then go to a site like Feedity to create the page into an RSS feed. It probably won’t work first time, but you can adjust filters to get the results you need. The other problem is that the items in your feed won’t have accurate timestamps, so they won’t appear correctly in your timeline.

Vimeo: Format: http://vimeo.com/tag:[yourtag]/rss (so the feed we wanted is http://vimeo.com/tag:newsrw/rss). One slight problem, at the time of writing Vimeo did not update its feeds in real-time so videos may take a while to appear in your timeline.

Do you know a better way to do this? Or do you think we should include other social media channels other than those listed above? Let us know in the comments please.

Adam Westbrook, freelance journalist and multimedia producer (and one of the speakers at the practical journalism event news:rewired, City University London, 14 January 2010), makes his predictions for journalism next year.

10 trends in journalism for 2010 from Adam Westbrook on Vimeo.

1. Decide what your ultimate goal for your business is. Is it a) to make you rich or is it b) a lifestyle choice, ie a business that will give you a reasonable income and the lifestyle you want, where you want it? If a) is your sole aim, think seriously about basing your business on something else other than journalism.
2. Don’t assume anything you do will be unique. No matter how clever the idea or the underlying technology, someone else can easily set up in competition to you. The internet makes it much easier to self-publish, but it makes it easier for everyone not just you! Being the first to do something is not necessarily good. You will do all the work creating a marketplace that others will then exploit. But if you are in a niche and fairly innovative space, competition is a good thing. It spreads the burden of building consumer confidence in your business model and should prevent you becoming complacent.
3. Don’t risk any of your own money in the business unless you can afford to lose it. Launching any new business is risky, journalistic enterprises are likely to be riskier than most. And if you want to maintain some control over your business, also avoid risking other people’s money, at least until you have got yourself off the ground. Instead you could take a minimal salary from the company and supplement it by freelancing or other part-time work. And structure sales targets so that your sales staff are effectively self-funding.
4. Avoid investing too much money in online technology, at least at the outset. You might be re-inventing the wheel; you will be rebuilding everything again from scratch within three years, probably sooner as web technology and design rapidly evolves. Unless you are planning to launch something revolutionary, chances are there are existing solutions out there that will do the job for you, either very cheaply or for free.
5. Do some or all of your own accounting. It’s a lot easier than you might think if you use the right software packages and it will help you to keep on top of your company’s finances.
6. In the current climate, you are unlikely to be able to charge for your journalistic content and, unless you expect very high volumes of traffic (millions of unique page views a month), you won’t make much money from display advertising. One answer is to sell related products or services to the community you create around that content. Be prepared to have to make high volumes of sales on low-profit-yield services or goods. Don’t expect the money to flood in overnight; you will have to build your community first.
7. Get good sales people on board as soon as you can. Selling might be an alien culture to you, but you won’t get anywhere without it.
8. Never give up on your main idea (even bad ideas can be made to succeed with stubborn determination), but be prepared for many of your supporting ideas to fail. Get used to failure (all entrepreneurs experience it) and make sure you have plenty of ideas surrounding your main idea at the outset and keep having them as your business evolves. You cannot afford to stand still online.
9. KISS – keep it simple, stupid. Start with a simple, low-cost business framework that is deliverable using your current skills and build on that as you gain experience. Attention spans online are limited, so simple ideas will be the easiest to get across.
10. Beware of false prophets. As an online business, you may find yourself deluged with offers of win:win contra deals where no money changes hands or offers to sell products or services on your site on a commission basis – don’t waste your time with them. The benefits are almost always a one-way street in favour of the other party; stay focused on the deals that put money on your table, up front.

These are just some of my own thoughts based on my personal experiences as founder, owner and publisher of Journalism.co.uk and should not be taken as gospel. I am sure many will disagree with some or all of my points or have better advice of their own to offer. But please feel free to ask me questions in the comments or to share your own advice if you are already an online journalism entrepreneur.

Meet and learn from other entrepreneurial  journalists at Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired digital journalism event, City University London 14 January 2010 – book your tickets now