New training course from talk about local in managing User Generated Content (UGC)

newsroom — Pressure: Newsrooms need tried and tested UGC workflows

Do you need help with a constant stream of pictures, comments and videos arriving at your door?
Maybe you’re struggling to persuade enough people to engage with your publication?
Whatever your experience and confidence of dealing with User Generated Content, talk about local can help.

More people are finding they need to deal with pictures, video and text submitted by people for publication as part of the mix on websites and blogs.

Where once there was the comments to moderate and respond to, all sorts of publishers of all sizes now have the added dimension of reader pictures and videos too.

And it’s not just the traditional newsrooms that are adapting to these new demands – many institutions, brands, charities and similar organisations not previously involved in publishing are finding both opportunity and challenge in the landscape where so many more people want to get involved in taking pictures, telling stories or bearing witness.

This is an area that we’ve been developing our expertise in here at talk about local, particularly over the past year as part of our work as the official n0tice.com trainers. We’ve been helping the clients of n0tice.com, the platform which drives the award-winning Guardian Witness website, to understand how to maximise the opportunities technology offers for participative publishing in their communities. (Read some of our client testimonials here).

And we’re now offering to share some of the skills, tips and tools more widely – can we help your organisation with its user content strategy?

We’re offering bespoke training to organisations tasked with dealing with this User Generated Content. The training can be delivered within your operation or remotely via an online set up we’ve successfully developed over the months having delivered training in locations as diverse as US sports organisations and community publishers in Borneo.

The exact mix of ingredients will be decided in consultation with the client but will typically feature:

– issues around the moderation and verification of visual content

– defining what content works (and, of course, what doesn’t)

– lessons learned from looking at successful case studies

– how to build a community of contributors

– workflows, cultural issues and organisational strategy

If you’d like to arrange a no-obligation chat about how we could help your organisation, please get in touch via hello@talkaboutlocal.org.

Individual training
If there’s sufficient interest from individuals interested in this sort of training – maybe you’ve just got a new community management job or simply want to maximise your community website or blog – we’d be happy to put together an online session for a group not related to a single organisation. If that sounds like you, please do get in touch via the same email address above.