#Helpful

Print is dead. We’ve been hearing this for years, but the newspaper industry is putting up a good fight. Not many are surprised by the fact that the print newspaper industry is in structural decline. Similar to the 6’oclock evening news, why wait until the end of your day to receive your news? We can use the internet to access news 24 hours a day, this way you get your daily dose of news whenever and wherever you like.

Besides the obvious convenience of digital journalism, we can also receive more information than ever before. Whenever you read an article or news piece online, there are dozens of relating links on the page, just a click away.           

#Hashtags are nothing new. But this year, I’ve stopped hash-tagging #LikeForLike and learned how I can use hashtags to further my career as a journalist.

Hashtags help journalists find people posting about topics they are reporting on. This is especially helpful during the interview process. Whenever you attach a hashtag to a tweet, Facebook post or even Instagram photo, it is immediately indexed by the social network and searchable by other users. People with shared interests will use regular hashtags to help others find related tweets.

For example, my hometown has been hit with 2 winter snow storms in the past 48 hours. If I was looking to talk to people affected by these storms, I would go on twitter and look up the hashtag #NLWeather.

Hashtags have the potential to be extremely valuable, when used the right way. Over hash-tagging can distract users from the main message of the post, and can also make the post look like spam.

Remember - Less is more!