But our readers seem to love it, and that’s what keeps me going. Every week I connect with local people who are thrilled to have a place on PalmBeachPost.com to share their stories and read about their neighbors. Every week, I am reminded that people in the community like and respect The Palm Beach Post brand.

And the fact that someone at The Palm Beach Post is listening to them, interacting with them and publishing their stories, I am convinced, makes them feel more connected to their hometown paper.

To me, that’s what social media is all about – much more so than things like being the first to switch to Facebook’s new Timeline. (The modern profession of “social media” is filled with people so obsessed with being seen as the first to be in the know and the first to use the latest tools that they often forget about the audience they’re supposed to be connected with.)

Anyway, part of the Community Post channel is a reader-generated blog, moderated and edited by me. I get several dozen submissions a month, many of which turn into print stories, listings on our entertainment website, or guest blog posts. The latest submission made my day.

It’s from an 80-year-old woman who’s been married 61 years “to the love of my life,” designs websites on the side, and is writing and self-publishing her first book.

“I feel rather bold writing to you but I thought perhaps you’d be interested,” she emailed me, then outlined the plot of her novella and signed off by expressing worry she appeared “egotistical” for writing.

We exchanged a few emails, and I asked her to keep in touch when her book was published and available to purchase online. She agreed and added: “Writing a book was something I always said I’d do ‘someday.’ When I reached 80 I figured, “If not now, when?” I try to encourage people, especially in my age group, to try new things and keep learning.”

Such an inspiring woman! I already feel uplifted by her, and I know our readers will, too.

Here are just a few things she did in the past few days to help out with social media while I was attending the Online News Association conference in Boston.

Talk about the weather

A simple photo post with an engaging cutline got our Facebook fans talking. Click to see all the interaction, among the highest we’ve seen on any one image.

Pouncing on a hot topic

From being an avid consumer of social media herself, Amanda knew everyone was talking about the recent Facebook news feed changes. So she capitalized on this by using Storify to curate public posts about what people were saying on the topic.

Amanda embedded the Storify on our site and included a link at the bottom to our news story.

Reader of the Week

Finally, Amanda helped by choosing and posted our Reader of the Week. This is a popular new-ish feature on our Facebook page that recognizes local people who use social media to share news, photos and video with The Palm Beach Post and who help spread our content virally on social networks.

Amanda had also embedded the reader’s video onto a page on our site.

Thanks Amanda for your good social media instincts! Amanda’s just one of several web producers who do a good job with social media for our site. A social media editor can’t do it alone; you have to have a good team.

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Now, Facebook has added this tool to its own Insights for page admins, and today I saw it in action for the first time.

Clicking on “View 1 share” brings this pop-up box:

Facebook isn’t showing me anything I could not find through a regular search on Facebook or another website. Lisa Isler-Karney’s post is public, just like a blog post or a tweet, because of the Facebook privacy that setting she chose. But it’s a nice perk for a Facebook page admin to see the sharing activity right from our own Wall.

Still, only a trickle of readers are taking the bait so far: Just 54 locals have added me to their Google+ circles, up only 4 people in the past month. We may see more interaction when official brand pages are enabled.

If G+ is able to eventually rival Facebook’s spot as a mainstream social network, it has the potential to offer better search capabilities and better analytics. Not to mention its innovative features like intimate video-chat Hangouts.

But that still remains a big “if,” despite its rapid growth. (Google Plus garnered 25 million users in less than a month, and while some data suggest most of the early adopters were young men in the technology field, more students have been hopping aboard, suggesting the Google Plus demographic may be heading in a more mainstream direction.)

Meanwhile, the monster that is Facebook shows no sign of slowing. The site now gets 1 trillion pageviews a month worldwide, according to DoubleClick.

Facebook has also been scrambling to improve its privacy controls and sharing features, two of the touted advantages of G+. Another recent Facebook improvement is its news feed, which now groups posts by topic, giving it a clear advantage over Google Plus’ still-cluttered feed showing repeated posts.

Many of the direct messages we receive are responses to our auto-follow note that asks new followers whether they are locals.

That morning, I noticed an email from a new @pbpost Twitter follower that was a little unusual.

The stereotypical image of a Twitter user is a young person tapping out text-like updates from a cellphone. But here was Palm Beach Post reader Richard Philpott of Boynton Beach – who tweets about politics and history – breaking the mold.

