Your magazine — whether it is a custom magazine, member magazine, consumer magazine or b2b publication — is on Twitter. So now what? Here are six ways that you can utilize Twitter as an integral part of your magazine’s web presence:

Share articles. When you post new articles to your magazine’s website or find those related to your magazine and the passions of your readers, share them with your followers. A URL shortener (like bit.ly, urlzen or tinyurl) will help you share the URL and still be able to make the most of the 140 characters that Twitter allows.

Engage and interact. First of all, follow folks back — especially those interested in your magazine’s focus or your industry. Don’t just use your magazine’s Twitter account to push web links and articles, make sure you’re engaging and interacting with your followers. Ask them questions, reply to theirs, get their opinion.

Brag. If someone you’re following tweets a compliment about a recent article from your magazine, a writer or a photograph, that is the perfect item to consider retweeting. It lets the rest of your followers in on the compliment, and it’s one more way to interact with those you’ve connected with on Twitter. Retweeting someone lets them know you’re listening.

Do something special. Offer special subscription discounts for your Twitter followers, give away t-shirts or share links to members-only content. A tiny token of appreciation is not only fun for your followers, but it is just one more way to engage them and get their attention.

Find sources. You probably have an extremely diverse group of followers from all over the country — if not the world. If you’re looking for sources for articles, your biggest fans and creative contributors might be waiting for you in your followers list. Reach out to them with the opportunity to be featured in your magazine. You might be surprised at the wealth of information and inspiration your followers can be.

Promote something new. If you’re be changing your body font or cover banner, or adding a new section to your magazine, share that news with your Twitter followers. It could help create some loyalty in your followers by helping them to feel “in the know.”

You don’t have to look hard to see how social media is changing the world of print. Newspapers and magazines that used to just come to your mailbox now deliver snippets of news to your inbox. In a few clicks, you can find your favorite publication on the networking site of your choice, and read stories, enter contests, and submit photos and feedback. But social media has transformed more than just the printed product; it’s also revolutionizing the way we editors and writers do our jobs.

At Hammock, we don’t quote or view Wikipedia as the definitive authority on a topic. However, it can often be a great gateway to a wide array of resources that can help a researcher find experts on a topic who may help readers understand topics from various points of view. Rather than making an endless string of calls to locate the right source, we can send a shout-out to our virtual network to find more than enough leads to follow. We can even use social media to connect with far-flung readers and freelance writers and photographers.

“The connections we’re making through social media and social networks are important to our work in many different ways,” says NFIB.com editor Summer Huggins.

Reaching out
In some ways, our editorial team has always used social media to develop stories. Since 2007, we’ve been sending out monthly e-mail surveys to the reader panel of MyBusiness, the magazine we publish for members of the National Federation of Independent Business. We use these surveys to find members for upcoming articles as well as to gather demographic data. Sometimes, we even ask the panel to choose the cover of the next issue.

Because the magazines we publish tell stories about people from across the country, we have long used the Internet to dig up sources and information. But the growth in social media has made that process much easier and more efficient.

One of our favorite sites for finding sources lately is Help a Reporter Out. Run by marketing guru Peter Shankman, the site connects journalists with potential sources through a list that boasts thousands of contacts. It’s sort of like a matchmaking site: You submit a query about your story and the type of person you want to interview, and set criteria like region, category and deadline. Then Shankman shoots it out to his list of sources, who are encouraged to contact you if they see a fit.

“It’s incredibly simple to use, and I always get a handful of possible sources to choose from, so I get the freedom of being picky about who I follow up with,” Summer says.

Making connections
MyBusiness editor Lena Anthony uses LinkedIn to track down small business owners to interview. “Maybe I read about someone online, but I need to make sure I’m contacting the right person, so I’ll search for them on LinkedIn to connect the dots,” Lena says.

For stories with looming deadlines and quick turnarounds, Twitter is especially helpful, Summer says. If she’s in a rush to find a source, she’ll just send out a “tweet,” and “in a matter of seconds, my quest to find someone to talk to is seen by my followers (about 500 people),” she says. “If I’m lucky, they then ‘re-tweet’ my request and someone somewhere along the way is a perfect fit.”

Thanks to Twitter, Summer has also added new writers to her NFIB.com freelance list.

One of our frequent freelancers Nancy Mann Jackson has also found Twitter to be fertile ground for cultivating sources. “I follow lots of other writers and professionals in the areas I write about, and people interested in the subjects I post about often follow me,” Nancy says. “So when I need sources, I tweet, people re-tweet to their networks and interested parties get back to me.”

Finding sources through sites like Facebook and MySpace can be a little trickier because profiles are often private and contact lists are usually full of more friends than colleagues. But publishers and writers with pages that people can “fan” create a pool of willing sources eager to share stories and ideas.

