How to Use Paper.Li To Create a Twitter Newspaper

If you use twitter, chances are you may have seen the tweets explaining that you or your followers are featured in someone's newspaper. Perhaps you've even clicked those links and thought it would be neat to have your own. I have created several twitter newspapers using the paper.li service by Small Rivers. The papers may look complex. But they are quite simple to set up and maintain.

What is Paper.li and how does it work? Paper.li is a newspaper creation and hosting service. When a paper is created, that paper pulls feeds from twitter based on hashtags, single users, a user and the people the follow, and more. You choose and set the delimiters. The paper automatically refreshes at intervals set by you. You can choose twice per day, once per day, once per week, or once per month. I always choose twice per day to keep things fresh, since twitter moves so fast. You can also set the paper to automatically tweet some of the people who have been featured.

Do I have to find all the articles to include? No, Paper.li will automatically do that for you. However, it will do this based on the delimiters you choose. So be careful what you select. You may have a nightmare story to tell, like I do. One tag with an ordinary everyday name had to be limited to only myself and people I follow. Why? It pulled porn. The intended paper topic was as far from porn as you can get. So you can imagine my surprise when someone sent me a direct message about it. Now, if that's your thing, fine. But when your paper is supposed to be about something completely different, people don;t want to see it there. Be very specific when choosing which tags and accounts to include.

How do I create the paper? When you are at the website (http://paper.li/), sign in using your twitter account. Sign in is quicker if you are already signed into the twitter website. Once you are signed into paper.li, click "create paper" up at the top right. Choose which type of paper you want and fill in the requested text. Once you do that, your paper is complete. It's that simple. But if you want your paper to auto-post to your twitter account each day or you want to add more options, you need to go back into the settings section and do some more customizing. You can do this by hovering over the profile icon at the top right. You'll see a drop-down menu. From there, choose "paper settings" and click through each tab to customize further. Before doing that, you may also want to click the "account settings" link and customize your profile.

What are the settings available? You can change the update frequency of your paper, based on your time zone and other factors. That's the default landing tab of the paper settings. The next tab is the 'content' tab. This is the tab that contains the settings for the way the twitter feeds are pulled. You may add up to five different content streams (or modify your existing ones). After that is the "promote" tab. From there, you can check or uncheck the box to auto-update to twitter. It will do this once per day, even if your paper is set to update twice per day. This is likely to avoid being spammy by posting your paper link to twitter more than once per day. The "appearance" tab is the last tab. There, you can place a link to an online image you have the rights to use. That image will become the background for your paper. This is optional.

Should I create a Paper.li paper? Publishing a paper.li paper can be useful in many different ways. I've used them to highlight niche topics, which has helped me find contacts in those fields. I've also used them to highlight a cause, such as homelessness, in the hopes of spreading the word. Another way I've used paper.li is to highlight specific websites or a specific group of people. Whether you should create a paper.li paper will largely depend on your own desire and passions about having said paper. The main benefit for me has been gaining and finding new contacts. When the paper pulls keywords or hashtags, unless a filter is set, the people included are not always people I already follow. Another benefit is being consistent with current twitter followers. The paper helps keep people interested and also helps keep the focus on specific topics. The only drawback I experienced is one time when a stream was pulling items that were very inappropriate, based on the chosen keyword. To solve the issue, I limited pulling that keyword to only my followers. To conclude, there are many benefits and drawbacks, which will vary for each person. Only you can decide if it's right for you or your company.

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