I decided to highlight Richard as our Reader of the Week for that week, and I posted his message to our Facebook page along with this note:

Anyone else out there been reading The Post for 40 years? Richard Philpott of Boynton Beach, a longtime Palm Beach Post reader, is now also keeping up with our news via Twitter on @pbpost. He’s this week’s Reader of the Week to thank him for his loyalty!

The responses, though they included the usual jokes and grousing, were pretty encouraging as several other longtime loyal readers came out of the woodwork:

However, early response is positive. There are already 10 million users, and they’re sharing 1 billion items a day, according to Google CEO Larry Page.

At first glance, Google+ seems to similar to Facebook, especially in the layout and function of its news feed, notifications and posts. Users “+1″ posts instead of liking them.

One key perk, though, is how easy G+ makes it to segregate posts among different audiences. For instance, if I want to post something about my vacation, I can easily choose to share that post only with my Friends circle on G+. If I want to put on my journalist hat and share my comments on the latest Pew survey, I can share that post either publicly or with just my Journalism circle.

As The New York Times’ review of G+ points out: “You share each item with only the people who deserve to know. And simultaneously, you spare the masses from seeing news of no interest to them; why should the whole world be in on your discussion of this Friday’s bowling outing?”

Facebook offers this functionality, but doesn’t make it nearly as easy. And Twitter doesn’t really do offer at all, sticking mostly to the tweets-are-public-to-the-world model that got Anthony Weiner in so much trouble.

Google+ isn’t yet allowing brands to have a presence, and is in fact actively discouraging and disabling many brand pages.

Google’s Christian Oestlien said a few days ago that G+ for brands is coming “later this year” and added: “It will include things like rich analytics and the ability to connect that identity to other parts of Google that businesses might use on a daily basis, like AdWords.”

Update 7/14/11: Oestlien said late last night that because of dramatic demand, G+ plans to accelerate its plans to roll out business pages.

While the early-adopter and social-media nerd crowd is excited about Google+ – many to the level of near-frantic – it’s helpful to keep in mind that it’s still far from mainstream.

Last week we polled our Facebook fans on our main Palm Beach Post Facebook page, asking “Are you planning on using Google’s new social networking site, Google Plus?” Twelve percent said yes, while nearly half answered “What is Google Plus?”

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Today, Susan upped her social-media rockstar status even more during her first time using CoveritLive, instead of Twitter, to live-blog a high-profile sentencing hearing.

I’ve written before about why I prefer CoveritLive to Twitter for live-blogging an event. Those reasons are listed here, and it doesn’t mean Twitter is bad, just more useful for other purposes.

As defendant Dalia Dippolito, the South Florida woman who tried to have her husband killed, was waiting anxiously for the judge’s hammer to come down, so were thousands of Palm Beach Post readers logged on to Susan’s live chat.

Susan started off warning readers: “I will not be expressing any opinions here. Please ask only fact-based questions.” She then started posting details from the courtroom such as the people, the mood and the setting.

She answered readers’ questions, even crowdsourcing at one point to ask readers what they thought of a question she planned to ask the prosecutor.

Meanwhile, web producers sprinkled polls, links and a few photos throughout the chat window.

Replay the chat here, or if on mobile, here.

During the three and a half hours that Susan live-blogged from court, more than 7,400 Palm Beach Post readers tuned in. They shared more than 500 comments and questions, which Susan moderated to avoid having inappropriate or irrelevant remarks show up on our site.

Beyond the numbers, the best part of Susan’s live chat is that, for several hours, it turned PalmBeachPost.com’s top story of the day into an interactive feature that drew readers in and allowed them to participate.

Readers were downright clamoring to take part in the chat, posting questions and comments at the rate of several each minute:

Is the sentencing underway??????
anything yet??
have been waiting to see how this turns out!
the suspense is killing me.

Readers were also full of kudos for Susan and The Post for providing the minute-by-minute updates.

Thank you for your coverage and keeping us abreast.
I want to mention what a good job you did reporting the trial.
You all do a great job at the POST keep it up!!!
Love following this blog as well as the Casey Anthony Blog at the same time. Oh technology
Thank you SpenWen! you totally rock keeping us up to date.
this live update is absolutely fantastic!! thanks Susan!

A certain newsroom editor was even overheard saying: “It looks so great online, it’s so immediate! Such a better system than Twitter.”

