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Tech Semantic Web and Linked Data

• May 14, 2012
• 14:51

  4 Big Reasons Why Your Company Should Set up an Internal Blog

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Not all blogs are open to the general public. There are also internal blogs, i.e. corporate blogs aimed at the employees of an organization/company. Many corporations and other organizations now use social networking platforms as their corporate intranet. Blogs can be an integral part of the intranet.There are tons of tips out there how to start a blog, how to blog, etc., but not nearly as much about internal blogs. So, why should you company consider setting up an internal blog?

  

  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.

   

  Related articles

   

  • Blogging Is Not Dead, If…(zemanta.com)
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  • How to Develop an Internal Content Marketing Plan by Leveraging Intranets(contentmarketinginstitute.com)

  

• 13:53

  Engineers are becoming a lot like marketers too

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  

  I spend a lot of time thinking about how engineering culture and capabilities are seeping into marketing's ecosystem. Marketers are becoming more tech-savvy by the day, which is a fascinating transformation to behold.

  But it struck me recently how much the inverse is happening too: many of the signature characteristics of marketing have now become a part of engineering culture. Engineers are becoming quite marketing-savvy in their trade. This isn't about engineers working in marketing (although that's what marketing technologists do). It's about engineers natively applying marketing principles in their own endeavors.

  No offense is intended to engineers by this remark! I know the old-school clichés — engineers considered most marketing to be fluff and spin. In days past, that was sometimes a fair indictment too.

  But new-school marketing is different. Content marketing, social media marketing, and customer experience marketing are intently focused on delivering real value to prospects and customers. New-school marketers probably have as much derision for fluff and spin as any cynical system administrator caricature ever did.

  New-school engineering is different than its predecessor too. The old-school clichés of engineers as poor communicators, sequestered in back rooms, disconnected from the business and customers, are now laughable. Some might argue that we're suffering from the polar opposite of that archetype — CNN just ran an article bemoaning the rise of "brogrammer" culture. But even without that extreme, it's not hard to see that software engineering has shifted to a highly collaborative, customer-centric profession that has become quite adept at outward communications, promotion, and business strategy.

  I believe that three forces have driven this transformation:

  1. Open source software communities
  2. Agile software development
  3. Celebration of the engineer-entrepreneur

  There are a lot of lessons that marketers can learn from these dynamics, so let's look at each.

  Open source software communities as marketing organizations

  

  Open source software has been tremendously successful: Linux as an operating system, MySQL as a database, Apache as a web server, and thousands and thousands of other great products and platforms. This success is certainly built on technical accomplishments — an extremely discerning kind of peer-reviewed ecosystem.

  But open source success is also due to engineer-driven marketing. Open source projects exist in the marketplace of ideas, competing with each other for the precious commodities that marketers have always competed for — attention and adoption — and, even more ambitiously, participating contributors. The classic book The Cathedral & The Bazaar describes a number of the technical and marketing aspects of that competition from several early successful open source projects.

  But since that book was written more than 10 years ago, the "marketing" aspects of open source seem to have only grown in popularity and sophistication — making them an integral part of engineering culture. Consider the following:

  • Web sites for open source projects are increasingly well-designed and rich in content. Often this content includes social proof of well-known brands that have adopted the software and case studies of their implementations. They feature screencasts, presentations, and ebooks — deep, genuine materials that any content marketer would rightly envy.
  • Great engineers and open source project advocates also use blogs prolifically to share ideas, persuade others to their point of view, and disseminate learning and knowledge related to their projects. The writing on many of these blogs is passionate and compelling, and in a very real sense helps build the brands of those individuals and their respective open source communities.
  • Engineers engage in a highly effective kind of social media marketing through sites such as Stack Overflow, a Q&A site focused on technical topics. Projects and people earn credibility through the quality and quantity of answers to questions. A popular "tag" in Stack Overflow is a good sign of a thriving open source project. This is promotion through helping real customers with real solutions — fluff and spin are not tolerated — and it's impressively responsive.
  • Personality has become a significant force in the promotion of many open source projects, where humor and wit combine with well-defined platform philosophies and "opinionated" software architecture. Exhibit A: the Ruby on Rails community and it's colorful founder David Heinemeier Hansson. These are brands that thrive on more than just their technical merits.
  • Such open engagement in winning an audience is not restricted to online forums — engineers speak regularly at conferences, unconferences, meet-ups, workshops, hack-a-thons, and more. They invented many of these new event formats! From a marketing perspective, such events have been incredibly successful at building momentum for open source projects and communities. The quality of the presentations are often superb too, featured on SlideShare, and would make Garr Reynolds proud.
  • Open source projects nurture loose and formal co-marketing relationships with each other. There are ecosystems of smaller developments that orbit larger open source platforms, such as the gems and plugins for Rails. There are also alliances of larger platforms that work well together, such as the popular LAMP stack bundle for web applications. Open source projects are often masterful at using APIs and data as a new kind of marketing to drive adoption.

  There are more examples, but you get the point: open source software initiatives have become thriving ventures championed by engineer-led marketing. And for most engineers, since such marketing is genuine — developing meaningful connections with their audience — it's valued and respected. Say so long to the stereotypes of the last century.

  Agile software development as a driver of engineering-marketing culture

  

  Software development in the old days — like marketing in the old days — operated on long schedules of months or years, with the planning stage often separated from the implementation and delivery stages by huge gulfs of time. The process often isolated engineers from customer and market feedback along the way. And it all too frequently resulted in outcomes that made everyone unhappy. ("This isn't what I want!" "It's what you said you wanted 18 months ago!")

  Seeking a better way, a group of pioneering engineers got together and penned the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. The first principle: our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery.

  Agile software development methodologies put the customer at the center of the development process, emphasize continuous interaction between engineers and customers (or their internal proxies), and take a more iterative approach to implementing large projects to have faster feedback loops and quick adaptation to change.

  Agile has been widely embraced over the past decade, and its adoption has fostered principles of customer-centricity deep in engineering culture:

  • Understanding what the customer truly wants and values is given top priority in the development process. Developers and customers (or product owners on their behalf) meet daily to evolve the product vision together. The iterative design and implementation process lets the best solution emerge organically from showing, discussing, and revising features.
  • Faster speed to market and quicker responses to opportunities/threats are enabled by the rapid iteration of agile development. The capability to react quickly — and through that be more competitive in the market — is a badge of honor for agile practitioners. "Release early and release often."
  • Usability and user experience (UX) design are now a core part of development. The customer-centric design process has caused engineers to appreciate and value good UX and strive to incorporate that into products from conception — not merely sprinkled on at the end. Non-designers eagerly seek the participation of designers or find other ways to leverage their contributions (see Twitter Bootstrap as an example of an open source design framework).
  • A commitment to consistent quality as a key feature through continuous integration and test-driven development tactics. These "baked in" approaches to quality provide the flexibility to release software more quickly and fulfill customer expectations more reliably.
  • Metrics are used to quantitatively measure improvement. Data on how customers use products is treasured, both to uncover new opportunities for improvement and to gauge the success of new changes released. This is often business data as much as it is technical data, under a mantra of "you optimize what you measure." A/B testing is now commonly applied in many web software applications, encouraging agile teams to achieve the best user experiences through real-world experiments.

  When it comes to product management in an agile organization, the perspectives of engineering and marketing blend together harmoniously into a hybrid engineering-marketing culture. What's considered great engineering is also what's considered great marketing. That's an amazing achievement when you think about it.

  Frankly, many marketing teams could actually improve their own customer-centricity in other aspects of their work by modeling themselves on the success of agile engineering teams — in fact, that's exactly what agile marketing is all about.

  Celebration of the engineer-entrepreneur

  Computer scientist Alan Kay famously remarked, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

  While there have long been famous examples of engineers who became entrepreneurs — Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard and Bill Gates of Microsoft leap to mind — the correlation of those two callings has grown substantially in the Internet age. Consider some of the hottest Internet companies, all founded by software engineers:

  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin who created Google
  • Mark Zuckerberg who created Facebook
  • Jack Dorsey who created Twitter and then Square

  

  There are literally thousands of examples of engineer-entrepreneurs from the past ten years. Most recently in the news, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger who created Instagram, which Facebook just purchased for $1 billion. But even on a more modest scale, consider the hundreds of thousands of offerings in Apple's App Store for the iPhone and iPad.

  Part of the explosion of engineer-entrepreneurs is due to the structural changes in the software industry. It has never been easier or cheaper to build great software products — leveraging open source foundations and scalable cloud computing infrastructure — to launch a new idea. And, thanks to the reach and network dynamics of digital marketing, it's never been easier or cheaper to promote and distribute those products worldwide.

  These have enabled the explosion of engineering-driven entrepreneurship, but there's something else that's helped motivate it.

  Over the past 10 years, it has become cool in engineering circles to be an entrepreneur. Building something technically impressive still earns respect. But building something that is commercially successful also earns respect — even if its technical merits are minimal. It's not just about the money either. It's about the pride of making something that other people want and architecting ways to grow and sustain a business around them.

  Engineer-entrepreneurs are celebrated among their peers and by the world at large, and it's fundamentally changed engineering culture.

  Even engineers who aren't full-time entrepreneurs increasingly have small ventures on the side: a Web.20 application, an iPhone or iPad app, a project on Kickstarter, etc. This instinct to tinker with new ideas to open up business opportunities has become so powerful within engineering culture that even large companies are seeking to tap into it for intrapreneurship, such as Google's 20% time.

  The result: engineers increasingly think about the marketing and business dynamics at play with their products, entwining those facets of a successful product with their technical design and implementation. The concept of growth hackers arises from this interplay of marketing and technology.

  If you consider all the above factors together, it's easy to see that new-school engineers have both tech savvy and marketing savvy.

  And that blurs the line with new-school marketers — who are increasingly adding tech savviness to their marketing skills.

  The new school is a convergence of marketing and engineering. And that's pretty cool.

  

• May 11, 2012
• 12:54

  Your Blog Needs Tags: 4 Tips How to Use Them Effectively

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Categories and tags are both very useful blog assets, provided they are each used for their own purpose. Last week I wrote about how to choose categories for your blog: “To keep things simple, you’ll want to limit the number of categories to about five.” Readers use categories to navigate to posts that they’re interested in; on the other hand, they help bloggers make better writing decision and keep them on track. I made it clear that categories and tags are not the same thing. However, tagging is too often used for the same purposes that categories are. Only the combination of both can be quite an effective navigation tool through your blog. This post is about what tags are, how they are different from categories and how to use tags effectively.

  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.

  Related articles

  • Why and How to Use Tags in Your Posts(zemanta.com)
  • 4 Ways to Use Keywords and Put Your Blog Traffic on Rocket Fuel(bloggingtips.com)
  • How To Make Sure Readers Find What They Are Looking For On Your Blog(zemanta.com)

  

• May 07, 2012
• 16:13

  PoolParty PowerTagging – bringing semantics to enterprises

   » ‎ The Semantic Puzzle

  PoolParty PowerTagging (PPP) is on its way: By extending Confluence´s label management, new application scenarios which make use of content recommendation and semantic indexing will be supported soon. PPP will be published at this year´s Atlassian Summit and at SemTechBiz in San Francisco at the beginning of June.

  The Problem: weak semantics
  

  Tagging is still not a very popular task, especially in corporate environments. Many users don´t see the benefit of creating metadata to describe the actual content. A typical counter-argument to social tagging is that there are too many words for the same thing. “Even if I am tagging very hard my colleagues won´t find necessarily my pages  because they will use different words to search for the content. I don´t have enough time to insert ‘New York City’, ‘NYC’, ‘Big Apple’ etc. as labels”.

  The result: Tagging facilities of enterprise software platforms like Confluence are rarely used and don´t help to index content at all. Search is mostly based on classical full-text indexing. Semantic search as seen more and more on the WWW has still not entered the enterprise realm.

  The Solution: thesaurus based indexing
  

  W3C´s Semantic Web technology stack provides means to define controlled vocabularies like thesauri which results into more and more tools and data which make use of standards like SKOS. Tagging based on thesauri means that concepts are attached to pages & documents rather than putting labels on them. Labels like ‘New York City’, ‘NYC’ and ‘Big Apple’ refer to the same concept, thus it should be sufficient if one of the various terms is used for labeling, all the other names of this certain concept should be attached automatically.

  PoolParty PowerTagging is able to analyse each Confluence page and to insert concepts from a thesaurus and all of their names automatically. Users can curate all suggested tags or they can also index their spaces automically resulting in a semantic index which makes search more comfortable than ever before.

