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Increasing traffic to your blog isn’t the “cure all” some people make it out to be. Without a solid strategy, you might attract users – but not be able to keep them coming back. But as long as you’re clear-eyed about what traffic-building efforts can and cannot accomplish, there is a lot gained by getting exposed to new (and different) people. You truly can never know when one of those new visitors might play a very important role in your online “ecosystem.”
With that thought in mind, here are a few tactics to help you attract and convert new visitors...
There is certainly no denying the ever-growing popularity of Pinterest. With over 2.5 million users participating in the beta, Pinterest provides a new and unique way to discover and share the web. This growing popularity has, of course, spawned numerous sites that utilize a variety of Pinterest elements.
If Pinterest doesn’t seem to be quite what you need, you might consider trying one of the many alternatives. Whether it’s a “manlier” alternative like Gentlemint or a specific niche like tech-centric Curisma, you are sure to be able to find something up your alley. Read on to learn about ten of the best alternatives to Pinterest....
Hey everyone -- this looks like a really great FREE tool for taking a bunch of data and creating a stunning visual story. I haven't tested it because I don't have a pile of data to crunch, make it look beautiful, or tell a story with it. But if you do, then I wanted to make sure I passed this along. Enjoy trying it out.
Robin Good: Readlists is a simple web app which allows you to easily create curated lists of web resources, articles and links and bundle them to a downloadable eBook.
"A Readlist is a group of web pages—articles, recipes, course materials, anything—bundled into an e-book you can send to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone." To create a "Readlist" you simply click on the Create a Readlist button and add one url at a time. The system gently grabs metadata info like title and author and elegatly lays it out in an ebook formatted reading index ready to be published. The service is free to use. Try it out now: http://readlists.com [This is is cool tool for readers, researchers, PR pros - JD]
Via Robin Good, Giuseppe Mauriello, Jeff Domansky
A complete three-lens optical system for serious iPhoneographers... iPhone Lens Dial: Is this the coolest iPhone photography accessory or what? This perfect for quick and dirty pics for PR, blogging or what have you. Of course it also means you have the perfect excuse for avoiding calls from your mother-in-law, boss or your spouse with that grocery list. "Uh sorry dear, I'm taking pictures right now!" ;-)
Do you have a favorite writer? Are you looking for another one? Visit our Writers page to discover Most Read, Featured, and Up & Coming Writers. Or visit your favorite authors’ own pages, where our editors have hand-picked the very best stories for you to enjoy. Read on for notable stories from our favorite authors.... [Awesome reading, story suggestions from Byliner. Just in time for the long weekend - JD]
Robin Good: Curate.me is a customizable personal news briefing service that allows you to define up to ten specific interests/topics you want to monitor, and to schedule which days and what time your news brief is to be delivered. The generated custom news brief are delivered to you via email (each email includes 10-12 links from the topics you've selected) and can be read also in your preferred browser or iPhone. For each one of the up to ten topics selected you can specify the degree of importance to you. As a user you can create as many custom news briefs as you like, each one with a specific set of topics and delivery schedule.
Free to use.
Try it out now: http://curate.me/ ;
Via Robin Good, Jeff Domansky
When you’re just getting started with content marketing, you might not necessarily be aware of the tools that are out there and available to you. Once you establish yourself and start to try out and get used to different technologies, you’ll find that many of the tools you’ll want to use are paid. That is not, however, to say that there aren’t some very good free tools out there too (and everyone likes when “free” and “powerful” come together, right?) So here we go: through the basic outline of your content strategy, here are 37 must-haves for your content marketing toolbox. Keep in mind that all of these have free versions (though you might eventually decide the paid version better suits your needs)....
Here are 24 fantastic, and free, online creativity tools you can use to kick your creativity into high gear. Below you’ll find 24 creativity tools to help kick your creativity into high gear. This list of creative thinking tools includes creativity cards, tools to scribble, idea markets, and more. And, best of all, they’re all free!...
