Google Docs Introduces New Sidebar Research Tool

Google has quietly released a new research tool which sits on the sidebar in Google Docs. The tool allows users to “learn more information about the topics in [their] document,” bringing research inside the authoring environment.

via: thenextweb.com

shared with Quotelove

Although we focus on helping bloggers create more awesome blog posts via our recommendations, we did at one point create a prototype for Word, see proof below in the video:

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Water cooler used to be enough, now the intranet can do magic by sharing info and engaging coworkers.

Internal blogging as projects’ support system
Blogs are personal. Blogs aren’t official (bureaucratic) documents. Blog posts are first-person, exploratory narratives. As such they are more attractive to the readers, who are thus more open to actually read them. This leads to content variety within your organization; content that is relevant to your employees. Internal blogs can therefore achieve much better awareness of your corporate culture, of your projects, future plans, etc. Think about it: you can pursue a great project, but if it’s not explained adequately, it won’t be adequately supported which can severely undermine its success. Internal blogging, on the other hand, can help ensure great projects receive great explanation.

Community building
For blog to succeed it must supply the needs of its community. Their needs can be met by regularly posting relevant and engaging content, says Boštjan. An internal blog can be a powerful (corporate) community building channel, especially in big companies. Technical or business insight posted to an internal blog can move around the company quickly. Any analysis and wisdom has potential to gain wide attention via internal blog. A blog post can easily turn into an active discussion around a topic. This helps you gauge where your coworkers stand on certain issues.

Visibility is capital
Moreover, internal blogs can increase your individual or your team’s visibility. And you know what they say? Visibility is capital. If your company sets up an internal blog, make sure there is a wide support for it, that different departments and teams understand well its objectives and advantages to avoid a usual impression that only those who aren’t busy enough at their jobs, blog. This is so wrong and unfortunately too many times keeps employees from blogging.

(Internal) blog is a blog
For your internal blog to be successful, you shouldn’t approach it as an “internal” blog, rather as any other blog we’ve been writing about on Z-Blog, save the target audience happen to be exclusively the employees in your company/organization. When setting up such a blog, you should consider all questions you’d consider as a “regular” blogger:

•  What are the blog’s objectives?
• What are you going to write about?
• Who will be primarily responsible (editing, proofreading, looking for authors, content ideas for posts) for the blog?
• Who will serve as primary writer?
• How often will you update it? Etc.

Done properly, an internal blog is good, not only for the organization, but for the bloggers as well. For example, businesses blog to show their thought leadership. They blog because blogging is ideal for publishing content that is relevant/useful to readers. The same applies to internal blogging, save the readers are exclusively the employees.

What is your take on internal blogging? Would it be a great fit for your organization? Let us know in the comments below.

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If you think of categories as sections in your favorite magazine or chapters in a book, think of tags as the index of keywords you usually find at the end of a book or as keywords used in articles in scientific journals. Tags are more specific than categories and they address items you discuss in your blog post.Categories are your blog’s best table of contents, whereas tags are your blog’s index. By tagging a post with relevant keywords/tags, a blogger helps readers find the posts with specific information they’re looking for. The thing is, rarely anyone is interested in all posts. So make sure your readers don’t get discouraged by having to spend a lot of time look for posts that may be relevant to them. That’s where tags come in.

(Photo credit: dr_ed_needs_a_bicycle)

Based on the above understanding of tags, here are 4 general tips on tagging your blog posts:

1. Tags should be up to three words long
A general rule is tags should be very short. How you can achieve that, it depends on the language you’re writing in. In English, tags shouldn’t be longer than three words. As aforementioned, they’re like keywords/topics your target audience may be interested in, because you write about things that are relevant and potentially useful to them. Tags as keywords related to your blog post will also aid search engines in finding your content. For example, tags for this post are tags, categories.

2. Use a few tags only
Don’t get overboard with the variety of tags. Tags are primarily used to help your readers find posts on the topics they’re interested in quickly. Use those that are really what your post is about. For example, tags for this post could also be content marketing, better blogging, how to blog, keywords, but honestly that would be overreaching and fishing. Don’t disappoint the readers, don’t frustrate them with an abundance of tags.

3. Repeat the same tags
Know what your readers are interested in, what topics/keywords they’re looking for. Use them as tags. Don’t use synonyms; choose a specific tag and use it in every post that is about that topic. Too much variety isn’t a good thing in this case, quite the opposite. For example, this post could be tagged with tags, keywords, chapters, categories, indexing, writing, blogging. But what is this post really about? It is about tags and categories. It is aimed at those who are looking for tips how to use the two on their blogs. So, why would you use a chapter as a tag?

4. Once again, tags are not categories
Do not use names for tags that are the same as the names of your blog’s categories. They don’t serve the same purpose, rather tags and categories complement each other. To sum up, don’t confuse your readers.

What other advice would you give bloggers about tagging? What’s your experience? Let us know in the comments below.

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Engage in casual conversation to get great ideas for blog posts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before I get into that, I must stress: “Be curious!” Find your inner child. He/she is still in you, somewhere. Curiosity is one of the blogger’s best assets. If you’re curious enough, you’re more aware of your surroundings. If you open yourself to stimuli from your environment, you’ll be surprised how many ideas you can get for the blog. Don’t be, however, alert only in your office or when doing your work or reading for your work. Anything that you do at work or in your free time, everybody you come in contact with at work or outside work is potentially a great source for blog ideas.

You’ll find most corporate blog ideas among the people you work with, especially among those who have direct contact with customers. And here’s my advice: do not approach them officially, or only when you’re out of ideas for posts. Talk to them regularly. Approach them as if you were talking to a friend, or if you were their shrink. Don’t come to them and say, “I am writing a blog for our company. What is new in your department? Please give me some ideas.” Don’t make them think, because you may not extract anything genuine nor original nor useful from them. Don’t make them “work”. Talk to them! Let them complain about or praise customers, let them speak about how something is disorganized… Be their confidant(e). That is how you’ll learn the most about customers and their problems. Turn those conversations into helpful blog posts.

My own blog is about customer magazines and branded print publications. I get most ideas from marketing directors and magazine editors who either email me or call me with questions or are looking for my opinion on how to do something. This is how I stay in touch what really bothers my prospects and turn that into useful blog posts.

If you’re responsible for your company’s blog, how do you regularly get ideas for posts? Let us know in the comments below.

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What are categories?

Beware! Categories and tags are not the same thing. They are two taxonomies functioning at different levels; the combination of both can be quite an effective navigation tool through a blog. Think of categories like sections in your favorite magazine or chapters in a how-to-do book. When I scan the table of contents in a book or magazine, I expect to get what the book is about, what articles I want to read first. Likewise, someone should be able to look at your blog’s category list and understand what your blog is about. I see a blog as a type of online magazine. I won’t be interested in all posts, but I don’t want to waste my time looking for posts I may find relevant and useful. Categories are there to assist me finding them quickly.

Here are 4 tips for your categories:

1. Put them on a visible top spot
Put your categories somewhere on the top part of your blog, where they are visible. Again, imagine your blog as if it were a magazine. Most magazines are divided into sections, which are often visible on the top corners of a page – those corners are the most visible parts of every page in a magazine.

Likewise, check out several other blogs. There is a reason why blog templates include space for categories on the very top or near the top of the page.

Check out categories on top right corner.

2. Categories should be fewer in number
To keep things simple, you’ll want to limit the number of categories to about five; at least at first. You will always have an opportunity to make appropriate changes later on. A limited number of categories is not just user-friendly, it makes your job easier. It helps you organize your posts, like filing documents – the longer your list of categories, the harder it is to file and find posts – and it helps you think about how to approach a post on a particular topic. My personal blog for example has 6 categories.

Categories on my personal blog are always on the top left corner.

3. Categories should be planned ahead
What I’m getting at here is you must understand your own blog. Why are you writing it, what do you aim to achieve and, especially, what is it about? A good plan will help you define categories more clearly. Clearly defined categories help users find content quickly. In addition, categories help keep you on message. Besides, categories get indexed by the search engines. Therefore, it pays to choose them carefully.

4. Category names should be broader in meaning
Make sure your category names are understood without the reader having to click on them to figure out what they might mean. On the other hand, try not to be too specific. Too specific categories may lead to categories with only one or two posts, which make them useless.

Each category should pertain to one and only one subject. Moreover, make sure that a post belongs in one and only one category. All of the above makes your blog clearer, easy to navigate through, easy to understand your overall message and story, and helps you make better writing decisions.

To sum up, readers who come to your blog for the first time are likely to use categories to navigate to posts that they’re interested in. On the other hand, categories help bloggers make better writing decision and keep them on track.

How did you come up with the categories for your blog? How useful do you find them as a reader of other blogs? Let us know in the comments below.

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Writer's Block?

Do you ever get stuck for a blog post topic? When writer’s block hits me, I often look to my old friend Twitter, which can be a great resource for coming up with new things to writ about. Here are a few ways to use Twitter (in conjunction with HootSuite) for topic generation:

1. Check out your streams and see what posts are hot (i.e., getting a lot of retweets). Read these posts carefully and see if you can add anything to the topic — a new spin, a deep insight, elaboration of one or two key points.
2. Set up keyword tracking streams to follow Twitter-wide commentary on themes you like to write about. From time to time people will share content you’d never find in your follower streams that will inspire a post idea. You’ll also see conversation from fresh perspectives, which also helps you develop fresh ideas.
3. Take part in Twitter chats. These forums are spectacular opportunities to share ideas with experts. Sometimes 10 or 15 questions will come up in a single chat that would each make for a tremendous post topic.
4. Ask your followers! Let people know you’re stuck for a topic — you may be surprised at how many good ideas people will serve up.
5. Scrutinize the streams of your favorite thought leaders. How often do you go back and read someone’s entire day’s or week’s worth of tweets? Most of us think of Twitter as a “now” medium, but the archives are chock-full of topic ideas … just waiting for enterprising bloggers to find.

To make Twitter work really well for topic generation, it’s exceedingly helpful to optimize your Twitter presence, so here are a few Twitter tuneup techniques:

1. Get rid of your spam followers. The cleaner your stream, the easier it is to pinpoint quality tweets that lend themselves to fresh topics for your blog. If you’re looking for a good tool to take care of this job quickly and efficiently, try Twit Cleaner.
2. Set up separate streams based on a follow’s area of expertise. Ideally, you can organize streams based on your own blog topics. Twitter Lists can also be used efficiently in this way, or use both: create Lists and view them as streams in HootSuite. The key is to organize Twitter content in a way that produces a constant flow of new post ideas.
3. Favorite tweets to archive great ideas you don’t have time to ponder at the moment. Again, getting caught up in the immediacy of Twitter can sometimes blind us to the long-term value of its content. If you run across a Tweet with a brilliant idea or link, save it as a Favorite, and study it at your leisure, perhaps in front of a fire as you sip a fine brandy. The chances are good a new post topic or two will emerge!

Over to You

• Have you ever used Twitter for generating blog post ideas?
• If so, what techniques have worked well?

Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, a Web development firm in Chicago. They work with firms in specialized B2B niches, from physical therapy website design to contract food packaging manufacturers. Brad has been blogging since 2005 and active on Twitter since 2008.

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(Image Credit: © JRB #34613600 – Fotolia.com)

American Idol winner Scotty McCreery stuck to what he does the best: classic country music. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many auditions are very popular on YouTube. There are contestants that just blow us away with their audition performance, but many of them have a hard time to live up to their initial success. Do you remember Danyl Johnson from the sixth season of the UK X Factor? Simon Cowell described his performance as “the best first audition I have ever heard”. Well, guess what? He didn’t win the competition. Very soon he turned from the favorite to the most “hated” contestant. On the other hand, there is Olly Murs, whose audition performance was described by Cowell as “the easiest yes I have ever given”. He maintained the momentum for the entire season and finished as a runner-up. Moreover, he’s been successful even after the show: he already has several number one hits and is still a very popular artist in the UK, while the winner from the same year, Joe McElderry, hasn’t found much success after the show ended.

So what makes Ollys Murses different from other contestants who blow us away during the auditions but cannot maintain the momentum for long? What can bloggers learn from their examples?

1.      Human stories matter
People love to watch others who struggled in their life and are now winners. The best movies are based on this premise, Oprah Winfrey shows are based on this premise, and so are American Idol type shows. It’s not just about singing, it’s about singers who struggle and the shows give them this great opportunity to finally share their talent with the world. We root for them; the bigger the struggle, the better the story, the better the contestant. Do you remember Chris Rene from last year’s US X Factor? Chris is a recovering drug and alcohol addict, who revealed he had just been out of rehab and had been clean for just ten weeks before taking part in The X Factor auditions. He auditioned by singing one of his original songs getting a standing ovation from the audience and the judges. His personal story of struggle played a pivotal role throughout the competition.

Likewise, bloggers should share their experience, their personal thoughts with others, because personal stories and human connections are what move consumers. That’s what popular bloggers do all the time. There’s nothing wrong with being personal or vulnerable. On American Idol or in the blogosphere, it is attractive.

2.      Stick to what you’re good at
Last year’s American Idol winner Scotty McCreery stuck to what he does the best. He never pretended to be versatile, from the beginning he was clear he was all about classic country music. And that’s what he delivered, week after week.

Likewise, write about things you know, write the way you write. Do not pretend to know something you don’t, don’t try to copy someone else’s writing style. Simply, do what you’re good at. And the readers will be coming back for more.

3.      Seek unbiased opinion
The best part of American Idol type shows is when contestants get real, not sugarcoated feedback. That is why Simon Cowell is so popular; for the most part he says exactly what everybody else is thinking. Many times he’s harsh, but can anyone really improve if he/she gets only unconditional support? Encouragement is necessary, but sometimes tough love feedback is what’s needed to help contestants get to the next level.

I couldn’t apply this better to blogging than Bostjan: “I think we should seek quality comments. Yes, it’s nice to hear when others say wonderful things about your writing and posts, etc. It’s human to desire attention and some tenderness. Corporate blogs may wish for as many comments as possible believing it gives their blog credibility and the feeling it’s popular thus worth checking it out more often. They may boost your ego, but not much more. Comments like ‘Great post!’ ‘Awesome!’ or ‘You make a good point and I look forward to reading more!’ are nice to hear but nothing more. They don’t really contribute to the conversation you started. /…/ I see comments the same way as I see posts: they continue/contribute to a conversation. This is how I define a quality comment. They’re really hard to come by, but when they come, grab them and join the conversation.”

4.      Pay attention to feedback
Many contestants who refused to learn from their mistakes or even listen to the judges have failed sooner or later. Unless they’re really special or THAT good, they can’t be stubborn and continue doing what they’ve been doing despite the advice they’ve been given by the industry professionals with experience. Astro was a 15-year old contestant during the first season of the US X Factor. He was a stubborn teenager who thought he knew enough and wasn’t listening to anybody. His stubbornness didn’t go well with the audience and he soon became unlikable and was eventually eliminated from the show.

The lesson here is pay attention what your readers and peers have to tell you and adapt accordingly. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a beginner or you’ve been blogging for years. Listening to other people’s opinions, especially if they’re your regular readers, is essential. You must be open to changes and constant learning. You will show your readers that they and their opinions matter. It’s not just about you!

5.      Choose topics relevant to your audience
The most successful American Idol or X Factor contestants and their mentors know how to build their music and persona around their key voting blocks. Even the producers are crafty enough to know how to pack their stories and image to appeal to their key demographic. The most obvious example is Phillip Phillips, the front-runner of this season’s American Idol. The things the judges say, the way the producers portray him and how he finally succumbed to this image … it’s so obvious. That’s playing smart. The biggest mistake a contestant can make is choose a song that is “self-indulgent”, that only he/she may enjoy singing, whereas the viewers feel left out.

Likewise, as a blogger, you need to know who your “voting block” is, who your primary readers are. Hence, you must always write about what is relevant to them, not only you.

What else can bloggers learn from winners and losers of reality TV singing competitions? Do share.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People are busy even when browsing the Internet. You are competing with so many others to get their attention. They make an instant decision whether to click on the link to your post or continue reading it; the decision is based on scanning the headline. They may see a picture on your blog that attracts them to your post. The headline, however, is what really informs them about the post.

The headlines may be a great opportunity to be playful to attract attention, but I think one should earn enough trust of his/her audience to be allowed to play. Therefore you should write powerful, eye-catching and sharp headlines. They must make your readers curious enough to make them click. But most headlines must be informative – they should be as long as they need to be. Don’t fall prey to those who argue for very short headlines.

I would say that in general these are 5 most important guidelines you should follow when writing a headline for your post:

1. The headline must be direct and tell potential readers exactly what your post is about.

2. Let the headline be as long as it needs to be to include enough information that tell your readers what the post is really about.

3. Make sure your headlines are as much as your posts relevant to the visitor. What is their pressing problem? Address that urgent need and promise easy-to-follow advice.

4. Whatever your headline is, the biggest sin you can make is to not deliver on the promise you made with your headline. Yes, write a compelling headline but deliver the quality content; don’t make your readers angry, don’t make them feel tricked into reading. You’re going to lose them forever!

5. Brad Shorr warned against “cheesy, overworked headlines”. He says, “Certain headline formulas have been done to death. I’m tired of hearing about 5 things beef jerky can teach me about website design, or 10 things the Super Bowl can teach me about fluid mechanics. This sort of headline tells me a blogger is relying on gimmicks and perhaps doesn’t take his/her subject matter seriously. Is this the impression you want to give prospects and customers?”

Here are some examples of good (attract attention, long as they need to be, informative, effective) and not so good headlines – of course their effectiveness depends on your blog and especially knowing your target audience well (are they relevant to them and do you deliver what you promise).

GOOD:

5 Steps to Getting More Targeted Website Traffic with SEO Copywriting
7 Links That’ll Make You a Better Writer and Online Marketer
Ideas for Kick-Starting Your Content Marketing with Video and Social Media
Klout: Has the service improved?

NOT SO GOOD (as mentioned above, you have to build a strong loyal audience, to earn their trust that you will always deliver a great and useful post to be able to use such headlines effectively):

The sandwich shop that closes for lunch
Doing the work
Live today!

There are many useful posts on what types of headlines work the most. Most of them mirror the success of lifestyle magazine headlines – how-to and list headlines. Nenad wrote an angry post about them, but if you follow his writing on Z-Blog, you can see he’s using them too, because they are informative and because they’re effective. That should be the benchmark for your headlines too: do they tell the story of your post, are they attractive enough, i.e. are they relevant to your target audience.

How do you come up with headlines for your posts? What works the best for your blog? Tell us in the comments below.

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This is a fantastic partnership for Zemanta as we will now be able to directly serve a niche of top bloggers such as Fred Wilson of AVC (who is also our investor) and Elsie Larson of A Beautiful Mess, and help them create even more compelling content.

“The AVC blog and community has been hosted on TypePad since it was started nine years ago,” said Fred Wilson. “For the past four years, I have been using the Zemanta browser plug-in to make sure I have the best links and related links for the AVC community. Now I can rely directly on TypePad for that functionality as Zemanta has now been integrated into TypePad. Links are central to blogging and Zemanta makes linking easier and better. This is great news for TypePad users.”

Zemanta recommendations are now part of TypePad

Take a peek at the official press release and let us know how Zemanta is working out for you on TypePad!

What matters more: who plays, how he plays or where he does it? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This case is evidence how significant context is with regard to how we perceive what is going on around us and what actions we take. The same applies to blogging. Bostjan’s post on quality comments reminded me of the experiment. He writes how it usually takes a very long time before you may get the first comment on your blog and even then it takes longer time before the comments become common on your blog. On the other hand, he argues, »blogs that already have a number of comments are far more likely to receive additional comments«.

I have experience with writing my own blogs, guest blogging and I read tons of blogs daily. I don’t have an insight into their analytics, thus I can only focus on their sharing numbers. I’ve noticed something: the context matters! Let’s take a blogger X (he’s real, but the name isn’t important here). He writes his own personal blog, he also posts on his company’s blog and is sometimes a guest blogger on blogs that are important in his industry. His posts are all of the same quality, they’re always useful and make you think. However, when his text was posted on an already established blog, it was shared on social media significantly more than his equally great posts on his company’s blog and it got exponentially more comments. Thus, it wasn’t so much about who he is and what he blogs about or how, as much as where his text was posted.

If you’re still a fresh blogger, who’s trying to establish him/herself in the industry and online: guest blogging on the right blog may significantly increase your visibility and bring new readers to your blog. I advise you to do the following to increase the readership and visibility of your blog:

1. Write a guest post for a blog that matters in the area you’re writing about.
2. Regularly leave quality comments on other blogs that matter to your subject area.
3. Contribute to the conversation outside your blog, i.e. on other blogs and social media.
4. Write posts that include bloggers that matter in your industry.
5. Invite bloggers that matter in your industry to write a guest post for your blog.

What other suggestions do you have for fresh bloggers how to increase their visibility and attract more readers to their blogs? Let us know in the comments below.

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Real Matt Cutts or fake Matt Cutts? (Image via CrunchBase)

Yes, the web hasn’t been made to prevent impersonation; even worse it allows many to pretend to be someone they’re not. Many are aware of this, although sometimes we let our guards down and allow someone to dupe us. I, however, don’t want to live a paranoid online life. Yes, we should be cautious, but not overly suspicious. Call me naïve, but I believe in the goodness of men; therefore, it’s good to know that these types of comments exist, but I wouldn’t pay much attention to them, unless they’re there to do harm.

Matt’s case is about another issue to ponder over – comments. Last week I wrote that an audience makes a blogger. Therefore, blogs are built for comments, discussions and interaction. If you’re not a well-established (corporate) blogger yet, everyone will tell you it’s a long, lonely and bumpy road ahead of you, before you reach the stage when comments on your blog become common. And even then you shouldn’t expect a flood of comments. On the other hand, blogs that already have a number of comments are far more likely to receive additional comments. This can be explained by a simple human factor and because of course there is already a conversation going on. More comments mean there are more things for other people to comment on. However, this really depends on so many variables it’s hard to give advice. Yes, the net is full of advice how to make your readers more active, we’ve done it too, but there is simply no magic solution to this.

I think we should seek quality comments. Yes, it’s nice to hear when others say wonderful things about your writing and posts, etc. It’s human to desire attention and some tenderness. Corporate blogs may wish for as many comments as possible believing it gives their blog credibility and the feeling it’s popular thus worth checking it out more often. They may boost your ego, but not much more. Comments like “Great post!” “Awesome!” or “You make a good point and I look forward to reading more!” are nice to hear but nothing more. They don’t really contribute to the conversation you started. So my question is: would you rather get comments for getting-comments’ sake or comments that matter to you and your business?

I see comments the same way as I see posts: they continue/contribute to a conversation. This is how I define a quality comment. They’re really hard to come by, but when they come, grab them and join the conversation.

Don’t give up too fast! Just because it takes time before you get your first quality comment, it doesn’t necessarily mean that no one reads your blog or that no one talks about it or it doesn’t make them think. Today, there are plenty other channels where the conversation about your blog or the content of your posts may go on, particularly on social media. A friend of mine, a blogger, told me that in four months he’s been blogging he hasn’t received a single comment yet. However, he discovered that the target audience was reading his blog: they individually email him to tell him that and say good words about it, some even call him, moreover, many have contacted him seeking advice and he has even won two paid projects; the clients contacted him themselves because of his blog!

What is your take on this issue? When and on what blogs do you leave comments? Let us know in the comments below.

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WordPress is one of them. While it’s interface is improving with every version, some small parts can be improved with simple plugins. And what we have for you today we called Enhanced Linking. It really isn’t anything else.

Here is WordPress' regular Insert/edit link modal window.

See the neat dropdown that enables you to link to your own content? Nice! “That’s just not good enough!” said Jure when we were poking around with the interface. We have the tech to improve this dialogue. So we decided to add Related Articles. And then, we decided to add Bing Search too. They offer a free API, so why not!

Here are the results:

The selected text will query the whole blogosphere and present a whole bunch of articles to link to.

The same interface allows you to search the web and find the link if you missed it elsewhere. No extra tabs, huh!

There it is. You can download and install Enhanced Linking for your WordPress.org today, for versions 3.2 and up. And it’s free! We’d love feedback and more ideas how to improve it. Email us!

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Blog is only one among so many
In today’s multimedia and complex online world, writing a blog is rarely rarely enough. You’re most likely utilizing other tools to communicate with your target audience and to promote your posts. Bostjan stresses that a blogger needs an audience. So, when writing a blog for business or corporate blog, make sure it’s integrated with other communication tools you use, online and offline. Don’t just write and think readers will magically come. To know how to get the most out of your corporate blog, you need to know/undertand well what blog is, how you can approach it and what you can expect from it. Don’t you ever start a blog just because everybody else is doing it!

TIP: Use social media to spread the word about your blog.

2. Don’t rush into anything
Just because you or your boss had an epiphany is not a reason enough to start a business/corporate blog. Don’t rush into it without any plans whatsoever. Do you know who you’re writing for? Do you know what you’re going to write about? Do you know how you’re going to write? Do you know how often you’re going to update the blog? Bostjan warned against overcomitting oneself. I can’t seem to stress enough: planning is key to sucess!

TIP: Make thorough plans before you start blogging.

3. Be consistent
Z-Blog is a firm believer in publishing regular content. Thus your initial plan has to include the idea of editorial calendar. Don’t ever believe you’re going to come up with content when it’s time to write. Forget that! Without an editorial calendar, you’ll get into serious trouble sooner than later.

TIP: Make an editorial calendar to help you plan content.

4. Management support
If you’re responsible for your company’s blog you will need a full support by your superiors and colleagues. Many blogs have failed because they were managed by a handful of people or only one person, while others didn’t quite understand what it was all about. Whoever is assigned with this they should always make sure that the company understands what benefits the company is reaping from blogging and how it’s done and gain their support behind the project.

TIP: Make sure the company stands behind the project.

5. Measure success and adapt
You should constantly measure the success of your blog (based on defined goals and benchmarks from your project plan). There are many tools out there that measure the engagement with your blog online, such as Google Statistics, that are easy to use. Is there a steady growth  of readership? What posts seem to be the most popular? What posts/topics seem to generate most comments? What days do you get most readers? How long on average do they spend on your blog? What is your bounce rate? Whatever you learn from regularly observing how your blog is being consumed use it and simply adapt – make your blog better, better for your readers.

TIP: Regularly observe how your blog is consumed and adapt accordingly.

Do you agree with these 5 rules? What other advice would you give new business-related bloggers? Tell us in the comments below.

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What would Carrie Bradshaw be today? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“You are a blogger when you do things just to blog about them later.” MeRu’s World

A few weeks ago I argued that the blogosphere has come out of age. I discussed the latest research that shows a significant increase in blogging in the last few years. “This just means that blogs have become indispensable, they are not just a new kid in town anymore,” I wrote. After the post was published another blogger asked me who I thought a blogger is. His question was the revival of blogger/journalist/columnist discussion that has been going on for years. There is still no definite answer to this trilemma and I don’t think there ever will be. However, he made me think, and you know as a philosopher I live to think.

Our discussion went on for a while. His main argument was that he’s a journalist, a brand journalist, and he also writes his own blog: “When I think of a post and the way I approach it it’s the same I do it when I write an article for a magazine or newspaper. So what’s the difference?” He reminded me of that little HBO show Sex and the City rarely any of us guys would admit watching it at the time. If the show were made today, would Carrie be a newspaper columnist or a blogger?

The lines are increasingly blurring between blogging and journalism. Do you remember the debate at the end of last year when Montana blogger Crystal Cox lost a federal case focusing on an Oregon law that protects journalists from having to reveal sources? A federal judge ruled that under Oregon law, she did not qualify as a journalist. However, many bloggers now contribute to, or work full time in, traditional publications. On the other hand, many blogs today resemble traditional media online: check out TechCrunch or The Huffington Post. Are they journalists or bloggers? Or is it a personal choice? And there are some who are everything; for example, an award winning journalist Lincoln Spector also writes a blog where he identifies himself as “journalist, columnist, blogger and sometimes humorist”. He’s the whole package!

This is what I think. Utilizing WordPress doesn’t make you a blogger. Choosing a catchy name for your blog doesn’t make you a blogger. Just because you’re writing doesn’t make you a blogger. The audience, your readers make you a blogger. If you’re a columnist or a journalist, it is the publication you write for that brings you your audience. A blogger, if he/she’s not already a known columnist or journalist, has to work hard to attract readers to the blog and to keep them coming back.