  Usage: enhanced collaboration with enterprise knowledge models
  

  There are two main application scenarios which can be realised on top of Confluence and its PowerTagging extension:

  • Semantic Search: Fully integrated with Confluence´s built-in Lucene based search facility, users no longer have to type in search phrases literally: Even if only ‘New York City’ is mentioned on a page on a word-by-word basis, it´s sufficient to search for ‘Big Apple’ or ‘NYC’ and results will be generated. This feature is especially interesting for domains in which a lot of technical terms or abbreviations are commonly used or for enterprises in multi-lingual environments.
  • Content recommendation: Identifying similar and semantically matching contents especially in larger Confluence instances is a crucial task: Imagine you´re working for a recruiting company and you would like to match a new open position with all people in your applicant database. Or: Imagine you´re working on technical documentation and you can provide your customers automatically with further readings. Or: Imagine you´re working on a slidedeck and you´ll see instantly if some of your colleagues have worked on similar issues recently.

  Don´t re-invent the wheel again and again. Save time and money. PPP will help to fulfill these tasks when creating rich contents more efficiently than ever before. You can link similar contents within Confluence automatically and you can fetch further readings even from the WWW like from Wikipedia.

  If you are interested in trying out PowerTagging, please drop us a note and we will be happy to support you!

• 14:42

  How to Talk to Your Coworkers to Generate Ideas for Blog Posts

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Oh, the feeling of having nothing to write about! How grossly misleading! There’s always something to write about, we just like to complicate things, don’t we? There are tons of tips spread round the blogosphere for how to get fresh ideas for your next post. Brad for instance advises to use Twitter to generate ideas for blog posts. However, rarely do they say anything about HOW to approach those who may be the source of ideas for your blog posts.

  

  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.

  Related articles

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  • A Letter by a Selfish Consumer: Why I Prefer Company Blogs (Vs. Websites)(zemanta.com)

  

• 13:07

  Marketing technologist: part optimist, part pessimist

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  

  I think a great marketing technologist should be part optimist, part pessimist.

  The optimist needs to indulge his or her imagination to drive the organization forward. To wonder, "what if?" To keep an open mind about new technologies and processes. To engage in the sort of creative free association and collaborative brainstorming that leads to innovation. And, most importantly, to be fearless in diving into the implementation of those ideas, making them real.

  The pessimist — or realist, some would say — needs to ask, "What can go wrong?" It's a different kind of imagination, anticipating the ways that things might not work as expected. Of course, to be useful and not annoying, it needs to be combined with solutions for plugging those holes, guarding against those contingencies, or calculating when certain risks are acceptable and not worth addressing.

  Another way to think of it is as two sides of a game strategy: offense and defense.

  The optimist without the pessimist builds spectacular skyscrapers that fall apart when the first woodpecker gives them a rap. The pessimist without the optimist may never conceive of the skyscraper in the first place.

  The Zen of Marketing Technology exists in the balance between these two halves.

  

• May 04, 2012
• 8:48

  Your Blog Needs Categories: 4 Tips How to Choose Them

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Our Z-Blog is fast approaching 500 posts – 500 pieces of useful and relevant content. However, the organization of our posts is far from ideal. As a start-up company we’ve been working hard on R&D of products that make blogging much easier and more fun. One of the channels we’ve been successfully using lately is Z-Blog. We get more and more new visitors daily, thus, it was time to rethink its organization. We’re now working hard on redefining categories and tags. This post is about how to choose categories for your blog to make it more approachable to your readers.

  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.

  Related articles

  • Adding Images, Links and Categories to Your Blog(bloggingtips.com)

  
• May 02, 2012
• 14:03

  Use Twitter for Blog Post Ideas

   » ‎ Z-Blog
  

  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.

  Related articles

  • 5 Ways to Spread Conversation with Your Blog(zemanta.com)

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

  

• April 30, 2012
• 19:18

  Silicon Valley Marketing Technologists: Growth Hackers

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  

  Awesome little essay by Andrew Chen from last week: Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing. As far as I'm concerned, you can almost perfectly substitute "growth hacker" with "marketing technologist," as much of the rationale for this new breed of marketer is the same.

  Here's his opening paragraph (emphasis added is my own):

  The new job title of "Growth Hacker" is integrating itself into Silicon Valley's culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of "How do I get customers for my product?" and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what's already working.

  At the end, he summarizes:

  • For the first time ever, superplatforms like Facebook and Apple uniquely provde access to tens of millions of consumers
  • The discipline of marketing is shifting from people-centric to API-centric activities
  • Growth hackers embody the hybrid between marketer and coder needed to thrive in the age of platforms

  Well worth reading the whole post.

  P.S. Amazingly, "growth hacker" can't be generated by the marketing technologist job title automata. Will have to work on a patch.

  

• 14:12

  Another 5 Lessons Bloggers Can Learn from Reality TV Singing Competitions

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  A few weeks ago I wrote about lessons bloggers can learn from TV singing competitions, such as American Idol, X Factor, and The Voice. In my experience as a customer magazine editor and a blogger, the hardest thing to achieve is to maintain the momentum you gained with your first blog post or the magnificent first issue of your magazine. I was reminded about this by watching TV talent shows.

  

  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.

  

• April 27, 2012
• 18:53

  The tech talent time bomb in marketing

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  

  One of the other points that leaped out at me in the Econsultancy/Adobe report I discussed earlier this week — Are agencies hopelessly screwed or on the verge of a spectacular Renaissance? — was the increasing challenges of finding good technical talent.

  Under the heading "the tech talent time bomb," the report cites research from McKinsey that claims: "By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions."

  The Econsultancy/Adobe report suggested that the shortage has already hit many agencies and marketing departments:

  "Interviewees for this report mentioned how technologically savvy people are hard to come by. This shortage is apparent in both hard technical skill areas such as tech development, specific areas such as data analytics, and softer areas including the requirement for good digital generalists who can combine broad knowledge of digital channels with the ability to see things from the point of view of the consumer."

  "Salary inflation, particularly for developers, is a reality and becoming a real issue for some areas of the industry."

  So what's an agency or in-house marketing department to do? Three suggestions:

  Readjust budgets and cost models to accurately reflect tech supply and demand. A small number of incredibly talented and highly paid innovators can be much more effective than larger teams of average paid average performers — especially at the intersection of technology and creative. Don't be penny-wise, pound-foolish.

  Invest in building a culture that inspires and rewards technical talent. This runs the gamut of active tech participation in management and strategy, tech-friendly ergonomics, progressive HR policies, sweet computers and devices, support for open source initiatives. Give technical talent the opportunity to make a significant impact and to be recognized for their contributions. This isn't just IT plumbing — this is the building of a grand estate from concept-to-completion.

  

  Grow your own marketing technologist "stellar nursery." Put in place good programs to hire interns and junior staff members and shape them into tech-savvy marketers (or marketing-savvy techs).

  The smart kids already crave this kind of opportunity. Get them vendor training on marketing technology products. Have them learn how to program (yes, even if they're not engineers!). Send them to technical and digital marketing conferences. And then push them to apply that learning in meaningful ways. As stars emerge from this process, move quickly to promote and reward them (before someone else snatches them from you).

  Parents: you can do your part by planting the seeds of this exciting career in the heads of your children now. Firefighter? Astronaut? Movie star? Pfff, not nearly as thrilling — or, ahem, as lucrative — as being a marketing technologist. Well, maybe not more than the movie star... ;-)

  

• 11:39

  Headlines Should be as Long as They Need to Be to Tickle Curiosity

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  There are millions of blogs out there. It takes a long time before you reach the steady growth of readers of your blog. Headlines may help you achieve that goal. Potential readers are looking for information, and the first thing they see on blogs is headlines. Posts’ headlines are shared via social media: the headlines are the preview of your posts.

  

  (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.

  Related articles

  • 6 Types Of Effective Headlines – That Attract Readers(weblogbetter.com)
  • How to write a good blog post title(marketing.yell.com)
  • Writing killer headlines: Part 2(marketing.yell.com)

  
• April 26, 2012
• 13:00

  Zemanta Content Recommendations Tools Now Integrated Into TypePad

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  We are very excited to announce a strategic partnership with TypePad today. Over the next few weeks, TypePad users will be able to start using Zemanta’s content recommendations to add links to other authoritative blogs and content sources in addition to bloggers’ own content.

  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!

  

• April 25, 2012
• 20:08

  Are agencies hopelessly screwed or on the verge of a spectacular Renaissance?

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  Maybe both.

  It would be hard to overstate how thoroughly disrupted marketing has been by technology over the past 10 years — or how much disruption still awaits in the decade ahead. It's against that backdrop that the giants of the marketing industry — agencies and their conglomerate ecosystems — are increasingly wrestling with their evolving role in this new era.

  Not unlike the struggle of marketing technology within client organizations — which is not only analogous, but directly intertwined into the agency question — everyone agrees that things have changed. But opinions run the gamut of how to strategically address that change. Is this about tacking the sailboat's course? Shedding weight and trimming the sails? Adding fancy new navigation equipment? Or is it more about abandoning the boat and going by airplane instead?

  Econsultancy and Adobe just released a report, The Progression of Agency Value: Developing a Model for Agency Maturity in a Digital World, that looks at that debate from several angles. It contains a lot of great attributed (and unattributed) remarks from agency and brand executives, such as this gem from an anonymous strategy director:

  "It's hard to know what the ad industry is any more, where it starts and stops."

  Robin Bonn of Code Worldwide — a very different kind of firm in the agency ecosystem — is cited as saying, "Agencies still provide the magic of ideas, but technology will inevitably power most of the logic of implementation. Adapting to this sea-change in business model is proving very tough."

  

  The Econsultancy/Adobe report frames this struggle according to the "progression of economic value" model that Joseph Pine and James Gilmore described as the foundation of the experience economy.

  In the context of agencies, this report focuses on the "deliver services" stage on up. They characterize agency challenges with technology, big data, and the new skill sets required as a maturity model that advances from delivering services, to staging experiences, to guiding transformations:

  

  In theory, it sounds promising.

  But the rest of the world isn't necessarily holding their breath for that metamorphosis. As one director of digital marketing who was interviewed said (emphasis added is my own):

  "In my opinion, companies who want to excel in the digital space need a strong internal team able to connect creativity and execution, possibly using different agencies to do that. At the end of the day, we don't need an agency to know what happens in the digital space: we all read the same articles and go to the same conferences. So we either need brilliant ideas or flawless execution from an agency."

  An executive summary version of the report is available free from Adobe here.

  P.S. On the marketing technology frenemy triangle, there's this quote in the report from a client-side global marketing leader:

  "Traditional agencies that claim to have become digital or 'full service' are at risk of being put out of business by what we used to call systems integrations who have discovered that creating a pure digital marketing group (usually staffed by ex-digital agency people) and combining that with some really smart technical people (from the systems integration/technical delivery arm) makes for a very compelling offer in the digital age."

  

• April 23, 2012
• 14:55

  IEEE publication of ?Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store?

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  My article, Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store (PDF), can be found in Volume 35, Number 1, March 2012 (PDF) of the Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Data Engineering (also known as the IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin).

  Abstract:

  We discuss applying column store techniques to both graph (RDF) and relational data for mixed workloads ranging from lookup to analytics in the context of the OpenLink Virtuoso DBMS. In so doing, we need to obtain the excellent memory efficiency, locality and bulk read throughput that are the hallmark of column stores while retaining low-latency random reads and updates, under serializable isolation.

  DBLP BibTeX Record 'journals/debu/Erling12' (XML)

  @article{DBLP:journals/debu/Erling12,
    author    = {Orri Erling},
    title     = {Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store},
    journal   = {IEEE Data Eng. Bull.},
    volume    = {35},
    number    = {1},
    year      = {2012},
    pages     = {3-8},
    ee        =  [sites.computer.org]   bibsource = {DBLP, [dblp.uni-trier.de}] }
  
   

• 14:55

  IEEE publication of ?Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store?

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  My article, Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store (PDF), can be found in Volume 35, Number 1, March 2012 (PDF) of the Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Data Engineering (also known as the IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin).

  Abstract:

  We discuss applying column store techniques to both graph (RDF) and relational data for mixed workloads ranging from lookup to analytics in the context of the OpenLink Virtuoso DBMS. In so doing, we need to obtain the excellent memory efficiency, locality and bulk read throughput that are the hallmark of column stores while retaining low-latency random reads and updates, under serializable isolation.