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NYT social media editor Liz Heron tracked the readers’ responses and collected some of the most interesting:

[View the story "How Should Journalists Use Social Media? @NickKristof's Fans' Advice" on Storify]

For example, using Instagram, a popular photo-sharing app that adds arty filters to iPhone-snapped images, ABC World News shared a glimpse of Diane Sawyer in the cockpit of the “Nightwatch” aircraft during her journey to Afghanistan.

ABC World News

Closer to home, WPTV-Channel 5 in West Palm Beach has a Facebook photo gallery called “Behind the scenes” that lets viewers in on sights they may not normally see during the nightly newscast, like green-screen setups, reporters working at their desks, even a baby deer chewing on a cameraman’s tripod.

Click the image below of WPTV’s Katie LaGrone to see the whole gallery.

WPTV Social Media Journalist Mollie Reynolds is the force behind the TV station’s Behind the scenes gallery and behind their overall audience-engagement strategy.

Mollie Reynolds

Reynolds says when she started taking and posting “random photos” of things around the newsroom, like anchor Paige Kornblue’s shoes, some co-workers wondered, “Why would anyone care?”

“But then they saw all the comments,” said Reynolds, who manages the TV station’s Facebook page and spends a big part of her day posting items and interacting with the page’s fans.

Reynolds says behind-the-scenes images of anchors work especially well, since they’re already personalities, “but it’s a good way to introduce reporters to people too. I try not to do it all the time because you don’t want to give everything away. I only like to do it if the mood feels right.”

Something new for print journalists

Using social media in this way is a natural fit for a TV station, whose faces already enter the homes of their audiences each night. But I think this strategy can be effective and inviting for newspapers, too.

Palm Beach Post political reporter, blogger and columnist George Bennett recently started his own Facebook Page “to keep up with politicians and other newsmakers who use social media and to share some of my Palm Beach Post articles and blog posts.”

Creating the page was George’s idea. And without any prompting from me (can you tell I’m proud?), he also uploaded a Facebook photo gallery called “At work” that shows glimpses of him on the job over the years.

Often resembling a Secret Service agent in a suit and dark sunglasses, George is caught in the act interviewing Tom Rooney, Mitt Romney, Charlie Crist and others, as well as scrutinizing a disputed punch-card ballot from the 2000 presidential election, posing with a colorfully clad medical-marijuana activist and more.

Because George’s Facebook presence is a professional Page, there are no family photos, high school friends, non-work status updates or anything else typically associated with a personal Facebook Profile.

What do you think of the idea of journalists drawing back the curtain a little and showing themselves in the act of covering the news?

Who are some print media journalists using social media well to connect on a more personal level with readers?

Created with the philosophy that social media are more than just tools such as Twitter and Facebook, our website is launching a new section called Community Post, which focuses on our readers and their neighborhoods and allows people to share and comment on local issues.

I’ve been building Community Post behind the scenes for a few weeks, inspired by several different threads of thoughts I’ve had for a while.

Palm Beach Post reporters and editors, like those in any newsroom, receive hundreds of emails every week from readers. Many of the emails are personal grievances or spam, but many others are valid and interesting story ideas and other nuggets of information. And just because we may not always have the space we want in print to cover everything, that doesn’t mean feedback from readers has to go into a black hole.

I created Community Post as a way to capitalize on user-generated content and give readers a voice and all of those other clichés. Community Post isn’t a new idea, it’s just my version of it for The Palm Beach Post.

Community Post lets PalmBeachPost.com users:

• Read stories about Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast people, displayed on regional pages as well as on an interactive map. The stories come from all sections, including Neighborhood Post, Accent, Local and Business.
• Contribute their own stories about notable local people and groups.
• Share news tips and comment on others’ news tips.
• Jump into the discussion of hot topics on our Facebook page and elsewhere.
• Read a continually updating list of tweets from The Post’s handpicked list of local Twitter users.
• Report problems in their communities such as potholes and broken traffic lights, and comment on and vote to fix others’ reported problems, via the awesome widget SeeClickFix provides.

Community Post officially launches June 9, but it’s live now at PalmBeachPost.com/communitypost. Questions or ideas? Please send them my way via email, or comment below.

Reader of the Week

And speaking of new stuff, in May we started recognizing our “Reader of the Week,” which hopefully will be a fun way to recognize our audience in a more formal and public forum in addition to the one-on-one engagement we’ve already been doing.

Though this is a social media feature, our Readers of the Week do not have to be from Facebook or Twitter. They can be anyone who shares good news tips, photos, and even comments. (Click here to see who the first official Reader of the Week was and why.)

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