Archive for October, 2006

BlogBurst Publishers Take Blogs to the Next Level

Published by Beth on October 20, 2006 in General. 0 Comments

The Santa Maria Times and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier are just two examples of BlogBurst publishers which have successfully leveraged blogs in the network to enhance their existing content through experimenting with blogs across a wider range of topics.

On the Santa Maria Times home page, BlogBurst blogs are published in ‘The Blog Zone,’ and the use of blog avatars and summaries provide an attractive way of showcasing content. BlogBurst blogs featured on the SM Times include Food & Wine, Gossip, and Shopping, as well as virtual columnists such as TechCrunch, Vagablogging and VivirLatino.

The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier dedicates an entire page to blogs known as ‘Blog Zone.’ WCFCourier.com uses BlogBurst blogs to complement feature content such as Travel, Science & Technology, and Shopping.

We’re excited to continue working with all of our publishers as they move forward to help them showcase and package blogs, while leveraging blogs across multiple topics of interest.

 

Ten Ways to be a Better Blogger

Published by Beth on October 18, 2006 in Blog Writing. 2 Comments

TechRepublic offers some great tips - 10 of them - on how all bloggers can improve their writing and their chances of increasing their audience numbers and site visits.

When we read the post, we felt there were many similarities between what we at BlogBurst see as good ways to increase your chances of getting pick up on one of our publisher sites, and what TR had to say. Here are our top three tips from TR that we think are the most relevant for getting picked up and syndicated:

#1: Define Your Purpose

We, at BlogBurst, could not agree more. Finding a clear and focused objective for your blog will garner you more loyalty and more readers. Audiences/Readers like to tune into the expert opinion, and a focused blog can show you off as a resident expert, or at least as someone who is following a particular topic or issue, more so than they can.

Continue reading ‘Ten Ways to be a Better Blogger’

The Sun Never Sets on the British Blogosphere

Published by Beth on October 13, 2006 in General. 0 Comments

Previously, we have discussed a number of our esteemed overseas members, and I thought I might take the opportunity to highlight a few of our British friends. The timing also seems appropriate since Technorati and Edelman have just released preliminary findings from a study they are performing on the European blogosphere.

Gapingvoid.com - Hugh MacLeods Blog of “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” is always entertaining and incisive.

Making a Mark – An artist’s journal, exploring art and the thoughts behind it

Spacestories.com - Space news in plain English by Fleet Street journalist Paul Sutherland

Mashable.com - Invaluable analysis of the social media space

And a personal favorite – Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog – he can pretty much speak for himself…

It is a great privilege to count these fine bloggers among our membership, and we look forward to helping bring global perspectives into finer focus.

Cheerio!

New Section on washingtonpost.com

Published by Beth on October 12, 2006 in General. 1 Comment

Washingtonpost.com has just launched a brand new section featuring BlogBurst. Your Life in Green features a number of our very fine environmentally-focussed blogs. A few of the members that are now being featured are:

Treehugger - great design meets environmentally sound rechniques
The Oil Drum -Â Energy and Our Future
Gristmill - Environmental News and Commentary
This quarter is shaping up to be very exciting - stay tuned for a lot more news, pickups, and implementations.

Reporting Gap Last Weekend

Published by Beth on October 12, 2006 in General. 0 Comments

Just to let everyone know, we had a data warehouse error last weekend resulting in a short reporting blackout. The BlogBurst service was still running, but if you look at your reports, you will see little or no data for about a 48 hour period over the weekend. We are taking steps to beef up our data collection and reporting infrastructure to make sure this does not happen again.

Up Close and Personal: BlogBurst Debuts at ONA

Published by Beth on October 9, 2006 in General. 0 Comments

The Online News Association (ONA) held its annual conference last weekend in Washington D.C. on Content, Convergence and Commerce, and Pluck was proud to promote the BlogBurst network in our display booth. We also sponsored a seminar entitled “Going Digital: How to prepare your newsroom for the future” at Gannett headquarters.

Serving as ONA keynote speakers were Adrian Van Klaveren of the BBC and Mark Cuban of HDNet (and the Dallas Mavericks). The conference included panelists and speakers from numerous digital media outlets (USA Today, washingtonpost.com, CBS News, CNN.com, Reuters and Salon.com, to name a few) and such Internet luminaries as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (an advisor to the BlogBurst network) and Jeff Jarvitz of Buzzmachine.

The Blogger spotlight session featured famed Iraqi blogger Zeyad A. and his blog ‘Healing Iraq.’ Zeyad is one of BlogBurst’s excellent Middle East bloggers, reporting the news from the front line with unique perspectives, fresh voices and informed opinions.

Although the overall future of online news was obviously one of the central themes for ONA members, the interest in social networking, social media and how to make web sites more interactive and community-oriented was tremendous. Traditional media, which emerged from a print-based world, is constantly searching for ways to design their sites to attract a younger audience - and this younger audience grew up with digital media, making them ‘digital natives.’ They have never known life without Internet technologies.

In one session called “How young people consume news,” a panel of young multi-tasking students with voracious media appetites discussed how they use the Web. They said that at their computers, while accessing news and information from portals and blogs, they’re also playing games, chatting with friends online, uploading photos, and checking in on their MySpace and Facebook pages - all at the same time.

Young people aren’t just media consumers - they’re multimedia producers. The Internet provides a library of resources that has always been at their fingertips. Many of them receive their news through Web portals and RSS feeds, in order to access headlines and blurbs quickly and conveniently. The question, of course, is how to monetize the pages where young people are going.

One thing is certain: the future of online news will be determined by increasingly younger readers. It will be instantaneous, user-generated, more dynamic, more interactive, personalized and customizable. Although the way people digest their news is constantly evolving, their hunger for news and information will continue to grow.

Writing Post Summaries

Published by Beth on October 5, 2006 in Blog Writing. 1 Comment

It’s a good idea to summarize the main point of your post in the first 50 or so words of the article. Most blog readers spend time scanning many articles at a time before they decide to read any given post closely.

BlogBurst publishing partners do searches for specific topics and will get back hundreds of relevant, high quality blog articles. Their search results will only show the first few sentences of these posts. The editor will scan these summaries and select posts for further review. This means that your headline and article introduction are the most important text you can write to improve your chances of pick up.

A compelling summary will both give readers a quick overview of your topic and introduce a striking statistic, quote, or fact. It should “catch the eye” of a reader and drive them to learn more by reading the rest of the article.

Technology: The new “generation gap”

Published by Beth on October 4, 2006 in Blog Industry News. 0 Comments

“71% of the 16-34 year olds have participated in a blogging activity. The 16-34’s are three times more likely (25%) than those 35-49 to manage and/or write their own blog.”

This, according to the latest study from Universal McCAnn and published by the Center for Media Research: “The New ‘Digital Divide’, How the New Generation of Digital Consumers are Transforming Mass Communication.”

The study looks at interactive usage among various age groups, and finds that younger, more tech-savvy Internet users are using and participating in new forms of media and social networking, including blogging, instant messaging and file sharing, at a much higher rate than those age 34 and older.

David Cohen EVP, U.S. Director of Digital Communications stated “No longer can we simply broadcast our messages to a mass audience and hope that our standard metrics of reach and frequency will guarantee success. Accountable engagement innovation is the battlefield of the 21st century.”

With your blogs, you have made even researchers and social scientists take notice of how social networking and social media tools are changing communication and its effect on everything from trends to market share. Way to go, bloggers!