In the end, what someone is called is the matter of the industry terminology. It’s more about the relationship between content and consumers. It’s about the quality of the content you are producing and sharing. Not so much about who did it. We’re all publishers. Journalism, social media and blogging mean publishing. It’s about content creation and content sharing. And that’s all it matters.

What is your take on “Who is a blogger?” debate? Share your thoughts in the comments bellow.

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• I Believe in the Power of Blogs: They Make Us Understand (zemanta.com)
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A blog coach is an advisor, reviewer, and writer/editor who works with people one-to-one to develop and improve their blog content to meet marketing goals.

In my case, I work with small business owners to help them develop excellent copy, messaging and to deliver it in a way that excites and intrigues their target audience.

I don’t write blog posts for the business owner. That is a key point. They write and I review, edit, advise, and, like any coach, challenge them to learn, grow and reach higher to meet their goals.

I have been writing for more than 25 years and I maintain two blogs of my own in addition to assisting multiple clients with their blogging.

My focus with my clients is to help them find the right topics, write well, use links and photos effectively, to consider some SEO best practices, write content that matters to them and meet the needs of their target audience.

What are some common challenges business owners have maintaining their blog?

Coming up with Ideas - developing new ideas can be more difficult than you think. I work with clients to come up with ideas that are easy for them to write about from their immediate business and life experience, challenges, lessons learned and analysis of new ideas, tools and best practices.

What is the Posting Schedule? - how often to blog? This depends on the blogger. Once a week is great, Twice a week is better, but often unrealistic for a small business. Every two weeks works and is better than no blogging at all. SEO (via Google) improves significantly with a weekly post.

Coordinate Blogging Strategy with Other Marketing Initiatives - A blog coach will work with you to coordinate your blogging with your other marketing and PR initiatives to maximize the reach and investment you have in your blog.

Building Out Starting Thoughts - it can be a challenge to share best practices in a focused, simple writing stye for a blog, so a coach can really help you fine tune your writing and make a strong point quickly.

Grammar and Punctuation - a coach can review, edit and proof, but in many cases, organizations have someone internally who is excellent at proofing and I recommend involving other team members in a blog whenever possible.

Long-term Blogging Strategy - a coach can help you look at the long-term picture with blogging and planning. Many bloggers stop blogging at the 1 or 2-year mark, so a coach can help you with some innovative strategies to keep it fresh and interesting for you with ideas about vlogging, photo blogs, interviews, methods of writing for compelling brief posts, ways to repackage other content for your blog and much more.

Working with Guest Bloggers - when a business owner invites someone to guest blog, a coach is great about working with the guest blogger to make sure they adhere to the style and standards for that blog. Blog coaches often create guest blog guidelines for their clients.

Responding to Comments - blog coaches advise about how to comment, respond to comments and to build relationships with those who take the time to comment on your blog.

Handling Controversy - a blog coach can advise you about steps to take with negative blog comments or what to do if your content is ‘stolen’ and re-posted on another blog without proper credit given to the original blogger.

Using Plug-ins and Widgets - if you are using a WordPress blog, there are so many software tools to enhance the blog presentation and experience. A blog coach can advise you on some of the technology options to make your content really stand out.

Promotional Strategies on Social Media - make sure your blog is shared with your audience. A blog coach can advise you on dashboard tools, such as Hootsuite and TweetDeck, and best practices for blog promotion using social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, e-news and more.

What challenges do you experience with maintaining your blog? Would you work with a blog coach to make the process easier?

Lori Crock is a marketing writer, blog coach and founder of Written Impact and BlogCoaches. She works with small business owners and not-for-profits.

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Created in Photoshop, based on "Sustainable development" diagram at Cornell Sustainability Campus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tool for sustainable blogging
Few weeks back, Zemanta introduced a new project called Blogspire, which is currently in beta – a tool for sustainable blogging. Sustainable blogging, of course, what a concept! Political scientists, agriculture experts, activists and economists have been talking about the sustainable development for a long time. What everybody talks about is the capacity to endure. However, blogs haven’t been around enough to legitimately discuss their sustainability. On the other hand, they’ve been around just enough to make an educated guess about their sustainability.

What is a blog’s average life expectancy?
Have you ever asked yourself how long you’d like your blog to live, be a personal or a corporate blog? Have you ever made any plans regarding your blog for more than a year or even a decade ahead? When I was introduced to the idea of sustainable blogging, I was literally in intellectual shock. Things around us change so fast, it seems like we are incapable of making lifelong plans, especially regarding new media. We’ve read so many blogs and we’ve written so many of them on how to do a good blog, how to write and how many times to do it etc., but we’ve rarely ever pondered on the life expectancy of a great blog. Is it too short to be discussed?

What do you want to get out of your blog?
Posts about sustainable blogging usually focus on two issues. First, do bloggers know what they want to get out of their blogs? Darren Rowse, the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips, made an insightful short video almost 5 years ago. His argument is that blogs should benefit two groups of people: readers and bloggers. And every blogger should get the balance right, so that no group dominates, otherwise this will be the end of their blog. Brad Shorr writes about how blogs shouldn’t become information charities. He was basically writing about conversion, i.e. knowing what exactly you want to get out of your blog.

How many times is too many times?
Second, there is mainly a discussion on how many times we should update our blogs. It’s an interesting dilemma. On Z-Blog, we’ve often cited research, which show that to increase the readership of your blog you should blog as often as possible, best is if you do it daily. On the other hand, bloggers who write about sustainable blogging argue that blogs with more posts – a “more more more” strategy according to Seth Werkheiser – are eventually doomed to failure: “But with more posts — just like more ads — when do people start tuning out?” So which is it?

I stopped blogging so many times mostly because I couldn’t sustain it. So many times I did everything right, save overcommitting myself. My history shows I start a new blog when I have a lot of “free time”. I make wonderful plans. However as soon as I become too busy again, I can hardly stick to the plan. I can’t keep up with regular posting anymore and feel bad about it. Sounds familiar, right? This applies to blogs by individuals as well as corporate blogs. In one of my previous jobs, we started a blog on my initiative. Soon it became clear that everyone was so busy we rarely updated the blog. It became clinically dead. Last week, Bostjan in his post on how to update a blog more often stressed: “If you’re a one-man band and not a serial writer then you should think carefully how many posts you can really manage a month.” Puglypixel blog points out: “Consistency doesn’t just mean posting regularly every day. It can mean posting with consistent quality. It can mean posting with consistent excitement and enthusiasm. And it can mean being consistently true to yourself and posting only when you feel like it.”

More a philosophy than a set of rules
I think we will continue to read and give advice on how to do successful blogging which entails sustainable/enduring blogging. Kim De, a freelance writer and author of Zen Kitchen, a blog focused on recipes and food issues, though reminds us that “sustainable agriculture is more a philosophy than a strict set of rules, and the same applies for blogging. Find what works for you and stick with it.” The best advice I could give you.

What is your opinion on sustainable blogging? Is it a buzzword, an oxymoron or a real deal? Let us know in the comments below.

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Grammar, Punctuation and Usage

1. 

   Cover via Amazon

   The AP Stylebook Online is an authoritative and easy-to-use standard

2. For spelling and synonyms, I like The Free Dictionary
3. For simple usage issues try Google searches
4. For heavy-duty questions on usage, grammar and punctuation, try The Chicago Manual of Style 

Typography

1. Five lines or fewer per paragraph
2. Use ordered and unordered lists for short lists
3. Use bold type selectively to highlight key points and/or keywords
4. Use italics sparingly: hard to read on monitors
5. Use subheads to break up text and highlight major themes
6. One space between sentences, not two 

SEO

1. Use primary keyword phrases in the title tag; set up your CMS to have post titles default to the title tag
2. Use variations of one to three keyword phrases in the post content
3. Make posts 300 to 500 words in length, or longer
4. Include links to related posts manually or with a CMS plugin
5. Encourage comments (they add search value to the post)
6. Use Rel=Author links to link the post to the author’s Google+ page

Images

1. Use keywords in image titles
2. Write alternate text descriptions in regular, descriptive sentences
3. Consider adding a caption: they draw attention and help SEO if optimized
4. Place images at top or top right of the post
5. Use JPG format
6. Credit image and include a link to the source

Creative

1. Provide news, a new idea, fresh perspective, and/or useful research
2. Fact-check data and attribute sources, ideally with links
3. Informal writing style is acceptable
4. Avoid profanity and sarcasm
5. Avoid jargon and technical language
6. Use slang and idioms with care, as readership may be global
7. Intriguing post titles encourage social sharing and reads
8. Optimized post titles improve long-term search visibility
9. Leave posts somewhat open-ended to encourage discussion
10. Add a powerful meta description to encourage social sharing

Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, one of the leading Internet marketing companies in Chicago. The agency works with B2Bs in a variety of specialized niche industries, from gloves for electricians to credit card processing for nonprofits.

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How many times a month should I write? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Don’t overthink
Once again, nobody’s perfect. Moreover, only a few of your posts will be perfect or rather almost perfect. My advice is simple: don’t overthink it. What I mean is stop worrying so much about the quality of your post. This may sound ridiculous in the world where we constantly, for a reason, talk about quality content. I’m not saying, publish whatever or that quality doesn’t matter. Quite the contrary. It’s just that many times we are too critical. Look! Whatever you write (unless you’re not a good writer), it will be about 80 per cent all right. So don’t wait, just write.

2. Don’t overcommit yourself
To update a blog daily, especially if you’re very busy, is daunting. Come on! Lift this burden from your shoulders. Content marketing teaches us we should post as many times a week as possible. Even research shows that the more often a company updates its blog, the more readers it gets. But if you’re a one-man band and not a serial writer then you should think carefully how many posts you can really manage a month.

Recently I began to exercise again. I decided to do it every morning. At first it was a struggle to make myself do it daily. After a while I discovered that I don’t need to exercise an hour each morning, sometimes fifteen minutes are plenty – better than no exercising at all. This is how exercising has become less frightening. Moreover, it has turned into a habit of mine.

I apply the same philosophy to blogging. It should become your habit. My own approach is to write three to four longer, more analytical posts a month, but to keep myself writing,  I post shorter opinions on other days; I usually reblog other blogs and add my own short opinion to it. So it’s better to write something than nothing in my case. There are two levels of quality: great and less great. What it comes to is to train your audience when to expect a new post. If you decide to publish once a week, that’s fine, however, stick to the schedule. To sum up, if you’re a lone blogger, make sure you know how many times a month you really can commit to posting and stick to it.

3. Guest blogging
Allowing others to guest post on your blog is beneficial for so many reasons. First, it lifts the burden of having to write something on a regular basis. Second, known bloggers improve the credibility and even increase traffic to your blog. Third, you keep up the level of quality, especially during dry spells or if you’re too busy to stick to your commitment – both can happen from time to time. Choose your guest bloggers carefully.

With regard to my own personal blog, I follow the first two rules, which made me get back to blogging and they made me happier. Guest blogging is what we do on the Z-Blog, thus making sure we post as many quality posts as possible as many times a week as possible. There’s simply too much great content out there waiting to be written and posted online.

What is your advice about how to make updating blog a habit? How many times a month do you update your blog and how do you make yourself stick to the schedule? Let us know in the comments.

The web is evolving. Again.

Since the 90′s we’ve gone from simple websites to Java Applets, to Flash websites, to dynamically updating sites with Ajax and finally to full blown applications running in browsers where a server is but a glorified database.

Now, we are at a brink of another revolution.

Websites are becoming extendable ecosystems with the most popular sites garnering tens of different plugins ranging from simple tweaks to full blown features living solely inside browsers, completely independent of the original authors’ intent.

A minimaler Minimum Viable Product

“But I thought user scripting was just for tweaks!?”

The idea of adding things to a website was born with Greasemonkey in 2004, but despite a massive following it never quite gained mainstream support or understanding. Users just weren’t ready.

All of this changed when Chrome really started gaining ground, even surpassing Internet Explorer as the world’s most used browser. Chrome extensions are as simple to create as Greasemonkey scripts, but much easier for the end user – there’s even an “app store” and everything!

And what better way to gaining a massive user base than extending a website that’s already got millions of users? Just look at Rapportive – accidentally launching to 10,000+ users in 24 hours and being acquired by LinkedIn just two years later.

More importantly, your minimum viable product can actually be minimal. You should focus on that one key feature users want, right? So why are you spending all that time creating the ecosystem to put the feature in?

1. Find a popular app with a problem
2. Fix it
3. Prove hypothesis
4. Profit

You can worry about everything else once your main hypothesis is proven.

Taglr

With that in mind … tagging is kind of broken on Tumblr.

Even though tags are the only thing on Tumblr that makes anything findable, the interface is somewhat lacking. Sure, you can add tags, but who’s got time to think of tags? There are cat pictures to be seen!

Enter Taglr ->

• add to Chrome
• continue reblogging like mad
• tag suggestions in the sidebar!
• clicky click
• sit back and watch the reblogs roll in

Let Taglr do the magic so you can focus on the cat pictures

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Bird's eye panorama of Manhattan & New York City in 1873 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The work environment is exciting and we really enjoy good food. Our team is young, international and full of web enthusiasts. We are looking for a person who likes the start-up atmosphere, wants to advance his/her knowledge in the field and can tackle the technical side of supporting our sales efforts.

This is an ideal career building position for a customer focused, technically minded individual with drive and determination. Based in our busy New York sales office and focusing on offering technical support and advice to sales team and our customers.

Main purpose of your role:

• to integrate the content from various internet sources to our databases
• to communicate and assist sales and customers effectively, answering questions and clarifying technical details
• to provide specification of further infrastructure improvements

Requirements:

• versed in shell scripting
• versed in web crawling and scraping data from various sources
• familiarity with internet stack (HTTP, HTML, …)
• familiarity with web syndication formats (RSS, Atom, …)
• python knowledge is a plus

What we offer is an opportunity to work on an exciting global project, competitive pay, team of bright peers and cutting edge tech. The location is in New York.
Apply by sending an e-mail to jobs@zemanta.com.

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Does this sound familiar? No, this is not a story about a procrastinator; it is a story about a perfectionist. Perfectionism can be and a lot of times is a burden. It can stall our productivity. I’m somewhere between two types of perfectionism, as defined by Don Hamachek more than 30 years ago: normal perfectionists “derive a very real sense of pleasure from the labors of a painstaking effort” while neurotic perfectionists are “unable to feel satisfaction because in their own eyes they never seem to do things well enough to warrant that feeling of satisfaction”. But I’m in the business of writing. I have to deal daily with my own demands of being perfect, so I can be productive. Here are my five steps how to snap out of it and start writing. 

1. Yes, you’re going to fail from time to time. Deal with it!
Perfectionists are afraid of failure. However, failure is part of life. There isn’t a successful person in this world who hasn’t failed from time to time. They learned from their failed attempts and moved on. Life is unpredictable. It is rarely well structured. Realize that not all your posts will be popular, praised and shared.

2. Nobody’s perfect
Do you remember these legendary words by Jack Lemmon from Some Like It Hot? It’s true. Nobody and rarely anything is perfect. So snap out of unrealistic dreams of writing that perfect post. Realize that an incomplete post may even attract more comments (what you may deem incomplete, i.e. not perfect). You don’t need to cover off every aspect of the post’s topic in order for that post to be good.

Nobody's perfect, right?

 3. Don’t be so pernickety
In the workplace, perfectionism is often marked by low productivity as individuals lose time and energy on attention to detail and small irrelevant details of larger projects or mundane daily activities. It happens to all of us, perfectionists. Instead of worrying about grammar, spelling later, we worry about them while writing. So instead of typing our thoughts, we worry more about the structure and little details, making us going back into texts and correcting, rather than moving forward and making sure we don’t forget what we wanted to write. This can make us less productive. So snap out of it and just write. Switch off the spell check until you’re finished with the first draft.

 4. Just do it
Because we’re so afraid of failure we’re prone to procrastination. Many times we worry so much about doing something imperfectly that we become immobilized and fail to do anything at all! This leads to more feelings of failure – a vicious circle. The only solution to this is to just sit down and write. There’s no other cure. Snap out of it and write. Don’t worry about the end result yet. Just write.

5. Give yourself a tight schedule
If your deadline is in two weeks, give yourself your own serious deadline at least a week earlier. The farther the deadline, the less you write before then and the more you think about the assignment – more thinking, fussing about the assignment doesn’t necessarily mean it will be better. Shorten the time you’d otherwise have for dreaming about the perfect post.

This is not easy. Believe me. It’s something I’ve been struggling for a long time. I try to follow my own advice above. In the end, I always realize I was afraid in vain. So don’t be so hard on yourself.

Do you struggle with perfectionism? How have you overcome it? Help us all!

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In a few sentences – Who are you?

I’m a sort of expatriate philosopher gone developer.  If there’s one thing years of relentlessly reading Kant and Hegel did for me, it was realized in coding.  Not that I can defend German Idealism, but they did develop a metaphysics that feels a lot like Python.

Where did you go grow up?

I grew up in the States – Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.  I consider myself to be from Philadelphia, although that’s only half-true.  I’ve lived in London and now some magic brought me to Ljubljana.

Who are your influences?

Autechre, Thomas Pynchon, Wittgenstein, Deleuze and Tarkovsky are my home boys.  I’m especially keen on that existential moment you find in patterns.

What did you study?

I studied music at first… playing the trombone and contrabass.  Then I moved towards philosophy and physics.  Programming’s always been there in one form or another.

What is your role at Zemanta?

I’m a frontend developer, although i’m working with the product team as well.  I like how this allows me to think about the broad picture as well as the immediate one.  I love how at Zemanta we can take an idea from inception to reality in only a few days.

What are some blogs that at you follow that others may not know about?

I read www.badassjs.com for all my badass Javascript updates.  I like keeping an eye on what MrDoob (http://mrdoob.com/) is up too as well.

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

Google, mos def!  Their contributions to the open source community are extensive, and they’re constantly striving for technical innovation.  Case in point – I wonder if Dart will catch on?

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

When I came across Zemanta, my own interests were oriented in much the same direction as Zemanta’s, so it was an obvious choice.  It’s a great opportunity to work with a company doing so much for writing and semantics.

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Visual Appeal

Every blog needs a theme. The theme is the first visual impression a reader gets about your blog, essentially about you. If you’re a business blogger and a serious one, invest in your blog theme. I’m not talking about thousands of dollars. But make sure that the theme you choose or create represents you and the main topic of your blog. Oh, and don’t forget: whatever theme you choose and however you design your blog, it should be clear and user friendly. Don’t confuse your potential readers.

Last month, Tripwire Magazine compiled a useful list of 75 Clean and Simple WordPress Themes. You can also choose from their latest list of 50 Cool Professional WordPress Themes.

At Zemanta, we usually start with open source themes and adjust them to fit our needs. We’re in the process of redesigning our blog so stay tuned for that!

Plugins

You can extend the functionality of your blogging platform via external plugins. A plugin is a piece of software that acts as an add-on to your blog. Ask yourself what you need on your blog to make it more attractive, interesting and what plugins may  bring new readers. For starters, check out Ryan Hanley’s 32 Plugins That Drive a Successful WordPress Blog or 20 Best WordPress Plugins by Big Passage.

Here are some that we recommend and use at Zemanta:

Buffer – We use Buffer regularly at Zemanta to promote our content to Twitter and showcase other great content around the web to our Twitter followers. Besides the ability to schedule these tweets for optimal times, Buffer also provides analytics on the performance of each tweet, and best of all the basic version is free.

Quotelove - A Buffer-like app that we developed to let bloggers easily share web content via a light browser plugin on their blogs. Easily select a block of text that you want to cover in your blog post and the snippet will automatically be added into a new post on your blogging platform.

Getting your blog posts to your readers via email

Many either don’t have time or simply forget to check your blog. Make it easier for them to follow you regularly by giving them an option to subscribe to your blog. Make sure you ask them in your sidebar, at the top of your posts, after they read a great article. There are millions and millions of plugins to help you build your lists. WordPress.com has a built in way to let readers sign up to receive blog posts via email and Feedburner also provides email distribution.

InboundWriter - Our friends at InboundWriter have a great tool that will analyze your blog post text and help optimize it for SEO by identifying important terms and encouraging you to emphasize them further.

YARPP -  A clever simple plugin by Mitcho that finds related posts from your blog and adds links to the bottom of your post.

WordPress SEO  - Yoast comprehensive plugin suite for SEO helps bloggers set up their WordPress settings for post titles, meta description, robots meta configuration, xml sitemaps, permalink cleanup and lots more.

EditFlow - One of the most comprehensive editorial calendar tools that we have found for WordPress. We are still learning to use it well, but are excited to use it more as we add additional guest bloggers.

Zemanta and Taglr -Updating your blog with posts, including the links and pictures and videos usually requires a lot of time. Blogosphere has fortunately developed so much lately there are now tools that make your job easier, such as our own Zemanta.

There’s also new tool that we put together for Tumblr users that helps them identify relevant tags for their post that we’re calling Taglr. More about this next week, but here’s a quick preview:

You need to know what your blog is about and who your target audience is to know what tools and plugins your blog needs in order to succeed – what components will help you increase and nurture your community. Add them and use them!

And one last shameless plug for a new Zemanta project: Blogspire, a tool that will inspire you to blog more.

What are your favorite blogging tools or plugins? Do share.

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Small Business, Entrepreneurship & Startup Blog | Sprouter » Using Rejection as Business Inspiration

“As we were thinking about how to pivot the company (however we didn’t use term pivot in 2007 yet), we thought about bloggers and tools to help them write. We applied with the idea to the Seedcamp bootcamp program and that’s how it all started.”

via: sprouter.com

shared with Quotelove

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I am a huge fan of TV singing competitions. Yes, I’m one of those who know who Lee DeWyze, Astro and Beverly McClellan are. These shows aren’t a British or the US phenomenon anymore. They’re a global phenomenon. I am very well aware they’re just TV “reality” shows. They don’t really affect my life, nonetheless throughout the years I’ve learned several lessons about trying, about success, about persistence and endurance, and about popularity. Here are 6 major lessons bloggers can learn from talent shows, such as American Idol, X Factor, The Voice, etc.

Simon Cowell (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

1.      Be goal oriented
Love what you write about. Know what you want to accomplish. The contestants on talent shows have different goals; some just really love music, others care more about becoming global pop stars. Those who know their goals well seem to do well in the competition. Make sure your plans include reasonable and realistic goals. By the way, you can’t become a star overnight.

2.      Listen to others’ opinions
Juries in these competitions are there for several reasons, for instance to give the contestants constructive criticism, so they can improve and potentially grow into credible artists. Those who can’t take it, are eliminated from the competition sooner rather than later. Therefore listen to what others have to say about your blog and its posts. Pay attention to the comments left on your blog. Be active in social media and other online and offline platforms where your writing may be discussed.

3.      Learn and adapt
Listening carefully to what others have to say about your blog allows you to make changes to improve and change what doesn’t seem to be working for you. Nobody likes cockiness and ignorance. By paying attention to other blogs you may learn from their mistakes.  The Voice is a great example of a show that incorporated what works well for American Idol and X Factor and got rid of the stuff that don’t work anymore.

 4.      Be unique
Sometimes winning isn’t about working the hardest or even being the best. There are way too many trying the same thing. Find your own niche on the market. How can you be different from so many others writing about the same topic? How can you approach differently to get noticed? Check out your competition and the feedback they’re getting. What do your prospects miss?

5.      Be yourself
How many times have you seen infamous Simon Cowell roll his eyes and say: “This was like a really bad copy of the original.” Always be yourself. Don’t try to imitate someone else. It won’t work. I admire several bloggers, but I can’t be them. It would be foolish to even try.

6.     Rally support
Every American Idol, X Factor, and The Voice competitor needs fans to move further in the competition. They need fans that will pick up their phones and call as many times as possible to make sure their favorite stays in the competition at least one more week. Bloggers need readers too. You can have the best blog in the history of blogging; it won’t matter if nobody reads it. Make sure the information from your blog is distributed online and offline as much as possible.

What else can bloggers learn from reality TV singing competitions? Do share.

La jungle de Langkawi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not Just a Buzzword Anymore
Nielsen Wire emphasizes that blogs are sometimes overlooked as a significant source of online buzz in comparison to social networking sites. Only a month earlier Marketing profs reported how blogging was down among Inc. 500 companies, whereas research by Content Marketing Institute clearly shows that blogging had the highest “leap” in 2011 in terms of effectiveness when compared with other content marketing tactics. In addition, NM Incite tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up from 36 million only five years earlier. A bit confusing, however it is obvious that the number of blogs has been rising, although everyone seems to be in love with social networks, at least at the moment. Therefore, I’m not worried. Quite the opposite. This is all great news. This just means that blogs have become indispensable, they are not just a new kid in town anymore.

Bloggers Are Influential Well-educated Parents
What does this research tell us about bloggers? Who are they/we?

• Women make up the majority of bloggers.
• Half of bloggers are aged 18-34.
• About the third of bloggers are moms.
• More than half of bloggers are parents with minors.

And the majority of bloggers are well-educated. This makes me happy, although I’m not saying that a college degree makes you a better blogger. A few weeks ago I, though, wrote that we, the bloggers, have become an indispensable source of boundless information: the blogosphere has become a very strong force; bloggers are (becoming more and more) influential.

Blogs Are Everywhere
On the other hand, bloggers have learned to use other tools at their disposal to spread their posts online and offline. The NM Incite research shows, “Bloggers are active across social media: they’re twice as likely to post/comment on consumer-generated video sites like YouTube, and nearly three times more likely to post in Message Boards/Forums within the last month.« My own case shows this perfectly. The entire year prior to mid December 2011 I virtually hadn’t updated my blog. However, since the mid-December 2011 I’ve learned that blogging regularly brings more visitors to my blog and raises my Klout score. Honestly, I didn’t expect that the decision to update my blog daily would bring such great and rewarding results so fast. In four weeks, my Klout score rocketed from 20 to almost 50. This is another proof how pervasive the blogosphere has become, spreading effectively through many other online platforms. Just another sign how blogs have really matured. Long live the blogosphere!

Do you also believe blogs have left the chaotic jungle and become a force of their own? How do you see this new research on blogs?

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Who are you?

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Image by Getty Images via @daylife

This reminds me so much of content marketing. One thing are sales and other short-term marketing activities, but if you want to succeed in the long run you should follow the rules and thousands sets of advice on how to approach and do content marketing well. Blogs are one of the tools that are available to content marketers.

This is what I learned from losing weight and changing my way of life that I’ve been successfully applying to blogging.

Define Your Goals
If you really want to lose weight, you have to define your goals. Let’s be honest, it rarely works (without at least succumbing to the Yo-yo effect) to just decide you’re going to lose some weight. Isn’t that’s why New Year’s Eve resolutions rarely come true? How much weight is feasible to lose in a desired period?

The same is with blogging. In content marketing you can’t really be successful if you don’t plan ahead, define your goals. It is one thing to decide to start a blog, another is to know what you want to achieve with it and when.

Plan Thoroughly
Making lifestyle changes doesn’t come naturally. To change your eating and exercise habits, you have to plan to make it happen. Without planning, you’re always going to be struggling – trying to figure out how to eat what you should.

The same is with blogging. You can’t just start a blog and then come up with ideas what to blog about, ad hoc. You should create an editorial calendar to avoid getting stuck or suddenly being left without ideas to write – to keep your content consistent and relevant.

Discipline Is Key to Success
Planning involves discipline, which is a key trait among those who successfully lost weight and maintained their weight loss for at least a year if not longer. It is very difficult to lose weight and keep it off. Honestly, it takes effort to be successful in long-term weight management. I was a victim of the Yo-yo effect. I believed I was ready to do it on my own. Unfortunately I soon returned to my old self. And now I am doing it all over again. I learned the hard way there is no long-term success without strict self-discipline.

The same is with blogging. It requires a good deal of discipline. You are teaching your readers when to expect new posts. Don’t disappoint them. Build a trusty relationship.

Update Regularly
I learned that it’s better to eat every three hours or so, five to six times a day, rather than once or twice (which also means much bigger portions). By doing so, I keep my metabolism running strong. In contrast, when I eat large meals at a more infrequent rate, my metabolism experiences large chunks of time when it’s not active. This has resulted in substantial weight gain.

The same is with blogging. Your blog needs readers. Your blog needs your readers to come back. But they won’t come if you don’t update regularly. However, if you post new content frequently that is timely and written in a style people enjoy, they are likely to return again and again to see what you have to say. The more frequently you publish new posts, the more new content there is for people to see and the more reason there is for people to visit again and again.

