Follow smart people has long been my best Twitter advice. Paper.li is a new tool that makes it easier to follow and learn from smart people without investing all your spare time in Twitter.
Paper.li is a kind of daily newspaper made from links, photos and videos shared on Twitter by a selected group of users or about a selected topic.
Here are five ways to use paper.li:
If I’m unable to check in with Twitter on a given day, I can look at my Paper.li daily to see what good stuff I’ve missed.
2. Learn more about a particular topic.
I have a daily based on my Economic Development list on Twitter. Anyone can subscribe to it, whether or not they use Twitter, and get some of the best stories shared each day on economic development. http://paper.li/BeckyMcCray/economic-development
3. Share a paper.li summary with non-Twitter people.
Have a boss or board member who doesn’t use Twitter, but wants to know more? Share the daily (or weekly) email with them to help them see the value.
4. Get the best info from people, even without following them.
You can add smart people to a Twitter list, even if you don’t want to follow everything they say. (Some people tweet a lot.) Or you can use a Twitter list created by someone else, perhaps on a topic you want to learn more about. (You might not want to follow 500 tourism agencies on Twitter, so you could use the @TourismCurrents CVB-DMO-Tourism Folks list to keep up with local tourism trends: http://paper.li/TourismCurrents/cvb-dmo-tourism-folks )
5. Follow a topic or an event by hashtag.
Hashtags on Twitter are keywords preceded by a pound sign, like #NWOkla. They make searching easier. (Sometimes you’ll see joking hashtags, like #thiswasmeanttobefunny or #iamadoofus. Ignore those.) Follow interesting hashtags like #140conf for all the 140 Conferences, #WCF2010 for the World Creativity Forum in Oklahoma City this week, or #tourismchat for the bi-weekly tourism learning exchange on Twitter. You’ll keep up with the interesting links from an event or chat when you can’t be there in person.
You don’t need to create a new account at paper.li; just sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account.
One caution: there is a setting to automatically tweet a link every day when your paper.li is updated. It’s off by default, but don’t turn it on. Remember, we don’t all want to be reminded that you want to read your paper. If you want a daily or weekly reminder, use the email reminder instead. Thanks!
How are you using paper.li?
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I have to say I like the Paper.li concept. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the timeline approach of Twitter and Facebook. This format is a better approach for occasional glancers.
I also like how Paper.li displays the videos and photos that are shared through Twitter.
Thanks for the tip about setting up papers for lists. I’m looking for ways to make lists more useful to my network. This is a great way to do it.
Thanks, Carl. I’m also a fan of the photo display in paper.li. From poking around in the advanced settings, it’s clear that paper.li plans to make it a powerful monitoring tool.
I keep some all of my paper.li’s unpublished except for one – Oklahoma Writers. I like to share with everyone who’s writing what in Oklahoma. I think that’s perhaps a 6th way to use paper.li – to promote something important to you.
Thanks for adding the 6th idea!
Great blog post, Becky! Good, practical advice on this new tool. :)