While working on a magazine project for a military client, we created a Facebook group for teens interested in magazines, so we could gather quotes and insight from students across the country. We also built a network of teen contributors by sending out calls for writers to our Facebook and MySpace contacts.

Brainstorming and collaborating
Editor Bill Hudgins has also used Facebook to find leads for freelance writers for Semper Fi, the magazine we publish for the Marine Core League. While developing an idea for a profile on golf pro and Marine veteran Lee Trevino, he put out the word for a journalist who would have easy access to Trevino, and found the perfect fit — a writer who had done public relations work for the sport.

Social media also gives journalists a new way to brainstorm and collaborate. Nancy often gets story ideas from reading links posted by others.

“Last week, I was researching a story about 401(k)’s for small businesses, and I posted a tweet about the topic,” she says. “Within minutes, someone at the Pension Rights Center responded with a helpful link. [The organization] isn’t on my list of followers, so someone must have seen my request when it was re-tweeted for me.”

NFIB.com writer Megan Morris often turns to Twitter when she wants to throw out a quick question or run ideas by colleagues. This week, she’s browsed Twitter’s “Trending Topics” area to brainstorm for the 2010 MyBusiness editorial calendar.

“I’ve been searching words like ‘small business’ and ‘how to,’ seeing what profiles come up and scanning them to see if anything jumps out,” she says. “I’ve found some interesting possibilities!”

4 ways to find interesting Tweeters to follow

Perhaps you’re new to Twitter, or maybe you’ve been on Twitter for a couple of years now and just want to find a few new people to follow. What’s a tweep to do?

1. Keep an eye on those you’re following. The people you’re already following add value to the conversation, so it stands to reason that they’re following interesting people too. Take at look at their lists of followers and check out the possibilities of new people to connect and network with.
2. Utilize search.twitter.com. If you’re interested in following more local people, those interested in a particular hobby or others from your industry, use search.twitter.com to find others tweeting about Nashville, knitting or nursing at any given time.
3. Is your favorite blogger tweeting? I bet they are. Bloggers who are interested in listening and participating in the conversations happening on Twitter will more than likely let you know that somewhere on their blog. (Example: Rex Hammock’s blog, the RexBlog, has a “follow me on Twitter” icon where you can follow him with one click.)
4. Use services like Mr. Tweet. I think of Mr. Tweet kinda like “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” for Twitter: It will show you who you’re connected to through those you’re already following and those following you. There are often very good connections to make though his recommendations.

While much has been said recently about certain Twitter users hitting 500,000 and even 1,000,000,000 followers, we believe it’s the quality of the folks you are following — not the quantity — that will make your use of Twitter the most beneficial and effective.

And while you’re finding new folks to follow, be sure to follow us: @hammockinc.

Hey, I’m looking for someone who eats hot dogs for breakfast and whose last name starts with a C. Anyone out there fit that description? Anyone out there know someone who fits that description?
OK, so that’s a strange example, but I was just trying to demonstrate one of the best uses of social media and Web 2.0—crowdsourcing. In very basic terms, crowdsourcing means leveraging your audience to find solutions to your problems—or, in my case, answers to very random questions.

Several members of the Hammock crew spent June 3-4 in Washington, D.C., for the Association Media & Publishing Conference, an annual meeting for association publishing professionals hosted and organized by SNAP. Hammock Inc. served as social media sponsor for the event, and part of our responsibility in that role was creating and maintaining the “real-time” event website live.SNAP09.com. We believe it’s a great example of how to pull together some of the streams of the “live” web (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare, blogging) to capture the activities of an event. It also allowed a increased level of participation for those who attended by including their tweets and photos.

“The launch of a conference live site enabled SNAP to convey content in real-time to both to attendees and those who couldn’t make it,” said Amy Lestition, CAE, SNAP executive director.

In addition to developing and updating the live site, Hammock also developed and helped the folks at SNAP host a six-week pre-conference community at SNAP09.com that helped to start the conversation leading up to the conference. While good content and networking are the keys to a great meeting, it’s interesting to note in this environment of magazine-oriented conferences being canceled and having their attendance fall dramatically, this conference hit its attendance goals and sold out its exhibitor space.

“The online component increased the interaction between the attendees and created a valuable, worthwhile experience,” Amy said. “For SNAP, the live site enabled the association to foster connections not only in person, but virtually as well.”

We’re not suggesting that making social media a central part of the conference promotion is the only reason this conference attendance has held up; however, we do believe it displayed how a focus on online “community” reinforces the intuitive understanding people have of the value of investing time and money in making the effort to spend time offline connecting with people with whom they share a professional passion.