  DBLP BibTeX Record 'journals/debu/Erling12' (XML)

  @article{DBLP:journals/debu/Erling12,
    author    = {Orri Erling},
    title     = {Virtuoso, a Hybrid RDBMS/Graph Column Store},
    journal   = {IEEE Data Eng. Bull.},
    volume    = {35},
    number    = {1},
    year      = {2012},
    pages     = {3-8},
    ee        =  [sites.computer.org]   bibsource = {DBLP, [dblp.uni-trier.de}] }
  
   

• 13:12

  Understanding Context: How to Increase the Visibility of Your Blog

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Have you seen a YouTube video of Joshua Bell, a world-renowned musician, playing the violin at a subway station in Washington, DC? The story goes something like this. About five years ago, on a cold January morning, Bell played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time thousands of people went through the station. However, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while, about 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. When he finished playing, no one applauded, nor was there any recognition. Moreover, no one knew he played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars! Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100. His “concert” at a subway station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people.

  

  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.

  Related articles

  • Joshua Bell “Stop and Hear the Music” by the Washington Post(ad-aglance.com)
  • The Art of Writing Blog Comments(zemanta.com)

  
• April 20, 2012
• 14:53

  (False) Dilemma: Quality Comments or Rather No Comments?

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  A few days ago I stumbled upon Matt Cutts’s post, the Google search engine software engineer, about fake comments. He talks about the cases when somebody impersonates him on other people’s blogs leaving “nasty comments”. He calls them “fake Matt Cutts” impersonators who make “crazy claims” that are untrue.

  

  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.

  Related articles

  • How to NOT get comments on your blog.(jtdabbagian.com)
  • Does Commenting Add Any Value?(hightalk.net)

  • The Art of Writing Blog Comments (zemanta.com)

  

• April 19, 2012
• 7:49

  Exploiting Big Data: Linked Data and SKOS

   » ‎ The Semantic Puzzle

  Yesterday I gave a webinar covering the question which role SKOS plays in the linked data game. Just the day before I discovered an interesting white paper published by Fujitsu which clearly states that linked data and SKOS are excellent approaches to ‘create additional value in linking and exploiting big data for business benefit’.

  I had at least five scenarios in mind in which SKOS and linked data in general can be combined. Take a look at the slides or watch the video to find out …

  • how to publish SKOS thesauri as linked data
  • how to generate SKOS from LOD sources like DBpedia
  • how to make use of SKOS thesauri for entity extraction & content enrichment from LOD sources
  • how to use linked data mechanisms for collaborative thesaurus management
  • how to use SKOS for linked data alignment & better disambiguation

  Linked Data and SKOS

  View more presentations from Semantic Web Company

• April 18, 2012
• 14:42

  Brand impact or conversion rate? Both, please!

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  From my latest article on Search Engine Land, 5 Colorful Sketches on Conversion Optimization:

  

  The accompanying write-up in the article:

  There can be a perceived tension between conversion rate optimization and brand impact, which dates back to the early rivalries of direct marketing vs. brand marketing.

  But it's a false choice: you can — and should — do great on both dimensions.

  Sure, there are cheesy used car salesman type tactics that you can use to squeeze short-term bumps to your conversion rate. ("I promise you the world, just give me your email address and click 'Boom!'") But such chicanery costs you brand equity.

  On the other hand, great brand-building content is often published without any direction towards a "next step." It leaves visitors dangling like a sailboat in the middle of a lake with no wind. Sure, they can paddle their way to a conversion step. But paddling is hard work.

  The sweet spot is pushing the Pareto frontier of brand and conversion to achieve both. That's brilliant post-click marketing.

  Click through for the other 4 sketches (although you've seen another one on this blog before)

  

• April 17, 2012
• 19:38

  ICDE 2012 (post 6 of 6) - Science Data Panel

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  Michael Stonebraker chaired a panel on the future of science data at ICDE 2012 last week. Other participants were Jeremy Kepner from MIT Lincoln Labs, Anastasia Ailamaki from EPFL, and Alex Szalay from Johns Hopkins University.

  This is the thrust of what was said, noted from memory. My comments follow after the synopsis.

  Jeremy Kepner: When Java was new we saw it as the coming thing and figured that in HPC we should find space for this. When MapReduce and Hadoop came along, we saw this as a sea change in parallel programming models. This was so simple literally anybody could make parallel algorithms whereas this was not so with MPI. Even parallel distributed arrays are harder. So MapReduce was a game changer, together with the cloud where anybody can get a cluster. Hardly a week passes without me having to explain to somebody in government what MapReduce and Hadoop are about.

  We have a lot of arrays and a custom database for them. But the arrays are sparse so this is in fact a triple store. Our users like to work in MATLAB, and any data management must run together with that.

  Of course, MapReduce is not a real scheduler, and Hadoop is not a real file system. For deployment, we must integrate real schedulers and make HDFS look like a file system to applications. The abstraction of a file system is something people like. Being able to skip a time-consuming data-ingestion process with a database is an advantage with file-based paradigms like Hadoop. If this is enhanced with the right scheduling features, this can be a good component in the HPC toolbox.

  Michael Stonebraker: Users of the data use math packages like R, MATLAB, SAS, SPSS, or similar. If business intelligence is about AVG, MIN, MAX, COUNT, and GROUP BY, science applications are much more diverse in their analytics. All science algorithms have an inner loop that resembles linear algebra operations like matrix multiplication. Data is more often than not a large array. There are some graphs in biology and chemistry, but the world is primarily rectangular. Relational databases can emulate sparse arrays but are 20x slower than a custom-made array database for dense arrays. And I will not finish without picking on MapReduce: I know of 2000-node MapReduce clusters. The work they do is maybe that of a 100-node parallel database. So if 2000 nodes is what you want to operate, be my guest.

  Science database is a zero billion dollar business. We do not expect to make money from the science market with SciDB, which by now works and has commercial services supplied by Paradigm 4, while the code itself is open source, which is a must for the science community. The real business opportunity is in the analytics needed by insurance and financial services in general, which are next to identical with the science use cases SciDB tackles. This makes the vendors pay attention.

  Alex Szalay: The way astronomy is done today is through surveys: a telescope scans through the sky and produces data. We have now for 10 years operated the Sloane Sky Survey and kept the data online. We have all the data, and complete query logs, available for anyone interested. When we set out to do this with Jim Gray, everybody found this a crazy idea, but it has worked out.

  Anastasia Ailamaki: We do not use SciDB. We find a lot of spatial use cases. Researchers need access to simulation results which are usually over a spatial model, like in earthquake simulations and the brain. Off-the-shelf techniques like R trees do not work -- the objects overlap too much -- so we have made our own spatial indexing. We make custom software when it is necessary, and are not tied to vendors. In geospatial applications, we can create meshes of different shapes -- like tetrahedral or cubes for earthquakes, and cylinders for the brain -- and index these in a geospatial index. But since an R tree is inefficient when objects overlap too much, as these do, we just find one; and then because there is reachability from an object to neighboring ones, we use this to get all the objects in the area of interest.

  * * *

  This is obviously a diverse field. Probably the message that we can synthesize out of this is that flexibility and parallel programming models are what we need to pay attention to. There is a need to go beyond what one can do in SQL while continuing to stay close to the data. Also, allowing for plug-in data types and index structures may be useful; we sometimes get requests for such anyway.

  The continuing argument around MapReduce and Hadoop is a lasting feature of the landscape. A parallel DB will beat MapReduce any day at joining across partitions; the problem is to overcome the mindset that sees Hadoop as the always-first answer to anything parallel. People will likely have to fail with this before they do anything else. For us, the matter is about having database-resident logic for extract-transform-load (ETL) that can do data-integration type-transformations and maybe iterative graph algorithms that constantly join across partitions, better than a MapReduce job, while still allowing application logic to be written in Java. Teaching sem-web-heads to write SQL procedures and to know about join order, join type, and partition locality, has proven to be difficult. People do not understand latency, whether in client-server or cluster settings. This is why they do not see the point of stored procedures or of shipping functions to data. This sounds like a terrible indictment, like saying that people do not understand why rivers flow downhill. Yet, it is true. This is also why MapReduce is maybe the only parallel programming paradigm that can be successfully deployed in the absence of this understanding, since it is actually quite latency-tolerant, not having any synchronous cross-partition operations except for the succession of the map and reduce steps themselves.

  Maybe it is so that the database guys see MapReduce as an insult to their intelligence and the rest of the world sees it as the only understandable way of running grep and sed (Unix commands for string search/replace) in parallel, with the super bonus of letting you reshuffle the outputs so that you can compare everything to everything else, which grep alone never let you do.

  * * *

  Making a database that does not need data loading seems a nice idea, and CWI has actually done something in this direction in "Here are my Data Files. Here are my Queries. Where are my Results?"] However, there is another product called Algebra Data that claims to take in data without loading and to optimize storage based on access. We do not have immediate plans in this direction. Bulk load is already quite fast (take 100G TPC-H in 70 minutes or so), but faster is always possible.

• 19:38

  ICDE 2012 (post 5 of 6) - Graphs

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  There were quite a few talks about graphs at ICDE 2012. Neither the representations of graphs, nor the differences between RDF and generic graph models, entered much into the discussion. On the other hand, graph similarity searches and related were addressed a fair bit.

  Graph DB and RDF/Linked Data are distinct, if neighboring disciplines. On one hand, graph problems predate Linked Data, and the RDF/Linked Data world is a web artifact, which graphs are not as such, so a slightly different cultural derivation also makes these disjoint. Besides, graphs may imply schema first whereas linked data basically cannot. Then another differentiation might be derived from edges not really being first class citizens in RDF, except for reification, at which the RDF reification vocabulary is miserably inadequate, as pointed out before.

  RDF is being driven by the web-style publishing of Linked Open Data (LOD), with some standardization and uptake by publishers; Graph DB is not standardized but driven by diverse graph-analytics use cases.

  There is no necessary reason why these could not converge, but it will be indefinitely long before any standards come to cover this, so best not hold one's breath. Communities are jealous of their borders, so if the neighbor does something similar one tends to emphasize the differences and not the commonalities.

  So for some things, one could warehouse the original RDF of the web microformats and LOD, and then ETL into some other graph model for specific tasks, or just do these in RDF. Of course, then RDF systems need to offer suitable capabilities. These seem to be about very fast edge traversal within a rather local working set, and about accommodating large, iteratively-updated intermediate results, e.g., edge weights.

  Judging by the benchmarks paper (Benchmarking traversal operations over graph databases (Slidedeck (ppt), paper (pdf)); Marek Ciglan, Alex Averbuch, and Ladialav Hluchy.) at the GDM workshop, the state of benchmarking in graph databases is even worse than in RDF, where the state is bad enough. The paper's premise was flawed to start, using application logic to do JOINs instead of doing them in the DBMS. In this way, latency comes to dominate, and only the most blatant differences are seen. There is nothing like this style of benchmarking to make an industry look bad. The supercomputer Graph 500 benchmark, on the other hand, lets the contestants make their own implementations on a diversity of architectures with random traversal as well as loading and generating large intermediate results. It is somewhat limited, but still broader than the the graph database benchmarks paper at the GDM workshop.

  Returning to graphs, there were some papers on similarity search and clique detection. As players in this space, beyond just RDF, we might as well consider implementing necessary features for efficient expression of such problems. The algorithms discussed were expressed in procedural code against memory-based data structures; there is usually no query language or parallel/distributed processing involved.

  MapReduce has become the default way in which people would tackle such problems at scale; in fact, people do not consider anything else, as far as I can tell. Well, they certainly do not consider MPI for example as a first choice. The parallel array things in Fortran do not at first sight seem very graphy, so this is likely not something that crosses one's mind either.

  We should try some of the similarity search and clustering in SQL with a parallel programming model. We have excellent expression-evaluation speed from vectoring and unrestricted recursion between partitions, and no file system latencies like MapReduce. The initial test case will be some of the linking/data-integration/mapping workloads in LOD2.

  Having some sort-of-agreed-upon benchmark for these workloads would make this more worthwhile. Again, we will see what emerges.

• 19:38

  ICDE 2012 (post 4 of 6) - Graph Data Management Workshop

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  I gave an invited talk ("Virtuoso 7 - Column Store and Adaptive Techniques for Graph" (Slides (ppt))) at the Graph Data Management Workshop at ICDE 2012.