Move a Lot
Here’s the truth: you can’t lose weight and maintain weight loss if you don’t exercise regularly. Hire a personal trainer, if you can afford him. Talk to him. Exercise with him to increase the probability of your success.

The same is with blogging. You can hardly, especially in content marketing and our globalized world, blog in a vacuum. Move around the blogosphere; talk to other bloggers (leave comments on their posts), read other blogs, etc.

It is about Long-term Changes
I was/am overweight for a reason. My bad habits have been fatty food, almost no exercise and a lot of negative stress. I learned that if I wanted to lose weight and maintain my weight loss, I had to change the way I lived my life, to get rid of my bad habits.

The same is with blogging. If you want to remain and even upgrade on your success by blogging, you have to change how you do it, think about it. You can’t just start a blog and when you achieve your goals stop doing what brought you to that point. It is only the beginning.

What do you think about the analogy between weight loss and blogging? Is there any other lesson I forgot to mention? Please share.

Conversational Marketing Is Hot – Again. Thanks Facebook! | FM Signal

Our latest innovation is our partnership with Zemanta, which has resulted in a new “Content Desk” product, allowing brands to work directly with relevant authors as they write in real-time to integrate sponsored content. By combining best practices in content marketing with new authoring tools, FMP helps brands target exceptionally relevant authors and conversations at a scale not previously possible.

via: signal.federatedmedia.net

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• Making you stand out from the crowd as an authority
• Putting yourself on the radar of influential bloggers
• Opening up opportunities for guest blogging and collaboration

Image via Wikipedia

I would almost go so far as to say a person who fully commits to a blog commenting strategy wouldn’t need his/her own blog at all. (The missed SEO opportunity is what holds me back.) However, don’t look at blog commenting as a time-saving alternative to blog authoring. In my experience, composing really effective comments can take just as much time, if not more, than writing a blog post. That being the case, most serious blog commenters I know pick their spots carefully: you don’t want to invest half an hour or more unless you have reason to think there’s a potential business benefit.

Tips for Writing Blog Comments

Read the Post Carefully

How often do you see a blog comment that makes a point identical to one in the post itself? Doing this will not further your reputation as an original thinker, and the only way to avoid empty repetition is to make sure you’ve read everything the author put forth. But reading is only the first step. A great blog comment starts with a point made by the author and expands on it, challenges it, or applies it to a different situation. In order to do this, you must take the time to fully understand the ideas behind what the author has written.

Read Other Comments Carefully

Restating comments that have already been made will not make you stand out, either. On the other hand, playing off another comment — expanding or challenging it — is highly effective. Here again, properly interpreting these other comments is important, and it’s not always easy, because comments may have been dashed off in a hurry and are not particularly concise. Even so, a haphazard comment might contain a really provocative idea that you can elaborate on, adding a great deal of value to the conversation.

Edit, But Stay Conversational

Too much polish on a blog comment can backfire. You don’t want the blogger or readers to get the impression you’re trying to steal the platform — this makes you look like a jerk. The key is to edit your thoughts with extreme care so that your ideas are crystal clear, while staying loose and conversational in tone. Mention the blogger and other commenters by name, and refer to their statements. Don’t go off on a tangent that has nothing to do with what has been said.

Answer Questions

Authors and commenters frequently ask questions, hoping that someone in the community has a reliable answer. Of course this is a great opportunity for you to showcase your skills — as long as you do it properly. The challenge is to be authoritative without coming off arrogantly or like a shameless self-promoter. In this situation, links are tricky. There’s nothing wrong with putting a link to your own content in a comment if it helps answer a question. Still, some bloggers and readers really dislike comment links on principle, or may jump to the conclusion that you’re a spammer. For those reasons, I seldom put links in my comments unless I really know the blogger and the community well.

Avoid Bad Commenting Practices

Many types of comments will hurt your reputation rather than enhance it. There are so many I could never think of them all, so here’s a quick list that you are welcome to add to.

• Empty comments. Saying things like, “Great post!” won’t get you anywhere.
• Snarky comments. Showing your unpleasant side is unlikely to attract praise or leads, so what’s the point?
• Arrogant comments. Similarly, trying to make a blogger or commenter look like a fool will never advance your interests. If you have that much hostility, either pick a different post to comment on or develop the ability to contend without being contentious.
• Cryptic comments. We must always remember that the Web is a fast medium. Readers need to grasp your meaning quickly. They will pass over comments that are vague or contain obscure references. In short, be direct.

Take Your Time, Do It Right

Relatively few people take the time to write world class comments. As a result, bloggers and serious readers love people who do, and will make an effort to reach out to you, cultivate a relationship with you, and in some cases, do business with you. It’s a great technique for building a business, even though social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter get all the attention, it’s one that I think is greatly underutilized.

What do you think? Has blog commenting helped your business?

Brad Shorr is Director of Content and Social Media for Straight North, a leader among Chicago Web design agencies. The firm specializes in helping middle market B2B firms, with clients in specialized B2B niches such as credit card processing for gas stations and air quality monitoring. Brad has been a business blogger (and commenter) since 2005 and writes frequently on social media topics. 

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Right?

Stop. Before you even begin, think about where your users are going to come from and how you’re going to get found on the wide wild frontier that is the Internet. As a blogger, some, if not much, of your traffic will come from organic channels (ie. Google and Bing), so you need to set yourself up for SEO success before you even begin. No worries, I do this every day, so I’m here to walk you through what you need to know to get started.

How Do I Get Found?

In short, SEO is the practice of getting your site found in Google’s web index. The web index is essentially Google’s database of all of the pages on the Internet that it knows about.

There are many different parts of your website that affect SEO and how well your content is going to rank for searches about your topic. This topic has been written about time and time again, so let me point you to the most important resource I know of:

Basics of Search Engine Friendly Design and Development (SEOmoz)

To get your site found and ranking better, thus bringing you more traffic, you need links to your site. Linkbuilding is always a hot topic in the SEO world, but to start wrapping your mind around how it works, check out these resources:

Growing Popularity and Links (SEOmoz)
All the articles about linkbuilding from SEOmoz

Domain Name and Hosting

When starting your blogging career, you must think about where you want your site to live online. First, if you really care about organic traffic and branding yourself as a blogger online, you should seriously consider buying your own domain name from a service like Moniker. Second, if you are really serious about blogging, you need to pay for hosting and get someone to set it up for you, or figure it out yourself. It’s really not that hard and I’ll link you to some resources below.

Choosing a Domain Name

Depending on your niche or the popularity (or lack thereof) of your name, .com domain names start around $8 per year and can go much higher. My main recommendations to people when they think about buying a domain follow the KISS acronym:

• Keep it short.
• Inform your readers of your topic.
• Stay on topic.
• Streamline your audience.

You want to find the most relevant domain name possible to your niche (and get niche-specific keyword traffic), or use it to create your name as a blogger (hence use your name as your domain name, if possible). If you look at the big bloggers today, they are a mix depending on their message:

http://michaelhyatt.com/ (Michael Hyatt about leadership, social media, and more)
http://www.problogger.net/ (Darren Rowse about blogging)
http://www.copyblogger.com/ (Brian Clark about content and marketing)
http://www.avc.com/ (Fred Wilson about venture capital)

Depending on your location and availability of domain names, you could have the pick of many top-level domains (TLDs as we call them). The main TLDs are, in order of preference:

• .com
• .org
• .net
• Country specific (ie .co.uk for the UK or .com.au for Australia)

Pro tip: If you want a domain name that is related to your industry, sign up using your Gmail account for an Adwords account and search for words that you think might be available. Look at the Keyword Ideas for more thoughts. Once you find one with some search volume in the “Local Monthly Searches” column, with “Exact Match” checked, run it through Moniker to see if the domain name is available.

Content Management System

The term “content management system” is probably unknown and scary to you. Don’t let it be. Simply put, your content management system is where you write and control the content that you are publishing onto your site. Think of it as your outbox for your ideas.

If you’re starting to blog and are doing the self-hosted route like I recommend, use WordPress.org. It has a great developer community for when you need help, a lot of plugins that you can easily install to customize the functionality of your site, and many themes to choose from (both free and paid).

The plugins you absolutely need are:

Yoast SEO
W3 Super Cache (for speed)
Sharebar or a similar social sharing plugin

If you must scale up in the future, or your company needs a

Finding Hosting

Hosting is the next key part to setting up your site. You can find hosts for about $10/month that are plenty fast for most sites.

You want to look for the following if you are not tech-savvy:

• Easy Installs (1-click is best)
• 24/7 Support
• Shared or Dedicated Hosting (shared for small blogs, dedicated for when your site gets big)
• WordPress Support

The two hosts that I have used personally that I have had good experiences with are Bluehost and Dreamhost.

Keywords

I’m not going to go into this one too much, as a lot of resources are available to you about conducting easy keyword research, and then there’s the more comprehensive SEOmoz Keyword Research section in the Beginner’s Guide to SEO, which I recommend that all of you read.

But in a nutshell, you should strive to create content around keywords that people are searching for in your niche. You can look at the keywords that people are landing on your site with in Google Analytics, look at the posts that your fellow bloggers are writing, and use tools like Ubersuggest to find what Google suggests for others.

Content

Before we get any further, I have to say that if you want to win online, the way to do it is this:

Create great content and let others know about it.

It’s not enough to just create great content, but that is the first step. You should think outside of just text content and think about other mediums that you can use on your site. Some bloggers do podcasts. Others do videos. Some publish infographics.

As a blogger thinking about outreach, I recommend shifting your mindset from “Who can I get links from?” to “Who can I make friends with?” As a blogger, your greatest linkbuilding asset will be connecting with your readers and nurturing the conversation, both on your site and across social networks. If your target market is on Twitter, be there and be engaged.

Here’s a good Beginner’s Guide to Twitter.

Link to Others

This point goes in with both the above linkbuilding point and the “make friends” point. One great way to get the attention of others is to link to them in your posts, then let them know that you referenced them.

Some “SEO experts” will tell you that you should not link out to other people. Don’t listen to them. By linking out, you make friends and you’ll receive back 10-fold what you give.

There are some good posts written about this here and here.

Tracking

Finally, your blogging will be ineffective if you don’t track what your users are doing on your site. The easiest way to do this is also free: Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is Google’s product that allows you to track people on your site. It’s pretty easy to set up, as all you do is register with your Google/Gmail account and they give you a code to put onto your website. This is simple with Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress.

There are many tutorials available online for Analytics, but I recommend Grovo’s Google Analytics training course for beginners.

Don’t Give Up

Finally, don’t give up two to three months in. Or even a year in. It takes time to build a following on your site. Sometimes your traffic over time could happen like this:

Image Source

And sometimes it goes slow and steady, like my personal site:

Keep publishing on a schedule and you’ll see returns. Remember:

Overnight success doesn’t happen overnight. The people winning now have been doing it for years.

Resources

I want to end this post by giving you a few more resources to help you get started.

Beginner’s Guide to WordPress
Beginner’s Guide to SEO

And here is an SEO 101 presentation that I gave at a meetup in New York City:

What other questions do you have? How can I help you out?

John Doherty is an SEO Consultant in New York City with search marketing firm Distilled. With prior experience as a web developer and an international entrepreneur, he enjoys the dual challenges online of helping clients create user-friendly websites that are friendly to search engines, while also keeping in mind the ultimate business goals of making more money and expanding influence. You can find John on Twitter at @dohertyjf.

For this week’s featured Power User, we have the lovely Coral Russell of Alchemyofscrawl!  Enjoy readers

Who are you?

I’m Coral Russell from alchemyofscrawl.wordpress.com and I blog mostly about books. I rant every now and then. I talk about food because I love to eat and exercise because it has to be done. I’ve run personal blogs for years and only within the last year or so decided to let people in on my personal brand of nuttiness. I don’t take just any book. I only take eBooks and from Indie/self-published or small press publishers. Like Indie music and film, Indie authors are on the cutting edge with diverse and genre bending stories. They also interact with their fans!

What do you blog about?

I researched ways to make my blog appeal to people and generate traffic. I knew in-text links were important to optimize a blog. Pictures and video for attention. Linking back to other relevant posts in your blog so people will stay awhile. The other perk is relevant posts can lead you to hook up with other bloggers in your field. I’ve increased my followers by doing pingbacks and trackbacks through Zemanta.

When did you start using Zemanta?

I always think I’m the last one to know about something so when I stumbled across Zemanta I installed the plug-in right away. It was easy to set up. I used it for Blogger until my blog crashed and I had to move to WordPress. Between the two blogs I’ve used Zemanta for over a year. I’m sold! It’s a great gadget that lets me automate the important things that drive traffic to my blog. And it’s free. You can’t beat that with a stick!

How does Zemanta help you blog better?

The promoted links are not intrusive, so the only thing I have to check is that promoted posts are relevant to mine. If not there are others to choose from, plus they include posts from my blog.

Power User Tip (please share a Zemanta tip!)

My Zemanta tip is to use the in-text links. I’ve noticed a difference in traffic since including them in my posts. The tags for WordPress and using the related posts round out the three main things I use on Zemanta that optimize my blog.

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Shane Snow of Contently will join us to talk about his take on where blogging is heading and how they are using their corporate blog at Contently as well as their work with their clients on building content strategy for them.

We will also have one of our awesome power users Richard Butler of MyTakeRadio and how he uses his blog to promote his online radio program.

Looking forward to seeing you all!

Head over to our Meetup page and register there!

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In the last 15 plus years I’ve read and written many different texts in many different contexts: press agency news bulletins, magazines short and very long articles, school papers of different lengths, bachelor theses, master theses, heck, I even typed 96 pages during my comprehensive exam in altogether 24 hours, my blog posts are of different length… I read tons of blogs daily; some are more visual blogs, some have very short, others very long posts…

Bostjan hit the nail on the head: “Think of school assignments that usually come with pretty clear instructions of their size and universities that specify a required length for theses and dissertations, as if length is a meaningful indicator of merit and hard work.” Indeed. As if you wrote more it would mean you must have put more effort in your research and work and were thus worthy of a higher scientific title. Well, this isn’t necessarily true, is it? Let me tell you something. Writing brief, more concise posts with a message can many times be more daunting than a much longer post on the same issue. Sometimes it may in a way take more time to perfect it, than it is to speak your mind by writing a longer post.

We seem to live in a society obsessed with size. Are bigger cars really better than smaller? And by the way, what may be big for someone it may not be so big for someone else. The length may be in the eye of the beholder. Honestly, I don’t care so much about the size as I care about style and content. Impress me, attract me with your content, I’ll take time to read it. It’s the content, not the size that matters.

Bostjan argues that “the size does matter in a sense of the blog post’s longevity, how it behaves in the long run”. I still don’t understand why longer posts would be more popular, shared etc. in the long run compared to shorter posts. Yes, you may use more space (time) to develop your argument with empirical evidence, but even that can many times be accomplished with shorter posts. I don’t believe that the length predisposes how long a post shall live. Indeed, there are still much loved short stories and very long novels, shorter and longer poems, very short and very long rock hits, much respected short and very long movies. Again, it’s not about the size, but style and content. Sometimes you like to read a very long article in The Atlantic Monthly, sometimes a photo on a cover of a lifestyle magazine can have a longer and bigger effect on us. Spetic also says, “…the size really determines the type of audience and their engagement.” Does this mean people don’t really engage with microblogs, such as Twitter? I refuse to believe so.

All of the above applies to blog posts. As long as it’s good, relevant to you, the reader, who cares about the size? Right?

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In a few sentences – Who are you?

I’m Andrei Mikhailov and I came from Russia to work at the awesome Zemanta. I’m a versatile and enthusiastic developer who loves to be on both front and back ends. It keeps me in balance and brings me a new dose of inspiration over and over again and helps me develop apps with love.

Where did you go grow up?

I grew up in Lipetsk, 500k in population industrial city in Central Federal District of Russia that was a resort in the past and is famous for it’s metallurgical factory nowadays… and It’s not in Siberia

Who are your influences?

Many influences, it would take a day or two if I started talking now. I really love music and I have to say that music follows me all the time. Literature of course, thanks to my russian roots, I’m able to read originals and get a lot of satisfaction from reading. People and cultures, I’m happy I have this opportunity to travel around the world and meet different people, oh and of course girls!

What did you study?

Mostly computers and computer networks, but programming was always dominating for me even if I didn’t have enough emphasis on that during the study, so I learnt many things myself, thanks Internet, the best library in the world!

What is your role at Zemanta?

I am a front-end developer and widget development is my primary responsibility. I do many prototypes of upcoming features and always keep in touch with our UX team. Together we make Zemanta better and better everyday.

What are some blogs that at you follow that others may not know about?

I can’t say I read a lot on the Internet, but some quite interesting technical posts may be found on Paul Irish blog. I recommend it to our front-end staff.

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

Somewhere in the middle. Apple has an aggressive and restrictive policy and has distinguishing features to take simple things and turn it upside down, that makes me feel puzzled at times, however I like their design mostly and their usability approach. Google has a lot of great products but their design looks too simple and feels like two steps behind from Apple in certain products, but I have to admit they run many apps that keep saving me a lot of time, regardless any visual appearance or usability, it just works!

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

Zemanta and I had a friend in common, so he told me that Zemanta was looking for javascript developers and gave me their contact information, so this is how we found each other. After two months and five interviews they told me they wanted me to join the team, and I was totally absorbed. As Andraz said, so far friend suggestions were the best source of good candidates, I hope he was talking about me, or am I flattering myself? Nah!

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Image via Wikipedia

Falling in Love with Your Community
The blogger (an individual or an organization) is at the center of the ecosystem. His main objective is to keep the blog alive as long as he needs it. In order to do that he must supply the needs of his community, because if their needs aren’t met, they will move to a better blog. Their needs can be met by regularly posting relevant and engaging content.

To do so successfully, the blogger must know his community really well. Most blogs are written for a specific group of people: friends, loved ones, prospects, buyers, etc. Basically, a community is the blog. If the community is gone, the blog doesn’t exist.

You need to wow them constantly. To paraphrase Samir Mr. Magazine™ Husni’s words, the blogger needs to fall in love with his readers. It’s like dating, your goal is to find as much as possible about your potential partner and then nurture the relationship. So, how well do you know who you’re writing for?

Nenad Senic recently wrote on this blog: “It doesn’t matter, whether it’s a personal, corporate or technical blog, TALK to your readers.” Be personal and use your own recognizable style! You can hardly build a meaningful relationship with your community if you speak to them from somewhere above. Just look at the dictatorships, they never work in the long run.

Regular, relevant and engaging content
When you learn (imagine) about your community as much as possible, you may write better, you will know what they’re interested in. This infographic clearly shows all the things you may think of when writing a blog. Their answer to how make your content king is “come up with that great idea that the other bazillion blogger haven’t done yet”. The biggest fear every blogger has is to run out of the ideas to write about. Remember, content is always all around you. Always! All you need to do is pay attention to comments to your posts, conversations you have with your friends, clients, and coworkers, what is being discussed in other channels, such as social media, etc. Turn a question or a problem into a blog post. By the way, as I mentioned last week, “you should regularly step out of your ecosystem and investigate other blogs and even interact with them in order to make yours better for your community.” So, regularly check out other blogs – did they adequately discuss a particular problem, do you disagree with something written somewhere else. Everything is potentially a great idea for your next post.

Let me end this post with a quote by Darren Rowse: “Above all, the best way of building a community on your blog is to lead the way and start to BE the community that you want to form.” Indeed, blogs are more than a tool to publish on the web.

Next week, I will conclude this 3-part series on blog ecosystems and how to make them work by outlining the other support system, the abiotic components: what they are and how to utilize them efficiently. After all, a blog (an ecosystem) results from the sum of individual responses of readers (organisms) to STIMULI FROM ELEMENTS online and offline (in the environment).

How well do you know your community? What other advice would you give for how to never be left without things to write about?

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• Reblogged Vs. Retweet: A Case for the Former (zemanta.com)
• A Blog Is Like a Print Magazine: So Spice It Up! (zemanta.com)

Featured Images in WordPress let users replace header images for a particular post which create a better visual presence for the post.

See it live in this handy dandy super fun video by Sam + Ron:

The response so far has been great! Let us know how YOU like it!

On another note, we are no longer supporting Zemanta on Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail. Contrary to what some believe, product development does not always mean adding numerous features and expanding the product infinitely. When we talk to our users, they ask for features and we as product designers have to have a very clear scope in which we continue to work. However, when users are clearly annoyed by some features, there’s no way of going around it. You just have to pull the plug.

With that in mind, we decided to completely discontinue Zemanta for email.

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We’re proud to present Stephanie of Fangs, Wands, and Fairy Dust as this week’s featured power user!  Enjoy!

Who are you? 

My name is Stephanie and I’m a blogger living in coastal New England in the northeastern US.   I have an MA in Rhetoric and Communicaton with a BA in the same with a minor in English . Ex-bureaucrat, ex-programmer, sales-person, business owner, artist, graphic design hobbyist. I am currently taking a break from volunteering in my community as a board member and fund raiser.

I have four cats and one husband.  I am obsessive about reading which is handy as a book blogger! I enjoy movies but tend to read or work as I watch. I can’t stand not reading, unless I am shopping or driving.  I love museums but am generally not a fan of tourist attractions, except in Las Vegas where everything is a tourist attraction and is therefore like a giant museum of tourist attractions. I take Pilates twice each week.

Love strong, but imperfect heroines, and sexy heroes, steamy romance. I love to do giveaways and try products, read ARCs and communicate with people everywhere.  I abhor spam in it’s many forms. I try to write fair reviews and never attack an author personally in my reviews. I may strongly state my opinion but I try to remain professional even while entertaining and informing readers. I am not a fan of expository writing or product placement in a book. Continuity is important.

I JUST started reading Titania Hardie’s The House of the Wind from Simon and Schuster’s Washington Square Press.

I don’t plan months ahead for almost any thing.  I have an idea what I will be reading but unless it’s a contest or interview I fly by the seat of my pants. I never guarantee I will read or review anything I am sent. I can usually find at least ONE good thing about a book. Usually.

What do you blog about?

Anything: That’s why I have two blogs and also have a companion blog on Tumblr & use Pinterest. Fangs, Wands, and Fairy Dust usually looks at the world of speculative fiction and/or the Paranormal in books, movies, and culture from an adult POV.  Sometimes I have an “Out  of Genre Experience.” Adult issues may be discussed so I ask that readers are 18 and over.  Of course, any such viewing by minors is the purview of the parent.

I mostly look at adult PNR or Urban Fantasy, but sometimes YA for an older audience. When I do I look at it as an adult.

I like to promote using YA books to keep the lines of parent-teen communication open.  They give kids and their folks a way to know each other and discuss ideas like sexual readiness and responsibility without making it personal. If a kid can reach a conclusion through discussion it is more likely to stick. Reading YA can also help know what your kid is talking about.

On Winged Effigy I will talk about whatever strikes my fancy. Today it’s religion, yesterday it was movies. I may also discuss adult issues here so again 18 and older.

When I say discuss adult issues I mean that I look at intimate scenes or issues of an adult nature and discuss them frankly but tastefully.

In a first run of True Blood season I will do a scene by scene look at the show each week.  That can keep me up until two or three in the morning.

I spend 10 to 16 hours a day working on my blogs.  That means reading, writing, networking and learning new internet stuff like HTML. I don’t use a rating system – I recommend or don’t recommend something  to people in various ways and varying levels of enthusiasm..  Eventually I would like to make money blogging or at least in social media.

When did you start using Zemanta?

Shortly after I began blogging in March 2010; basically as soon as I became aware of it. I am not certain it was available when I began but I started using it ASAP.  There is rarely a day that I don’t need it.

How does Zemanta help you blog better?

It saves me time by giving me access to images and articles for which I would otherwise have to search. Zemanta tells me what I need to do to use a picture and it saves readers time with the related articles feature.

The quote add-on that is available on Chrome  is a fantastic feature and I hope it is eventually on Firefox.

The guys at Zemanta are always working to improve everything they do.  If you go to Blog World at BEA you should stop by their booth to learn more.

Power User Tip (please share a Zemanta tip!)

1. If you see something like Cannot find editor just retry.

2. Make sure your own blogs are followed for access to your own previous posts.

3. If you are on Blogger and change  a picture’s sizeize  you can also change the  size of its envelope in HTML mode. There are two width numbers and they should match.

4. Make sure your Amazon affiliation is registered so that when a picture of a book cover says it is from Amazon you can use it as a buy link.

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Becky Mancuso defines the second screen viewing, a verifiable trend in 2011, as “the act of watching TV while concurrently engaging on a tablet or mobile device”. When watching TV, pay attention to the lower right corner of your TV screen: it doesn’t contain only the name of the TV station anymore, but also a Twitter hashtag.

NBC's The Voice actively incorporates social channels into the actual broadcast and encourages real-time discussion during showtime. (Image by Getty Images via @daylife)

2011 was the year of the return of collective TV viewing. You may not remember, but in the 1920s and 1930s listening to radio was a collective activity – families and friends and neighbors getting together and listening to their favorite radio show. The same thing happened again during the first years of TV. Social media and microblogging have now been making collective TV viewing possible again: we share the same experience in real time. Heck, how many jokes are there about teenage couples who watch the same show, but not in the same room? However, they share the same experience by texting each other and discussing the show in real time via Twitter or Facebook.

TV is a medium expanding into a multi-platform, engaged conversation with friends and strangers alike. Innovative TV stations are taking advantage of this new trend. Luke Dringoli describes well the three latest examples of the second screen viewing, including NBC’s The Voice and this year’s Grammy Awards. TV can integrate microblogging service Twitter into an episode of a TV show also in other innovative ways. Last year NBC’s comedy Community “live” tweeted character Annie’s move to her new apartment. All of the show characters were outfitted in plain blue t-shirts adorned with the hashtag #AnniesMove.

The Latin Americans have taken this a even further. Todos estamos conectados (Everyone Is Connected), the first cross-media show in Latin America, premiered last month on Canal 10 in Montevideo, Uruguay. The format was created by Damián Kirzner, head of New Sock, an audiovisual content production company. This innovative show allows viewers to participate via the Internet and generate content. Viewers can interact with hosts via webcam: they must sign up through Facebook and participate in an online casting. I asked Kirzner, an Argentine winner of a Young Creative Entrepreneur Award, given by the British Council, what other businesses can learn from their case. “We understand that new communication technologies propose creative alternatives that didn´t exist before, and we understand these new things as a possibility to innovate the creation of content and, above all, democratize the participation of the audience of the traditional mass media.”

Brands today are faced with the social media (including blogging) world. It’s still fresh, but already quite powerful. The brands that want to survive unscathed in this environment will have to adapt fast. Does all of the above mean we’re already moving into an era of making business decisions and changes in real time? How can business make decisions and changes in real time? Damián Kirzner says, “If we create content in real time, we have to make decisions in real time, too. This is common in live TV; if you combine new technologies with this logic, the process is the same. If we can measure the behavior of our online and on-air community, we can (must!!) make decisions in real time to improve results. Is this the future or already a reality? Our format, Conectados, shows that this is already a reality and, without a doubt, its future is great and it will develop around the world.”

And here we go again – engagement. A survival of a business, a TV show or a product or service, seems to depend on the engagement, a two-way dialogue between fans and the brand. Dringoli stresses, “A viewer should no longer be expected to sit through a program that offers no opportunities to be engaged with.” All of us, including bloggers, have gained a lot of power. We’re forcing brands to make necessary changes faster, preferably in real time.

Do you know any other example of brands making changes in real time, big or small? What do you think about the power of social media and blogs to make brands react faster?

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In a few sentences – Who are you?

I’m a senior at Northeastern University (in Bahston, MA) working as a Marketing intern at Zemanta for 6 months.  I’m a huge sports/music enthusiast, but one of my real addiction lies with TV shows.  I have an addictive personality and I love to binge on seasons of shows in one sitting. Don’t believe me? I finished 5 seasons of Lost in a little more than a week, sleep is for the weak! (RACK CITY.)

Where did you grow up?

I grew up on the mean streets of Philadelphia.  Well, not really, I just tell people I did, but in reality I grew up in a nice suburban home outside of Philly called Lansdale .. where there are way too many farms.

Who are your influences?

Simple, my father.  I would be nothing without the guiding hand of my pops.  From lessons of golf to girls, everything about who I am today is because of him and everything I strive to be is for him.  He took care of me, so now it’s my turn to take care of him!

What did you study?

Marketing, marketing, marketing.  Everything about marketing fascinates me, from consumer behavior to strategic marketing campaigns, it’s amazing to see the results of an effective marketing campaign and to observe and analyze how consumers react to it.

What is your role at Zemanta?

