Five Tools to Super Charge Your Story Pitches
Say you’ve got a great story idea.
You know it will hit a nerve with the public.
So how do you prove it to your boss?
There are several tools on the internet that you can use to back up your story pitches. They provide a gauge of what the public is concerned about; a way to listen in on the water-cooler conversations.
These tools provide a view of what Canadians are searching for, talking about, and telling their friends. They can also find the best reference material on the web.
Let’s look at them each briefly, and then we’ll look at how to use this stuff in your pitches.
How to Listen in on the Water Cooler
Number 1: Google Insight
Google Insight shows what people are thinking about, by exposing what they’re searching for.
Have you missed the boat on your story? Maybe you’re a bit too early? Google Insight may be able to answer that.
Here’s an example of Google searches for the term “Toyota Recall”. You can see that interest peaked and is now waning.
A similar tool to this is Trending Topics which looks at what’s trending on Wikipedia.
Number 2: Google Trends
Google Trends is a slightly different view than Google Insight. Insight shows you what people are searching for over time and place. Trends shows you what people are searching for in comparison to all Google searches.
You can also use trends to compare different searches. This could be useful to compare different angles on a story.
Number 3: Twitter Search
Twitter Search shows you what people are saying about a given topic. It’s a very powerful way of crowd sourcing story ideas and finding out what people are talking about. It is much more immediate than Google searches. I often find out about breaking news on Twitter’s trending topics before I see them on TV.
Number 4: Delicious
Delicious is a web tool used to save bookmarks. The Delicious Search engine shows what web sites are getting the most bookmarks. Since most people only bookmark relevant content, this search function can be useful to find the best resource material on a given subject.
Number 5: IceRocket
IceRocket is a one of many social media monitoring tools that aggregates conversations on many networks (Twitter, Blogs, etc) into one place. I use IceRocket instead of say Radian6, because it’s free. This is a handy way to monitor a news beat, check out the conversation on the blogosphere or to get a general sense of what’s trending on the internet.
How to Use This Stuff in Your Pitches
You can use the data from these tools to gauge the response to your story idea. For instance another story on the Toyota recall might not be the best idea. Interest in the story is waning. There have been far fewer searches. Unless you’ve got a strong news peg you may want to give this story a pass.
On the other hand there’s been lots on interest in virtual assistants lately. It’s one of the top 10 search terms on Google today. Maybe that’s a topic worth considering.
But these tools are not only useful for testing story ideas. They can also be used to come up with pitches.
The Twitter Search Engine is a powerful tool. It’s like an early warning system for breaking news. It’s constantly providing new story ideas. And it can be used to follow leading thinking on a particular beat.
Frankly I couldn’t live without it.
Is there any tool out there that you can’t live without?
Have I missed something? Leave a comment with your thoughts.
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Trending on Twitter right now:
* Justin Bieber
* American Idol
* Brasil Is Saying
* Lady GaGa
I appreciate you’re trying to help, and it’s great to see tools other than reading the newspaper at the pitch meeting, but honestly, ‘super charge’ ?
Sure you should use whatever is available to see what’s going on – but ‘pitches by Google’ helps explain a lot of what is wrong with what’s on the radio today.
Try Super Charging your pitches by dropping the pitch meeting, getting out of the building, and spending more time in the community. Then by all means use those tools.
Otherwise, here’s tomorrow’s lineup:
* Justin Bieber
* Eclipse
* Chuck Norris
* Chile
* Mark Owen
* PlayStation Move
* Chile
* Conan O’Brien
robert, I never suggested you should use Twitter trending topics for pitches. That’s simply missing the point. I said “there are several tools on the internet that you can use to back up your story pitches.” If you want to go out into the community to figure out your story pitches, go for it. Regardless of how you come up with the idea, there are still online tools that can “provide a gauge of what the public is concerned about.”
As for the headline, I guess I could have written “Online Tools to Help with Gauging Public Sentiment About Story Ideas,” but then I doubt you would have clicked the link.
[...] Five reporting tools to check out A few tools to check out for your reporters’ toolkit: “Five Tools to Super Charge Your Story Pitches“. [...]
Fair enough Paul.
You do say, “But these tools are not only useful for testing story ideas. They can also be used to come up with pitches.”
Based on your follow I realize you mean Twitter search, though that assumes you know what you’re searching for in the first place. (Although if you put “story idea” in Twitter search, you’ll get lots of them since so people are using it to pitch stories)
But don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for using modern tools to add some real data to the archaic story meeting.
Maybe the headline should have been :
“Online Tools to Help You Prove You’re Right and Your Assignment Editor Isn’t”
I would have read that.
PS:
By far the best story on CBC radio last weekend was Mary Jane
Lamond singing Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69″ in Gaelic on Go.
Now that was a pitch that was super charged.
What happens if a topic is unpopular, relative to whatever’s being searched or bandied about in social media, but is worthy enough to pass mention?
For breaking news and monitoring popular trends, yeah, Twitter and Google are helpful tools. They’re no substitute for knowing your fields of interest and anticipating what could be, rather than what is.
Someone on the book of faces just pointed out http://www.trendingtopics.org/ for Wikipedia trending. ONe to add to the list.
great addition. adding that now.
here is a good article in the New York Times about ways of finding people for your stories.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/technology/personaltech/25basics.html?src=me&ref=technology