10 words you need to know to get started

We like Twitter. We like the quick pace, the fast information, the smart and talented folks who post there, and the ability to be part of the conversation.

And as is the case with many new things, there is a vocabulary growing specific to Twitter and its use. If you’re just getting started with Twitter, here are 10 terms specific to the use of the service that will help you along your journey:

• Tweet: A “tweet” is a single message or post to Twitter. Each tweet can be no more than 140 characters.
• Tweeting: “Tweeting” is what you’re doing while you’re engaged in the use of Twitter. Reading others’ tweets, sending out tweets, etc. If you’re doing those things, you’re tweeting!
• Follow/follower: On many social media and networking sites, you “friend” someone to connect with them. On Twitter, you “follow” someone. Those who follow you are your “followers.”
• RT: RT is short for “re-tweet.” This is a way of sharing someone else’s tweet with your own followers. For instance if Megan Morris (@MegMorris) tweeted about a new restaurant opening in Nashville, I should share that information with my own followers and it might look like this: “RT @MegMorris: Local Taco just opened near the office. Anyone want to go with me to try it out?” A re-tweet is simply giving credit to the original tweet when you want to share the information you learned from it.
• DM: DM is short for “direct message.” If you want to send a message to one of your followers without every single one of your followers seeing it, you simply send them a direct message. A DM also can only be 140 characters. If one of your followers says “DM me with your phone number,” you certainly don’t want everyone on Twitter to end up with your phone number. Direct message is the way to go for personal messages like that.
• @ reply: An “at reply” is simply replying to a specific follower instead of creating a brand new tweet. Example: “@megmorris I’ll go with you!”
• Twibe: There are many services online that allow you to categorize yourself on Twitter. You can log into these sites and sign up to be part of specific categories such as Nashville, Photography, Pets. The people who have also plugged themselves into these categories are called a “twibe.” These twibes can then share and receive information specific to those categories.
• Tweeps: Your “tweeps” are the people on Twitter that you are connected to.
• Twitter apps: Of course, you can go to twitter.com on the web and tweet all day long. But there are “Twitter apps” out there that you can use on your computer or cell phone that allow you to tweet from anywhere. Desktop and phone clients such as Tweetie, Nambu, TwitterFon and many more are popular options for using Twitter without having to have a web browser open.
• Hashtag: A “hashtag” is a keyword or tag that ties tweets together from many users. For instance: Just this week, a popular hastag for music lovers has been #bonnaroo. Anyone tweeting about the annual music festival simply needs to add “#bonnaroo” to the end of a tweet. That then allows your tweet to be found by anyone who searches for information on the festival. Hashtags are very popular during conferences and seminars.

Recently, I stumbled across a debate I could never imagine taking place. My friend Joe Pulizzi at CustomPublishers.com was recounting his numerous discussions with individuals in the custom publishing business who view it as being separate from services related to social media.

As anyone who knows me will easily know, I can’t comprehend how anyone — a marketer or any creator of custom media — could perceive that “social media” is not only a part of what a custom publishing firm does, it’s the heart of what we should be about.

First, let me explain a few things.

1. I believe the term “social media” is just a temporary label. Those who follow the media, marketing and technology fields need an umbrella term to describe all the methods people are using to identify and express themselves online. For the moment, the term “social media” is a catch-all phrase to describe everything from Twitter to Facebook. So, remember, “social media” = “the way in which people identify and express themselves online.”
2. At Hammock Inc., we have never described what we do in terms of “creating content.” We are in the relationship-building business. From the day our company was created nearly 19 years ago, we have always clearly conveyed that our job is helping our clients create longer-lasting and deeper relationships with customers, members, supporters, alumni or whatever term a marketer applies to those with whom it has a relationship based on a shared passion.
3. To us, “custom publishing” has always been a means to facilitate conversation among all those who share a common love, passion, commitment or special relationship. Before the word became a cliche, we used “community” to describe the goal of successful custom publishing.
4. While we are known for our magazines — and our love of magazine story-telling, photography, illustration and design — Hammock Inc., from Day 1 of its existence, has also been committed to being on the leading edge of technology that supports our clients’ efforts to build strong relationships with their audiences. That means we were early developers of a wide array of interactive media in the early 1990s and managed listservs and CompuServe forums in the mid-1990s and created and managed web-based forums and communities beginning in 1995.

So you can see, I don’t even comprehend why a custom publishing company can say it’s not in the social media business.

To me, whatever media — magazines, online, video, audio — that help communities build around shared passions is the business we’re in. Building stronger, longer, more mutually-beneficial relationships is what we do.

With newspapers and their social media policies taking center stage in the news recently, I thought it might be interesting to talk to a couple of my favorite local newspaper folks to get their take.