  Bryan Thompson of Systap (Bigdata® RDF store) was also invited, so we got to talk about our common interests. He told me about two cool things they have recently done, namely introducing tables to SPARQL, and adding a way of reifying statements that does not rely on extra columns. The table business is just about being able to store a multicolumn result set into a named persistent entity for subsequent processing. But this amounts to a SQL table, so the relational model has been re-arrived at, once more, from practical considerations. The reification just packs all the fields of a triple (or quad) into a single string and this string is then used as an RDF S or O (Subject or Object), less frequently a P or G (Predicate or Graph). This works because Bigdata® has variable length fields in all columns of the triple/quad table. The query notation then accepts a function-looking thing in a triple pattern to mark reification. Nice. Virtuoso has a variable length column in only the O but could of course have one in also S and even in P and G. The column store would still compress the same as long as reified values did not occur. These values on the other hand would be unlikely to compress very well but run length and dictionary would always work.

  So, we could do it like Bigdata®, or we could add a "quad ID" column to one of the indices, to give a reification ID to quads. Again no penalty in a column store, if you do not access the column. Or we could make an extra table of PSOG->R.

  Yet another variation would be to make the SPOG concatenation a literal that is interned in the RDF literal table, and then used as any literal would be in the O, and as an IRI in a special range when occurring as S. The relative merits depend on how often something will be reified and on whether one wishes to SELECT based on parts of reification. Whichever the case may be, the idea of a function-looking placeholder for a reification is a nice one and we should make a compatible syntax if we do special provenance/reification support. The model in the RDF reification vocabulary is a non-starter and a thing to discredit the sem web for anyone from database.

  I heard from Bryan that the new W3 RDF WG had declared provenance out of scope, unfortunately. The word on the street on the other hand is that provenance is increasingly found to be an issue. This is confirmed by the active work of the W3 Provenance Working Group.

• 19:38

  ICDE 2012 (post 3 of 6) - What Is Timely LOD Search Worth?

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  There was a talk (Linked Data and Live Querying for Enabling Support Platforms for Web Dataspaces (Slides (PDF)); Jürgen Umbrich, Marcel Karnstedt, Josiane Xavier Parreira, Axel Polleres and Manfred Hauswirth) at the Data Engineering Meets the Semantic Web (DESWEB) workshop at ICDE last week about the problems of caching LOD, whether attempted by Sindice or OpenLink's LOD Cloud Cache. The conclusion was that OpenLink covered a bit more of the test data sets and that Sindice was maybe better up to date on the ones that it covered but that neither did it very well. The data sets were random graphs of user FOAF profiles and such collected from some Billion Triples Data set, thus not data that is likely to have commercial value, except in huge quantities maybe for some advertising, except that click streams and the like are much more valuable.

  Being involved with at least one of these, and being in the audience, I felt obligated to comment. The fact is, neither OpenLink's LOD Cloud Cache nor Sindice is a business, and there is not a business model which could justify keeping them timely on the web crawls they contain. Doing so is easy enough, if there is a good enough reason.

  The talk did make a couple of worthwhile points: The data does change; and if one queries entities, one encounters large variation in change-frequency across entities and their attributes.

  The authors suggested to have a piece of middleware decide what things can be safely retrieved from a copy and what have to be retrieved from the source. Not too much is in fact known about the change frequency of the data, except that it changes, as the authors pointed out.

  The crux of the matter is that the thing that ought to know this best is the query processor at the LOD warehouse. For client-side middleware to split the query, it needs access to statistics that it must get from the warehouse or keep by itself. Of course, in concrete application scenarios, you go to the source if you ask about the weather or traffic jams, and otherwise go to the warehouse based on application-level knowledge.

  But for actual business intelligence, one needs histories, so a search engine with only the present is not so interesting. At any rate, refreshing the data should leave a trail of past states. Exposing this for online query would just triple the price, so we forget about that for now. Just keeping an append-only table of history is not too much of a problem. One may make extracts from this table into a relational form for specific business questions. There is no point doing such analytics in RDF itself. One would have to just try to see if there is anything remotely exploitable in such histories. Making a history table is easy enough. Maybe I will add one.

  Let us now see what it would take to operate a web crawl cache that would be properly provisioned, kept fresh, and managed. We base this on the Sindice crawl sizes and our experiments on these; the non-web-crawl LOD Cloud Cache is not included.

  From previous experience we know the sizing: 5Gt/144GB RAM. Today's best price point is on 24-DIMM E5 boards, so 192GB RAM, or 6.67Gt. A unit like that (8TB HDD, 0.5TB SSD, 192GB RAM, 12 core E5, InfiniBand) costs about $6800.

  The Sindice crawl is now about 20Gt, so $28K of gear (768GB RAM) is enough. Let us count this 4 times: 2x for anticipated growth; and 2x for running two copies -- one for online, and one for batch jobs. This is 3TB RAM. Power is 16x500W = 8KW, which we could round to 80A at 110V. Colocation comes to $500 for the space, and $1200 per month for power; make it $2500 per month with traffic included.

  At this rate, 3 year TCO is $120K + ( 36 * $2.5K ) = $210K. This takes one person half time to operate, so this is another $50K per year.

  We do not count software development in this, except some scripting that should be included in the yearly $50K DBA bill.

  Under what circumstances is such a thing profitable? Or can such a thing be seen as a marketing demo, to be paid for by license or service sales?

  A third party can operate a system of this sort, but then the cost will be dominated by software licenses if running on Virtuoso cluster.

  For comparison, the TB at EC2 costs ((( 16 * $2 ) * 24 ) * 31 ) = $24,808 per month. With reserved instances, it is ( 16 * ( $2192 + ((( 0.7 * 24 ) * 365 ) * 3 ))) / 36 = $8938 per month for a 3 year term. Counting at 3TB, the 3 year TCO is $965K at EC2. AWS has volume discounts but they start higher than this; ( 3 * ( 16 * $2K )) = $96K reserved host premium is under $250K. So if you do not even exceed their first volume discount threshold, it does not look likely you can cut a special deal with AWS.

  (The AWS prices are calculated with the high memory instances, approximately 64GB usable RAM each. The slightly better CC2 instance is a bit more expensive.)

  Yet another experiment to make is whether a system as outlined will even run at anywhere close to the performance of physical equipment. This is uncertain; clouds are not for speed, based on what we have seen. They make the most sense when the monthly bill is negligible in relation to the cost of a couple of days of human time.

• 19:37

  ICDE 2012 (post 2 of 6) - LOD Column Store Experiences and Sizing

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  We have played around with LOD data sets and Virtuoso Column Store for the past several months. I will here give a few numbers and comment on some different platform comparisons that we have made. The answer at the end of this is how to size a system for often-changing web-style data. The conclusion is a data-to-RAM ratio that gives an acceptable working set without driving the price up by forcing 100% RAM residence.

  The experiment is loading Sindice web crawls. The platform is 2 x Xeon 5520 and 144G RAM. The initial load rate is 200-180Kt, and drops to 100Kt at 5Gt because of I/O. The system is Virtuoso Column Store configured to run as 4 processes and 32 partitions, all on the same box. After 5Gt, we see just more I/O and going further is not relevant; one runs CPU-bound or not at all.

  We use 4 Crucial SSDs in the setup. The hot structures like the RDF quad indices are on SSD, and the cold ones are on hard disk. A cold structure is a write-only index like the dictionary of literals (id to lit).

  For bulk load, SSDs turn out not to be particularly useful. For a cold start on the other hand, SSDs cut warmup time of 144G RAM from over half an hour to a couple of minutes. It is possible that Intel SSDs would also help with bulk load, but this has not been tried. The SSD problem during bulk load is that these do not write very fast, and while there are writes in queue, read latency goes up; so under a constant write load, the SSD's famous instantaneous random read no longer works.

  The fragment considered in the example is 4.95Gt: 8.1M pages worth of quads; 12.7M of literals and iris; and 4.71M of full text index. A page is 8KB. The files on disk contain empty pages, but these do not matter since they do not take up RAM. The quad indices take 13.4 bytes/quad. The row-wise equivalent used to be 38 or so bytes/quad with similar data. Two-thirds of the IRI and literal string data can benefit from column-wise stream compression. (This was not used but if it were, we could count on a 50% drop in size for the data affected, so instead of 12.7M pages, we could maybe get 8.5M on a good day. This could be worth doing but is not a priority.) The system was configured to have 12M database pages in RAM, so a little under half the database pages of the set fit in RAM at one time; thus one cannot call this a memory-only setup. Due to the locality in the unusually non-local data, this is as far as secondary storage can reach without becoming an over-2x slowdown. In practice, we are talking about under 1% of rows accessed coming from secondary storage, but that alone means half throughput.

  We note that this data set represents the worst that we have seen. It has 129M distinct graphs, 38 t/g. Regular data like the synthetic benchmark sets take half the space per quad. This is about a third of a Sindice crawl; the other two-thirds look the same as far as we looked.

  So if you are interested in hosting data like this, you can budget 144GB RAM for every 5Gt. Do not try it with anything less. Budgeting double this is wise, so that you have space to cook the data; this is important since in order to do things with it, one needs to at least copy things for materializing transformations.

  If you are budget-constrained and hosting very regular content like UniProt, you can budget maybe 144GB RAM for every 10Gt.

  As for CPU, this does not matter as much as long as you do not go to disk. Just for load speed, Dbpedia is loaded in 300s on a cluster of eight (8) dual AMD 2378 boxes at 2.6GHz (total 8 cores per host, so 64 cores in the cluster), and in 945s on one (1) dual Xeon 5520 box at 2.26GHz (total 8 cores in the host). Intel makes much better CPUs, as we see. Both scenarios are 100% in RAM. For even more regular data, the load rates are a bit higher: 1.3Mt/s for the AMD cluster, and 300Kt/s for the Xeon host.

  The interconnect for the AMD cluster is 1 x gigE but this does not matter for load. For CPU-bound cross-partition JOINs, 1 or 2 x gigE is insufficient; 4 x gigE might barely make it; InfiniBand should be safe. When running cross-partition JOINs, a single 8-core Xeon box generates about 300MB/s of interconnect traffic; a gigE connection can maybe take 50MB/s with some luck.

  Intel E5 is not dramatically better than Nehalem but this is something we will see in a while when we make measurements with real equipment. Prior to the E5 release, we tried Amazon EC2 CC2 ("Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large Instance" -- 2x8 core E5, 2.66GHz). The results were inconclusive; it never did more than 1.9x better than Xeon 5520 even when running an empty loop (i.e., recursive Fibonacci function in SQL, no cache misses, no I/O). With a database JOIN, 1.3x better is the best we saw. But this must be the fault of Amazon and not of E5.

  We also tried AMD "Magny-Cours", but for 32 cores against 8 it never did over 2x better, more like 1.4x often enough, and and single thread speed was 50% worse, so not a good buy. We did not find a Bulldozer to try, and did not feel like buying one since the reviews did not promise more core speed over the Magny-Cours.

  It seems that especially with Column Store, we are truly CPU-bound and not memory-latency- or bandwidth-bound. This is based on the observation that a Xeon 5620 with 2 of 3 memory channels populated loads BSBM data only 10% faster than the same with 1 of 3 channels populated, with CPU affinity set on a dual socket system.

  So, if you have a choice between a $2K processor (E5-2690) and a $600 processor (E5-2630), buy the cheaper one and get RAM with the money saved. $1440 buys 128G in $90 8G DIMMs. Then buy E5 boards with 24 DIMMs -- one for every 7Gt of web crawl data. If your software licenses are priced per core, getting higher-clock 4-core E5’s might make sense.

  While on the subject of bytes and quads/triples, we note that Bigdata®'s recent announcement says up to 50 billion triples per single server. Franz loaded at a good 800+ Kt/s rate up to a trillion triples. One is led to think from the spec that this was with less than full cpu but still with highly local data, considering 1.5 bytes a triple would hit very heavy I/O otherwise. Their statement to the effect of LUBM-like data corroborates this, so we are not talking about exactly the same thing.

  So if you compare the claims, I am talking about running CPU-bound on the worst data there is. Franz and Bigdata® do not specify, so it is hard to compare. LOD2 should in principle publish actual metrics with at least Bigdata®; Franz is not participating in these races.

  We may publish some more detailed measurements with more varied configurations later. The thing to remember is minimum 144GB RAM for every 5Gt of web crawls, if you want to load and refresh in RAM.

• 19:37

  ICDE 2012 (post 1 of 6) - LOD2 Plenary

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  LOD2's database contributions are, on one hand, Virtuoso Column Store and Elastic Cluster, and on the other, the demonstration and proof from CWI that indeed all of the relational innovations for which CWI is well known apply to graph/RDF data as well.