Working in the NY office as a Marketing intern.  Doing mostly blogger outreach (reaching out to bloggers old and new) and SEO-related work.

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

Probably Team Apple, despite the fact that I hate their customer service.  I was always a Windows guy growing up, but after getting my first Macbook, must say Apple grew on me.

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

Usually during my annual Co-op searches, I’m pretty picky with which company I want to interview with.  Zemanta caught my eye immediately and decided then and there that this was the job I wanted to pursue.  The rest is history!

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A Blog Ecosystem Explained
A blog ecosystem consists of all the people and their ideas interacting with an impressive array of support systems (tools, social media, platforms, plugins, themes, an editorial assistance like Zemanta, etc.). The entire array of people and their ideas inhabiting this ecosystem is called a community. How many people make up such a community – ecosystems vary in size – depends on a number of factors, making it very fluid. A blogger, the center of this ecosystem, has to know and understand well himself and other biotic components (people) of his community or those who are likely to join. He must also understand nonliving, abiotic components well in order to know how to reap their benefits – to engage with the ever growing community. The blogger must supply the needs of his community, such as relevant and engaging content. If the community’s needs aren’t met, it will move to a better blog (ecosystem). Therefore, you should regularly step out of your ecosystem and investigate other blogs and even interact with them in order to make your own better for your community.

How big and prosperous is your ecosystem? (Image via Wikipedia)

The Center: A Blogger
The center of this ecosystem is in my opinion a blogger; all the other components, a community and the abiotic ones, are his support system. A blog, a new ecosystem, is born in his head or their heads (if it’s a corporate blog). There are boundless reasons, why someone decides to blog – usually they have a more or less clear agenda: to share their views on issues, to position themselves on the market as opinion leaders and experts, to increase the sale of their products and/or services, to make a lot of money etc. Virtually everyone who decides to blog wants to accomplish something with it. The blogger thinks, contemplates and updates his blog. If he understands and knows his growing community well, he will make the right decisions, such as what about and how many times a week to blog, how long blog posts should be, what else they should include etc.

Blogger Needs a Good Support System
Everybody else, i.e. the community, and everything else make a support system that aids with making the blog (ecosystem) effective. Like in Nature, such an ecosystem can be permanent or temporary. How long will your ecosystem live, depends on how you utilize the support system.

In the next two weeks I will go into detail about biotic and abiotic elements that make our blog ecosystems live and prosper. I’m going to outline the elements of support systems to utilize them efficiently and discuss best practices.

How well do you know your blog’s ecosystem? What do you think of my view of a blog as an ecosystem?

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Elephants and Web Never Forget

Come on, with all seriousness, anyone even for a split second believed that every public tweet you’ve ever sent was not recorded for future use? That it will not be sliced and diced to profile you individually and as a group? Come one, what do you think Klout and PeerIndex are basing their analysis on? What do you think big brands that use UberVU, Radian6 and other tools are doing?

via: likeabanana.wordpress.com

Business Advice: Your Next Board Member Should Be A Woman

What might significantly change the way businessman look at gender inequality, and possibly classify it as a problem worth solving, is exactly this kind of research – pragmatic, practical, common sense even.

via: bostjan.konstrukt.it

Letting Go – Delegating Responsibility as your Startup Scales

Luckily, we added some tremendously talented individuals to our team in 2011. The hard part for me is to let go of responsibility, even when i fully believe in the team we built. I want to do everything. But, you cannot scale your start up if you don’t delegate responsibility to the team you built. You will also burn yourself out trying.

via: greggortz.wordpress.com

shared with Quotelove

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Who are you?

eComTechnology an ISO/Agent that focuses its services on merchant accounts and online payment processing services worldwide. We are operating our business realizing that the best way to be successful is to make our top priority our customers’ complete satisfaction. We look forward to helping you with all of your credit card processing needs whenever you need them.

We understand the importance of providing Internet merchants, whether standard e-commerce or high risk and offshore, with services that offer the most reliable and secure transaction features and credit card processing available on markets today. That’s why online merchants worldwide turn to eComTechnology for safe, real-time and cost-effective payment solutions.

With our network of partner processors we offer highly reliable payment gateways for live and batch processing, with a range of built-in services such as advanced fraud prevention tools, virtual terminal to process your phone/mail orders, recurring billing module, statement printing, live real-time statistics and more. Being a fully PCI compliant gateway, it supports Visa 3-D secure, MasterCard Secure Code and SSL processing.

Internet merchants from diverse industries are benefiting from our services including high risk merchants like adult entertainment, online pharmacies, online casinos, sportsbooks, bingo, betting exchanges, pre-paid cards, e-wallets, travel, e-wallet, replica products, and more. Our current merchants network includes: Canada, USA, UK, Denmark, Germany, Mauritius, Latvia, Panama, Hong Kong.

Our broad banking relationships, partnerships with other European payment service providers, dedicated customer service and technically perfected services are the foundation for our business relationship with you as our future customer.

What do you blog about? 

I basically blog about technology business being internet, website,mobile,environment. Then I have two yachting sites which I cover worldwide sailing races or try too. Toss in a resort site which then I blog about travel as well.  Then economics/business which goes on everything else covering the 20+ sites which are active with my posts daily.

When did you start using Zemanta?

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But do readers really come back because our posts are made of bullet points? I know. I am guilty of writing such posts, too. I almost listed aforementioned Green’s reasons with bullet points! They help both, the writer and the readers. But do they? Or do they only seem too? When is too much simply too much? And what is my sudden grudge against bullet points really about?

Image via Wikipedia

William Green is far from being the only one who writes how useful bullet points are in posts. There are thousands and thousands of blog posts about why bloggers should use them. On the other hand, I’ve noticed I’ve become weary of posts with bullet points. They seem to make arguments and especially tips more clear, but not necessarily more memorable. Yes, I notice them faster, distinguish them quicker, but in the end they are counterproductive: so many posts with tips how to do something, they make me tired and forgetful. I feel like I’m back in school and having trouble to remember what everyone is telling me I should. There are so many other ways how to highlight what you think it’s important or how one should do something.

I think my animosity and world-weariness (only temporary?) have something to do with so-called “number reasons/ways” headlines. You know the headlines like “7 Reasons How To” “10 Reasons Why” “51 Ways How To” etc. Heck, even I’ve done them many times, because they’re allegedly effective and attract more readers to your blog as do similar headlines on covers of tabloids and lifestyle magazines. But after reading and even writing so many posts in this manner I can’t take them anymore. I think I’m looking for something else, something more substantial, different. There’s simply way too much talk about how the online readers lack time, so they’re mostly scanners and this is how we should write.

At the beginning of this year, Brad Shorr wrote on this blog: “Certain headline formulas have been done to death. I’m tired of hearing about 5 things beef jerky can teach me about website design, or 10 things the Super Bowl can teach me about fluid mechanics. This sort of headline tells me a blogger is relying on gimmicks and perhaps doesn’t take his/her subject matter seriously. Is this the impression you want to give prospects and customers?” Well, I don’t really agree with the second part of his argument, but I really agree with the first half. If nothing else, google these types of headlines! You’re going to get hundreds of thousands of hits. This tells me we should do something different and unique to stand out from the crowd.

Green points out that the key is to get the right balance. I am not calling for total disappearance of bullet points and “number reasons/ways” headlines. However, it’s time to rethink them and at least from time to time stop doing what everyone else is doing.

Are you tired of bullet-point posts and “number reasons/ways” headlines? Or are you attracted to such posts? I’d like to hear what you think.

In a few sentences – Who are you?

I’m a young web designer cultivating my passion for life (food, outdoor sports and creative projects).

Where did you go grow up?

In Dinan, Britanny, France. A nice middle-age fortified town, by the way.

Who are your influences?

Lots of singers (Georges Brassens, Batlik, Johnny Cash, Jim Morisson, … ), lots of movie directors also… artists in general and of course the people I currently work with – I think being inspired by your colleagues is priceless.

What did you study?

Literature, arts and advertising. I figured out a few years ago that steering myself towards the web seemed like an obvious choice. Although, making movies and writing songs is something that I’ve always kept in mind.

What is your role at Zemanta?

Working in the UX team as a web designer, I make prototypes and sometimes implement them to improve the website or the new products. The UX team creates designs, taking user feedback into consideration, which is something totally new for me. I’m also appreciated for my cooking skills.

What are some blogs that at you follow that others may not know about?

www.thezigzagger.com : it’s a south african blogger that is one of Zemanta’s users. All of his posts are really either interesting or funny, but never boring.

loeildelinks.blog.canalplus.fr/ : blog of a french tv show dedicated to web artistic trends, I discovered lots of websites and blogs thanks to it. This one for instance : www.creativeapplications.net : blog dedicated to processing and geeky projects.

www.facebook.com/gopro : this is actually a fb group but I’ll mention it anyway. Lots of GoPro users post their videos here and it’s really cool. The gopro brought to people not only the chance to make hd movies with a camera the size of a cigarette box, but also to do it everywhere, at anytime, for any event…

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

Team Zemanta! Google and Apple keep on copying Zemanta but they don’t have as cool of an atmosphere. And last but not least, they are not located in the place to be: Slovenia!

I use a macbook but my phone is an android, I’m not an appleholic.

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

I was looking for a job in France and I knew that the only way to find something unusual was to move from my little city, Rennes (a bit bigger than Ljubljana, though). Paris wasn’t totally appealing to me, and I already had Ljubljana in mind, so I quickly got some data about working abroad and found an organization providing European scholarships. I already had two proposals via Linkedin when someone posted a comment about Zemanta on my profile. After an interview over Skype, my choice was made.

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Image via Wikipedia

I’ve had a lot of problems with writing lately. Problems with finding time to do it, focusing enough on doing it well and in the end making sense of what I wrote. I’ve tried having my blogging platform set as home pages so whenever I opened a new tab they would pressure me into thinking about writing. I’ve tried software like OmmWriter and Writer from IA that completely cancel out the rest of your computer habitat. But that didn’t work. In the end, when I did write something down, I had no idea if it made any sense for people who would read it. I had no idea if there was an audience for my writing. I figured out I was transported to my childhood when I was avoiding homework by cleaning my room. I settled for a while.

When we were talking to one of our users the other day he showed us an example of how he uses our service. I was shocked to see that he was actually making use of Zemanta like I always thought it would/should be used. He wasn’t trying to cancel out the world like OmmWriter and services that focus on focusing do. It seemed that he rather allowed the world to influence his writing. As he wrote he would take pauses and check what Zemanta had found – where Related Articles were on topic he would read up and came back to his text more informed than before. I gasped and said “This is our model user!”, which my peers confirmed as they were the ones who designed our service in the first place. But this made me cringe on a deeper level.
Out of all our user interviews that we had (a lot), this was the first blogger that allowed to dare to tap in the collective consciousness to find more knowledge. I’ve seen people use Zemanta as inspiration for writing Haikus. I’ve seen them take something we suggested and write a whole story around that. People are creative and hackers by nature.

However, this communicates something else to me. If we really sought out to change the way people write, how come a small percentage of our large user base actually uses this larger potential? Maybe the world isn’t quite ready to freely dive into the information fluxus and allow to be influenced by it? It’s a new concept altogether. Gregory Stock wrote about the “Metaman” awhile ago. He believed that the world is merging into a collective human super-brain. Stock truly did convey some really fascist ideas, but what I found interesting is that he said the whole process was happening on it’s own. It’s not like we have a story on our scrum board that says “Unify humanity’s knowledge”, it’s the fact that we are embodying a collective human dream — subconsciously. We are coding the future! Faster!

I think the future of writing lies in this opportunity to have an intimate connection with the real-time self-developing information world. It teaches us how to be more informed, self-critical and what is most imporant, it allows us to choose and become sources of information.

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Related Articles with Images

This is a biggie for us. Users will now have a choice to display related articles with an associated thumbnail image. The new option allows users to display the list in a more elegant and visually effective away. Users can still choose to add simple bulleted text links.

This feature is currently only available for users on WordPress 3.3 and above, using our plugin or browser extensions and based on the response we will expand it to other versions and platforms.

Improved Search

We cleaned up the user interface for the search functionality so that now users can more easily find it and refine their search for related images and articles. In addition to refining recommendations, the users can also start out searching out a topic to get some help and inspiration before they start writing.

Simplified WordPress Settings

All of the WordPress settings have been consolidated into one area (Settings > Zemanta), so there is no more need to toggle between the regular WP Settings and Plugin Settings.

Target=Blank by default!

Many of you have requested this feature! From now on, all inserted links will open a new browser window or tab. If you already played around with Preferences, you have nothing to worry about, this only affects new users.

Built for Speed!

We’ve made behind the scenes improvements that will make Zemanta faster and smoother. One of the improvements was in how we load up the recommended images. Instead of loading up all of them, we will load just the ones that you can see at the moment.

What do you think?

Let us know what you think of the new improvements. We’d love to hear how they are working out for you!

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Who are you?

My name is Lucas Whitefield Hixson, and I am a nuclear researcher based in Chicago Illinois.  Prior to nuclear research I was involved with developing computer applications that work with us, not for us.  The most exciting experience that I was able to bring to nuclear research stemmed from projects that I had worked with developing automated intelligence systems and computer experiences involving linked transformable objects that connect human thought, memory, sensory representation, communication, and computational possibility.

What do you blog about? 

Currently I research and publish nuclear-energy related research, news, FOIA documents, media, you name it.

When did you start using Zemanta?

I started first using Zemanta almost a year ago, and have found a few new ways to help really connect or link related information.

How does Zemanta help you blog better? 

Obviously as with most archives, it is imperative that information is sorted and filed in a consistent manner to ensure max efficiency and user friendliness.  Zemanta helps us create custom lists of related materials that our users love.  Every author has a different style they use to create lists.

Do you have a power user tip that you can share with our users?

We find that if we use a standard methodology for titling materials, that we can use Zemanta to create specially targeted lists of links.  All that is required is a string-format for the beginning of the title, either a document number or date.  When you create a new post with that style of title, Zemanta will auto suggest other posts from the same category and style, helping you create more targeted lists.

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With the evolution of the social customer, creating relevant and authoritative – thus findable and engaging – content has become more important than ever. Bloggers, writers, and marketers now have access to innovative tools and tactics to understand what interests their readers based on their search, sharing or reading patterns – and easily incorporate relevant context to render their content more compelling. Leveraging the many forms of social and behavioral consumer intelligence available to them, the new generation of writers can now develop and apply the right content, at the right time, to engage the right audience in the most effective manner possible.

Join us for a complimentary webinar featuring Pelin Thorogood, Managing Partner, Schulman+Thorogood Group and Andraz Tori, Co-founder and CTO of Zemanta to learn the 7 steps to creating content that is both easier to discover via search engines as well as more compelling to read. Pelin will also share the results of a recent research study she co-authored with online marketing and social media experts, Bryan Eisenberg and Jay Baer to explore how to enable more effective content creation, across a variety of writers and online content types.

Learn more about:

- The 7 steps to creating more findable and compelling content
- The new tools and tactics to engage the social customer
- The new metrics to measure and optimize content effectiveness

When: February 28 @ 12pm EST

According to Anil Dash, blog posts often age into something more substantial than they are at their conception, through the weight of time and perspective and response. (Image via Wikipedia)

A blog should be a multi-party conversation. Rarely anyone writes a blog only for herself.  We’re social beings. Besides, writing a blog is a bit of an ego trip. Last year, Anil Dash wrote that when we blog, our ideas can be effective over time as people have a chance to respond to what we write. He argues that blog posts often age into something more substantial than they are at their conception, through the weight of time and perspective and response.

We, the bloggers, expect our readers to respond to our blog posts: they can agree or disagree, but they put their thoughts into the conversation. This is a very important understanding of blogging; if you see your blog like a prelude to a conversation, then you should follow the next five points to encourage reactions to your blog posts and make it easier to respond.

1. Write as you talk
To get more readers, to get more people to talk to you and about your blog posts, you need to write as you would say the same things to your friends, colleagues, boss, etc. It doesn’t matter, whether it’s a personal, corporate or technical blog, TALK to your readers. There’s nothing worse than a blog without an opinion or a blog post that reads as if it had been written by a robot.

2. Ask for comments
At the end of each blog post ask your readers whether they agree or disagree with you. Ask them to share their thoughts and opinions with you(r blog). Basically, make them talk to you. You have to show that you’re interested in what others have to say about the topic you wrote about and that your blog isn’t only a one-way discussion. Nobody likes to hang out with people who listen only to themselves.

3. Encourage sharing
A comment box at the end of each blog post hasn’t been the only space where one could continue the conversation online, since the proliferation of social media, especially Twitter and Facebook. Many express their opinion about your blog post by simply tweeting about it.  Some add a link to your blog post on their Facebook page, where the conversation may be continued. Therefore, people may respond to your blog post, albeit on other platforms. So make it easy for them to share your blog posts elsewhere by adding a share button to your blog.

Moreover, promote your blog posts on other platforms online. I let people know about my new blog posts on my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. I don’t do it only once; I talk about the blog posts I crave a feedback for several times, even a few months after it was initially posted.

4. Talk about/to other blogs
Unless you’re really special, nobody’s going to carry a conversation with you, unless you talk about them too. So to spread awareness about yourself and your blog, you should talk to other blogs, too: leave comments on other people’s blogs, tweet about them, retweet them. And don’t just leave nice comments like: “What a great post, Nenad.” You can do that from time to time (we all like to be commended publicly), but your goal should be to add something meaningful to the conversation.

5. Reblogging
Bostjan wrote about reblogging: “Reblogging means to repost the content of another user’s post in our own blog post by adding our own comments; reblogging plays a double role: of social bookmarking and user commentary. That is how we build or expand a (meaningful) conversation.” So, instead of leaving a comment or in addition to leaving a comment, reblog a blog post and add your own comments. Or how about writing a blog post in response to another blog post? That is part of carrying on the conversation as well.

Do you see blogging as a multi-party conversation? What other suggestions would you add to the above five to spread the conversation?

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It’s Friday and that means one thing > it’s time for our Meet the Team Casual Friday! Today we present Drazen one of our recent additions to the Lubljana team.

In a few sentences – who are you and where did you grow up?

My name is Drazen Peric. I’m from asmall village near Pazin, Croatia but I’ve been living in Ljubljana for about a year and half (uh, time flies). Besides Zemanta and studying, I’m a big music fan who also enjoys visiting gigs, I’m helping my friend with Moonlee Records, sometimes messing around with design and photography and I’m trying to ride my bike as much possible. I need a new one, though

What is your role at Zemanta?

I’ve started to work at Zemanta as software tester, but following my other interests (mostly fronted and softcore backend development) I’ve already had a chat with few coworkers about some other possibilities - only problem is that studying takes a lot of my time currently.

What did you study?

I finished three years of Faculty of computer science in Rijeka, Croatia and I am trying to complete additional two years here in Ljubljana.

What are some blogs that you follow that others may not know about?

Well, I dig most of interesting articles all around the internet (Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Smashing Magazine etc.) but I could mention few other blogs/websites like Netokracija, 13. brat, Addicted to Nothing, jQuery4u and Swizec’s blog.

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

Probably Team Google because I find their services a lot of more useful, free to use and available to everyone. I don’t have problems with Apple, just don’t get their hardcore fans who will try to prove you Apple is the best, no matter what they do

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

I met this guy!

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Think of how we choose books based on how thick they are. Different readers will prefer different thickness. Think of school assignments that usually come with pretty clear instructions of their size and universities that specify a required length for theses and dissertations, as if length is a meaningful indicator of merit and hard work.

There are blog posts of many sizes. You can write like Seth Godin who is famous for his short posts, enjoy the social ripples that burst your cause, as your followers quickly and painlessly engage with them.

Seth Godin is famous for his short posts. (Image via CrunchBase)

Or you can be as long as anyone and write long posts like Glen Allsop. About two 2 years ago, Glen did a study on the most linked to blog posts on four of the most popular blogs in the world. He was surprised to find that the average length of really influential blog posts was 1,600 words, which is longer than an average blog post out there.

The majority of discussions on the size of blog posts miss the point. Yes, it seems that many prefer shorter blog posts or many want us to believe so. I, on the other hand, believe that longer posts are more likely to convert readers into your believers, evangelists.

Yes, I agree that it’s also about interesting, relevant and value adding content and of course knowing your audience well. However, the size really determines the type of audience and their engagement. If you want your posts to have a long, prosper life – to be linked to and be talked about for years to come, to make others think and even change their views or behavior – don’t be afraid to make them extensive. Exactly how many words make a longer blog post? Well that is a good question, isn’t it?

What do you think about my view that the size does matter, when all other factors are accounted for? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

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Image via Wikipedia

A common mistake by content marketers and SEOs is to concentrate their link building efforts exclusively on top-level pages like the homepage, while neglecting deeper pages across the site.

One of my favorite benefits of Zemanta is its ability to build deep links — i.e. links to pages other than the homepage and top-level pages.

Ultimately, deep links are a reflection of your site’s overall content quality. If you’re committed to producing excellent material — whether it’s a blog, white papers, research findings, videos, etc. — building links to this deeper content can be extremely beneficial for several reasons.

Deep links help boost domain authority, and improve SEO.

Domain authority is an increasingly important ranking factor for search engines. If you’ve earned a wide range of inbound links to blog posts, articles and other content across your site, that’s a signal to search engines that your domain is a credible resource that should rank for relevant search queries.

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, sums it up:

Domain authority is influenced by a myriad of factors, but an important one for search engine rankings in particular is almost certainly the distribution and diversity of links pointing to pages on the site. A website with thousands of links pointing to the homepage may be important, but a site with a good portion of those links pointing to a wide range of internal pages suggests to the engines that content from that site is much more deserving of ranking across the board.

What stands out from this explanation is the concept of deserving to rank. When you publish a new article or blog post, is it so valuable that a site owner or blogger covering a related topic would link to it as a resource? The key to building deep links is creating awesome content that people want to link to.

Deep links breathe life into older content that may otherwise be forgotten.

A new blog post will stay on your homepage or the main blog page for a relatively short period of time before it ultimately falls into the archive. When an old blog post gets a new link from a relevant source, that post gets some new life. Not only does the link help your SEO, but the content is placed in front of a new audience with an opportunity to attract new readers.

You can also help breathe life into older content by:

1. Sharing past content on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other networks, as well as in your email newsletter.
2. Cross linking to relevant past content when you publish new content.
3. Creating “round-up” posts that include links to previous popular content on your blog. These posts are usually more effective if you share excellent content from other sites, as well as your own.

Deep links attract targeted site visitors.

The homepage is not always the most relevant landing page for a specific audience or search query. Building deep links to pages across your site will help those internal pages rank for the keywords they’re targeting.

Whether a visitor arrives at your post from the source link directly, or whether he or she clicks through from Google because the page ranks for a specific query, the end result is a targeted site visitor who’s specifically interested in that content. And that often means lower bounce rates and higher conversion rates.

Additionally, it’s important to make sure every page on your site — whether it’s a blog post, article, product page, etc. — is strategically optimized for target keywords. This will not only help the content rank, but also increase CTR if it does rank. For more information on blog post optimization, check out my post at the Content Marketing Institute.

Deep links can help you determine what content is having the biggest impact.

Deep links can also serve as an indication of what content across your site is the most popular.  Is there a particular topic, author, or type of content that’s attracting the most links?

If links are a signal of authority to search engines, they should also be considered a signal of content popularity to bloggers and content marketers, much the same way Likes, tweets, +1′s etc. demonstrate content popularity.

Tracking what content is earning the most (and the best) links over time can provide invaluable insight into what your readers like best, and help you guide the direction of future content based on their interests.

David Reich is CEO of SixEstate, a content marketing company fusing professional journalism with intelligent SEO to help brands establish top blogs around their most important issues and causes — from polymer testing to auto technology, and everything in between. Follow David on Twitter.

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Who are you?

My name is Richard Butler and I am the webmaster for mytakeradio.com and also the host of the My Take Radio show. My Take Radio broadcasts live on Blog Talk Radio Network every Thursday at 11pm est.  We pride ourselves on being the crossroads of entertainment. Our on air product can be compared to   Opie & Anthony meets G4. Our  content is at times brutally honest but easy to follow for any reader.

I am a NY resident who was born and raised in NYC. During my day job I serve as a Product Analyst for a leading automotive warranty company. I share my home with my older brother and my two handicapped sisters who I am raising as their guardian. All the content I write about on the site and discuss on air are based on personal interests and experiences. My fiancee along with some close friends round out the website staff.

What do you blog about? 

We cover mixed martial arts, professional wrestling, video games and movies on air. On the site we expanded our content past the core four and also cover comics and tech as well.

When did you start using Zemanta?

I have been using Zemanta on the site for well over a year maybe even two.

How does Zemanta help you blog better? 

Zemanta allows my content to be layered and expanded with various links to sources like Wikipedia and IMDB. It also allows us to add additional tags we may have missed when generating content.

Do you have a power user tip that you can share with our users?

Become an Amazon affiliate. Zemanta works very well with Amazon and allows you to link to products which in term may help blogs generate revenue. Also, make sure to add your own site to the sources section so you can link to other content on you blog/site.

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

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Valentine’s day was one of the busiest days for our recommendation engine, but it wasn’t enough to beat out Christmas for the top spot. ‘Valentine’s day’ was still a very busy and popular term for our bloggers and it showed up over 11,000 times on Valentine’s day.

Love is in the Air – But Maybe Not for Flowers..

Seems that ‘chocolate’ and ‘marriage’ were closely correlated over the last few days and ‘dinner’ and ‘flowers’ weren’t as popular as we thought they would.

Dark Side of Valentine’s Day

Aside from the “bad dates” term getting a little bump over the last few days, some of the negative terms didn’t spike around this time so optimism and love win! On a second glance, the spike in “relationship breakups” end of January is curious, folks preempting in advance of Valentine’s day? Interesting! Spring holidays, you are up next!

Blogging Tops Advertising as Highest ROI for Online Marketing

Do you realize what you’re blogging about has more ROI worth to your business then traditional advertising does? According to a study done by Hubspot about one of their clients. Truth be told, this company has made great progress implementing an inbound marketing strategy using HubSpot’s internet marketing software.

via: www.bloggingtips.com

lijit (Photo credit: teamstickergiant)

We recently announced our partnership with Federated Media and in parallel also renewed our friendship with the folks over at Lijit.

Lijit was acquired by FMP late last year. The company’s online advertising services, audience analytics, and reader engagement tools are used by over 125,000 high-quality, niche and professional sites.

Online publishers and bloggers can use Lijit’s advertising services to monetize their unsold inventory. Lijit has direct partnerships with every major player in the industry – ad agencies, trading desks, DSPs, ad exchanges, ad optimizers, and ad networks – which enables them to maximize fill rates and CPMs.

Audience analytics are displayed in a real-time dashboard that provides insight into ad performance, pageviews, uniques, reader demographics, and other actionable data that helps publishers better understand their audience and grow their site. Other tools include an on-site search tool and reader widgets that help publishers and bloggers increase time on site, drive pageviews, and reduce bounce rates.

If you are looking for a great tool to help with ad delivery and analytics, please give Lijit a try.

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Your blog is like a print magazine. (Photo credit: Longzero)

“Websites have all begun to look the same and need to start looking more like print media,” said Mike McCue, the founder of Flipboard, the popular social media magazine iPad app. I would add that both, websites (blogs) and print media, have been trying to emulate each other lately: websites more and more resemble print magazines – rich in regularly updated content that is designed similarly to how we browse and read magazines; some (especially customer) print magazines are looking for ways to include multimedia on the paper, to make reading a magazine an interactive experience.

A customer magazine Virgin Media Magazine by Virgin Media is the latest example of spicing up paper with interactive multimedia. The magazine is accompanied by a downloadable augmented reality and image recognition app for Android or iPhones, Blippar, which customers can use to scan images in the magazine to access exclusive video content and bring the opening section of the magazine alive. On the other hand, check out blogs you’ve been reading and the blog(s) you’ve been writing. They are corporate or personal publications that to some limit follow the rules of the print media. Indeed, research shows that adding a photo to your blog, for example, considerably increases its traffic. (This is not only the case with photos. For example, as a former radio journalist I am especially drawn to Coppyblogger – it includes “radio shows”, i.e. audio recordings.)

Some blogs are like press agencies linking to other sources online they think we should read (check Zemanta’s own Bostjan’s personal blog; it is a blog that reblogs others as well as it is his own personal information repository). Others are like column pages in print mags or newspapers, third resemble print magazines.

