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Have you seen a paper.li newspaper? It’s one of the coolest pieces of content I use. If you don’t know, paper.li is an old-fashioned broadsheet newspaper but completely online. The articles are sourced from Twitter based on any number of criteria you specify. The paper is generated and distributed automatically. Once you have it set up, paper.li is a great resource to provide aggregated content from wide-reaching sources to your audience and you don’t have to do a single thing. Unless you’re like me.

One of the newspapers I produce every day is called the Mining, Oil and Gas Jobs News. My editorial direction for the paper is to provide jobseekers in the resources industry with career advice and employment information. Of course, I want to feature our daily blog post and the 2 jobs we feature on Twitter every day. Paper.li allows me to go into every issue and arrange the articles the way I want them, remove articles I don’t want, and add articles that didn’t make it into the paper. Why would I go to all the trouble?

Location, location, location
The most influential articles in any newspaper are `above the fold’. In other words, the stories published in the top half of the front page have the best chances of getting read. I want my daily blog post to be holding that spot and any other strategic content I tweeted from the MiningOilGasJob account.

Beating the competition
Despite the common belief social media, and Twitter in particular, is an open source of information, I have no intention of giving my competition space in my newspaper. I go through each section to make sure no one competing for business with me has their content on my page. You can block a website, and I do, but that doesn’t stop guest posts and articles my competitors write for other online publications.

Negative publicity
Protestors, activists and anarchists love social media. The last thing I want is an anti-mining article in my newspaper. I comb the paper to make sure the haters haven’t infected my content.

Offensive content
I once opened a paper.li newspaper published by a very smart business woman. The first thing I saw was a full-length photo of a man. The only thing he had on was socks and an erection. Do I need to say more?

Bad advice
For as much great content is swirling around the web, there’s just as much bad stuff. I want to make sure my articles are coming from reputable sources and providing valuable information. I don’t have to read every article but I made sure I scan the headlines, source and description of each one. I usually dump about 20% of the articles every day due to poor quality.

Building authority
The Twitterverse is full of super smart people. Every day I find new people to follow and articles on my topic of interest I hadn’t seen before. It’s a rare day I don’t find 2-3 things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The editorial process forces me to read each and every page of my newspaper and I discover lots of treasures.

Be an editor
I’ve written before about the dangers of content marketing on autopilot. While it may seem counterintuitive, adding a manual step to your automatic newspaper improves your brand and increases your authority. A newspaper with a strong editorial focus enjoys higher circulation. When then content is laid out properly, it also enhances your brand and increases your authority. The benefit far outweigh the time it takes to do a quick edit and schedule a tweet.
When do you make a manual intervention?

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