Even if this list is from 2011, you'll find a lot of interesting tools for today. [note mg] If you want to know what’s happening in the social web you need monitoring tools. Before you get out your credit card and start to spend money try out some of the free social media monitoring services. This way you get a taste of what is available and if you need paid services. I have collected 48 free social media monitoring tools. In the Group A are the services that I use regularly or seem interesting to check out immediately. The Group B is an alphabetical list of tools for you to play with. Here we go:... Read more: http://bit.ly/IDzrqr
Via Martin Gysler, Jeff Domansky
Surrounded by an overwhelming amount of digital content, many people are looking for something that can fill the role of a digital newspaper -- filtering and highlighting interesting content. What did the printed newspaper provide in its heyday as the information-delivery system of choice? A collection of news and other interesting content, selected by knowledgeable editors from a wide range of sources, presented in an easy-to-scan format. Now, the supply of information we have available to us is almost never-ending — but we still need an easy and efficient way to filter it, and find what is interesting and relevant, and share it with others. The field is filled with contenders who believe they can solve that problem, including News.me and Flipboard and Zite, and one of the newest is a San Francisco-based startup called Prismatic....
Want to create your own infographics? PiktoChart is a full-featured tool that lets you write, design and produce your own professional visuals for PR, content marketing, sales and marketing. It has free and reasonably priced pro versions. Well worth a closer look.
Lots of agencies have booze on hand—Arnold in Boston even has an impatient and lonely beer vending machine that harasses employees on Twitter until they visit it. But JWT's Casa in Brazil has the most annoying agency beer fridge. It's hooked up to the shop's computers and refuses to open on Fridays until all staffers complete their weekly time sheets. [PR agency CEO, CFO, bosses, managers' alert! Must-have management tool! ;-) JD ]
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ReadrBoard is a new social tool that lets readers react to anything online - an article, a photo, a video, even a snippet from a page. How many times have you had the experience of being on Facebook and wishing there was a “dislike” button? Or some alternate way to react to something beyond clicking the infamous thumbs up? That’s the idea behind ReadrBoard, a new social tool that lets readers react to anything online – an article, a photo, a video, even a specific snippet from a page.... From a business model standpoint, Bayne says ReadrBoard is a tool for online publishers frustrated with the user engagement tools they’re using.... [I really like the potential for PR, content marketing and research - JD ]
While video lovers have gotten more social services that highlight interesting clips, it's still hard to construct a more comprehensive look at video news. That’s the gap that New York state startup Newslook is trying to fill with a new iPad app that allows users to construct channels of their favorite news subjects on the fly....
I’ve been recommending PostPlanner to many of my clients (and friends) for months now. If you don’t know what PostPlanner is, it’s a way to schedule, manage and measure updates on your Facebook Page (here’s a video tutorial). They recently added a feature that allows you to quickly see what time of day is best for you to update your Page....
Excerpted from article: "Qwiki, the start-up known for creating automated multimedia presentations, is launching a new media format that allows publishers, bloggers, web personalities and others to create 60-second video stories that are embedded with other videos, images, maps and links. It’s like an interactive video slideshow that lets users click on other content throughout a narrated story, so they can choose how deep they want to experience the content. The service goes into private testing today with some early users and is expected to open to the public in a couple of weeks. Users can put together a Qwiki by arranging images, videos and maps and other content into six frames. Each frame can be further edited with a caption and embedded with more images, Tweets, maps and links taken from sources such as YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps and other sources including their personal content. When the media content is laid down, a user records a 60-second narration for the story with the option of appearing in a small window throughout the Qwiki. The creator decides when to advance each frame. Imbruce, Founder and CEO, said: "there are many more features to be added that could make Qwiki even more attractive to its creators and users. Right now, creators can only tell a 60-second story. But with the ability to add more content, it could really be the starting point for a bigger story. I think over time, Qwiki might be better served by allowing people the option to make videos a little longer. New online tools, such as Pinterest, are already showing us that self-expression and curation are now very popular. I think it’s logical that a simple tool for mixing video, images and online content could also attract an audience..." Read full article:
http://gigaom.com/2012/05/23/qwiki-launches-interactive-story-telling-platform-with-abc-news/ Check out it: http://www.qwiki.com [This is another cool tool with potential for PR, contentmarketing pros - JD]
Via Giuseppe Mauriello, Jeff Domansky
...Curating content done properly, IMO has its positives. I do it here on iblogzone, via my weekly speedlinks (weekly roundups). With so much information out there, this is one method where users are starting to see its advantages, due to its objective of “finding the best content about a certain topic”, combining them together, and letting like minded people to know about them. Really great to filter out the noise, and useless content.... Did you notice the words, meaningful, great information and credit your sources? That’s the essence of being a great content curator and nothing else.... [Useful article and great summary of seven free content curation tools - JD ]
A yet-to-be-launched tool called Meograph promises to let you easily “create, playback and share beautiful stories in the context of when and where.” It’s a tool that’s still in pre-beta, but journalists and news organizations can get priority access for an invite. Meograph released a demo of what the tool can do, using the fictional KVWM San Diego TV station as an example use case. Based on the examples, I wouldn’t yet call the resulting product “beautiful,” but the storytelling format is a compelling mishmash: timeline + audio + Google Maps + images + video+ hyperlinks (for adding more context and linking to stories)....