  The value is unquestionable both to Virtuoso users in the short-term, and to the state of science and to all RDF users and vendors in the mid-term.

  The LOD2 claim of "linking the universe" (my words) will be tested soon enough, after we first put the universe in a bucket. This refers to a real-time quad store of Sindice crawls, plus a warehouse of the LOD data sets.

  This effort raises a few questions that I will treat in a number of posts to follow, such as --

  • How do you size a real-time copy of LOD/web data?
  • What does it cost to operate a properly provisioned warehouse of all RDF web crawls?

  What is done now is under-provisioned and not kept up to date. We are talking about all the RDF on the web in near real time with arbitrary queries. This is very far from the "billion triples" data sets or vertical portals, which are both easy by comparison.

• 19:36

  ICDE 2012 (post 6 of 6) - Science Data Panel

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  Michael Stonebraker chaired a panel on the future of science data at ICDE 2012 last week. Other participants were Jeremy Kepner from MIT Lincoln Labs, Anastasia Ailamaki from EPFL, and Alex Szalay from Johns Hopkins University.

  This is the thrust of what was said, noted from memory. My comments follow after the synopsis.

  Jeremy Kepner: When Java was new we saw it as the coming thing and figured that in HPC we should find space for this. When MapReduce and Hadoop came along, we saw this as a sea change in parallel programming models. This was so simple literally anybody could make parallel algorithms whereas this was not so with MPI. Even parallel distributed arrays are harder. So MapReduce was a game changer, together with the cloud where anybody can get a cluster. Hardly a week passes without me having to explain to somebody in government what MapReduce and Hadoop are about.

  We have a lot of arrays and a custom database for them. But the arrays are sparse so this is in fact a triple store. Our users like to work in MATLAB, and any data management must run together with that.

  Of course, MapReduce is not a real scheduler, and Hadoop is not a real file system. For deployment, we must integrate real schedulers and make HDFS look like a file system to applications. The abstraction of a file system is something people like. Being able to skip a time-consuming data-ingestion process with a database is an advantage with file-based paradigms like Hadoop. If this is enhanced with the right scheduling features, this can be a good component in the HPC toolbox.

  Michael Stonebraker: Users of the data use math packages like R, MATLAB, SAS, SPSS, or similar. If business intelligence is about AVG, MIN, MAX, COUNT, and GROUP BY, science applications are much more diverse in their analytics. All science algorithms have an inner loop that resembles linear algebra operations like matrix multiplication. Data is more often than not a large array. There are some graphs in biology and chemistry, but the world is primarily rectangular. Relational databases can emulate sparse arrays but are 20x slower than a custom-made array database for dense arrays. And I will not finish without picking on MapReduce: I know of 2000-node MapReduce clusters. The work they do is maybe that of a 100-node parallel database. So if 2000 nodes is what you want to operate, be my guest.

  Science database is a zero billion dollar business. We do not expect to make money from the science market with SciDB, which by now works and has commercial services supplied by Paradigm 4, while the code itself is open source, which is a must for the science community. The real business opportunity is in the analytics needed by insurance and financial services in general, which are next to identical with the science use cases SciDB tackles. This makes the vendors pay attention.

  Alex Szalay: The way astronomy is done today is through surveys: a telescope scans through the sky and produces data. We have now for 10 years operated the Sloane Sky Survey and kept the data online. We have all the data, and complete query logs, available for anyone interested. When we set out to do this with Jim Gray, everybody found this a crazy idea, but it has worked out.

  Anastasia Ailamaki: We do not use SciDB. We find a lot of spatial use cases. Researchers need access to simulation results which are usually over a spatial model, like in earthquake simulations and the brain. Off-the-shelf techniques like R trees do not work -- the objects overlap too much -- so we have made our own spatial indexing. We make custom software when it is necessary, and are not tied to vendors. In geospatial applications, we can create meshes of different shapes -- like tetrahedral or cubes for earthquakes, and cylinders for the brain -- and index these in a geospatial index. But since an R tree is inefficient when objects overlap too much, as these do, we just find one; and then because there is reachability from an object to neighboring ones, we use this to get all the objects in the area of interest.

  * * *

  This is obviously a diverse field. Probably the message that we can synthesize out of this is that flexibility and parallel programming models are what we need to pay attention to. There is a need to go beyond what one can do in SQL while continuing to stay close to the data. Also, allowing for plug-in data types and index structures may be useful; we sometimes get requests for such anyway.

  The continuing argument around MapReduce and Hadoop is a lasting feature of the landscape. A parallel DB will beat MapReduce any day at joining across partitions; the problem is to overcome the mindset that sees Hadoop as the always-first answer to anything parallel. People will likely have to fail with this before they do anything else. For us, the matter is about having database-resident logic for extract-transform-load (ETL) that can do data-integration type-transformations and maybe iterative graph algorithms that constantly join across partitions, better than a MapReduce job, while still allowing application logic to be written in Java. Teaching sem-web-heads to write SQL procedures and to know about join order, join type, and partition locality, has proven to be difficult. People do not understand latency, whether in client-server or cluster settings. This is why they do not see the point of stored procedures or of shipping functions to data. This sounds like a terrible indictment, like saying that people do not understand why rivers flow downhill. Yet, it is true. This is also why MapReduce is maybe the only parallel programming paradigm that can be successfully deployed in the absence of this understanding, since it is actually quite latency-tolerant, not having any synchronous cross-partition operations except for the succession of the map and reduce steps themselves.

  Maybe it is so that the database guys see MapReduce as an insult to their intelligence and the rest of the world sees it as the only understandable way of running grep and sed (Unix commands for string search/replace) in parallel, with the super bonus of letting you reshuffle the outputs so that you can compare everything to everything else, which grep alone never let you do.

  * * *

  Making a database that does not need data loading seems a nice idea, and CWI has actually done something in this direction in "Here are my Data Files. Here are my Queries. Where are my Results?"] However, there is another product called Algebra Data that claims to take in data without loading and to optimize storage based on access. We do not have immediate plans in this direction. Bulk load is already quite fast (take 100G TPC-H in 70 minutes or so), but faster is always possible.

• 19:35

  ICDE 2012 (post 5 of 6) - Graphs

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  There were quite a few talks about graphs at ICDE 2012. Neither the representations of graphs, nor the differences between RDF and generic graph models, entered much into the discussion. On the other hand, graph similarity searches and related were addressed a fair bit.

  Graph DB and RDF/Linked Data are distinct, if neighboring disciplines. On one hand, graph problems predate Linked Data, and the RDF/Linked Data world is a web artifact, which graphs are not as such, so a slightly different cultural derivation also makes these disjoint. Besides, graphs may imply schema first whereas linked data basically cannot. Then another differentiation might be derived from edges not really being first class citizens in RDF, except for reification, at which the RDF reification vocabulary is miserably inadequate, as pointed out before.

  RDF is being driven by the web-style publishing of Linked Open Data (LOD), with some standardization and uptake by publishers; Graph DB is not standardized but driven by diverse graph-analytics use cases.

  There is no necessary reason why these could not converge, but it will be indefinitely long before any standards come to cover this, so best not hold one's breath. Communities are jealous of their borders, so if the neighbor does something similar one tends to emphasize the differences and not the commonalities.

  So for some things, one could warehouse the original RDF of the web microformats and LOD, and then ETL into some other graph model for specific tasks, or just do these in RDF. Of course, then RDF systems need to offer suitable capabilities. These seem to be about very fast edge traversal within a rather local working set, and about accommodating large, iteratively-updated intermediate results, e.g., edge weights.

  Judging by the benchmarks paper (Benchmarking traversal operations over graph databases (Slidedeck (ppt), paper (pdf)); Marek Ciglan, Alex Averbuch, and Ladialav Hluchy.) at the GDM workshop, the state of benchmarking in graph databases is even worse than in RDF, where the state is bad enough. The paper's premise was flawed to start, using application logic to do JOINs instead of doing them in the DBMS. In this way, latency comes to dominate, and only the most blatant differences are seen. There is nothing like this style of benchmarking to make an industry look bad. The supercomputer Graph 500 benchmark, on the other hand, lets the contestants make their own implementations on a diversity of architectures with random traversal as well as loading and generating large intermediate results. It is somewhat limited, but still broader than the the graph database benchmarks paper at the GDM workshop.

  Returning to graphs, there were some papers on similarity search and clique detection. As players in this space, beyond just RDF, we might as well consider implementing necessary features for efficient expression of such problems. The algorithms discussed were expressed in procedural code against memory-based data structures; there is usually no query language or parallel/distributed processing involved.

  MapReduce has become the default way in which people would tackle such problems at scale; in fact, people do not consider anything else, as far as I can tell. Well, they certainly do not consider MPI for example as a first choice. The parallel array things in Fortran do not at first sight seem very graphy, so this is likely not something that crosses one's mind either.

  We should try some of the similarity search and clustering in SQL with a parallel programming model. We have excellent expression-evaluation speed from vectoring and unrestricted recursion between partitions, and no file system latencies like MapReduce. The initial test case will be some of the linking/data-integration/mapping workloads in LOD2.

  Having some sort-of-agreed-upon benchmark for these workloads would make this more worthwhile. Again, we will see what emerges.

• 19:34

  ICDE 2012 (post 4 of 6) - Graph Data Management Workshop

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  I gave an invited talk ("Virtuoso 7 - Column Store and Adaptive Techniques for Graph" (Slides (ppt))) at the Graph Data Management Workshop at ICDE 2012.

  Bryan Thompson of Systap (Bigdata® RDF store) was also invited, so we got to talk about our common interests. He told me about two cool things they have recently done, namely introducing tables to SPARQL, and adding a way of reifying statements that does not rely on extra columns. The table business is just about being able to store a multicolumn result set into a named persistent entity for subsequent processing. But this amounts to a SQL table, so the relational model has been re-arrived at, once more, from practical considerations. The reification just packs all the fields of a triple (or quad) into a single string and this string is then used as an RDF S or O (Subject or Object), less frequently a P or G (Predicate or Graph). This works because Bigdata® has variable length fields in all columns of the triple/quad table. The query notation then accepts a function-looking thing in a triple pattern to mark reification. Nice. Virtuoso has a variable length column in only the O but could of course have one in also S and even in P and G. The column store would still compress the same as long as reified values did not occur. These values on the other hand would be unlikely to compress very well but run length and dictionary would always work.

  So, we could do it like Bigdata®, or we could add a "quad ID" column to one of the indices, to give a reification ID to quads. Again no penalty in a column store, if you do not access the column. Or we could make an extra table of PSOG->R.

  Yet another variation would be to make the SPOG concatenation a literal that is interned in the RDF literal table, and then used as any literal would be in the O, and as an IRI in a special range when occurring as S. The relative merits depend on how often something will be reified and on whether one wishes to SELECT based on parts of reification. Whichever the case may be, the idea of a function-looking placeholder for a reification is a nice one and we should make a compatible syntax if we do special provenance/reification support. The model in the RDF reification vocabulary is a non-starter and a thing to discredit the sem web for anyone from database.

  I heard from Bryan that the new W3 RDF WG had declared provenance out of scope, unfortunately. The word on the street on the other hand is that provenance is increasingly found to be an issue. This is confirmed by the active work of the W3 Provenance Working Group.

• 19:33

  ICDE 2012 (post 3 of 6) - What Is Timely LOD Search Worth?

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  There was a talk (Linked Data and Live Querying for Enabling Support Platforms for Web Dataspaces (Slides (PDF)); Jürgen Umbrich, Marcel Karnstedt, Josiane Xavier Parreira, Axel Polleres and Manfred Hauswirth) at the Data Engineering Meets the Semantic Web (DESWEB) workshop at ICDE last week about the problems of caching LOD, whether attempted by Sindice or OpenLink's LOD Cloud Cache. The conclusion was that OpenLink covered a bit more of the test data sets and that Sindice was maybe better up to date on the ones that it covered but that neither did it very well. The data sets were random graphs of user FOAF profiles and such collected from some Billion Triples Data set, thus not data that is likely to have commercial value, except in huge quantities maybe for some advertising, except that click streams and the like are much more valuable.

  Being involved with at least one of these, and being in the audience, I felt obligated to comment. The fact is, neither OpenLink's LOD Cloud Cache nor Sindice is a business, and there is not a business model which could justify keeping them timely on the web crawls they contain. Doing so is easy enough, if there is a good enough reason.