Therefore, if you want your personal/corporate blog to be read even more, and who doesn’t, then spice it up with multimedia. I am a self-taught blogger; what I know about computers and the Internet is what I taught myself, mostly by trial and error. But thankfully, the software development makes our lives so much easier. I don’t need to be a computer geek (in a positive sense of course) to be able to add photos, links, videos, and/or audio recordings to my blog. Others have been making this easy for us (including Zemanta).

Basically, you can do anything you imagine. By writing a blog, you’re already a publisher. Just think of your favorite magazine and add stuff you’d normally find there. This is how you will build a long-term relationship with your readers and increase traffic to your blog. So, just do it. And enjoy the ride.

Do you see blogs the way I see them, too? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Have you seen this interesting retro infographic that easily explains a complicated concept such as the US debt? It has been circling the Internet in the past couple of weeks. It shows everything that’s wrong with the US budget. It’s so simple, yet so powerful. I did the same for my home country and came to similar conclusions.

We, the bloggers, have done this! We’re living in the world when newspapers are especially panicky and are looking for new ways to survive in the environment where many expect great content to be free online. It’s premature to proclaim that metered paywalls will save the newspaper industry. Some quality media report success, others don’t. However, the traditional mass media online seem to be making it harder for many to access their stories. This is an opportunity bloggers should seize; not just because many don’t want to pay for information online, but also because many still don’t know how to tell compelling stories and opinions in simple and memorable ways.

Michael Ausiello

Bloggers are publishers. And everyone can be a blogger. Moreover, many former editors, journalists and activists have already left their employer (the traditional media) and set up a lucrative blog – an alternative source of information and opinions online (for example, The Huffington Post, TV Line by Michael Ausiello, etc.).

And then there are us, opinionated individual bloggers, each with different skills: we tell stories with words, pictures, infographics, live blogging (let’s not forget live blogging during the hurricane Katrina), videos, etc. All of us together and each one individually have been gradually taking over the role of generating public awareness about issues around us. We, the bloggers, have become an indispensable source of boundless information. And each one of us uses the storytelling technique he/she is most familiar with and good at. And we are free to express ourselves as we want to. That’s why we are able to tell stories in so many different and especially creative ways and make an impact.

In the end, I’d like to stress I’m not crying the end of journalism or the mass media apocalypse. No, what I’m saying is that the blogosphere has become a very strong force; bloggers are (becoming more and more) influential and beneficial to us all. We are finally a meaningful alternative.

Do you believe that bloggers can do what traditional media for whatever reasons can’t?

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I am biased, way biased. As a journalist, geek and extremely curious guy, who’s always afraid he may miss something, I constantly crave more information and news. And I’m an avid reader. Indeed, static websites don’t do much for me. They may dazzle me with their oh-so-great design, but if they’re not regularly (in my case as regularly as possible) updated with great new content, I stop caring; I simply don’t have any reasons to come back.

There’s already been so much blogged about blogging and especially company blogs. Zemanta’s own Bostjan Spetic last week blogged about why he thinks every professional should at least consider blogging. I decided to list my own reasons why I think a company blog adds more value than a static website – from a consumer’s perspective. (Let’s make one thing clear. A blog is a website, but a much more dynamic one.)

Here are my four reasons why I prefer company blogs vs. static company websites.

(Photo credit: the Italian voice)

1. Blogs are about me, not them

The company blogs I follow regularly publish relevant and engaging content. They are all about how to make my life easier (what to do when I get sick, how to write better, how to get more customers for my small business, how to learn to knit sweaters, what are the best ways to clean windows, etc.). On the other hand, static websites are mostly about the company (who they are, what they do, where they are, why they are the greatest, they they they). I’m sorry, but I’m selfish and I care about my problems, because “they are mine”, as Ally McBeal once said.

2. Blogs engage me

Good blogs I follow are also engaging. They make it much easier for me to engage in a two-way conversation with the company and others who read the same blog. Good blogs make me feel important (we all like that), make me think, make me share my views on the issue at hand. Besides, our interactions can be easily transferred to and shared on social media.

 3. Blogs help me make better purchasing decisions

All of the above helps me make better purchasing decisions. I become loyal to the brand, because I feel like we have built a great relationship, because I feel that company really cares about me and my problems, and their products and/or services can satisfactorily solve them.

4. Blogs make me smarter

In the end, good company blogs satisfy my curiosity, they actually can be blamed for my reading more. They are a trusted media outlet, a great source of information I like to follow regularly as much as any other favorite news websites. They make me (feel) smarter.

It looks like I’m not alone in this. According to Hubspot’s 2011 State of Inbound Marketing Report, “the use of social media and company blogs as marketing tools not only gets your company better brand exposure, but it also generates leads that result in real customer acquisition«. Their study shows that 57 per cent of those using company blogs have acquired a customer from a blog-generated lead; this is an increase of 11 per cent since 2010. Moreover, their 2011 survey confirms a direct correlation between blog post frequency and new customers acquired!

What do you think? For what other reasons are company blogs better than websites? Do you think differently? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The Real Reason the Inc. 500 Is Made Up of a Bunch of Crappy Bloggers

This article won’t be long. And it won’t be very romantic either. But it needs to be said, so here goes. I was reading a great post by Mitch Joel a few days ago that led me to the following article found at ReadWriteWeb , who wrote about a recent study the University of Massachusetts did on the blogging trends of the Inc. 500.

via: www.thesaleslion.com

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Last weekend I read Antonio Cangiano’s (IBM) great blog post on why every professional should consider blogging. It inspired me to think more about why we all should do it. Here are my five main reasons why you should at least consider blogging if you’re not already doing it.

1. Blogging improves your storytelling skills

Blogging is about storytelling, either in words, with pictures, videos or podcasts. Storytelling is nowadays essential part of (content) marketing. But storytelling isn’t so much about talent; it’s a skill that needs constant nurture. Practice makes you better. And blogging is a perfect opportunity to polish your storytelling skills.

2. Blogging improves your communication skills
By polishing your storytelling skills, you also improve your communication skills. Are you shy, introverted, do you have low self-esteem, maybe you don’t know how to sell yourself? Blogging will help you overcome these obstacles. Communication essentially means to convey information to others. The better your communication skills the better you can sell your ideas, skills and knowledge to others. This is one of the reasons why I started blogging in the first place.

3. Sharing is caring
I am a whole-hearted advocate of the philosophy that knowledge is to be shared. Blogging can be a great platform for sharing what you’ve learned and know with others who may be interested in what you have to say and learn from you so they can improve their lives.

4. Position yourself as a thought leader
Blogging helps you build corporate and personal credibility. This is how you can position yourself as a thought leader in the marketplace. Indeed, thought leaders are perceived experts and everyone is expert in something. When done right, blogging can give thought leaders great visibility in the search engine results. Therefore, blogging connects you with others. That’s how great blogging can be.

5. Blogging builds your personal information repository
This is another reason why I decided to blog. Every day we are bombarded with tons of information we try to consume. Every one of us has his/her own way of looking for particular information. Blogging, however, helps archive information you will sooner or later need again. I regularly browse my blog and in this way remind myself of issues, solutions, and ideas I might have already forgotten, but are still useful. Sometimes it’s fun and a bit of an ego boost (we all need it from time to time) to check how far you’ve come.

What do you think about these 5 main reasons why everyone should blog? What other reasons would you add to these five?

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We are extremely excited to announce a new strategic partnership with Federated Media where we will jointly work together on new products to enable bloggers to connect with brands.

The products that we will create together with Federated Media will bring tangible revenue to independent writers. We believe this is a major next step in building the blogosphere as an alternative to traditional media.

The partnership will provide bloggers with a content authoring plug-in that invites them to create brand-sponsored content in real-time. Authors will now start the conversation via sponsored posts and brands will then be able to join the conversation in a transparent, authentic and respectful way.

This new offering will be available in addition to our current offering that helps content marketers and SEO experts to leverage their high-quality content.

Find the link to the official press release here. We’ll release more details about the products and their availability as we get closer to production but would love to hear your feedback in the meantime!

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This week we talked to another awesome Zemanta power user Stephanie Bernaba who blogs at Momma Be Thy Name.

Who are you?

My name is Stephanie. I am a former behavioral health professional turned stay-at-home mom of a two-year-old boy and one-year-old fraternal twins.

What do you blog about? 

I think the better question is what don’t I blog about? Obviously, a large chunk of my writing centers around my parenting (mis)adventures, marriage, and navigating life with three babies aged two and under, but I also write about society, the challenges of being a woman, and topics that otherwise fascinate, confuse, or irk me.

When did you start using Zemanta?

Honestly? I started using Zemanta as soon as I noticed it in the bottom right-hand corner of my WordPress screen, which would be the better part of my public blogging career.

How does Zemanta help you blog better? 

Zemanta both saves me time by effortlessly making images and related content available to me and enhances my own content with the resources provided. It’s intuitive, and takes most of the work out of adding interest to my blog posts.

Do you have a power user tip that you can share with our users?

When I find an image I wish to use, I right-click rather than left-click it, which gives me the freedom to then scroll through my work and choose the most appropriate place to paste it. Also, I adjust image size after I insert it into a post by clicking back into the image and adjusting the size percentage, so it doesn’t overwhelm the text.

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

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Screenshot of Zemages

Our Ljubljana team had a hackday past Friday and came up with some awesome hacks. We’ll highlight them throughout the week on the blog. Here’s the first one.

Many bloggers depend on our image recommendation to get great images into their blog posts.

Need access to cool images but aren’t a blogger? No problem! Zemages allows you to search by keyword and you will receive a list of related images.

Unlike Google Image Search, recommended images shared by Zemages are covered by a Creative Commons

You can try out Zemages at:

http://code.zemanta.com/drazen/zemages/

Disclaimer: This project was completed in one day, so it may be a little rough around the edges.

This hack was brought to you by Ron (design) and Dražen (html, js, css etc), and is based on Rok’s idea (who had another idea that he worked on).

Let us know what you think!

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7 Tips to Build Quality Backlinks for Better SEO – Blogging Tips

According to data by Hitwise, an authority when it comes to online analytics, search engine traffic keeps on increasing every day, and some fields are even getting as far as a 20% increase in searches in a year, amidst the buzz about social media these days. SEO traffic has also been proven to be more effective than other sources of traffic over the years, and around 80% of visitors that land on your blog through a long tail search keyword are first time visitors.

via: www.bloggingtips.com

shared with Quotelove

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Image by the tartanpodcast via Flickr

In a recent post about bad blogging habits I touched on the subject of conversion. This is an important issue for any business blogger, so let’s examine it in a little more detail.

Every business blog should have a conversion plan. It’s really as simple as figuring out what type of response you’re looking for, and then crafting deliverables that visitors can act on. Strategic goals and deliverables are limited only by a blogger’s imagination; here’s a short list of possibilities to serve as a starting point for some brainstorming.

Strategic Blog Conversion Goals

• Generating orders (sales)
• Setting up meetings (lead generation)
• Encouraging social shares (referrals, brand awareness)
• Improving search rankings (SEO)

Conversion Deliverables

• Order forms embedded in blog posts, limited time offers (sales)
• Webinar scheduling, white paper downloads (lead generation)
• Strategically placed social share buttons, social media contests (referrals, brand awareness)
• Keyword research, content optimization (SEO)

The two points I want to stress:

1. Always have strategic conversion goals and deliverables to support them
2. Don’t rely solely on brand awareness and SEO — as so many bloggers do

Why do so many bloggers shy away from conversion and instead operate information charities, giving away great content and getting nothing in return?

Well, I can’t speak for other bloggers, but I can summarize the things that interfered with my ability to achieve business goals with my business blog, to develop a conversion mentality. Does any of it sound familiar?

Eliminate the Build-It-and-They-Will-Come Mindset

All content needs to be marketed, pushed, promoted. Big media outlets have big marketing budgets: if advertising is good enough for The New York Times, it should be good enough for us, too! The fact is there’s a wealth of great information being promoted online. It finally dawned on me that no matter how valuable my posts were, I’d have to compete for attention.

Overcome the Fear of Selling

Even though I have lots of sales experience, I feel awkward going into sales mode in social media — probably because social media is so informal, conversational and relationship-oriented. If I’m reluctant to push myself and my services, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for bloggers who have never sold anything. The best way I’ve found to overcome the fear of selling is to start doing it. Thinking about it doesn’t get you anywhere, but practice really does make perfect.

Package Up You Services

It took me a while to figure out how to bundle up my services into packages that can be effectively promoted on a blog. This involves things like writing and designing an attractive whitepaper for download, creating a polished presentation for a webinar, building out a formal, written training curriculum, etc. People are more inclined to say “yes” to a tangible, well defined product, service, or consultation. Calls to action that are vague, such as “contact us to learn more” or “let’s talk about your needs” don’t provide sufficient motivation.

Brad Shorr is Director of Content and Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago SEO and digital marketing agency. The firm specializes in helping middle market B2B firms, with clients that do everything from vehicle tracking devices to dust exposure monitoring. Brad has been blogging since 2005 and writes frequently on social media topics. Follow Brad on Twitter and connect with Brad on Google+.

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According to Jeff Jarvis, a famous blogger, links are currency. “Links grant authority. Links build branding. Links equal value.” He wrote this almost 7 years ago. Since then, retweeting and later reblogging have become popular and most convenient ways of quoting others online. However, I strongly believe that reblogging adds more value and brings more credibility to you and your blog than retweeting. The impact of reblogging is usually more profound and long-lasting.

Some of our users may be familiar with our experiment with the ‘Reblog’ button; Tumblr facilitates reblogging and since 2010 WordPress has had an option to ‘Reblog this post’. Reblogging means to repost the content of another user’s post in our own blog post by adding our own comments; reblogging plays a double role: of social bookmarking and user commentary. That is how we build or expand a (meaningful) conversation.

And then there is an ever more popular retweet option on Twitter, which enables us to quickly share a tweet with all of our followers. However, Twitter has its limitations; tweets can only be 140 characters long. This prevents an (effective) expression of our thoughts about the content of the tweet we retweeted. At the end of the day, tweets are like sound bites: short, attention seeking and usually with a very short-term effect. Let’s not forget that Twitter resembles a 24-hour news program. Rarely anyone follows a Twitter thread 24/7, hence your retweets are going to be missed by many. According to 2010 research by Sysomos (they examined 1.2 billion tweets), more than 90 per cent of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published. This means that if a tweet is not retweeted in the first hour, it is very likely that it will not be retweeted.

Retweeting may be more convenient, in many cases even a more spontaneous act of letting our followers know what they should read, listen to or watch on the Internet. It is a fast way of sending them to a specific link. A retweet option lacks an opportunity to expand on the link more thoroughly. And here’s where reblogging steps in.

Reblogging isn’t just a potent means of secondary content promotion, it makes quoting others easier and consequently we can expand on the reblogged blog post and continue/build the conversation. Our arguments aren’t lost by a “sound bite” and we can take time to argue our case. This is how we make ourselves more credible, no matter the topic or the nature of our blog. This means a higher added value and that is why I believe the effect of reblogging is much bigger and more profound than the effect of retweeting (but a combination of both is even better). And let’s not forget that critical thinking with developed arguments is beneficial to us all. Indeed, the humanity doesn’t evolve through sound bites.

What do you think? Do you agree with me? Disagree? What are your experiences with reblogging? Share your experience with us.

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Use Zemanta To Improve Your Blogging

Personally I love blogging. I write for the company blog on a regular basis, but I also write on several other blogs. However I’d be the first to admit that I am not afraid of taking advantage of whatever tools I can find to help speed up the process and improve it.

via: blog.blacknight.com

Links can lead to increased shares

One of the reasons I’m a big fan of Zemanta is that all the content we publish on our blog gets recommended to other bloggers who are actively covering related topics. It’s a totally white-hat way to grow your audience, and build quality links to your blog without much effort — well, other than the significant effort required to publish compelling content in the first place.

From an SEO standpoint, links make the world wide web go ’round. Inbound links are a major factor in how well your site ranks in search engines — and search engines drive the vast majority of web traffic.

Great content will naturally attract quality links — the kind of relevant, trustworthy links search engines like best. You can help your blog attract those quality inbound links using Zemanta, of course. Here are five others ways you can use your blog content to attract natural, high-quality, relevant inbound links.

1) Invite Guest Bloggers

The typical approach to guest blogging is to go out and try to publish a post you’ve written on a popular blog in your niche. Here’s another approach: Try inviting bloggers and experts — ideally with significant followings of their own — to write a guest post for your blog. Just as you’d promote your own content, they’re going to promote the guest post they wrote for you across their network. They’ll link to it from their own sites and blogs, and share it with their followers attracting likes, tweets, and additional links resulting from the extra exposure.

Amanda Record at ThunderSEO offers some great advice on how to launch this type of guest blogging program.

2) Create a Team Blog

An extension of the strategy above is to create a team blog, with regular contributors publishing content, sharing it with their networks, and linking to the blog from content they publish elsewhere.

The Content Marketing Institute and SEOmoz both have awesome team blogs that now serve as the foundation for their vibrant and growing communities.

3) Conduct Interviews

Most companies have a media page, or will promote media coverage and interviews via their company blog. If you can get an industry expert to participate in an interview on your blog, you’ll likely receive some great links from that person’s company website, personal blog, as well as shares across his/her network. Your post will also become a source for other outlets looking to cover that person or company, and could be quoted or linked to dozens of times.

Over at the SixEstate blog, we conducted an interview with Unthink founder and CEO Natasha Dedis. Not only did this interview earn dozens of shares, it got a link from Unthink’s media page, and was cited at Digital Trends.

4) Link Out Often

Linking out to relevant content you cite or quote on your blog is a great way to get noticed by those sources. Most bloggers, journalists, webmasters, etc. will know when they receive an inbound link. If you link out, there’s a good chance you’ll get some link love and social shares in return. This doesn’t mean you’ll get a link from every source that you link to, but over time you’ll be rewarded.

Linking out also makes your content more credible and authoritative to begin with — which is the best way to build an audience.

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, presents five reasons you should be linking out from your site, and refutes some of the arguments against linking out.

5) Outreach & Promotion

In addition to standard social promotion for blog posts — like tweeting new content, sharing it on Facebook, etc. — I like to do some personal outreach, as well. I’m not talking about spamming everyone you know and telling them to read, share, and link to your fabulous post. I’m talking about reaching out with a personal email or DM on Twitter to select people you know will be interested.

A good candidate, for example, would be someone you’ve just cited or quoted in a post. They’ll likely notice this on their own eventually, but why not shoot over a quick note while the post is still fresh? This can also be a nice “in” to request an interview.

David Reich is CEO of SixEstate, a content marketing company fusing professional journalism with intelligent SEO to help brands establish dominant thought leadership positions around their most important issues and causes. SixEstate manages a growing network of experienced journalists with writing credits from such outlets as The New York Times, SELF, Glamour, and many other renowned publications and news sites. We’re always looking for talented writers and editors to join our team. Follow David on Twitter.

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Six reasons why your brand belongs on Tumblr

A unique, vibrant social community filled with creative minds, sharing millions of photos, and posts every day doesn’t have marketers knocking down the door to engage with all those users. Why? Because marketers are afraid to take chance at something they’re not used to, something they may fail at. That’s Tumblr’s story.

via: thecontentlab.icrossing.com

If you are not using Zemanta on Tumblr yet, please consider trying it out via our browser extensions.

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What do you blog about? 

It depends on the blog and its audience.

I blog for business on a couple of blogs, so the content there would be a mixture of marketing information about our new products and services as well as articles about internet news and policy. However I’m also a very active blogger in my spare time and I write about a wide range of topics including technology, entertainment, weight loss (I’m currently on a diet) and travel.

When did you start using Zemanta?

Shortly after you initially launched I think. I didn’t realize at the the time and only found out that I was quite an early adopter when I got to know Andraz

How does Zemanta help you blog better? 

It helps me to take my blogging to the next level, while also speeding up mundane tasks. I use the image options to add both my own photos and those from your sources to blog posts and give them a visual “lift”. The tagging options help speed up what could be quite a boring and time-consuming task. Using tags helps generate “related articles” as well as helping both users and search engines to navigate a site’s content and discover your “long tail”. Zemanta takes the pain out of the process, so that adding tags to posts is quick and painless and thus makes the entire experience better for me, as the author, and for the audience that hopefully consumes the content.

The related articles options help me to suggest relevant content from both my own trusted sources and ones that Zemanta “discovers” based on my writing.

Do you have a power user tip that you can share with our users?

Take the time to setup your Zemanta account and fill out the preferences as completely as possible. By setting up your own profile you can improve the relevancy of the service’s suggestions while also saving yourself time.

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Do Social Media & Social Video Really Exist?

In Part 2 of my interview with Jason Falls co-author of “No BullShit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing, we passionately discuss what’s good about social media today, what’s BS, and what needs to change for doing truly “social” business. The following is an excerpt from my 27-minute video interview with Jason..

via: www.reelseo.com

Our friend, Tim Moore of CrushIQ along with Jure Klepic is hosting a chat tonight on Twitter on social business strategy as a precursor to their CrushIQ Napa conference in February where we’ll be talking about blogging. Join them starting at 9pm ET using #crushnapa hashtag.

Image via Wikipedia

Imagine a reality where anyone that has an issue with the content that you publish has the ability to go to the authorities and have them shut you down before any legal process starts and keeps you shut down until the process runs its course, even if the complaint is frivolous. Crazy, right?

Not only does this legislation in essence threaten how we access, publish, and share web content, it also sets a dangerous precedent that may threaten our other liberties and encourage other countries to enact similar legislation.

Don’t let Congress pass this! Get involved and contact your representative to let him know how you feel about it!

Find out more on how to get involved on the official SOPA Strike web site.

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Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy

Hear that, content marketers? That is the sound of inevitability. It’s the sound of you creating a Google+ page for your business and working diligently to build up a network there with content, conversation, and the occasional cat photo. Goodbye … free time. Shameless (yet eerily fitting) references to Agent Smith of The Matrix aside, here’s why…

via: www.copyblogger.com

What do you think? Are you using Google+ to promote your blog and your organization? Are you getting good results? Let us know in the comments or via Twitter.

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This change coincided with my use of Zemanta and their blog recommendation software. (Tip: use Zemanta, it has additional SEO benefits besides their comment recomendations) I started having so much fun with images and was receiving really positive feedback that I started looking around for my own images. Flickr was by far my favorite place to find images because so many people licence their pictures under Creative Commons that as long as you’re not using it for commercial purposes and you link to the original, you can usually find a pictures to use without the fear of being sued. Finding one’s for commercial use, with no attribution is more difficult. (Tip: There’s lots of places to find free use pictures but Flickr is your best bet)

Result 1: I found my time on site and my pages per visit increased when I started using pictures. The more pages someone visits and the longer they spend on your site will usually lead to higher engagement in the form of comments and they are more likely to share your posts via social channels.

This is about the time that I stumbled across all the great Lego pictures out there (Balakov, is probably my favorite) and really started having fun with things and for the better part of two years I’ve mostly been using Lego and Star Wars Lego pictures. Pretty soon Lego pics kind of turned into sub-branding for me. When my posts get picked up on other sites if it has a Lego picture in it, people instantly recognize that and associate it with me. I’m not the only one that uses Lego pics, I’ve seen Mashable and other top blogs use these from time to time and I invariably get someone passing on a note to me about it.

The Lego pictures were working out so well for me that I decided about a year ago to start taking my own Lego pictures, in case I did ever want to do something commercial with my content, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting the rights. Now my pictures aren’t nearly as good as the ones I was using before, but that hasn’t seemed to matter. If anything my approach of using Instagram adds a unique look, which is nice since Lego pics have become even more common with social media bloggers.

Result 2: While it was an unintended consequence my frequent use of Lego pictures aided in my personal and site branding which extended off my site and even when the post or picture wasn’t mine.

What I’ve learned is that no matter how relevant the image might be to the post, almost any image is better than no image, but it’s better to have an image that enhances and even helps explain the post.

There’s also the additional benefit of SEO. Here’s some quick stats from my blog for the the last month. These stats are pretty normal. Rounding out the numbers for easier math, over the last 30 day’s I’ve received:

• 8, 000 total visits
• 3,000 from organic search
• Top 50 keywords brought in 1,500 (classic longtail)
• Of the top 50, eight were keywords from image results
• Those eight image search results brought in 150 visits

That may not sound all that impressive, but lets analyse this. The top “keyword” for all blogs now is (not provided) this is because any logged in Google user’s search results aren’t tracked. (not provided) added up to about 500 visits, or 1/3 of the traffic generated by my top 50 keywords. Among those there were bound to be a few image searches. I also didn’t look past my top 50 search results but I’m sure there were more image results than that. So while image search results only accounted for 5% of the the traffic of the top 50 organic search

And sure that’s only 2% of my total traffic but if this were advertising, a 2% conversion rate is huge. And I could probably increase those results if I followed these SEO tips . I currently don’t add alt text or caption very often. This is something that I should do more. (Tip: A few keywords, alt text and captions help search engines index your images.)

Result 3: Using images in my post led to an 5% increase in organic search traffic and a 2% increase in overall traffic. Plus there’s still room to improve if I followed better SEO practices.

So let’s summarize: Adding images to your blog posts, lead to a more engaged audience, stronger branding an an increase in traffic, just for doing one thing that’s actually quite easy and fun.

About Tac Anderson - Who am I? I consider myself a Digital Communications Phenomenologist. To make things easier I usually call myself a social media anthropologist, same thing really. I’m usually employed as a Communications Strategist. I’m a total business model junkie and love business disruption. That’s usually where you’ll find me. Other than that, I’m the husband of Jen, father of 3 and a Gen Xer into indie rock, mountain biking and snowboarding. For my brief professional history check out The Horse That Brought Me Here.

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thenextweb.com
WordPress doubles paid storage space for WordPress.com customers, for free   Jan. 6, 2012
	WordPress bloggers that utilise the company’s paid WordPress.com have been given a new year present after the company decided to double the amount of storage available to users that order additional hosting on its servers. Announcing the upgrades on its official blog, WordPress has upgraded the existing 5GB, 15GB, 25GB, 50GB and 100GB packages…

www.jeffbullas.com
The 14 Keys to Successful and Influential Global Blogging   Jan. 5, 2012
	Tweet The death of blogging has been predicted for many years. Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace provide easy to use multimedia publishing platforms to share your life’s experiences and insights with the world, that at first glance seemed to offer an alternative to blogging that would lead to its demise.

Did we miss anything fun? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

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Image by francescopozzi via Flickr

Almost every blogger starts out bright eyed and bushy tailed, expecting to conquer the world. Unfortunately, reality intrudes, and suddenly blogging loses its luster and becomes a chore; energy is replaced by ennui. This state of mind leads bloggers to become sloppy and silly — driving readers and business away.

These seven bad blogging habits are signs your blogging spirit needs rejuvenation and renewal. Correcting (or avoiding) these habits will help your blog generate traffic, engagement, leads, referrals and all the other goodies that go along with conquering the world.

1. Cheesy, Overworked Headlines

Certain headline formulas have been done to death. I’m tired of hearing about 5 things beef jerky can teach me about website design, or 10 things the Super Bowl can teach me about fluid mechanics. This sort of headline tells me a blogger is relying on gimmicks and perhaps doesn’t take his/her subject matter seriously. Is this the impression you want to give prospects and customers?

2. Superficial Posts on Overworked Topics

I’ll confess this is one I’m guilty of – shame on me! There’s no getting away from the fact that certain topics get a whole lot of attention, but if you’re just going through the motions, if you’re publishing a lame post that adds nothing new to the conversation — well, why are you publishing the post? If you’re publishing as a pure SEO play or to keep up with an arbitrary posting schedule, rethink what you’re doing. Mediocre content fails in the long run.

3. Not Citing Sources for Statistics

Some bloggers toss statistics around like confetti — more for decoration than illumination, to paraphrase David Ogilvy. Making unsupported statistical assertions inspires confidence in only 22.3% of blog readers, and arouses suspicion among the other 72.7% of blog readers. (I made up those statistics so you could see how you react to them. Here is a deep analysis on evaluating Internet research sources that demonstrates how serious a business statistical attribution should be.)

4. Incessant Self Promotion

Posts and blog sidebars that scream, “Buy Something Now!” smack of desperation. People are either browsing or buying, and 95% of the time, they’re browsing. If you’re screaming, “Buy!” when the vast majority of your readers are thinking, “Browse,” your blog is driving away the very people you want to attract.