Robin Good: the Content Strategy Generator Tool (CSGT) by Daniel Butler of SEOgadget is a Google Docs-based spreadsheet that allows you to input a specificic keyword or search-phrase and to find rapidli trending news articles from a number of relevant sources. These include: Bing News Google News Digg Reddit Topsy Twittorati Redux Helium Cracked Fark Blog Catalog Yahoo Answers Uber Suggest Google Insights How Stuff Works "That’s not all, though—the Source and Place tab will tell you how to find the top Twitter experts, bloggers, and editors in your niche. Use this to figure out who you can follow—and start new relationships with." Highly recommended. useful. 8/10 Review from ProBlogger: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/05/12/the-must-have-blog-post-topic-generation-tool/ ;
More info: https://seogadget.co.uk/content-strategy-generator-tool-v2-update/ ; https://seogadget.co.uk/using-google-docs-to-generate-hot-content-strategies/ ; CSGT Tool: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj4U6wmYE1X6dDB5S1lDUXFzaTUxME5IRmJqZ2ozZGc (Thanks to Alessandro Murra for discovering it)
Via Robin Good, Jeff Domansky
Pinterest is a great social networking site, but it is definitely still young and lacking in some features. ...If you’d like the Pinterest experience but with more features, you can either use an entirely different Pinterest alternative, or you can try using one of these Pinterest-based tools.
This collection has a huge variety of tools, including ways to explore, discover, analyze and more. There are even a few browser plug-ins to really make your Pinterest experience worthwhile. These tools definitely give Pinterest a whole new layer of functionality and you’re sure to find at least one you don’t know how you ever pinned without. Read on to learn about 10 of my favorite Pinterest tools....
...But with meetings all day and networking events on weekends, it’s difficult for any small business owner to keep up with the ever changing information. However, that’s still not a valid excuse — there’s an app for that, of course. I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs the following question: What content apps do you use to get the best startup, tech and industry news on the go? Here are eight mobile options that will deliver the business headlines you need to read — right to your fingertips... [Great suggestions; several new ones - JD]
Social startup Storify is capturing the imagination of journalists and brands... With the presidential elections underway and the Olympics coming up, this is a big year for event-driven journalism—and for social publishing tool Storify.
Storify built its name on enabling reporters, bloggers or anyone to aggregate status updates, tweets, links and YouTube videos and embed them into a blog-style, continuous-stream article treatment that can then live on a site of one’s choosing. The concept is fairly simple: capture as much content as possible on a particular topic from numerous voices across the Web in an easy-to-consume format....
Robin Good: Easel.ly is a new web app which allows you to create, edit and publish your own infographics. Easel.ly makes it easy to add visual, icons and graphic elements by providing a rich library of ready-made elements that can be dragged and dropped on your infographic. Infographics are created by selecting a ready-made template which can be edited and personalized in every possible aspect. You can also upload your own images and save the final work in your preferred format among JPG, PNG, PDF and SVG. Free to use. Try it out now: http://www.easel.ly/ ;
(Thanks to Nik Peachey for finding it first) [A promising looking tool for PR, content marketers alike - JD]
Via Robin Good, Jeff Domansky
Google is widely (and rightly) recognised as the mother of all search engines. But, if you need to drill down your searches by more specific details, do you trust Google to give you ... ...
Via Ana Cristina Pratas, Jeff Domansky
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