  The talk did make a couple of worthwhile points: The data does change; and if one queries entities, one encounters large variation in change-frequency across entities and their attributes.

  The authors suggested to have a piece of middleware decide what things can be safely retrieved from a copy and what have to be retrieved from the source. Not too much is in fact known about the change frequency of the data, except that it changes, as the authors pointed out.

  The crux of the matter is that the thing that ought to know this best is the query processor at the LOD warehouse. For client-side middleware to split the query, it needs access to statistics that it must get from the warehouse or keep by itself. Of course, in concrete application scenarios, you go to the source if you ask about the weather or traffic jams, and otherwise go to the warehouse based on application-level knowledge.

  But for actual business intelligence, one needs histories, so a search engine with only the present is not so interesting. At any rate, refreshing the data should leave a trail of past states. Exposing this for online query would just triple the price, so we forget about that for now. Just keeping an append-only table of history is not too much of a problem. One may make extracts from this table into a relational form for specific business questions. There is no point doing such analytics in RDF itself. One would have to just try to see if there is anything remotely exploitable in such histories. Making a history table is easy enough. Maybe I will add one.

  Let us now see what it would take to operate a web crawl cache that would be properly provisioned, kept fresh, and managed. We base this on the Sindice crawl sizes and our experiments on these; the non-web-crawl LOD Cloud Cache is not included.

  From previous experience we know the sizing: 5Gt/144GB RAM. Today's best price point is on 24-DIMM E5 boards, so 192GB RAM, or 6.67Gt. A unit like that (8TB HDD, 0.5TB SSD, 192GB RAM, 12 core E5, InfiniBand) costs about $6800.

  The Sindice crawl is now about 20Gt, so $28K of gear (768GB RAM) is enough. Let us count this 4 times: 2x for anticipated growth; and 2x for running two copies -- one for online, and one for batch jobs. This is 3TB RAM. Power is 16x500W = 8KW, which we could round to 80A at 110V. Colocation comes to $500 for the space, and $1200 per month for power; make it $2500 per month with traffic included.

  At this rate, 3 year TCO is $120K + ( 36 * $2.5K ) = $210K. This takes one person half time to operate, so this is another $50K per year.

  We do not count software development in this, except some scripting that should be included in the yearly $50K DBA bill.

  Under what circumstances is such a thing profitable? Or can such a thing be seen as a marketing demo, to be paid for by license or service sales?

  A third party can operate a system of this sort, but then the cost will be dominated by software licenses if running on Virtuoso cluster.

  For comparison, the TB at EC2 costs ((( 16 * $2 ) * 24 ) * 31 ) = $24,808 per month. With reserved instances, it is ( 16 * ( $2192 + ((( 0.7 * 24 ) * 365 ) * 3 ))) / 36 = $8938 per month for a 3 year term. Counting at 3TB, the 3 year TCO is $965K at EC2. AWS has volume discounts but they start higher than this; ( 3 * ( 16 * $2K )) = $96K reserved host premium is under $250K. So if you do not even exceed their first volume discount threshold, it does not look likely you can cut a special deal with AWS.

  (The AWS prices are calculated with the high memory instances, approximately 64GB usable RAM each. The slightly better CC2 instance is a bit more expensive.)

  Yet another experiment to make is whether a system as outlined will even run at anywhere close to the performance of physical equipment. This is uncertain; clouds are not for speed, based on what we have seen. They make the most sense when the monthly bill is negligible in relation to the cost of a couple of days of human time.

• 19:31

  ICDE 2012 (post 2 of 6) - LOD Column Store Experiences and Sizing

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  We have played around with LOD data sets and Virtuoso Column Store for the past several months. I will here give a few numbers and comment on some different platform comparisons that we have made. The answer at the end of this is how to size a system for often-changing web-style data. The conclusion is a data-to-RAM ratio that gives an acceptable working set without driving the price up by forcing 100% RAM residence.

  The experiment is loading Sindice web crawls. The platform is 2 x Xeon 5520 and 144G RAM. The initial load rate is 200-180Kt, and drops to 100Kt at 5Gt because of I/O. The system is Virtuoso Column Store configured to run as 4 processes and 32 partitions, all on the same box. After 5Gt, we see just more I/O and going further is not relevant; one runs CPU-bound or not at all.

  We use 4 Crucial SSDs in the setup. The hot structures like the RDF quad indices are on SSD, and the cold ones are on hard disk. A cold structure is a write-only index like the dictionary of literals (id to lit).

  For bulk load, SSDs turn out not to be particularly useful. For a cold start on the other hand, SSDs cut warmup time of 144G RAM from over half an hour to a couple of minutes. It is possible that Intel SSDs would also help with bulk load, but this has not been tried. The SSD problem during bulk load is that these do not write very fast, and while there are writes in queue, read latency goes up; so under a constant write load, the SSD's famous instantaneous random read no longer works.

  The fragment considered in the example is 4.95Gt: 8.1M pages worth of quads; 12.7M of literals and iris; and 4.71M of full text index. A page is 8KB. The files on disk contain empty pages, but these do not matter since they do not take up RAM. The quad indices take 13.4 bytes/quad. The row-wise equivalent used to be 38 or so bytes/quad with similar data. Two-thirds of the IRI and literal string data can benefit from column-wise stream compression. (This was not used but if it were, we could count on a 50% drop in size for the data affected, so instead of 12.7M pages, we could maybe get 8.5M on a good day. This could be worth doing but is not a priority.) The system was configured to have 12M database pages in RAM, so a little under half the database pages of the set fit in RAM at one time; thus one cannot call this a memory-only setup. Due to the locality in the unusually non-local data, this is as far as secondary storage can reach without becoming an over-2x slowdown. In practice, we are talking about under 1% of rows accessed coming from secondary storage, but that alone means half throughput.

  We note that this data set represents the worst that we have seen. It has 129M distinct graphs, 38 t/g. Regular data like the synthetic benchmark sets take half the space per quad. This is about a third of a Sindice crawl; the other two-thirds look the same as far as we looked.

  So if you are interested in hosting data like this, you can budget 144GB RAM for every 5Gt. Do not try it with anything less. Budgeting double this is wise, so that you have space to cook the data; this is important since in order to do things with it, one needs to at least copy things for materializing transformations.

  If you are budget-constrained and hosting very regular content like UniProt, you can budget maybe 144GB RAM for every 10Gt.

  As for CPU, this does not matter as much as long as you do not go to disk. Just for load speed, Dbpedia is loaded in 300s on a cluster of eight (8) dual AMD 2378 boxes at 2.6GHz (total 8 cores per host, so 64 cores in the cluster), and in 945s on one (1) dual Xeon 5520 box at 2.26GHz (total 8 cores in the host). Intel makes much better CPUs, as we see. Both scenarios are 100% in RAM. For even more regular data, the load rates are a bit higher: 1.3Mt/s for the AMD cluster, and 300Kt/s for the Xeon host.

  The interconnect for the AMD cluster is 1 x gigE but this does not matter for load. For CPU-bound cross-partition JOINs, 1 or 2 x gigE is insufficient; 4 x gigE might barely make it; InfiniBand should be safe. When running cross-partition JOINs, a single 8-core Xeon box generates about 300MB/s of interconnect traffic; a gigE connection can maybe take 50MB/s with some luck.

  Intel E5 is not dramatically better than Nehalem but this is something we will see in a while when we make measurements with real equipment. Prior to the E5 release, we tried Amazon EC2 CC2 ("Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large Instance" -- 2x8 core E5, 2.66GHz). The results were inconclusive; it never did more than 1.9x better than Xeon 5520 even when running an empty loop (i.e., recursive Fibonacci function in SQL, no cache misses, no I/O). With a database JOIN, 1.3x better is the best we saw. But this must be the fault of Amazon and not of E5.

  We also tried AMD "Magny-Cours", but for 32 cores against 8 it never did over 2x better, more like 1.4x often enough, and and single thread speed was 50% worse, so not a good buy. We did not find a Bulldozer to try, and did not feel like buying one since the reviews did not promise more core speed over the Magny-Cours.

  It seems that especially with Column Store, we are truly CPU-bound and not memory-latency- or bandwidth-bound. This is based on the observation that a Xeon 5620 with 2 of 3 memory channels populated loads BSBM data only 10% faster than the same with 1 of 3 channels populated, with CPU affinity set on a dual socket system.

  So, if you have a choice between a $2K processor (E5-2690) and a $600 processor (E5-2630), buy the cheaper one and get RAM with the money saved. $1440 buys 128G in $90 8G DIMMs. Then buy E5 boards with 24 DIMMs -- one for every 7Gt of web crawl data. If your software licenses are priced per core, getting higher-clock 4-core E5’s might make sense.

  While on the subject of bytes and quads/triples, we note that Bigdata®'s recent announcement says up to 50 billion triples per single server. Franz loaded at a good 800+ Kt/s rate up to a trillion triples. One is led to think from the spec that this was with less than full cpu but still with highly local data, considering 1.5 bytes a triple would hit very heavy I/O otherwise. Their statement to the effect of LUBM-like data corroborates this, so we are not talking about exactly the same thing.

  So if you compare the claims, I am talking about running CPU-bound on the worst data there is. Franz and Bigdata® do not specify, so it is hard to compare. LOD2 should in principle publish actual metrics with at least Bigdata®; Franz is not participating in these races.

  We may publish some more detailed measurements with more varied configurations later. The thing to remember is minimum 144GB RAM for every 5Gt of web crawls, if you want to load and refresh in RAM.

• 19:28

  ICDE 2012 (post 1 of 6) - LOD2 Plenary

   » ‎ OpenLink Community Blog

  LOD2's database contributions are, on one hand, Virtuoso Column Store and Elastic Cluster, and on the other, the demonstration and proof from CWI that indeed all of the relational innovations for which CWI is well known apply to graph/RDF data as well.

  The value is unquestionable both to Virtuoso users in the short-term, and to the state of science and to all RDF users and vendors in the mid-term.

  The LOD2 claim of "linking the universe" (my words) will be tested soon enough, after we first put the universe in a bucket. This refers to a real-time quad store of Sindice crawls, plus a warehouse of the LOD data sets.

  This effort raises a few questions that I will treat in a number of posts to follow, such as --

  • How do you size a real-time copy of LOD/web data?
  • What does it cost to operate a properly provisioned warehouse of all RDF web crawls?

  What is done now is under-provisioned and not kept up to date. We are talking about all the RDF on the web in near real time with arbitrary queries. This is very far from the "billion triples" data sets or vertical portals, which are both easy by comparison.

• 19:00

  Improving WordPress.org: Enhanced Linking

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Links are good, links are swell. Links these days will get you places. We’re trying to make the experience of linking to relevant data as easy as possible. We crawl the web. We integrate knowledge. We prototype interfaces. But what we do is always software within software. We realize there is no point in building new ecosystems but we really do feel there is room to improve the ones that already exist.

  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!

  Related articles

  • Is WordPress platform suitable for everyone?(skyje.com)
  • The Confusion Lingers with WordPress.com and WordPress.org(blogworld.com)

  
• April 16, 2012
• 15:06

  5 Rules for Corporate Blog Longevity That Are Often Overlooked

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Last week I discussed sustainable blogging– the endurance of blogs. Pretty much all of us start doing something wanting it to last indefinitely. However, there are certain rules based mostly on common sense and experience of many that we should follow to increase the probability of our projects’ endurance. Here are 5 rules to follow to make your business or corporate blog successful in the long run.

  

  (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.

  Related articles

  • 5 Ways to Spread Conversation with Your Blog(zemanta.com)
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  • Corporate Blogging & its Uses(bubblecube.wordpress.com)

  

• April 13, 2012
• 16:11

  reegle.info – linked (open) energy data cloud

   » ‎ The Semantic Puzzle

  Access to the latest high quality information on renewables, energy efficiency and climate change is fundamental to the acceleration of the clean energy marketplace, facilitating investments, promoting new legislation and regulations and broadening interest and knowledge in the sector.

  reegle.info acts as a unique clean energy information portal, targeting specific stakeholders including governments, project developers, businesses, financiers, NGOs, academia, international organizations and civil society. Alongside comprehensive country energy profiles, energy statistics and a directory of relevant stakeholders it also offers the clean energy search and an extensive glossary. There is also an insightful clean energy blog with interesting and up-to-date background information.

  As reegle.info provides relevant clean energy data from several key energy open data sources as for instance OpenEI, World Bank Data or the UK Open Data Portal the reegle.info Information Gateway has a strong need for efficient and automated data management mechanisms and technologies! Therefore REEEP (The Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership) decided to use Linked Open Data (LOD).