5. Total Lack of Self Promotion

This one might surprise you, but I think a business blog does need to convey that it exists for a business reason. The overriding purpose of a blog may be to inform or educate, but if you don’t offer some way for a reader to convert, you’re sending a message that you’re an information charity rather than a business. Assuming that people will buy from you just because you publish brilliant content is usually wishful thinking, and is never a business strategy.

6. Widgetitis

A lot of bloggers never met a widget they didn’t like. If your sidebar looks like a circus, your business will be taken just as seriously. Sidebar gimmickry is frequently used as a substitute for serious thinking. The only cure is a complete widgetectomy.

7. Rambling Posts

Sometimes, writing is a substitute for thinking rather than its fruit. Blaise Pascal said, “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” Editing, refining, and clarifying take effort. Vomiting content all over readers may be easy, but does not make for a pleasurable reading experience.

Brad Shorr is Director of Content and Social Media for Straight North, a full service Internet marketing agency. The firm specializes in helping middle market B2B firms, with clients that do everything from mobile credit card processing to electric gloves. Brad has been blogging since 2005 and writes frequently on social media topics. Follow Brad on Twitter and connect with Straight North on Google+.

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Our servers were quite busy churning out recommendations this year at incredible rate. So how many pieces of content did we have available to recommend? Glad you asked!

There are about 10 million articles and since we recently improved our image recommendations, there are 212 million images available for recommendations.

In 2011 we made the following:

• 370 million related article recommendations

• 397 million in-text links recommendations

• 862 million images recommendations

This, in hand resulted in 1.31 million posts that were enhanced by Zemanta in 2011. A busy year indeed! Let’s see what happens in 2012. Happy New Year!

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Jure Vizintin – UXer Extraordinaire

Some of our users might have already met Jure as he’s been busy interviewing our users and finding out how they use Zemanta and showing them new cool ideas we’re working on.

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

Throughout the summer I was shoveling soil, cutting wood and pondering if I should ever return to the digital world or rather start some agriculture and landscape related business. And then Boštjan called me out of the blue and made such an interesting case with Zemanta, that I had to give it a try. So far it’s been a wild and inspiring ride.

Read Jure’s full interview.

Jure Ham – Man who needs no sleep – The Hamax!

One of the superstars that joined us over the summer is Jure Ham who’s already come out with some amazing work mostly on front-end improvements and some fun hacks, like this awesome Chrome extension!

What are some of the blogs that you follow that others may not have heard about? 

Some of the blogs that I frequently follow are The Skeptics Guide to Universe, Reasonable Doubts and Merseyside Skeptics Society.

Read Jure’s full interview.

Major Tom Primožic – Backend Jedi

Tom gave up a career in financial mathematics to work as developer and decided to join our back-end team in our Ljubljana offices.

In a few sentences – Who are you? - Where did you go grow up?

Despite my English-sounding name, I’m a 100% true Slovene who was born in a small village and moved to Ljubljana in early teens. I was fascinated by computers as a kid, and when my uncle gave me a book about programming, I was hooked. After having finished my undergraduate degree in Mathematics in Slovenia, I spent one year studying Financial Mathematics in the UK, and while England was an interesting experience, I’m glad to be back home. Slovenia might be small, but it’s got some amazing landscape and is one of the only countries in the world where you can ski today and windsurf tomorrow.

Read Tom’s full interview.

Šam Šandberg – The NY Ljubljancan

Sam the Man moved from NYC to Ljubljana to join our development team, the first in this reverse recruitment scheme! He’s been busy working with our sales team on making our reporting system even more kick ass!

What are some of your other interests?

Blogs and bands aside, I’m also super passionate about technology, particularly open source software, service oriented architectures, and object oriented programming. My flavors of choice are PHP/ZendFramework, MySQL, Python (newly), and Android. I love playing around with exposed APIs and coming up with interesting mashups, as well as hacking out one-off projects overnight.

I was an active member of the New York Tech Meetup (over 17.000 participants with monthly meetups of 800 of the most active members), and am making the bridge between Ljubljana and New York City’s tech scenes. I actually found my position at Zemanta via the New York Tech Meetup’s community listserve, where another member happened to be a friend of a friend of Bostjan’s. Small world!

Read Sam’s full interview.

Jason Bhatti aka Bhattibytes

Prior to coming to the company, he studied Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and made his way around the world of social media working for KickApps and FlightPath. An avid snowboarder and gamer, he’s excited to bring his myriad experience and enthusiasm to the company.

How did you go from “mechanical and aerospace engineering” to “account executive”? Details please!

Being an account executive is a bit different then Mechanical Aerospace Engineering, but no less challenging.  I had a lot of family pressure in choosing my major at school, but it seems life had a better plan for me and I haven’t looked back.  I love working with technology and people, and I get to do just that working for Zemanta.  I also think its a great mix having the background in engineering and working in the technology industry.

Read Jason’s full interview.

Mateja Verlic – Dr. Mateja Verlic!

Mateja joined us over the summer to focus on European Union-related projects. Prior to Zemanta, she was Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maribor and was mentor to Slovenia’s team at the Imagine Cup competition.

What is your role at Zemanta?

I have plenty of roles… officially I’m the first woman (sorry Breda, plants don’t count) and first PhD nerd employed, furthermore, I’m a Python newbie and … oh… researcher. I plan on becoming a good developer… and a friend? Coffee anyone?

Read Mateja’s full interview.

Gašper Šetinc – The Gape!

Gašper joined in the spring and has worked mainly on integrating new sources as part of our recommendations. To differentiate from Gasper K., Gašper S. is going by his nickname, Gape.

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

Disclaimer: I am a big Apple fan in terms of their products. But this is a question of team preferences and based on public appearance I would go with team Google. It seems a more natural, friendlier and geekish environment for a guy like me. I would still own an iPhone though .

Read Gasper’s full interview.

Related articles

• New Job Opening at Zemanta – Junior Researcher – Ljubljana, Slovenia (zemanta.com)
• Recap from Zemanta Demo at NY Tech Meetup (zemanta.com)
• New Job Opening at Zemanta – JavaScript Engineer, Ljubljana, Slovenia (zemanta.com)

Tac Anderson

Tac is VP of digital consulting at Waggener Edstrom‘s Studio D Group. In our interview, we talked about the role of social media and blogging in marketing, mind-mapping tools and advice for bloggers. Here’s one of the questions from the interview:

What’s your opinion on the value and place of bloggers in the current media environment?

I think there are two ways to look at the value of bloggers. I may be rephrasing the question here, but  it’s more about the value ob blogging. On one hand, I feel like I get a lot of value through blogging, possibly more than my readers do. That’s because it’s almost part of my thought process now. I really enjoy the ability to express myself and taking some of these raw ideas, theories or concepts that I’ve been working on and writing them out in a blog post kinda forces me to think them through a little bit deeper.

On the other hand, there’s the value blogging adds to space – I’m not a news blogger, I don’t blog about necessarily current topics per se, that’s probably a whole different discussion point. But I think that bloggers like myself, who are perhaps more thoughtful, maybe add a different level of value in that they’re really talking about how things work. I don’t know if what I write is agreed with, but it’s a discussion. It sparks debate, it sparks thoughts. The value isn’t just in “hey, here’s what’s happening”. Where bloggers like myself try to add value is more in “what does it really mean” -  to you individually or you as an organization or to the industry. It’s “what is” versus “what could be”.

Read Tac’s full interview from this summer.

Kris Smith

Kris is a developer and digital strategist, author of Passive Syndication Markup Language (PasSML) for syndication at display level for web and mobile devicesand co-host of Croncast. Kris has been a friend of Zemanta for a long time and we finally were able to corner him this year for an interview.

You’ve been familiar with Zemanta for a while? Why are you a fan?

I’ve been a fan of Zemanta from close to the launch. At the time I was a professional blogger and I was working to build tools that would help me organize information better for articles. Zemanta came up in my research.

I became a fan instantly after installing the plug-in and writing my first article with it. The interface had the right amount of human touch and enough nerd power on the backend to deliver relevant results for images and links.

At that time I was writing 5 articles with 300 words or better per day. They were relatively short pieces that often had topics that I wasn’t knowledgable in and had a difficult time finding sources for information. Zemanta fixed that.

What made me an even bigger fan was the additional power it had to create keywords for the posts I was writing.

As a blogger sometimes you think you’re writing a post about one thing and when you see the keywords, you’ve found out that you’re really writing about another. It gave me a chance to edit in a way that I had never seen.

Find Kris’ full interview here.

Allison Boyer

After meeting Allison at BlogWorld LA in November we learned that not only is she a big fan of Zemanta but that she is using on her own blogs and champion the use of Zemanta on other blogs such as the official blog for BlogWorld. Here is an excerpt of her interview:

What do you blog about?

On the BlogWorld blog, we write cover all aspects of new media and online content creation. The site is a mix of news and opinion, with resource guides for beginners, weekly link round-ups, small business profiles, speaker interviews, videos, and more.

I also run a few of my own sites, including Blog Zombies. On Blog Zombies, I write about how to be a better, more profitable blogger by combining passion with monetization. In addition, I work with a number of clients to help them with their blogs. Some of the topics I cover for them include job hunting, education, insurance, and dating.

Read Alison’s interview here.

Ted Curran

At WordCamp in San Francisco over the summer, we found out about Ted Curran, a long-time Zemanta user and an instructional designer who blogs at TedCurran.net. Ted has been using Zemanta since 2008 and is a big fan.Here’s a snippet of his interview:

How does Zemanta help you blog better? 

Zemanta does a great job of recommending relevant tags, links, and images that make my blog posts richer and more informative for my readers. My favorite feature nowadays is the Related Articles– I love how Zemanta finds other articles online on the same subject matter I write about. This helps enmesh my blog posts in larger online conversations and helps me network with like-minded bloggers who care about these topics too. I’ve found them valuable as a reader, too, helping me broaden my understanding of the topics I write about. Now when I build WordPress websites for clients, I install the Zemanta WordPress plugin so they can easily add pictures and links to their posts.

Enjoy the full story here.

Todd Lohenry

Todd is a web entrepreneur, thought leader hurder, blog and content curation expert. He is a superstar Zemanta evangelist and our guest blogger, his interview was so in-depth that we had to publish in two parts.

What kind of feedback do you get from customers about Zemanta? How are they responding to using it?

Well,  you know I have to laugh about this sometimes, because Zemanta makes things so easy, I don’t think that my customers really appreciate it. What I have to explain to them sometimes, is “Now, you want to find an image”, you have to go to Google Image Search, and find an image, and look and see what is the best one, and then you have no indication of whether or not, you know, what is the status of these? Are they free? Are they Creative Commons? Can I license this? So even if I can find a good logo, it doesn’t mean I have the right to use it. And, you know, even if I do, so I go and I copy this and then I go back and then I have to add to the media library, and then I add the URL, and then I do this, and oh, that doesn’t work, I can’t do it. So you know, sometimes if I really want them to appreciate the elegance of Zemanta, I have to say, ‘“Listen, this would add five to ten minutes to every post, to do what Zemanta does in five or ten seconds.” Then some of them finally get that, some of them understand it, but you make it so easy that sometimes that they just don’t get that.

You can read part 1 and part 2 of the interview here.

Hope you enjoyed these tidbits from this year. We’re looking forward to connecting with more of our users in 2012. If you’re interested in being featured, do please let us know!

Related articles

• Zemanta Power User: Ted Curran, Instructional Designer (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Allison Boyer of BlogWorld and Blog Zombies (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 2 of 2 (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Ron Feldman, Mobile Entrepreneur (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Juan from DreamActivist.org (zemanta.com)

Our good friend Todd Lohenry is back with another great post, this one on how he uses different tools, Zemanta among them to curate content.

It’s a sad dog that can’t wag it’s own tail now and again so it is with all humility that I tell you that my blog, e1evation, llc, has steadily ranked within the top 50 thousand websites in the US according to Alexa for the past few years. If you read my blog, you’ll quickly see that I’m no Seth Godin or Chris Brogan or Nilofer Merchant or Ron Tite – I do, however, have a couple of great tools that make me competitive…

The three tools that help me keep my rankings high are:

1. Google Reader
2. Windows Live Writer
3. Zemanta

Google Reader is the way I ‘listen’ to the internet. It allows me to create a virtual newspaper with sections that map to my blog’s focus and I either create great content by connecting the dots I glean from Google Reader or I use Windows Live Writer to curate that content and incorporate it in my blog. Zemanta, though, puts the ‘cherry on top of the sundae’ for me by converting each post from a blob of text to an eye catching, content laden, Search Engine Optimization [SEO] magnet. You can see how I use them together here:

Let’s dig a little deeper! Not only are posts with images and related articles more appealing to readers, they are more appealing to Google:

“Businesses leveraging content marketing campaigns for SEO should consider including photographs on their article pages, PR Newswire recently reported. The use of images optimized with captions and other tags that include related keywords provide more SEO opportunities. The captions and other metadata included with the photographs increase SEO, while effective use of the pictures will give a website higher quality feel. When a prospect lands on a page and sees a compelling photograph, they are a more likely to have a positive perception of the website, increase the company’s authority as a news provider. Brafton has reported that content pages with images have 94 percent higher page views than those that only have text. Moreover, labeling the photograph with an appropriate title tag will increase the likelihood that it appears in various Image Search tools offered by search engines, according to PR Newswire. In general, images should follow the same best practices for SEO as other forms content. Any instance of keyword stuffing in a photo title or caption will negatively impact search ranking and the overall quality of the website.” Source: Images can help content marketing, SEO campaigns | e1evation, llc

Zemanta helps me enforce this critical aspect of blogging by adding 4 control panels that help me put the finishing touches on my posts:

1. Media Gallery
2. Related Articles
3. In-text Links and
4. Metadata tags

Because Zemanta is available in both the free and hosted versions of WordPress, my only question to you is why aren’t you using it like I am? Questions? Feedback?

Todd Lohenry is owner of e1evation, llc, and he’s the guy to call when you want to become and be known as ‘the expert’. He blogs at e1evation, llc and Power Tools for Thought Leaders…

Related articles

• How to curate content with Windows Live Writer and Zemanta (e1evation.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 2 of 2 (zemanta.com)
• Why do I use @Zemanta? (e1evation.com)
• How to: Use Zemanta to recommend articles from your own blog(s) (zemanta.com)
• How Zemanta works (zemanta.com)

Happy holidays from the Zemanta team!

Related articles

• Jeff Jarvis: FTC Fines Santa Claus for Violating Children’s Privacy (huffingtonpost.com)

Other stories on the list cover the importance of comments, complexity of content marketing, news on Blogger and Google+ and another reason on why not to depend too much on Google Image Search

www.gadling.com
10 reasons to travel to Ljubljana   Dec. 13, 2011
	When I found cheap airfare from Istanbul to Ljubljana, I didn’t find many other travelers who’d been there or even say for sure which country it’s in. The tiny of country of Slovenia is slightly smaller than New Jersey and its capital city isn’t known for much other than being difficult to spell and pronounce (say “lyoob-lyAH-nah”).

www.buildinternetbusiness.com
Should You Comment On Blogs To Generate Traffic?   Dec. 16, 2011
	The answer to this question is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no. Why? It all depends on how you go about commenting and what your underlying goals are. There are a lot of reasons people comment on blogs and many of them won’t provide the amount of traffic that you thought they were going to and may waste your time instead.

fuelingnewbusiness.com
Content Marketing is Hard Work: 4 Tips to Make it Easier   Dec. 15, 2011
	Content Marketing is Hard Work: 4 Tips to Make it Easier Content marketing is the wave of the future for ad agency new business but you will need to make preparation to consistently deliver quality content if you are going to have success. I’ve recently written my 650th blog post article.

kylelacy.com
Do You Have The Ability to Be Remarkable?   Dec. 13, 2011
	There are two blogs that I tend to read on a daily basis – Jay Baer’s Convince and Convert and Seth Godin’s blog. I love both with utmost intensity. They always have excellent content that makes you move mountains to get where you need to go. I was reading Seth’s blog today and he made a point about remarkable work that is worth repeating:

mashable.com
Sharing Blogger Posts on Google+ Has Never Been Easier   Dec. 13, 2011
	Google has added a new feature for Blogger users who have connected their blog with their Google+ account, making it easier to share a post with their Google+ friends, too. After you publish a post on Blogger, you’ll see a box containing a snippet from your post.

www.myfoxphoenix.com
Are Google Images Exposing US Secrets?   Dec. 12, 2011
	Google Satellite Images May Have Captured US Military Secrets Updated: Monday, 12 Dec 2011, 6:08 AM MST Published : Monday, 12 Dec 2011, 6:08 AM MST YUCCA LAKE, Nev. – Google may be compromising national security by allowing anyone to search for the names of military bases and zoom in to see airstrips and possibly even top-secret military drones.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

Related articles

• This Week in the Blogosphere – WordAds, Outdated Blogging Rules, Social Business (zemanta.com)
• This Week in the Blogosphere – Bloggers are not Journalists, Importance of SEO, Extraordinary Blogs (zemanta.com)
• This Week In The Blogosphere – Formal Fridays, Google Gobbles up Apture, Commenting Rules (zemanta.com)
• Images can help content marketing, SEO campaigns (e1evation.com)
• Content Marketing: What it is and Why it Works (bizsugar.com)

Formal Friday @ Zemanta

The work environment is exciting and we really, really LOVE Nerf guns. Our team is young, international and full of web enthusiasts. We are looking for a person who likes the start-up atmosphere, wants to advance his/her knowledge in the field and can tackle the hardest problems we encounter in our quest to integrate our service into third-party CMS and other platforms.

What we expect from you:

• You have an In-depth JavaScript language knowledge
• You understand the Browser environment

We are glad to hear:

• You have solid CS foundations; we care
  about big-O
• You have jQuery experience (more is better)
• You are a web savant
• You know Python and/or Django

What we offer is an opportunity to work on an exciting global project, competitive pay, team of bright peers and cutting edge tech. Location is in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Apply by sending an e-mail to jobs@zemanta.com.

Related articles

• New Job Opening at Zemanta – Junior Researcher – Ljubljana, Slovenia (zemanta.com)
• Fun Weekend Ahead for Whole Zemanta Team (zemanta.com)

Some fun facts about ZippyKid:

• Speed – Up to 3 times faster than most competitors.
• Security – Solid protection, built-in backups and proactive security audits.
• Scale – Will adjust availability based on demand without hidden costs.
• Managed Services - WordPress core and standard plugin updates, daily database backups and weekly file system backups.
• Stability - True unlimited bandwidth, service redundancy and disaster recovery.

And.. as a holiday reward for our users, ZippyKid is offering an awesome deal if you decide to try them out. Get 50% off the first three months of hosting if you sign up before December 31st. To get the deal, use ZEMANTAROCKS as the promo code when you sign up.

One more thing, ZippyKid is giving away 1,000 t-shirts as part of their holiday promotion so head on over if you’d like a cool t-shirt from them.

Related articles

• ZippyKid difference by the numbers (zippykid.com)
• WordPress 3.3 and ZippyKid Sites – Upgrade plans and procedures (zippykid.com)
• ZippyKid is giving away 1,000 t-shirts (zippykid.com)

Image via CrunchBase

Holidays are just around the corner but the blogosphere is still busy and churning out some amazing content. Here are couple of blog posts and articles that caught our eyes this week.

U.S. Court Declares Bloggers Second Class Citizens, Not Part of Media (via Search Engine Watch)

But a U.S. District Court judge in Portland, Oregon just set us back to pre-1990 days when he ruled against Crystal Cox, a blogger, after she was sued by Obsidian Finance Group for defamation over blog posts that criticized the firm and co-founder Kevin Padrick. The judge also awarded Padrick $2.5 million.

SEO: It’s Never Too Late to Optimise Your Old Blog Posts (via For Bloggers by Bloggers)

Don’t think you have to work your SEO  magic on every single old post;  just choose the ones that are already getting some traffic. Look at your stats package or Google Analytics and see what posts are currently popular and tweak them.

Survey Says SEO The Single Most Important Marketing Channel For SMBs (via Search Engine Land)

The question asked was: “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?” The list of choices included SEO, paid search, mobile, social and traditional media. As you can see below SEO beats everything else by a mile.

11 Tips for Cleaning Up Your Blog (via Quick Blog Tips)

When I looked back through the archives of Quick Blog Tips, I found several posts that were a bit out of date. In some cases, I’d simply changed my mind. I also found plenty of posts without images (there are still a lot of these lurking around).

9 Habits of Extraordinary Blogs (via Pushing Social)

The superstars know exactly who they serve.  They don’t write for the masses.  They craft content to capture the attention of a specific breed of reader.  TechCrunch appeals to ambitious, type-a, entrepreneurs.  Good’s content fits with the socially conscious technophiles.  Every article hits their audience squarely in their sweet spot.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

Related articles

• This Week in the Blogosphere – WordAds, Outdated Blogging Rules, Social Business (zemanta.com)
• Crystal Cox Case Scares Blogosphere: Blogger Fined $2.5, Judge Rules Press Protections Don’t Apply (inquisitr.com)
• FREE SPEECH: blogger found not to be a journalist immune from defamation liability (marcjan.wordpress.com)

Image via CrunchBase

We are looking for a researcher in one of the following topics:

• natural lanuage processing
• data mining and machine learning
• large scale web crawling and indexing
• information retrieval
• semantics

We are looking for people that know how to write code and have research interest in topics above (not necessarily deep experience). You would not be alone, since we already have a super-smart team of engineers. We are able to enlarge this team because we got a government grant to add booster rockets to our research. This also means there are some specific requirements as to who can qualify.

Who is eligible for the position?

Image via CrunchBase

It’s been another busy week in the blogosphere. We thought that the following blog posts may be of interest to you.

WordPress Launches WordAds – Because ‘You Deserve Better Than AdSense’ (via Search Engine Watch)

Federated Media Publishing gives bloggers another monetization option, with an opt-in ad program available exclusively to WordPress.com bloggers, designed to rival Google’s AdSense.

Do You Need Keywords in Blog Posts? (Via For Bloggers by Bloggers)

Keep track of what you’ve linked to and what your anchor text was,  you can vary your keywords and phrases so your site isn’t dominated by one specific phrase. It’s easily done even if we don’t mean to do it.

The 5 Old Blogging Rules Killing Your Readership (Via Outspoken Media)

Trouble is, sometimes “expert” just means “old” and the advice they’re giving you is so outdated that only your mother would follow it. That’s how I feel about many of the old blogging tenants.

Farewell Social Media (via RapidBI)

By believing that social media is “the devils work”, that it reduces productivity, or that it undermines brand is at best short sighted. Social media can be used for business. Business productivity, through knowledge sharing and management as well as collaboration and of course marketing.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

Related articles

• This Week In The Blogosphere – Technorati, Real Time Blogging, Finding Customers (zemanta.com)
• This Week In The Blogosphere – Formal Fridays, Google Gobbles up Apture, Commenting Rules (zemanta.com)
• This Week in the Blogosphere – Contests, Free Flights, Sticky Content, WordPress (zemanta.com)

Sam did awesome to fit an action packed presentation into 3 minutes talking about Zemanta, our API, some of our awesome API users like Small Demons.

Here’s a quick screenshot of the video by Livewire, but you can see the full video on their page.

As we were finishing up, we got a wonderful mention by the esteemed Esther Dyson:
[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/edyson/status/141683151067033600"]

Equally as impressive was this tweet from George Haines, who introduced Zemanta to his class after learning about us at NY Tech Meetup:

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/George_Haines/status/142642516645261312"]

Have a great weekend!

Related articles

• Zemanta Power User: Allison Boyer of BlogWorld and Blog Zombies (zemanta.com)
• Things We Like at Zemanta: VigLink, Affiliate Help For Bloggers (zemanta.com)

Here’s how it works:

• It’s free to sign up for!
• Available for major blogging platforms such as WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Tumblr and more.
• Over 12,500 merchants are in VigLink’s network (including Amazon, Overstock, iTunes, Target, eBay, etc.)
• Analytics that show which links and posts are driving the revenue and what customers are buying.

Check them out and let us know what you think! VigLink definitely looks like a promising solution and we hope you find it useful. Jump over to their web site to get started!

Related articles

• VigLink Launches LinkWeaver to Transform Content Monetization (prnewswire.com)
• Things We Like at Zemanta: TownNews.com (zemanta.com)
• Things We Like at Zemanta: Hitpad 2.0 Hits the Apple App Store (zemanta.com)

• Social media conversations reduce blog commenting. Companies that want to interact with customers can do so more easily via one of the big public platforms.
• From an SEO perspective, blogs, in and of themselves, add less value than they once did. Since other SEO activities can improve rankings more effectively, why exert energy maintaining a blog?
• Blogging requires a great deal of time: researching, writing, editing, promoting, responding to comments, building a community around the blog. With marketing budgets being slashed, with personnel forced to wear a hundred hats, marketing efforts must be focused on where the return is greatest, and with blogs, the ROI is difficult to calculate, at best.

There is an element of truth in all of these points. However, I continue to feel very strongly that blogging is very much alive and well. Yes, the days are gone when any old blog could have some measure of success; today the blogging bar is set quite a bit higher. But business blogging is not dead, IF certain things are done. Here are the most important IFs to execute, IFs that correspond directly to the three objections noted above.

A business blog works IF it is socially integrated. While it’s true that social media platforms have captured a lot of conversation formerly held on blogs, a lot of the conversation revolves around …blog posts. That being the case, a business blog is a firm’s centerpiece for social media engagement. Blog-driven conversations are occurring now on a scale far greater than when they were confined to blog comments alone, but in order for a company to participate, it must have an active presence on Twitter, Facebook, and perhaps a few other platforms.

A business blog works IF it is properly optimized. In the old days, Google loved blogs in and of themselves, and gave blogs the algorithmic benefit of the doubt. As spammy blogs increased in number, Google’s love affair with blogs began to wane. However, the pendulum is now swinging in the other direction: Google has recently increased the reward for fresh content, making quality blog posts more valuable.

Quality is indeed the other part of the Blog-SEO-IF equation. Google’s recent “Panda” update was introduced as part of its ongoing effort to penalize spam content and reward quality content. If blog posts are a meaningless regurgitation of keywords, Google is now smart enough to ignore them no matter how frequent they are. But, if a company’s blog is relevant, informative, insightful, useful — Google will recognize and reward it.

A business blog works IF it has a strategy behind it. A major reason why firms feel the ROI of a blog is rather fuzzy is that they neglected to establish a proper strategy for a blog to begin with. Blogs can serve a multitude of marketing purposes, from thought leadership to lead generation. Each goal has a set of metrics attached to it, and the ability to gather accurate data is steadily improving. If a blog’s purpose is wisely and clearly defined, and then pursued intensely, a blog should be able to carry its weight in the marketing mix, and then some.

Brad Shorr is Director of Content and Social Media for Straight North, a Chicago Internet marketing agency. The firm specializes in helping middle market B2B firms, with clients that do everything from block glass design to merchant credit card processing. Brad has been blogging since 2005 and writes frequently on social media topics. Follow Brad on Twitter and connect with Straight North on Google+.

Who are you?

Allison Boyer  – I’ve been blogging professionally since 2006 and have been working as the features editor on the BlogWorld Expo blog since spring 2010.

What do you blog about?

On the BlogWorld blog, we write cover all aspects of new media and online content creation. The site is a mix of news and opinion, with resource guides for beginners, weekly link round-ups, small business profiles, speaker interviews, videos, and more.

I also run a few of my own sites, including Blog Zombies. On Blog Zombies, I write about how to be a better, more profitable blogger by combining passion with monetization. In addition, I work with a number of clients to help them with their blogs. Some of the topics I cover for them include job hunting, education, insurance, and dating.

When did you start using Zemanta?

I’m a fairly recent convert. I started using it on a client’s blog in July this year and added it to Blog Zombies in September. By October, I was totally hooked and talked to the managing editor for BlogWorld about adding it to that site as well. I now recommend it to all of my clients.

How does Zemanta help you blog better?

I actually recently wrote an entire post on Blog Zombies about why I love Zemanta so much. What it boils down to is this: Zemanta saves me TONS of time, and as we all know, time equals money. I love to link to other blogs, but it can be pretty time-consuming to research links with Google or manually search my friends’ blogs. I think every post is better with links, and Zemanta makes this process easier.

Power User Tip

I use Zemanta to help me create huge resource lists, like those that are part of the BlogWorld Brilliant Blogger series. Even if you don’t know a lot about a certain topic in your niche, you can cover it adequately for your readers by linking to people who do understand the subject matter well. With link lists, it’s easy to fill knowledge gaps on your blog, and Zemanta makes it a less time-consuming process.