Robert Quigley is Internet Editor for the Austin American-Statesman, and Addie Broyles is their food writer. I connected with both of them through Twitter within the last 12 months, and when I asked some questions this week about social media and newspapers, they were just as insightful and helpful as I expected.

Q: You say in a recent article that there are no rules in place for the way staff conduct themselves on Twitter and other social media tools, do you think it will come to that?
Robert: Our normal code of conduct and ethics rules apply. I don’t think we’ll need to institute more layers of rules to cover social media, unless we need to respond to a serious problem that isn’t covered by our normal rules. Although we have a huge majority of our staff using social media, we haven’t run into any problems that would require new measures. This is an innovative newspaper, and our staff takes chances with new tools. We don’t want to stifle that. That being said, everyone here knows they represent the newspaper 24/7, and they are expected to act in accordance with that, no matter the platform.

Q: Even though the Statesman hasn’t issued policies regarding staff use of social media, are there certain rules or filters that you set up for yourself when it comes to using Twitter?
Robert: Yes, I do have rules that I’ve made up for myself:

1. I re-read every post twice and take a deep breath before hitting “update.” I have no one reading tweets behind me, and it can be a bit unnerving. I’ve sent out more than 4,000 updates on the @statesman Twitter account now, and my typo/other mistake rate is pretty low because of this rule.
2. I try to either attribute every post, provide a link or both. I do not retweet something unless it also has good sourcing. I also I want people to know that they can trust what I’m posting.
3. I try to space out my tweets so I don’t annoy my followers. It can be tough, though. Some days, I just have a lot to share.
4. I follow back people who seem to be following the account because they’re interested in what I have to say. I don’t follow back people who appear to be just looking to increase their own follower counts. The reason I follow people back is so I can exchange direct messages and because I think that’s the way Twitter should work: You follow people back who are interested in you.
5. I aggregate the news: If the Houston Chronicle or New York Times or KEYE-TV has an interesting story that I don’t have, I’ll retweet or link to them. I want people to see the @statesman account as a site that is looking to give the most interesting news, regardless of source.

Q: What do you think the use of social media has done for the Statesman here in town?
Addie: The Statesman‘s use of social media, led with its Twitter account, has brought a new level of attention and helped remove the stigma that it’s for an older demographic and squash the idea that newspapers’ content that is old by the time it gets to readers. Many, many people get the majority of their news through Twitter, which puts tv, radio, newspapers and blogs on the same playing field. Twitter has also allowed people in Austin to feel like they are connected — and eventually invested — in the newspaper. The colloquial dialogue between readers and twitterers strengthens that bond.

Q: How long have you been tweeting? Did you start tweeting as Addie Broyles, Statesman employee, or simply Addie Broyles?
Addie: I’ve been tweeting for about a year, and I started as the food writer for the Statesman. It took Gary Vaynerchuk, the host of Wine Library TV, convincing me to get over my fear that Twitter was a waste of time. It was some of the best advice I’ve gotten since I started this job. I was clear from the get-go that this was both a personal and professional account, which the Statesman supports because they know that the personality behind the tweets is what really makes them sing. I look to @OmarG for inspiration.

Q: How did you balance your personal tweets with your tweets as a representative of the Statesman?
Addie: I try to make all of my tweets come back to food, but I’d say about 95 percent of them end up about food, the other 5 percent are about music, life in Austin or being a parent. I’m constantly thinking about what to tweet and how to tweet, and my Twitter voice changes by the week. As Twitter evolves, its purpose in users’ lives evolves, too.

Q: Are more staff members diving into social media?
Robert: New staff members are joining Twitter all the time. I’ve given a couple of brown-bag lunches to help teach those who are interested in trying it out how to set up an account, why to do it, what they can do, etc. After each session, another handful of reporters signs up. We now have more than 45 staff members on Twitter posting information about their beats.

Q: What would you tell other newspaper folks who are interested in tweeting?
Robert: I’d tell newspaper folks who aren’t on Twitter that they should give it a try. They’ll get out of it what they put into it, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a shot. I personally think it’s the best tool for journalists to come down the pipe in a while, but people have to discover that potential on their own.

Tweeters at Hammock Inc. share their favorite apps
You probably already know that we love Twitter! So last week when the conversation turned to what tools use to tweet, there were several votes for favorites.

America’s truckers are learning a new language, while forgetting one that dominated the superslabs for decades.

Back in the Internet’s Age of Innocence – aka dial-up – we launched one of the early websites for the trucking industry, as an online presence for a truck-driver oriented magazine we published then. The conventional wisdom at the time was that truckers would never adopt the Internet – availability was the practical reason, and perceived “inability” to comprehend such a technology was the other, if whispered and elitist, reason most often given.