  Linked Open Data provides a powerful way for reegle.info for sustainable data management and data integration – thereby the current reegle.info linked (open) energy data cloud came into being and looks as follows:

  

  The figure of the reegle.info linked (open) energy data cloud above shows the model behind the scenes of the reegle.info clean energy information gateway providing an insight about sources and respective connections / links between the several sources and data sets.

  For the realisation of the Linked Open Data based reegle.info system the following software components are in use:

  • PoolParty Thesaurus / Vocabulary Management System
  • SWCs Linked Data Manager
  • OpenLink Softwares’ Virtuoso Triple Store

  Going this direction the reegle.info clean energy key portal is very flexible for future expansions in the fields of data integhration and data management by new data sets from several data sources!

  By the way – reegle.info is very open too – thereby the whole REEEP generated data is available via a Sparql endpoint for free re-use under the UK Open Government Data license on the reegle.info data portal!

  Try it out and make use of free high quality clean energy data!

• 15:23

  The Neverending Debate: Who is a Blogger?

   » ‎ Z-Blog
  

  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.

  Related articles

  • I Believe in the Power of Blogs: They Make Us Understand (zemanta.com)
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• April 12, 2012
• 15:25

  Insight Into the Life of a Blog Coach

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  What is a Blog Coach?

  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.

  Related articles

  • The Art of Writing Blog Comments(zemanta.com)
  • Guest Blog Post: How to Keep Your Blog from Being an Information Charity(zemanta.com)
  • Get More Bang From Your Blog: Optimize Posts!(panopticonlinemarketing.com)

  
• April 09, 2012
• 18:14

  Is Sustainable Blogging an Oxymoron?

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  In the past 10 years I’ve had 5 (I think) different blogs, not all at the same time. I seem to start a blog, whether it’s personal or business-related, update it for a period and then just disconnect it. The average age of each of my deceased blogs was like my romantic relationships, some were done in just a few days, some lasted a year or more.

  

  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.

  Related articles

  • Your Blog Is Like an Ecosystem, Part 2: Building a Sustainable Community (zemanta.com)
  • Your Blog Is Like an Ecosystem: Know It Well and It Will Have a Long Prosperous Life (zemanta.com)

  
• April 06, 2012
• 16:38

  A Blog Editor’s Checklist

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  New to business blogging? If you’re not sure how and what to edit in a blog post, here is a handy checklist to review before you hit the “Publish” button.

  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.

  Related articles The SEO Copywriting Checklist (bruceclay.com) Title Tags – Is 70 Characters the Best Practice? – Whiteboard Friday (seomoz.org)
• 13:47

  3 Rules for Updating Your Blog More Often

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  A few weeks ago I talked to a friend and our discussion turned to quality. He said he was having trouble updating his blog regularly, mostly because he doesn’t have enough time to devote himself to high quality posts. Sounds familiar? As Nenad wrote this week, nobody’s perfect, therefore, we should stop obsessing about quality to the detriment of rarely making ourselves write. Here are 3 rules to follow to update your blog regularly.

  

  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.

  

• 12:55

  The marketing technology ecosystem wheel

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  Experian — another one of those multi-billion dollar companies engaged in enterprise marketing — released their 2012 Digital Marketer Trend and Benchmark Report earlier this week.

  Right up in the front of this hefty 154-page report is a spread on understanding the marketing technology ecosystem — which is clearly the substrate upon which modern marketing is being built. Experian includes a couple of great infographics that help visualize all of the different pieces in that ecosystem:

  

  

  Any CMO at this point should be able to look at this "wheel" and speak to the marketing technology capabilities that they have in place — or are putting into place — for each segment.

  An excerpt from the report's text associated with these graphics:

  Consider how marketers can create the infrastructure necessary to support all the above-mentioned activities. The easiest way to break this down is to deconstruct the marketing technology ecosystem "wheel" into a customer intelligence platform comprised of critical marketing information and key "hubs" of functionality.

  Built on a foundation of data, this hosted, end-to-end marketing solution leverages a three-hub approach to capture and integrate data from across channels (integration), understand how to maximize customer value (intelligence), and optimize customer interactions with context and relevance (interaction).

  Admittedly, that last bit sounds like a sales pitch for Experian's specific solution. But I think the concept they're illustrating is broadly applicable — a core "system of record" platform interconnected with multiple hubs of context-specific solutions. Almost all of the major marketing technologies that would fit into that ecosystem are provided as hosted software-as-a-service.

  
• April 05, 2012
• 13:50

  HubSpot's brilliant marketing organization structure

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  Jonathon Colman, SEO marketer for REI, shared with me a deck he put together for ad:Tech, From an Army of 1 to Agile SEO Teams, which has some great insights on agile marketing. Here's his deck:

  From an Army of 1 to Agile SEO Teams - adTech 2012 View more PowerPoint from Jonathon Colman

  At the end, he included a number of links to other resources on agile marketing (including this blog, thank you!). As I browsed through them, I found a real gem that I hadn't seen before: Agile for Marketing, a SlideShare deck by the folks at HubSpot.

  HubSpot has always been prolific at content marketing — they helped invent the field as one of the foundations of inbound marketing. This deck reveals how they've organized their marketing team to thrive using agile marketing. My favorite slide illustrates their team structure, built around the funnel:

  

  It's clean, simple, logical — built from the ground up with the new marketing in mind.

  They also have yet another term for marketing technologists: they call the role marketeering (marketing + engineering) to "build stuff (tools, apps, etc.) to support marketing goals."

  Both decks — as well as the rest of Jonathon's reading list — are highly recommended.

  

• 13:33

  A modern way to extend the web

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  

  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

  

  Related articles

  • Hacking Hack a Day with Greasemonkey(hackaday.com)
  • What greasemonkey scripts would I want if I only knew they existed?(ask.metafilter.com)
  • Reblogged: Six reasons why your brand belongs on Tumblr(zemanta.com)

  
• 13:14

  New job opening at Zemanta: Sales engineer (NYC)

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Zemanta is a start-up with a clear goal of helping content creators author the best possible content.

  

  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.

  Related articles

  • The uncanny valley of web scraping (zemanta.com)

  
• April 02, 2012
• 14:39

  5 Steps You Need to Follow to Snap out of Your Perfectionist State and Be More Productive

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  I know that by Monday I have to submit an article. It’s Friday and I already dread the following Monday. Why did I agree? Why did I choose this particular topic? Can I really write something substantial on it? I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll be more focused. Tomorrow comes and I still haven’t written a sentence. I’ve been thinking about the article the whole time; I have a draft in my head. Sunday comes, no word typed yet. Monday comes, I sit down and write. There’s no other option. The deadline is looming.

  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!

  Related articles

  • Perfectionism is a Dirty Word(thestateoftheordinary.wordpress.com)
  • The curse of perfectionism…(itsaboutleaders.wordpress.com)
  • Why Perfectionism Sucks(happyisthenewperfect.wordpress.com)

  

• 9:56

  Why landing pages are awesome (a Venn diagram)

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  I picked up the new 53 Paper app for the iPad this weekend. Really a beautiful piece of software for sketching ideas without having to be an Illustrator jockey.

  Inspired me to share why I find landing pages (and microsites, conversion paths, and other kinds of post-click marketing) — the focus of my company, ion interactive — so fascinating and rich with possibilities:

  

  The intersection of performance marketing, content marketing, and technical wizardry. What's not to love?

  

• March 30, 2012
• 17:55

  Meet The Team: Isac Petruzzi

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  We’d like to feature our newest addition Isac Petruzzi to this week’s Meet The Team!  Isac just joined the office in Slovenia as a front-end developer and has been integral to some of our recent updates and new projects.  Happy readings

  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 ( [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.

   

  Related articles

  • Meet The Team – Casual Fridays: Jure Ham(zemanta.com)
  • Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Andrei Mikhailov(zemanta.com)
  • Meet the Team Casual Fridays – Drazen Peric(zemanta.com)
  • Meet the Team Casual Fridays – Jure Vizintin, UX – Zemanta(zemanta.com)

  
• 17:20

  Your Blog Is Like an Ecosystem, Part 3: Must-have Tools and Plugins

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  For the past few weeks I’ve been writing about blogging as an evolved wide web of very complex ecosystems. Once again, my argument is that in order “to get the most out of your blog, to know how to achieve the goals you have for your blog, it is becoming crucial to understand your ecosystem well”. Previous post was about the community, this post is about major abiotic components of our ecosystems – blogs. Why? So you can build, nurture and expand your community which will consequently lead to a longer life of your blog.

  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.

  Related articles

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• March 29, 2012
• 14:17

  Techs hiring creatives to embrace the creative world

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  

  A big part of this blog is encouraging marketers to bring technologists fully into their teams as a way to grok the use of technology in modern marketing.

  A couple of days ago, AdAge ran an article — Why Facebook Is Hiring Ad Agency Creatives — that illustrates an example of the inverse: a technology company hiring creatives to better embrace the possibilities with the creative community.

  During a session at the 4A's Transformation Conference, Facebook's VP of Global Marketing Solutions, Carolyn Everson, answered questions on why Facebook was hiring several leading agency creatives, such as Mark D'Arcy.

  It isn't because they're looking to start their own agency.

  "Creatives like talking to creatives," Everson said. "We need enough people at Facebook who can sit across the table from a creative leader and engage in a conversation about what the possibilities are."

  "Mark has hired a handful of people around the world so we can have a conversation with the Jeff Benjamins [chief creative officer of JWT] of the world and chief creative officers."

  Given that Facebook is arguably the epitome of a modern tech company — Mark Zuckerberg is the champion of The Hacker Way — I find Facebook's approach here to be an admirable endorsement of (a) the differentiated value that tech and creative specialists each bring to the table and (b) the enormous potential from their integrated collaboration.

  Everson urged the audience to look at how Facebook deals with developers to get a sense of how it would like to deal with ad agencies.

  Does your marketing team have a vision of how to deal with technologies and technologists?

  P.S. On the topic of creative and technical commingling, Tim Suther of Acxiom published an article on CMO.com earlier this week — Mad Men Meet Their Match: Math Men — that makes the case for the collaboration between left-brain (tech) and right-bain (creative) professionals. Includes plenty of clever nods to famous advertising slogans, such as:

  "While diamonds are forever, mass advertising is not. Marketing science alone won't be its replacement. Combined, however, the art and science of marketing are 'two great tastes that taste great together.'"

  Sounds g-r-r-r-eat!

  P.P.S. Is the inverse of a marketing technologist a technology creative?

  

• March 28, 2012
• 19:53

  Bostjan and Andraz talk about Entrepreneurship on Sprouter Blog

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Bostjan and Andraz were featured on Sprouter’s blog today where they talk about their experience, the beginning of Zemanta and advice to new entrepreneurs.

  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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• March 27, 2012
• 11:39

  LOD2 Plenary Vienna (March 2012) – 3rd day – afternoon session

   » ‎ The Semantic Puzzle

  Promising title. After two and a half day (well for almost all of us) we entered the final phase of the plenary. So two and a half days of intense and interesting discussions catching up with all that has been done so far and planning what should happen the next half year. But still two session in front of us.

  The afternoon started with the discussion of WP9 the “Open Government Data” use case. First Uroš Milošević from Institut Mihajlo Pupin (IMP) reported about the Serbian CKAN project already holding some data from the Statistical Office of Serbia. Also tools from the LOD2 stack have been and will be used for this project. Sounds great!

  

  Then Irina Bolychevsky of OKFN continued the session announcing that a better integration between CKAN and LOD2Stack should be made  to get more RDF in publicdata.eu. Good idea! We were collecting ideas for integration and talked about e.g. a wizard for generating RDF from .csv files (ULEI is working on something like that). Also a integration of google refine has been discussed. The consortium decided to make an extraction sprint transforming a (to be defined) number of  interesting data sets from CKAN to RDF.

  Finally we had a discussion if linked data is a (the) solution for CKAN to find data and find related data etc. Well i think the people in the consortium are pretty sure it is (not so sure if people from OKFN are). Irina and Mark from OKFN invited everyone to provide input to the Use Case.

  

  This session ended with a presentation about WP9a from Jindřich Mynarz from UEP and Martin Nečaský from CU. They are developing a distributed market place for public contracts. A ontology for public contracts has been developed and is open for review on google code. Next step here will be a web application for filing/creating public contracts in RDF as linked data using tools from the stack. So all in all pretty good progress in WP9.