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

Related articles

• Zemanta Power User: Ted Curran, Instructional Designer (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 1 of 2 (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 2 of 2 (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Ron Feldman, Mobile Entrepreneur (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta at BlogWorld 2011 in Los Angeles (zemanta.com)

Small Demons - An amazing startup out of Los Angeles that is still in beta with tremendous potential. Users are able to get associated via our API.

TownNews.com - In their Blox CMS platform that is targeted to small, regional publishers, TownNews.com uses the Zemanta API to create metadata (related articles and terms) associated with articles that writers are creating with a simple click of a button.

Hitpad iPad App – Our friends at Hitpad released a completed revamped version of their iPad app last week. Hitpad is a great, visually appealing news aggregation app and they are using Zemanta to show related terms for the content pieces as well as related articles if available.

In addition to Zemanta, there will demos by great NYC startups like Shapeways, Pixable, Kogeto and others so it’s definitely worthwhile taking a peek.

Related articles

• Zemanta API part of the NYC BigApps 3.0 Challenge (zemanta.com)
• Things We Like at Zemanta: Hitpad 2.0 Hits the Apple App Store (zemanta.com)
• Things We Like at Zemanta: TownNews.com (zemanta.com)

Out friends at TownNews.com have sent in their report on how they are using Zemanta within their BLOX CMS platform:

At TownNews.com, we help newspapers reinvent how they do business by offering powerful, easy-to-use, affordable online products. Our BLOX Content Management System enables newspapers to run great looking websites without knowing any HTML.

Most of the features within the BLOX Content Management System are developed internally. However, we do integrate some third-party products when it benefits our customers.

Zemanta provides our customers the ability to easily generate metadata — keywords and links. Metadata is important to newspapers because it helps categorize stories with search engines like Google. Articles categorized with Google and other search engines have a higher ranking when searched, making the articles more likely to be read.

Relevant keywords are also important to our client newspaper websites. When a keyword is clicked on a BLOX website, it brings up other stories with the same keyword. More clicks create more ad impressions.

Here is how Zemanta’s software works with BLOX Content Management System: When the newspaper is done creating an article in BLOX, all a staff member needs to do is click the “Suggest Metadata” button and the system automatically provides a list of relevant keywords and related links to go along with the completed article.

Our customers are satisfied with the “Suggest Metadata” feature because it helps categorize articles correctly for search engines and saves time because this is all generated with one click of the mouse.

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The new image preview window provides more detailed information about the selected image such as license, size and source information.

The new settings make it even easier to find, select and add an image to your blog post. Now we offer a quick and easy interface where you can adjust the caption and change the size of the image. Movable Type version also lets you change the alignment of the image. Importance of blog images.

Please let us know what you think of this update in the comments or on Twitter at @Zemanta. AND, if you are new to Zemanta, go to our download page to get started.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our US-based bloggers!

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The users get to experience Zemanta in the form of related terms and article recommendations in the app via our API.

Congrats to Jay and team on a great release! Give the new version a try by downloading it from the Apple AppStore and see the Zemanta API in action.

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Zemanta Formal Fridays

Moving on.. Here are some of the highlights in the blogosphere from this week:

Google Buys Startup Apture To Boost Chrome  (via Business Insider)

Founder Tristan Harris told us that the Chrome team within Google helped drive the deal, but did not comment on what exactly Google plans to do with the technology.

But it seems obvious that Google could use it to add more links to its services from within Chrome.

Has Social Media Really Stalled Among the Fortune 500? (Via Sysmos Blog)

 To now be successful with social media, companies must be creative, agile, fast-moving and ultra-engaged. It has created a new competitive paradigm that is more complicated and challenging than just setting up a Facebook Page or Twitter account.

Blog your way to a better career (Via CNN)

Pew Research was one of the first mainstream think tanks to study bloggers as a whole, in 2005, and Pew found that people who blog are generally higher earners. Jobvite shows that people who use social media to find a job end up finding jobs that are a better fit. And LinkedIn is so convinced that bloggers do better in their careers than nonbloggers that it has added features to enable people to simulate blogging right on its site.

Two Blogging Rules We Should Break More Often (via Inkling Media)

The world of blogging has a wide variety of unwritten rules that dictate how we behave in the blogosphere, both as bloggers and commenters. Most of these rules are there for a reason, and have stood the test of time.

 

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

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Alan Berkson

We are very excited to have Alan Berkson back for another great tought-provoking guest blog post. Alan has become a big fan of Zemanta and has been very helpful in providing us with great feedback and ideas on how we can make Zemanta better. Please enjoy his post.

A while back I wrote a blog called The Age of Thought Leadership. Sometimes, to define something, it helps to define what it is NOT, so I thought I’d have a little fun. I hope you take it in the spirit in which is was intended.

Hey you! Stop calling yourself a thought leader. For that matter,  you can stop with “expert” and “guru” and anything else that comes up in your thesaurus.

I admit I am somewhat addicted to so-called social media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs.  I am, by nature, gregarious and these are great tools for interacting with other people. As with every other communication medium, it wasn’t long before savvy/unscrupulous individuals co-opted it in the name of the almighty dollar. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for profit and free enterprise.

But if I see one more profile or blog where someone calls himself a thought leader I’m gonna puke.

By what process are leaders selected? They’re certainly NOT self-selected. It falls to US to designate YOU a thought leader/expert/guru – please don’t do it yourself. After all, real leaders don’t look for followers, they just do what they do and people follow.

Dating Sites Without Pictures

Thought leadership on the web seems to be more like a dating site without pictures: 6’, athletic build, loves long walks on the beach. Yeah, right. Sadly, people tend to believe things they see in writing. That said, when you write something on the web that’s hard to vet, and you call yourself a thought leader, I’m gonna have to say “prove it.”

In science, when you publish an article it’s subjected to peer review. They call it intersubjective testability.  It was laid out by Herbert Feigl as follows:

“The quest for scientific knowledge is regulated by certain standards or criteria … the most important of these regulative ideals [is] intersubjective testability… What is here involved is … the requirement that the knowledge claims of science be in principle capable of test on the part of any person properly equipped with intelligence and the technical devices of observation and experimentation.”

Ideally, we should be able to  substitute “content providers” for “science”  and demand of our content providers some intersubjective testability. Unfortunately, that’s not the case today.

Caveat Emptor

“Let the buyer beware” has never been more relevant. As consumers, we are (somewhat) protected by the FTC against false claims by advertisers. Publishers, in turn, are protected by the First Amendment. However, the Internet is a Wild West of unregulated and unvetted content. Some of it is selflessly expository, some of it is naively exuberant, but more and more of it is consciously self-serving.

It’s too easy to game the system. You’ve got all these people talking about what great leaders they are and buffing their resumes. Who’s vetting blogs for quality, authority, plagiarism? How do you separate the real ones from poseurs?

As Fred McClimans recently wrote in Are We Outsourcing Common Sense to the Internet?:

…in a world where we are all “publishers” and sources of information, not all information has the same value or trustworthiness.

How people judge thought leaders should be how we judge all leaders, from Presidents down to the local school board members or your next vendor. Do some research. Compare and contrast. Are there any references to back up claims? Real data?

How about on the web? On blogs? How can we apply intersubjective testability? Some common sense. Are they delivering value or a sales pitch? Are there comments on the blog? Are there negative comments on the blog? Are they responded to in a civil fashion?

Bottom Line: Apply Some (Not So) Common Sense

In the end, we can’t change other people. We can only change ourselves. A bit zen, yes, but I’m being practical. We need to learn to apply some sense to the content we consume. I’ve indoctrinated my kids: when I say “what’s a commercial for?” they reply “they’re trying to sell you something.” It’s a start. How about you? Can you inject more integrity into your content? Can you apply some intersubjective testability to your consumption of content?

If you ARE producing content on the web, or anywhere else, please make sure that none of these apply to you:

1. if you call yourself a thought leader, you aren’t;
2. if you’re not transparent and we can’t validate your data, you aren’t a thought leader;
3. if your goal of blogging is blatantly to promote yourself or your product, you’re not a thought leader.

So, I haven’t puked since I was, like, twelve. I really don’t want to start now. A little help, please?

Copyright © Intelligist Group 2011. This post originally appeared on The Intelligent Catalyst blog. It was written by Alan Berkson, a Principal at the Intelligist Group where he focuses on helping businesses move past blockages, leverage unidentified or underutilized assets, and identify opportunities for growth. He provides provocative commentary and theorizes on a variety of business strategy topics on his blog. You can connect with him on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. 

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Here’s what can change if this law goes into effect:

• Web Site Blocking – US government can ask service providers to block web sites and services if the users post infringing content and links.
• Jail Terms – Felony convictions and jail terms can be imposed even for non-commercial use such as on Facebook or Twitter.
• General Chaos - Many of the sites deemed legal under DCMA would face legal uncertainty.

We at Zemanta join the rest of the technology community in protest of these efforts and urge you to reach out to your legislators and let them know that you do not support this legislation.

Get active at the American Sponsorship Day or learn more in this video:

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Image via CrunchBase

With all the hoopla around BlogWorld, we didn’t get a chance to post last week, but there’s lots of good stuff to report this week. We are starting off with the report of the year, the one and only state of the blogosphere by Technorati.

State of the Blogosphere 2011  (via Technorati)

A large number of respondents who are blogging more are driven by both personal and professional benefits to do so. Along with their interactions with their audience, many Corporate bloggers (64%) and Entrepreneurs (73%) say they are blogging more because it has proven to be valuable for promoting their business and also valuable to their profession (60%)

What I learned from a month of blogging and 250k visits (Via The Startup Toolkit)

Roughly a month ago, I decided to give blogging another try, in earnest. I put out an article most days and up to 3 per day when I was experimenting with new channels. It has been fascinating. That being said, this is not a post about blogging tactics. It’s about what the experience has taught me about startups.

How to Use Content to Find Customers (Via Copyblogger)

Raise questions. Poke around at pain points that you can address in later content. Tell stories that resolve objections. But be subtle about it. The purpose of this content is to get your audience into a receptive state of mind before they start hearing any overt sales messages from you.

Why Real Time Business Blogging is Cool (via Jeff Korhan)

At the BlogWorld Expo last week we learned from a Technorati survey that the majority of bloggers are hobby bloggers.  Only 13% classified themselves as entrepreneurs who blog to support their business.

 

10 Free Blog Topics to Help You Get Your Blog On (via For Bloggers by Bloggers)

I’m A Blogger And I’m Proud, Dammit! You know what it’s like to be a blogger – we often get caricatured as lonely, failed writers. But some of the best content around – books, print magazines, etc – is coming from the blogosphere. Offer why blogging is important and why it’s one of the most creative spheres to be in.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

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Who are you?

I don’t really know. I thought I found myself a few years ago, but it turned out it was not really me. Anyway -  still searching. So far I’ve narrowed it down to this: I’m anthropologist by education, designer by profession and hacker by nature.

Where did you go grow up?

In suburban part of Ljubljana best known for its notorious mental institution. As kids, we were always on the lookout for people in bathrobes walking around as “normal people.”

Who are your influences?

I’m tempted to say Giordano Bruno, Leonardo DaVinci and so on, but I’ll rather list some contemporary dudes and creations: Alan Cooper, Jacob Nielsen, Steve Krug, Seth Godin, The Cluetrain Manifesto, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Critical Art Ensemble, Paul Virilio and Slavoj Žižek.

What did you study?

Cultural studies. It’s sort of urban cultural anthropology. We do what anthropologists do without going to the jungle to live with cannibals. We study cannibals in our own culture. It’s cheaper, easier and more fun.

What is your role at Zemanta?

I work in the field of user experience research and design (UXR/UXD). I play the role of the user, keeping myself ignorant of all that seems important to engineering and management and keeping euphorically naive in my future expectations.

What are some blogs that you follow that others may not know about?

I find the greatest power of blogs trough search. Most of valuable results I get from thousands of daily Google searches come from blogs and public forums. I’m really grateful to everybody who can properly form and write down relevant questions. It doesn’t even matter if they can answer them – the community usually takes care of it.

But still, there are some blogs I follow that influence my life in a good way. For example: Zenhabits, Get Rich Slowly, Smashing Magazine, ReadWriteWeb, LifeHacker.

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

My new MacBook Air is my first computer for which I feel not just intellectual but also deep kinetic bond. I like touching it more than operating it and that feels like a big change from devices I’ve had in the past. As for Google – my Mac would be just a lovely piece of aluminum if there was no Google to make sense of the Internet. I’m on both teams.

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

Throughout the summer I was shoveling soil, cutting wood and pondering if I should ever return to the digital world or rather start some agriculture and landscape related business. And then Boštjan called me out of the blue and made such an interesting case with Zemanta, that I had to give it a try. So far it’s been a wild and inspiring ride.

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The prize purse is $50,000 with the best overall application getting $10,000 and an opportunity to demo at NY Tech Meetup. This weekend is the official NYC BigApps 3.0 Hackathon, although the tickets are sold out, you may want to keep an eye on the registration page if any additional tickets become available.

We’re really excited to see what the contestants come up with and are here to provide any help that we can!

Find out more on the official BigApps 3.0 web site!

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Here is another great guest blog post by Todd Lohenry on tools that work great with Zemanta.

Google Reader is the killer app for ‘thought leadership’ marketing. It empowers you to create your own virtual newspaper from the sources you trust on any topic. Since only about 10% of American internet users are actually actively leveraging rss feeds, I believe Google Reader gives me a true competitive edge. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, here’s the best and simplest explanation I’ve ever seen to help you along…

What if there were an easy way to take the sources you trust in Google Reader and add them to your ‘my sources’ tab in the Zemanta media gallery? Well? There is and it’s as easy as 1-2-3…

1. Export on OPML file from Google Reader
2. Import the OPML file into your Zemanta preferences
3. Use my sources to pull related articles from YOUR trusted sources

Let me walk you through it…

Being able to add your own sources to the ‘my sources’ tab is one of the best, but least leveraged, features of Zemanta. Try this approach and you’ll use it all the time. Questions? Feedback?

“Todd Lohenry is owner of e1evation, llc based in Algoma, WI, USA. He helps you become and be known as the expert. You can learn more at http://e1evation.com.”

To get started, go to our download page and install a browser extension for your favorite browser.

See it here in action in our video:

Hey all  you Posterous users out there, try it out and let us know what you think! Drop us a note in the comments or tweet at us at @Zemanta.

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A scene from BlogWorld 2010: Image by dragonal via Flickr

If you are one of the many in attendance at this year’s BlogWorld & New Media Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center this week, we invite you over to our booth (#520), to come say hello and also take advantage of a special offer.

OK, so here is the offer: any and all who stop by can have their blogs indexed and included as part of our recommendations to our users.

We offer this benefit to our existing users but at BlogWorld we are feeling generous and are extending this offer to anyone that stops by .. This way, we can show you a little “link love” and demonstrate to you the power of Zemanta.

While you’re there, we’ll also show you some of our latest advancements and introduce you to more of what Zemanta can do. So come on by our booth and join in!

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From time to time, students ask me ‘is blogging relevant’? When I say that blogging is the foundation of thought leadership marketing, many of them are skeptical. After all, aren’t bloggers 40 year old white guys that live in their parents basement spewing political venom in their pajamas?

Far from it! While Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter are all valuable business tools, I believe you MUST own your primary ‘residence’ on the internet. Would you build your new home on rented land? Neither should you build your main internet presence on a Facebook page. Facebook can and will and does change the rules at any time. My advice? ‘Hold on loosely‘ to tools like Facebook and aggressively use blogging as a means of establishing your thought leadership position. Why?

• You own your blog
• It’s easy to update
• It drives traffic
• More than 140 characters to express yourself
• There are no privacy concerns, to name a few…

For me WordPress is the only platform! Whether I’m using a free WordPress.com blog like toddlohenry.com for my personal blog or the hosted version here for my business site, WordPress gets the job done with style and elegance. There are two additional tools I use to enhance WordPress; ScribeFire and Zemanta. ScribeFire is an external blog editor that allows me to easily create and curate content and Zemanta adds punch to every post by helping me find relevant photos, related articles, inline text and tags for metadata and seo…

The search driven media company Skyword recently reported “On average, total views increased by 94% if a published article contained a relevant photograph or infographic when compared to articles without an image in the same category” [Source]…

The case for using images is an easy one to make. Problogger says…

“Your opening line need not be a textual one.

‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ and used effectively at the opening of your blog posts a compelling image can be instrumental in drawing readers to read your posts.

I have been using images combined with words on almost every post in my photography site for some time now and have long noticed that when I open with an image it tends to draw more readers into a post and can lead to more comments. I’ve even had readers tell me that they only reason they read a post was as a result of seeing the image in their RSS reader.

The key is to find an image that is on topic, that is striking and that readers find compelling or intriguing.” Source: 11 Ways to Open a Post and Get Reader Engagement.

One of my favorite clients, Nilofer Merchant, lovingly selects a high quality image from a stock photography site for each post — perhaps that’s the reason why some of her posts get upwards of 2,000 views?! While that’s part of it, I’m sure it has more to do with her beautiful brain and the way she lovingly expresses her point of view [that and the fact she writes for the Harvard Business Review]. Me? I have a ‘churn and burn’ blogging style and I find it much easier and more cost effective to simply allow Zemanta to semantically scan my text and recommend complementary images that are free and safe for me to use. Here’s a short video on how I used it to make this post pop…

Zemanta also helps me find related articles from sites I trust. When I add a related article link from one of my fellow bloggers or a site I trust, I’m thanking them for their work by providing a valuable reference link back to their site which only helps them establish more credibility with Google in the long run. Zemanta also suggests in-text links for my text which allow me to provide backlinks while offering clarification for my readers.

Finally, Zemanta suggests metadata tags that help my post be found in Google. Tagging is one of the most important, but most overlooked aspects of blogging for seo purposes. Zemanta makes it easy for me to remember to tag every post with relevant metadata.

Not only is blogging still relevant, but in my book it remains the most important platform for thought leadership marketing and using tools like WordPress, ScribeFire and Zemanta will make it as fun as Facebook!

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A scene from BlogWorld 2010: Image by dragonal via Flickr

The Zemanta team is pleased to once again be a participant and official sponsor of BlogWorld & New Media Expo, which is taking place this time November 3-5 2011 at the Los Angeles Convention Center . We are excited to share with the greater blogging community all that we have developed over the last few months. Since May’s event in New York City, our most notable achievements have been:

• We heeded the calls of our users and made big improvements to the image interface.
• We added support for the new Blogger interface
• The team came up with a great new way to display article previews
• We added support for the open source Drupal 7 platform

We are proud of all that we have accomplished and are looking forward to many more successes  in the months and years to come. If you’ll be at BlogWorld, make sure to stop by and see us at Booth# 520 and let’s talk about how we can all Zemanta better!

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Image by pamhule via Flickr

The DREAM Act (DREAM being an acronym for Development, Relief,  and Education for Alien Minors) was first introduced to Congress in August 2001. Since that time, in its various iterations, the bill has been the issue of hot political debate and lengthy consideration. Most recently, California Governor Jerry Brown signed the California DREAM Act , putting a version of this legislation into law, and bringing a new wave of hope to the movement.

In addition to action at the community level, the groups working for the passage of this act have used the internet to gain support and gather resources. One of the major hubs for this work is the website Dreamactivist.org, and we recently had the opportunity to speak to Dreamactivist.org blogger Juan about Zemanta has helped him and his team harness blogging for social change.

Can you briefly describe what you do at dreamactivist.org?

Dreamactivist.org is essentially an online organization that looks to be an online resource center for undocumented youth. So these are students and kids who grew up in this country without any sort of documentation, and due to their legal status they are unable to enlist in the military or go to college, and we have been fighting for the DREAM Act for the past 5-6 years.The DREAM Act was introduced in Congress in 2001, so it’s been already ten years that it’s been there, and what it does it that it enables a path to citizenship to students who have good grades, good moral standing, no problems with the law, and who have the ambition to be a better citizen and give back to their communities.

As someone who is involved in a political cause, and who is using social media, how do you see the value and the place of bloggers and people who use social media in the current media environment?

Yeah, I guess there is, you know, a very simple answer for that. Because, obviously – at least what I tell my interns and the folks that I work with is – social media is all about making connections, y’know? How using certain platforms like Facebook, Twitter and your blog, you empower people to carry your message. I think that the value and place of bloggers is crucial when it comes to advocacy work, because you need to make sure that the folks who are getting hits or views are able to help you, as an up-and-comer, get your name out there, get your message out there, and collaborate in a way that is , you know, proficient for both the blogger and yourself. So that  the public can get a better grasp of what you are advocating for.

Can you talk a little bit about the tools you use?

When I started working on dreamactivist.org, we started very basic. At the time, you know, we had just a Facebook and I think Myspace was kind of dying by that time, and y’know we jumped on Twitter, and now we’re using from Facebook, Twitter to other aspects such as Evernote, Flickr. I know that Zemanta has come very much in handy. A lot of us weren’t well-seasoned bloggers when we started this project, but as time went by we recognized that we needed to learn more tricks of the trade. In order for us to make sure that whatever we wrote or whatever we published on our site was consistent with our messaging. So we’re still in the discovery phase. We’re always trying new things to connect with new people and new followers out there. Right now something that we are trying to implement into our routine is something called Beluga, which is like a chat window that allows Androids, Iphones, and Blackberrys to sync up in a simple chat window to make sure that we are able to conduct any meetings or small chats via instant messaging over our phones. So I guess we’re still kinda carrying on discovering new platforms.

In terms of uses of social media that you’ve seen just in the activist space or the political sphere, what have been some of the most innovative uses that you’ve seen recently?

Well, that I’ve experienced firsthand is probably just the revolution that Twitter and Facebook have released on breaking ground in social media and political movements. I was involved in a splinter project of our website called The Dream Is Coming, where we got undocumented youth and we got them arrested and possibly facing deportation in order to make a stand to politicans and tell them that these kids were no longer afraid and that we demand the DREAM Act as soon as possible. We were able to successfully implement Twitter and Facebook strategies to make sure that we inform our broader audience about what we were doing and what these kids, their friends, their families, and other folks were facing and were up against. To carry out the message not only about the DREAM Act, but what impact this action would have. We’ve implemented these resources in order to fundraise, in order to spread awareness, in order to sign petitions, so it’s been successful in that we’ve been able to list build across several platforms to ensure that we have a concrete following in which whatever we say, hopefully some folks will take it into consideration whether it’s re-tweeting, blog post, signing a petition, or share a blog post over Facebook.

What do you absolutely love and what bothers you about today’s blogosphere?

I think in some ways the blogosphere is kinda like a two-edged sword to some extent, and over time I’ve come to realize that it’s certainly not easy to sustain or maintain a blog, it really isn’t. I mentioned something about relationships and building connections with folks and that’s great, but on the other side of the coin, you find that sometimes folks play on their own interests. So it’s not just about helping one another but also about who wants to lead the fight or take credit for whatever’s happening at the moment. So sometimes we find that cross-posting or asking help frm multiple bloggers, they may take offense or they may not be as interested in your piece if it is cross-posted somewhere else. This is due to competition or difference of opinion, even though you are floating in the “same realm” – in this case political activism or pro-migrant work. So there’s a lot of politics, but I certainly love the collaboration and everyone’s opinions coming together. I think that’s the most fascinating aspect of the whole thing.

Finally, any tips or recommendations for people that are just starting out or for people that are stuck and don’t know how to proceed?

I think that you need to make sure you are cranking out material that’s captivating, because a lot of folks just think that blogging is just posting something and waiting for people to react, but if you’re not on top of your game and you’re not making sure that the material is appealing or captivating or alluring to an audience out there, then you’re just writing into the blogospher, which you know some people may be receptive to and others may not. In the line of work that I do, we need to make sure that we are up to date with everything that is happening across the nation regarding immigration reform or bills that are impacting communities, and make sure we tell a story here. You know? Who’s our audience? That’s another thing. Identifying who you’re writing for is one of the biggest things you can do when starting as a young blogger. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure who my audience was, but now I’ve come to realize that some of the people who read this depend solely on my work, because they take advice from and refuge in my words.

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

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12 Most Successful Corporate Blogs (Via The 12 Most)

This is a great example of a blog mimicking the real-life, in-store experience through imagery, content and themes. Content focuses on improving the customer’s lifestyle rather than selling products. Further, I’d swear that there are real-time conversations going on between the bloggers and their customers.

 

Legal Guide for Bloggers (Via Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don’t want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that’s under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.

The Shady Marketing Scheme Buying off your Favorite Bloggers (via Gawker)

There’s the plan: get paid under the table to insert links to advertisers in editorial content; if you’re caught, just remove the links without a word; if not, continue to get “paid handsomely.” According to Mr. Clark, this is already happening at some of the most popular media sites on the internet—with or without the boss’s knowledge.

Finding Your Blog’s Niche  (via For Bloggers by Bloggers)

If you are struggling with your niche, it could be because you are not organised. Go and open a new Google Doc and keep it open in a tab. On this document note your ideas, your thoughts. Add links that catch your eye and note why. In being organised you can start to see patterns and identify who you are blogging for (it’s either yourself or your audience  )

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

Related articles

• Zemanta Power User: Ron Feldman, Mobile Entrepreneur (zemanta.com)
• This Week in the Blogosphere – Contests, Free Flights, Sticky Content, WordPress (zemanta.com)
• 5 Legal Guides Every Blogger Should Read (blogherald.com)
• BlogWorld 2011: We’ll see you in LA! (buzz.blogger.com)

- In a few sentences – Who are you? - Where did you go grow up?
Despite my English-sounding name, I’m a 100% true Slovene who was born in a small village and moved to Ljubljana in early teens. I was fascinated by computers as a kid, and when my uncle gave me a book about programming, I was hooked. After having finished my undergraduate degree in Mathematics in Slovenia, I spent one year studying Financial Mathematics in the UK, and while England was an interesting experience, I’m glad to be back home. Slovenia might be small, but it’s got some amazing landscape and is one of the only countries in the world where you can ski today and windsurf tomorrow.

- How did you get involved with Zemanta?
Although the world of finance and investment banking is very alluring, its soullessness didn’t convince me and so I focused on my other long-time interest and passion, programming. I first heard about Zemanta a few years ago, when it was one of the first Slovenian startups. I’ve heard a lot of praise about its team from many sources, and I wanted to work in a fast-paced, relaxed environment and deal with cutting edge technology. Zemanta was on the top of my list and it didn’t disappoint me. I learn something new every day, I am developing new services and improving infrastructure, and I am helping develop our NLP (natural language processing) technologies.

- Who are your influences?
I try to learn something from every experience, so it’s hard to point out any specific influences. I was particularly intrigued and impressed by the books Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, and by the philosophies of Aristotle and Jean-Paul Sartre.

- What is your role at Zemanta?
I’m a backend developer. I mostly spend my time helping improve our infrastructure, adding new functionality to our internal and external services, and answering everybody’s questions about mathematics and statistics the best I can.

- What are some blogs that at you follow that others may not know about?
The list of Paul Graham’s essays is an amazing collection of deep thoughts, new and unconventional viewpoints and well-argued claims that teaches me something new every time I read through it.

- Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!
I have mixed feelings about both of them. Philosophically, I prefer Google’s openness to Apple’s control. However, my 5 year old iPod is still working flawlessly, while my 1 year old Android phone has annoyed me so much that I’m writing down a list of ideas how to destroy it when I get a new phone. I seriously hope that Google get their act together soon.

Related articles

• Meet The Team Casual Fridays: Mateja Verlic (zemanta.com)
• Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Rok Pregelj (zemanta.com)
• Meet The Team – Casual Fridays: Jason Bhatti (zemanta.com)
• Meet The Team – Casual Fridays: Jure Ham (zemanta.com)

What do you blog about? 
I blog about technology, a lot about mobile, but also about consumer experiences and some random stuff that inspires/engages me.

What are some your favorite aspects of the blogosphere?  Least favorite?
Favorite – I love that the blogosphere has a wealth of information, opinions and discussions. I’ve found answers to countless specific questions through blogs.  Least Favorites – overwhelming amount of great content, no time to read it all.  Comment flames, Trolls, SPAM comments, SEO garbage content.

When did you start using Zemanta?
I don’t remember exactly but it was probably about February 2010.

How does Zemanta help you blog better? 
Zemanta lets me stop worrying about the hunting and gathering part of blogging and lets me just write my thoughts.  It takes care of tags, links, definitions, photos.  So in addition to adding great content and context, it lowers the barrier to me blogging altogether, which is usually my biggest problem.

