Putting out a daily newspaper is hard, hard work. It takes a big staff. Reporters and photagraphers, editors and graphics specialists, layout gurus, proofers, printers -- it's a big undertaking.
What if I told you that you could publish a daily e-newspaper, about whatever topic you wanted, without doing a thing?
That's the idea behind paper.li and similar new services.
I'll talk about Paper.li because I've tried it and understand how it works.
It uses your Twitter account and / or Facebook news feed to hunt for links to news stories and blogs, whether you published them or somebody else did.
Whoever shared that link gets credit as a spotter. Their Twitter avatar or Facebook profile photo gets put next to that story, along with their online handle, and when your paper gets published to your social networking accounts, key news spotters get mentioned and credited.
You can use hash-tags to search for content and get used as sections in your daily e-paper.
The life of a paper.li publisher is hard. You tell it what to do. It does all the work.
If you want to change things, the settings are easy: add your Twitter feed and who you follow, and who follows you -- or add a up to four other streams of content.
A few quick questions and answers:
1) Can you edit or delete stories that you don't want?
Absolutely.
2) Does it look good?
Yes. I was shocked at how professional it looked, with a lot of photos and embedded videos, all without me doing a thing.
3) Can you customize the look and feel of your e-newspaper?
Sure. It's simple and flexible.
Why Starting Your Own E-Newspaper is Smart PR
If you spend any time on social networks at all, you'll notice a lot of self-promotion. It can get tiresome and repetitive.
Social networking should be a dialogue, not a monologue.
An e-newspaper like paper.li helps start a dialogue.
It gives you a chance to put your followers on a pedestal, to showcase the interesting stories they found or the blog posts they wrote.
An e-newspaper also gives you credibility as a source and an expert in the field.
Make It Special
Every e-newspaper can be -- and should be -- specialized.
An author who writes about foreign policy and is an expert on Russia could easily include popular Twitter hashtags for Russia and foreign policy and quickly fine-tune an e-newspaper that scoops up almost everything dealing with that topic, every day.
The same is true no matter what kind of public figure you are, or work for -- you're in the public eye for a specific reason.
A director in Hollywood who does horror films could easily make an e-newspaper that scoured Twitter and Facebook for links to anything about that genre.
A punk rock band might do an e-newspaper that gave people information not just about their next tour and album, but the entire punk scene. That'd be reaching out to a much bigger audience than people who are already fans.
E-newspapers like paper.li are on the cutting edge of how we communicate with each other. I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy it's been -- and how much people on Twitter appreciate being recognized and included the little e-newspaper I started as an experiment.