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

Related articles

• Zemanta Power User: Ted Curran, Instructional Designer (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Owen Cutajar (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 2 of 2 (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 1 of 2 (zemanta.com)

What are some your favorite aspects of the blogosphere?  Least favorite?

Image via CrunchBase

Besides our awesome image insertion improvements and power user features as well as an thought provoking guest blog post, this week was packed with good content throughout the blogosphere. Here are some highlights:

Why Content Marketing Is King (via Entrepreneur Magazine)

When it comes to marketing strategies, content marketing has just been crowned king, far surpassing search engine marketing, public relations and even print, television and radio advertising as the preferred marketing tool for today’s business-to-business entrepreneur.

 

5 Keys to an Editorial Calendar that Keeps Your Content on Track (via Content Marketing Institute)

Before you develop an editorial calendar, you’ll need to understand who your target audience is, what their biggest concerns are and what types of content they want. You can do this by creating buyer personas, surveying your target audience to understand their needs, or asking your customer service team about the conversations they have with buyers. Once you understand your target audience, you can come up with content that helps to meet their needs and solve their challenges.

 

10 Surefire Ways to Overcome Blogging Procrastination(via ProBlogger)

If you keep telling yourself that you’re going to start blogging on a regular basis, and that intention has failed to materialize, it’s highly probable that procrastination is the culprit. My favorite definition of procrastination is the one provided by Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., creator of the popular web site procrastination.ca, so I quote it often. Here it is:

“Procrastination is the needless, often irrational, voluntary delay of an intended task.”

Infographic – Why Content for SEO  (via Brafton)

Brafton's Infographic: Why Content for SEO?

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! Have a great weekend!

Related articles

• This Week in the Blogosphere – Contests, Free Flights, Sticky Content, WordPress (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 1 of 2 (zemanta.com)
• 3 Ways to Get Your SEO in Shape for 2012 (stayonsearch.com)
• Mastering The Content Workflow (toprankblog.com)

Here’s Jure’s report:

Hi, I’m the new Jure at Zemanta. The third one I think. I was born, raised and schooled in Ljubljana. At the moment my schedule is evenly divided between my bachelor degree in computer science and work at Zemanta. I followed Zemanta from its early days mainly because it was one of the first technology startups in Ljubljana(and because it’s hard to miss Andraz in the city that small). I started working here as a summer intern and I’m continuing as a part timer.

My biggest programming influence is my younger brother who outran me for quite a few years and made me work really hard to keep up.

- Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

I’m a big open source fan so Google is a bit closer to my hart. They are not doing everything right, but they are much closer to my ideals then Apple.

Some of the blogs that I frequently follow are The Skeptics Guide to Universe, Reasonable Doubts and Merseyside Skeptics Society.

Related articles

• Meet The Team Casual Fridays: Mateja Verlic (zemanta.com)
• Meet The Team: Gasper Setinc (zemanta.com)
• Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Rok Pregelj (zemanta.com)
• Zemanta Summer HackDay – Part II Report (zemanta.com)

What kind of feedback do you get from customers about Zemanta? How are they responding to using it?

Todd Lohenry, web entrepreneur

Well,  you know I have to laugh about this sometimes, because Zemanta makes things so easy, I don’t think that my customers really appreciate it. What I have to explain to them sometimes, is “Now, you want to find an image”, you have to go to Google Image Search, and find an image, and look and see what is the best one, and then you have no indication of whether or not, you know, what is the status of these? Are they free? Are they Creative Commons? Can I license this? So even if I can find a good logo, it doesn’t mean I have the right to use it. And, you know, even if I do, so I go and I copy this and then I go back and then I have to add to the media library, and then I add the URL, and then I do this, and oh, that doesn’t work, I can’t do it. So you know, sometimes if I really want them to appreciate the elegance of Zemanta, I have to say, ‘“Listen, this would add five to ten minutes to every post, to do what Zemanta does in five or ten seconds.” Then some of them finally get that, some of them understand it, but you make it so easy that sometimes that they just don’t get that.

I guess that for people who are new to blogging the experience is almost sort of synonymous with using Zemanta, because it’s so blended in to the composing experience.

Absolutely, absolutely. You are correct and so one of the things that I do is a lot of curation posts. So if I go into Google Reader, and  I see an article, something that is interesting to me, then a lot of time I’ll take a look at an article or a quote and say, does this give me an opportunity to weigh in on something that’s important to me? And I might use ScribeFire, I might use Posterous, here I highlight the text, you know the quote that I want, I go to Posterous, I go and I trim the title to what it is that I want, and I will send this to the appropriate blog. So I teach people to curate content, and then I tell them that it is time to go to the post. Once it is auto-posted from Posterous to WordPress, then I tell people it’s time to go into the post and to “Zemanta-fy” it. And so, in that manner, I can go from seeing a good article (or) good quote that I would like to grab because not only does it make my site content rich and give me a place to put good quotes, but it also drives SEO like crazy. So you can see, that Zemanta takes a plain vanilla post and turns it into something really spectacular.

So this is (what) I teach to my clients. Like Darren Rowse says, there are twenty different types of blog posts. There are rants, there are reviews, there are this, there are that, but to me they all fall into two main categories: either you are creating or you are curating other people’s content. And I always teach people to curate on purpose, and by “on purpose” I mean “be aware of your editorial focus in your blog”. Only curate content that gives you an opportunity to make a brand statement. Only curate content that makes it possible for you to say something important about who you are and what you do and invite them to interact with you.

I think we’ve covered almost all the questions that I had. Is there any thing else that you wanted to add as a closing?

Like I said, I am always on the lookout for tools that deliver tremendous value with no overhead, and Zemanta has a permanent place in my toolkit because of everything that you’ve delivered. So I’m just, I’m very grateful from the work that you guys do. Because for me, I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of talk about whether or not websites are still important, and the whole idea of the “siteless web”, but I still go along with people like Darren Rowse and Chris Brogan when they talk about home base and outpost, and how you must own your presence on the internet. According to HubSpot, business blogging drives seven times more traffic than non-business blogging sites.

Thanks so much for your time. I always love to talk about Zemanta.

Thanks for all the support!

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

Related articles

• Zemanta Power User: Ted Curran, Instructional Designer (zemanta.com)
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When I talk to my clients about blogging the first question I get is “who’s going to read it?” They are overwhelmed by the blogosphere and wonder that their blog will be just a drop of water in a very large sea of content. It’s a reasonable question and a reasonable concern. It’s just the wrong question.

Alan Berkson

So what is the right question? First we need to understand the function and value of a blog post as it relates to promoting yourself or your business. I always describe a blog as a conversation over a cup of coffee: a conversation with a colleague, a conversation with a customer or perhaps a conversation with a prospect.

• Conversations With Your Prospects

When you meet with a prospect do you pull out your marketing literature and recite it verbatim? I hope not. So what DO you say?

My guess is it would be a variation on a traditional sales approach: exchange pleasantries, talk about his business, get an idea of his goals, challenges and needs. The next step would likely be to identify areas where your product or service can help him with his goals, challenges and needs.

You’ll explain your understanding of his problems and suggest ways you could help. You’ll cite some use cases and specific examples.

That is a blog post.

• Conversations With Your Customers

Your customer calls you up to ask for some advice. You listen carefully to the issue. What’s your next step? Mail out some marketing material? Maybe, but most likely you’ll proceed to dole out your wisdom in the effective use of your product for her particular situation. Or maybe there’s a complimentary product or service you recommend.

That is a blog post.

• Conversations With Your Colleagues

If you’re like me you like to talk about issues relating to your industry with co-workers, colleagues and other industry professionals. Where is the market going? What are the challenges? How can we improve? How do we educate the marketplace?

Those are blog posts.

So Who’s Going To Read My Blog?
Who’s going to read your blog posts? Your prospects, customers and colleagues, for starters. What makes a blog different than your conversation over a cup of coffee is one simple factor: sharing. When your customer gets off the phone after a great conversation with you, where she received some great advice, she might be excited enough to tell some of her co-workers and colleagues. But the impact will be diminished. She can’t share your conversation. Ah, but she can share a blog post.

It is true that for some people creating high-volume blog sites is a source of revenue. But for the average person looking to leverage blogging as part of a business strategy, you already have your audience. It’s the people you already know and with whom you already do business.

Bottom line: People love to share. Jokes, recipes, breaking news. Anything interesting. I continue to talk about content as the currency of the new millennium. The market for quality content is insatiable and sharing is the grease that lubricates the gears of the new economy. Old economy vehicles like print media are failing. Is it because the content is not good? No, it’s because you can’t easily share it (see Death of Print Media).

Sharing is what gets your message out beyond your immediate circle. It’s like having thousands of people standing behind your prospect/customer/colleague as you have that conversation over a cup of coffee.

So the question is not “who’s going to read it?”

What’s the right question?

“Can you write something they  will want to share?”

Copyright © Intelligist Group 2011. This post originally appeared on The Intelligent Catalyst blog. It was written by Alan Berkson, a Principal at the Intelligist Group where he focuses on helping businesses move past blockages, leverage unidentified or underutilized assets, and identify opportunities for growth. He provides provocative commentary and theorizes on a variety of business strategy topics on his blog. You can connect with him on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. 

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• Blogger’s block? Time crunch? 5 easy ways to reuse your blog posts (seocopywriting.com)
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In the last months we have been trying hard to accomodate what our users feel are the most needed features in our service. We may have even talked to you about this. If not, maybe we will in the future.

Back on track! We made some big changes to how images are inserted with Zemanta!

Check this screencast to find out more or resort to the text below!

Images get inserted to blinking cursor position:
Inserting an image with Zemanta was pretty limited before. It got inserted to the top right of the page and it was pretty hard to move it around. The new feature includes “Microsoft-Word-like” functionality: the image now gets inserted wherever you put your cursor first.

 
More than one image:
As you used to insert images, the latter one always replaced the one inserted before. From now on, every new inserted image gets inserted after the previous one. This feature coupled with images getting inserted to cursor position makes for a powerful image-insertion beast.

 
Image settings:
Every time you insert an image a new settings box appears over the gallery. Here you can choose how the image is positioned (left, right or centered), you can change the caption or remove it all together. You can even change the size of the image manually. Wow? All the changes can be seen in the editor as you’re working.
When you’re happy with the result, click done and continue being great. If you feel like going back and changing the image, just click on it in the editor and the settings box will appear again. Cool, right?

Attention! Like some other features, these will only work on WordPress.com and all supported versions of WordPress.org. But be sure to find them on other platforms soon enough!

Todd Lohenry, web entrepreneur

 Can you share a few words about what e1evation is and what you do?

Well, E1evation is a fancy way of saying “me, myself, and I”, a solopreneur, a freelancer.. I focus primarily on cloud-based products, and I have three main areas of focus: 1) information management, 2) web development and internet marketing and social media, and 3) the emerging area of local and mobile search. So when I do web development, I focus solely on WordPress, and I give clients an option. WordPress.com has become a very robust platform, and so I work with them on WordPress.com if they are looking to save money, but then I will also do WordPress.org sites. I am a developer with Woo Themes, I tend to focus on their product because of the – what I consider to be – the superior quality of their product and also one of the things that I really enjoy is that they deliver maximum functionality with the minimum number of plug-ins. But whether I am working with WordPress.com or WordPress.org sites, it thrills me that Zemanta is available for both. I insist that my clients learn to use Zemanta from the very beginning as part of the blogging process.

We’re very thrilled about that. What are your typical customers? Do you focus on a particular niche or is it a mix?
I’ve developed a system and process, which for me is an answer to what I consider to be the single most important question in social media, and that question is “If I drink the Kool-Aid, and if I believe that social media can help my business, how do I add it to my already overflowing plate and still get home for supper?” If people want to play in the social media space they need to have a set of repeatable behaviors that allow them to participate. So I have created a repeatable workflow of four steps : Consume, Create, Connect, and Converse.

I believe that none of my customers are looking to learn a lot of new tools or new behaviors, so I try to always practice Einstein’s Razor (see: Occam’s Razor) of “things must be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. Another filter that I use is from Thomas Jefferson, who said “Never use two words where one word will do”; I say “Never use two tools where one will do”. And so, every tool that I use has to deliver maximum value, and again that’s why Zemanta is so important. You’ve heard people say that to participate in social media, you must first listen to the Internet. That’s what I call “consume”; I use Gmail and Google Reader, to make information flow to me effectively. When it comes to the creation process, to the thought leadership process or content process, no tool is more powerful for me than WordPress, and I teach people how to either create their own original content or to curate or quote other people’s content and publish that on WordPress. Then from that point forward I connect the WordPress blog to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, to an electronic newsletter, to Youtube, all using a phenomenal tool called dlvr.it, which takes an RSS feed and automatically schedules the delivery of content. Then on the backend, I monitor the conversation with HootSuite and then another great tool called Gist, and sometimes other tools like Nutshell Mail, Google Alerts, or Social Mention, etc.

I’m just looking at the list, all these tools are very much open and interconnected. On one end, we have MailChimp that works well with everything and then we have HootSuite, which is in my opinion one of the best reporting tools….

One of the things that I am continually doing is  always tracking the space. I am always using Google Reader to track technology trends, but I also am avoiding what I call the “bright shiny objects”, the temptation to see a new tool and say ‘oh this is the wave of the future’.

** Both laugh**

And one other thing, I said ‘tools must be completely cross-platform’, and by that I mean Mac, Windows, Ubuntu but also down to the smartphone. It must be IOS and Android compatible. I am very “cloud-centric” and I am always using tools that deliver maximum efficiency for me. So you can see that my love affair with Zemanta also meets these very rigorous standards, and I would go so far as to say that Zemanta is really a competitive advantage to me.

As you know, in working with WordPress, the fewer plugins you have to use the better. Another thing that I really like is that the keyword meta gives you an option to automatically post from tags and categories, and that’s where Zemanta really starts to shine. Even in working with my clients, I build the WordPress plugin, and I arrange my control panels so that it forces people to work through all of the Zemanta control panels, before they click the publish button.  I always encourage people to add a relevant picture, because posts with pictures get twice as much interaction as those that don’t. I always use at least three related articles, because those related articles drive interaction, give reference links, and put me on the radar of all these other smart people. The only one that I try to use more sparingly is the in-text links, and the reason for that is some feedback that I’ve received from customers is that sometimes if they see too many links in the middle of the article, they’re not too sure which one to click on.

There are two main reasons that I use Zemanta and that I teach my customers to use it:  first of all, from the reader perspective, being able to easily add an image, because sometimes it’s not easy to add an image in WordPress, it’s not easy to find the right image, so Zemanta helps me a great deal with that. I am enforcing the discipline of making customers very easily engaged in good SEO practices. So that is why Zemanta important, and why it is always the very first plugin that I always install.

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

Related articles

• Zemanta Power User: Ted Curran, Instructional Designer (zemanta.com)
• Using Zemanta… (thebloggingpath.com)
• Testing The Zemanta Feature (enjoyingcreating.wordpress.com)

Image via CrunchBase

It was another busy week in the blogosphere. Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments!

7 Golden Rules: Blogging in English for Non-Native Speakers (via ProBlogger)

Every year, English books are published by authors who have learned English as a second or third language, sometimes late in life. (I myself have managed to have one such book published)—just to prove to you that any fool can do it.)

 

Japan considers giving 10,000 flights to social media users to promote tourism (via The Next Web)

The proposal would give 10,000 free round trip tickets to social media users to help promote the country as a safe and exciting holiday destination and create buzz online.

Selected travellers would enjoy free flights, though they would need cover all other costs including accommodation and food. All travellers would be obligated to document their trip using Facebook, Twitter, a blog or other social networks.

 

Content Strategy: 7 Tips to Make Your Blog Stickier (via Mashable)

Want people to keep coming back to your blog? Create some anticipation with post series. Instead of writing a comprehensive, 3,000-word post on the “ultimate guide to whatever,” split it out into bite-sized chunks and release it slowly. This not only gives you the chance to dive deeper into your points, but it also creates the opportunity to get readers to “tune in” regularly.

Blogging Is Free and Easy at WordPress.com (via ComputerWorld)

When you’ve got something to tell the world, get out there and write it. Today, it’s easier to do than ever before to let your voice be heard. Social networks engage us in conversations with people we already know, but public blogging services like WordPress.com (free, with optional for-pay extras) let us carve out a niche for ourselves where others can benefit from our knowledge and perspective–even if we’ve never spoken to them before.

Next Crackdown on Bloggers: Sweepstakes & Contests (via Social Media Explorer)

No doubt most of you are aware that the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) regulates advertising and marketing practices here in the U.S. They’re the governmental group who has brought us the CAN-SPAM act (email marketing), COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) and, more recently, their Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, which helped to bring about a more open and transparent level of disclosure by bloggers about their relationships with brands, organizations and events.

Have a happy weekend!

Related articles

• PR Exec Curses Out Mom Blogger, Gets Annihilated On Twitter And The Blogosphere (businessinsider.com)
• Next Crackdown on Bloggers: Sweepstakes & Contests (socialmediaexplorer.com)
• 2011 State of the Blogosphere Survey (onecoolsitebloggingtips.com)
• How to Be a Generous Blogger (blogher.com)

What do you blog about? 
I think of my blog as “Lifehacker for educators”– I give tips, tricks, and free downloads to educators who want to do more with Web 2.0, Learning Management Systems, and free software.

When did you start using Zemanta?
I started using Zemanta in 2008 when I was teaching an 11th & 12th grade Digital Media Arts course and running my whole course on a WordPress.com blog. I immediately appreciated the way Zemanta suggests links for popular online tools so I don’t have to link everything manually. I also love the way it recommends Creative Commons images that fit with my subject matter. This makes it so I don’t have to worry about licensing my images. It made it easy for a busy teacher to provide students with lots of related information that they could explore themselves.

How does Zemanta help you blog better? 
Zemanta does a great job of recommending relevant tags, links, and images that make my blog posts richer and more informative for my readers. My favorite feature nowadays is the Related Articles– I love how Zemanta finds other articles online on the same subject matter I write about. This helps enmesh my blog posts in larger online conversations and helps me network with like-minded bloggers who care about these topics too. I’ve found them valuable as a reader, too, helping me broaden my understanding of the topics I write about.Now when I build WordPress websites for clients, I install the Zemanta WordPress plugin so they can easily add pictures and links to their posts.

Power User Tip
I recommend that you feed in all the different blogs you write into Zemanta so they can be recommended to other Zemanta users as related articles. This helps publicize your work. I’d say the geekiest thing I’ve done with Zemanta so far is to add all of my RSS feeds into it so it can aggregate them and give me more relevant, focused suggestions.

Are you a Zemanta power user? Want to be featured on our blog? Please let us know!

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• Point of View – Kris Smith, Digital Strategist and Blogger/Podcaster Extraordinaire (zemanta.com)
• Point of View: Tac Anderson, WE Studio D Group (zemanta.com)
• Point of View: Marshall Kirkpatrick on professional blogging (zemanta.com)

In a few sentences – Who are you?

I’m a huge social media advocate and I love anything and everything having to do with Technology.  I’m an avid snowboarder and I have the scars to prove it.

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Buffalo NY or as we like to call it “The Land of Snow”.

Who are your influences?
Albert Einstein, Kip Thorne, and Eleanor Roosevelt

How did you go from “mechanical and aerospace engineering” to “account executive”? Details please!

Being an account executive is a bit different then Mechanical Aerospace Engineering, but no less challenging.  I had a lot of family pressure in choosing my major at school, but it seems life had a better plan for me and I haven’t looked back.  I love working with technology and people, and I get to do just that working for Zemanta.  I also think its a great mix having the background in engineering and working in the technology industry.

What are some of your favorite blogs?
I follow business and tech ones, but everyone already knows them — like TechCrunch, Mashable, Business Insider. I also follow the PlayStation Blog; that’s why they call me “kid vid”.

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!
Team Google ALL the Way!!! Apple is iNnoying.

How did you get involved with Zemanta?
I started using Zemanta, fell in love with the product, and now I work for them. It was a match made in heaven.

 Related articles

• Meet The Team Casual Fridays: Mateja Verlic (zemanta.com)
• Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Jason Merhaut (zemanta.com)
• Meet The Team Casual Fridays: Tin Dizdarevic (zemanta.com)

With a little help from our team, this amazing 360 degree panoramic image of Ljubljana was published today by 360Cities. The photos that make up the image were taken this summer by Jeffrey Martin from Ljubljana Castle. Here’s more info from the folks behind it:

This panoramic photo of Ljubljana, Slovenia was created from 1,480 individual photos. These images were stitched together into a single, seamless 360° image which is 200,000 x 100,000 pixels. If you printed this photo at 150 DPI (dots per inch), it would be 33 meters (111 feet) long! This image is therefore, as far as we can tell, the largest photograph of Ljubljana ever made.

To navigate the image, click and drag your mouse inside the image. You can zoom using your mouse wheel (or using two fingers if you have a macbook, for example). You can also use the controls on the left side of the image.

The panorama was shot during the summer of 2011 from the top of the tower at Ljubljana castle. A Canon 550D and a Leaf 80-megapixel medium format digital back mounted on a Mamiya 645DF were used for shooting. The shooting took about 4 hours. Unfortunately the air was not quite as clear as it could have been, but it is still clear enough to see some of the mountains in the distance.

See the photo in its full glory here!

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• Slovene Rhapsody (travel.nytimes.com)

We tried to make it as easy as possible to have a quick overview of the suggested images with the appropriate info you need (license and size). They are available right now for all WordPress users and in the next days we’ll be adding support for other platforms too.

Let us know how you feel about these changes. We’re always available for critique, questions and suggestions on twitter and email.

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Image via Wikipedia

Sam Fiorella of Sensei Marketing talked about the difference of social media engagement policies vs social media policies at the Social Media Masters seminar in New York last Friday.

We came across this list of Blogging and Social Media Policies of some major organization published by the Social Media Governance website run by  Chris Boudreaux.

Here are some interesting excerpts from a couple of them.

From Coca Cola:

“Remember that your local posts can have global significance. The way that you answer an online question might be accurate in some parts of the world, but inaccurate (or even illegal) in others. Keep that “world view” in mind when you are participating in online conversations.”

From City of Seattle:

“Comments and articles submitted to a City of Seattle blog shall be moderated by an authorized blog moderator trained and assigned by the department/agency creating and maintaining the blog.”

From FedEx:

“Saying “I am FedEx” is saying you are a part of a global community. This is our platform for showcasing the winning culture at FedEx and providing a window into our workplace. We welcome and recognize the unique and compelling stories about the more than 280,000 team members who make FedEx one of the best places in the world to work.”

The list is a great resource for ideas if you haven’t established social media guidelines for your organization and it also provides some templates that you can use to get started.

Related articles

• Why a Social Media Policy Is Stupid (hubspot.com)
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• #BizForum Chat Hosts Social Media Master Sean Moffitt (socialmediaclub.org)

Image via CrunchBase

Some of our users will probably say “Finally!”, and we agree – we have been neglecting Drupal. Falter not, come fall, we are excited to now support Drupal 7! Applause is in order (or not…). As of last week, the new Drupal 7 is out in the wild and you are invited to download your own copy!

Get your new module for Drupal 7 here.

There are a few things you should keep an eye on:

• Make sure you have a rich text editor enabled (like TinyMCE).
• Settings where the Zemanta block is positioned
• If the theme you are using does not have a sidebar, enable it in our module.

If you find any issues or come to ponder interesting questions, we just might have the right answers!

As always, we are waiting for your emails at support@zemanta.com or comments below!

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Image via Wikipedia

It’s no secret that we love Firefox at Zemanta. It was the first browser we supported as a product and it still makes up the biggest share among our users and developers, too! No one can deny the large impact on the web community and world as a whole that Firefox has had.

We’ve all been in situations where one of our loved ones was running a prehistoric browser and we helped change their perspective by installing that fresh new release of Firefox. Tabs were such a ground-breaking thing, not to mention add-ons which are especially important for the type of software we develop. It’s like software within software within software.

As Firefox’s release cycle sped up, it stopped making sense to have release parties every five weeks (even though we all know people who would be delighted to do it). Having said that — it does make a lot of sense to get the local community together to talk about new features, issues and the path Firefox is taking.

On that note, we’d like to announce a small gathering around Firefox and it’s new tools for developers and beyond, next Wednesday, 28th of September. It will take place at our new offices at Celovška 32  in Ljubljana (also the home of really nice companies like D-labs, LectureHub, Uniki and Modro Oko) as a part of Kiberpipa’s weekly WebHours.

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We recently released improved preferences that allowed you to customize your Zemanta experience. This week, we are releasing a new update that will help you see more information about the articles that we are recommending.

But we need feedback from you to make sure we’re heading in the right direction!

Here is the preview of what you will see:

In addition to more detailed information about each article, we will also show you how well that article is performing on social media (Facebook likes, Twitter retweets) When you try them out, please, come back and tell us what you think.

Coming up next are improvements to related images. Here is a sneak preview of the new and improved image gallery settings:

Image settings preview:

And, by the way, have you noticed our new wicked character counter? What do you think?

New introductory screen:

User Experience Survey

We need your help making Zemanta better, so we need your feedback on what kind of improvements you are looking for.

Please take our short survey, or comment below.

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In a few sentences – Who are you?

Usually I describe myself with one sentence: “Sparkier than ever”. In reality I’m a ninja – small and deadly, killing people with crazy associations and weird sense of humor. In my spare time I’m also a woman (surprise, surprise), (computer) scientist, runner, adrenalin junkie, adventurer, blogger, social media omnipresentish person. One word: sparkica.

Where did you grow up?

Considering my height, I never grew up… Well, I was born in Maribor, raised in a small village with only 27 houses. Most of growing up happened while traveling all around the world meeting all the people, cultures and weird creatures. Oh yeah, I’m still growing.

Who are your influences?

Smart, witty, ingenious, honest, brave and goodhearted people – all gazillion of them

What did you study?

Other than computer science? Life, love and everything in between.

What is your role at Zemanta?

I have plenty of roles… officially I’m the first woman (sorry Breda, plants don’t count) and first PhD nerd employed, furthermore, I’m a Python newbie and … oh… researcher. I plan on becoming a good developer… and a friend? Coffee anyone?

What are some blogs that at you follow that others may not know about?

Mine? No, that’s too cocky even for me. I just love Savage Chickens (inspiration for my doodles), Wulffmorgenthaler (strange name, cool strips), thxthxthx (because it doesn’t hurt saying thx now and then) and of course a bunch of Slovenian blogs (e.g. Anka Bulovec).

Team Google or Team Apple? Explain!

I love good looking gadgets and cool apps, but I think the best things in life should be free…ish. Team Google FTW.

How did you get involved with Zemanta?

I know a person who knows a person who knows a person who knows a person… I was at the wrong place at the wrong time doing all the right stuff for all the wrong reasons. And I needed a change and a challenge.

Long story short: I met Škrat at the right place at right time, I seized the opportunity to work with/in awesome Zemanta team and… here I am.

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How easy are you making it for your customers to spread the word about your company/product/service/brand?

Many companies make sure they “cover the waterfront” so-to-speak with their social media efforts, friending customers in Facebook and Tweeting to them on Twitter, but at the heart of things most of your customers and users don’t really want to be your friend. What they want is for you to deliver good product that will make their lives easier or more fun or more interesting, and if you do that, they will gladly use their social networks to spread the word about you. Is your blog making it easy for them to do that? You should definitely have a “block” that lets users share your posts via the various social networks, but sharing can go even further than that.  To help users truly spread the word, you must think about ways that you can also remove the obstacles to sharing.

Artist Nina Paley shares her work for fun and profit.

Artist and filmmaker Nina Paley has done this is in a very novel way, she blogs about her work for her community of fans and releases all her work via free distribution networks that make her audience her distributors. While other entrepreneurs might be thinking about ways to prevent their ideas from being copied and shared on sites around the world, Nina is cooking up ever more ways to make it easier for her fans to copy, remix, translate, and redistribute her work….and she’s never been more successful. Her animated feature Sita Sings The Blues has screened at film festivals, movie theaters, and laptop screens  around the world and won accolades from numerous festivals and critics (Ebert gave her top marks and an award!). She puts herself on the same side as her audience and her appreciative fans (and often even  other fellow artists) have given her thousand of dollars, sent subtitles for her films (in over 25 languages), and flocked to her online store to buy DVDs, CDs, and merchandise related to her many projects. All this because she creates great work and encourages — in fact, she makes it as non-restrictive as possible — for them to share it.

So, what are you doing for your ideas to spread further? What tools are you putting in your customers hands and what roadblocks are you moving out of their way?

Happy Blogging!