  

  The third day and the plenary ended with Martin Kaltenböck from SWC and Sören Auer our project lead from ULEI presenting WP10-11-12 Dissemination, Exploitation and Project Management. First we voted for our next plenary to be in Cambridge (hosted by OKFN). Past dissemination activities have already been presented on day one, so Martin reminded us all to write blog posts about all the great things we are doing in LOD2. Next big dissemination activity and also a good opportunity to meet people from the consortium will be the European Data Forum from June 6-7 in Copenhagen.

  And that was pretty much it. I as i hope all the others enjoyed three days with a bunch of great people from all over Europe working on a great project. As always it was intense but it was also fun. Hope everyone had a save trip home!

  

• March 26, 2012
• 15:21

  6 Lessons Bloggers Can Learn from Reality TV Singing Competitions

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  I apologize, but let me make another confession. After I do it, please don’t run away.

  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.

  

• March 23, 2012
• 15:52

  What do you call a marketing technologist?

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  There's a punchline in there somewhere, but I'm partially serious.

  While everyone is coming around to the merging of marketing and technology/IT — and the value of hybrid roles to lead and operate at that intersection — the titles that people use for these roles vary tremendously.

  I like the phrase chief marketing technologist (a biased choice, I admit). My annual survey of marketing technology memes for 2012 favored the titles director of marketing technology, marketing technology manager, and vice president of marketing technology. The agency world favors the term chief creative technologist. Forrester advocates for a chief marketing technology strategist.

  Earlier this week, a vice president at Microsoft Advertising proposed another variation: Chief Information Marketing Officer (CIMO). From his blog post:

  Lines between CIO and CMO are blurring. Today's CMO needs to view technology as both a delivery tool and as an analytics/measurement tool. The CIO needs to think about build-out Big Data and actionable analytics capabilities to support marketing. Technology is the bridge between the two functions — hence a new title: Chief Information Marketing Officer (CIMO).

  Conceptually, that's right on. As far as titles go, I think four word titles have one word too many. But that's just personal preference. Choose title inspires you and your organization — it's the mission that matters, not the label.

  But if you want to construct your own title, here's an automata diagram for generating one:

  

  How many possible titles can this produce? Your choices: 7 rank qualifiers, 6 ranks, 3 rank conjunctions, 8 function adjectives, 11 functions, and 10 role nouns. Plus you could have multiple function adjectives and functions -- say two of each, so an extra 7 adjectives and 10 functions, plus 2 optional function conjunctions.

  7 x 6 x 3 x 8 x 11 x 10 x 7 x 10 x 2 = 15,523,200 possible titles.

  Want three functions adjectives and three functions? Multiply by another 6 x 9 x 2 for a total of 1,676,505,600. More than a billion.

  Senior Vice President of Creative Technology and Computational Marketing Platforms? It's plausible.

  

• 14:46

  Blogosphere Is Pervasive and Indispensable

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  The blogosphere has come of age. Do you remember when way back in 2007 blogs were all the buzz? Geeks were coming out and blogs seemed to be this new easy-to-use online toy. It seemed everyone had an opinion on something. Today content marketing is in the limelight – creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience. The philosophy of content marketing has encouraged some changes in the blogosphere. Those changes have been noticed and are now proven. About two weeks ago, an interesting researchby NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, hit the internet. It clearly shows that the blogosphere has become a serious business. It isn’t a jungle any more.

  

  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?

  Related articles

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• March 22, 2012
• 1:23

  Why marketing software will never be like ERP

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  I ran across a thought-provoking article earlier this week on GigaOm — Marketing is the next big money sector in technology — by Ajay Agarwal of Bain Capital Ventures. It begins with the reference to the Gartner report from December the suggested by 2017, CMOs will have larger technology budgets than CIOs, which is a great place to start.

  Ajay predicts that a new wave of companies leveraging big data for the benefit of driving marketing insights, "will create several multi-billion dollar winners. And a set of technology companies will emerge as the marketing equivalents of Salesforce and SAP."

  Hurrah!

  He takes a moment to point at several of Bain's investments in marketing technology ventures: BloomReach, CQuotient, HookLogic, and TellApart. (Hey, for all the benefits of big data marketing, a little PR is still in vogue.) Some very cool companies, actually. He then lays out two main points:

  1. The multi-billion juggernauts of back-office enterprise software will have counterparts in the front-office worlds of sales and marketing (well, acknowledging that Salesforce.com, and Siebel before it, already achieved that status).
      
  2. Much of the focus of marketing software has been focused on "process," but there's a huge new opportunity for a focus on "data" — and the web is an overflowing cornucopia of such data.

  Here's Ajay's graphic of enterprise functions and some of their notable venture successes:

  

  There's conspicuous white space at the bottom, no?

  Ajay remarks, "Despite the last 15 years of automation of sales functions, marketing functions have been underserved and underpenetrated in terms of enterprise software. While the other corporate functions have all created multibillion-dollar software companies, the marketing function has only had one exit north of one billion (Omniture)."

  At a high level, I vigorously agree with Ajay on both counts: there's a huge enterprise opportunity in marketing, and we've only begun to tap the potential of "big data" in this field.

  But I think marketing may play out differently than those other enterprise functions before it. I'll explain why in a moment.

  The missing billions in enterprise marketing successes

  First, however, I do feel that there are several arguments for multi-billion dollar marketing businesses that aren't represented in the above chart. On the enterprise software angle, both Adobe and IBM have created huge ventures in the space — granted, by the aggregation of many acquisitions and good, old-fashioned organic growth. Teradata probably deserves a mention in this category too, especially with their acquisition of Aprimo. And ExactTarget is well on its way to a billion dollar IPO. Constant Contact has a near-billion market cap of $882 million.

  There also an agency angle — I know, a different beast, but one that is increasingly engaged in coopetition with the likes of Adobe and IBM — Digitas was bought by Publicis for $1.3 billion. As for technology service providers focused on marketing, there's Axciom ($1.1 billion market cap), Accenture ($40 billion market cap), Sapient ($1.7 billion market cap).

  But the most interesting angle for claiming that marketing has had some spectacular multi-billion dollar successes: Google and Facebook. They're not enterprise software providers, but the lion's share of their multi-billion dollar revenues comes purely from selling technology-powered advertising-as-a-service to marketers. You could argue that they're really media companies, but that's a straw man. Google and Facebook are letting marketers leverage their "big data" and algorithmic prowess to achieve very intimate customer interactions in ways that have innovated marketing far more than any enterprise software package.

  (Also note that as a piece of that puzzle, DoubleClick and aQuantive were both multi-billion acquisitions by Google and Microsoft respectively.)

  My point is simply that the marketing function hasn't been as anemic in big venture wins as that chart suggests. It's just that the nature of marketing successes has been very different than those in other corporate functions.

  Why the marketing software space is structurally different

  One of the strongest indicators to me that the marketing software space is fundamentally different than finance, manufacturing, or HR, is the vibrant and varied ecosystem of marketing technology providers:

  

  The above graphic — which, from 6 months ago is already woefully out of date — is just a sample of about 250 companies out of thousands. Many are small, venture-financed start-ups. But many aren't so small either, representing revenues and valuations of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each. In aggregate, it's a multi-billion kaleidoscope.

  There was never anything of this scale of diversity in software markets for other corporate functions. Why?

  Two words: stability and standardization.

  Finance, manufacturing, even the bulk of HR, may be complex functions, but for the most part, they're highly standardized. In the case of finance for public companies, it's downright regulated. GAAP is GAAP, no matter which finance software you've adopted. Getting creative with finance isn't just discouraged, it can get you thrown in jail. So even though different software packages might have better ways of organizing, visualizing, or managing these standardized processes, the core of what they do is the same.

  This meant that there were only so many companies worth funding in those spaces in the first place. And as they matured, it was relatively easy for the biggest players to swallow smaller competitors in consolidation. In many cases, those weren't technology acquisitions — they were customer base acquisitions. They could even get away with discontinuing the acquired products and forcing customers over to their primary platform because they were essentially the same thing.

  But not only are these functions relatively standardized — they're also highly stable. With a few subtle differences, finance is managed today the same way it has been for decades. Same for manufacturing. The global scale of manufacturing has expanded dramatically, which increases the complexity of supply chain management to be sure, but the fundamentals are the same as they ever were.

  In other words, software providers in these other functions aren't frantically chasing a moving target. And that gives potential new entrants precious few opportunities upon which to mount an attack.

  That's not to say that there haven't been a few big innovations. For instance, sales force automation and CRMs were pretty much locked up by the late 90's — until Salesforce.com seized the opportunity to provide them as software-as-a-service. It's still basically the same function, but delivered in a better way (less IT overhead). Manufacturing and other back-office departments may yet have their SaaS revolutions. But that won't necessarily change the fundamentals of those functions.

  Admittedly, HR may be a growing exception to this rule. Why? Because companies are starting to make radical changes in how they manage an increasingly mobile and global workforce. Shifting attitudes and expectations about work, epitomized through the Millennial generation, are opening up opportunities for HR software that embraces The Cluetrain Manifesto. But as important as these changes are culturally, from a technical perspective, I suspect there are finitely limited ways by which software providers may reinvent the technology that powers them.

  There will be some amazing HR software start-ups, but there won't be anywhere near the gargantuan surge we've seen in the marketing domain.

  Stability and standardization do not characterize marketing today

  The marketing software space could not be more structurally different than these other functions.

  First and foremost, we must acknowledge: the entirety of marketing is in a perpetual state of disruptive innovation. Google changed everything. Then YouTube. Then Facebook. Then Twitter, Foursquare, Groupon, Quora. Apple has changed everything in mobile marketing and apps on our phones and tablets. My list of 131 different kinds of marketing offers a taste of the exponential explosion of new marketing approaches. And the pace of change only seems to be accelerating.

  The modern marketing landscape is in constant flux: it is the antithesis of stability.

  

  I'm not just talking about marketing software providers either. The very channels and vehicles they work on top of are still rapidly evolving, with new ones being invented every week. (Take Pinterest for example.) Like my examples of Google and Facebook above, you can revolutionize enterprise marketing without even being an enterprise marketing software provider.

  It's a breathtaking whirlwind — so much opportunity for competitive advantage. But it's also dizzying and overwhelming. No one person, even no one organization, can keep on top of it all. Even trying to specialize in just one subfield, such as search engine marketing, is a high-speed roller coaster ride. Blink and you miss some huge development that changes the landscape.

  This broadly disruptive environment is fertile ground for start-ups, who can see the potential of a new marketing mechanism and rise quickly with its success. Larger marketing software platforms seek to add support for these new mechanisms as features — sometimes just by acquiring one of those plucky start-ups — but they must continually battle inertia and bloat. The more add-ons you hurriedly slap on to your once sleek race car, the more it begins to maneuver like a Winnebago.

  Until along comes a new platform provider that capitalizes on all the learning of how to connect the dots of those disparate marketing mechanisms into a better cohesive whole. Which is very exhilarating, of course, until the next series of innovations starts to drag their architecture in unexpected directions. And the cycle repeats.

  But the dynamics of products vs. platforms vs. suites are something I'll save for a future post.

  The other axis by which marketing software differs from other functions is in standardization — that is to say, marketing software has almost no industry-wide standardization. Part of that is due to the lack of stability; it's hard to standardize when the ground keeps shifting under your feet. (The only things that are standardized are the APIs that big channels like Google and Facebook enforce to a standard. And those standards evolve darn fast.) But there's a deeper force working against standardization that emanates from the very soul of marketing: the Holy Grail of differentiation.

  Marketers don't want their customer experiences to be standardized against their competitors. They want their brands to be unique and beautiful snowflakes.

  That drives a constant demand for creative new ways to stand out from the competition, "think different." And the digital environment is infinitely malleable in this regard, far more easily plied by imagination than physical reality. The most common limitations? The architecture, features, and philosophy of the software you've adopted.

  Because there is no GAAP equivalent standard in social media marketing — GASP (Generally Accepted Social Practices)? — for how to universally interface with customers on Facebook or Twitter, marketers and marketing software providers are free to experiment with a wide range of different approaches. You can have two diametrically opposed solutions that are both successful in different contexts. One that works great for one brand might be a train wreck for another.

  So marketing software providers themselves are differentiated by the approaches they embody in their products, which guide and influence the strategies and tactics that marketers design and execute with them. As I wrote in a previous post, for marketers, you are the software you use.

  But there's one more way in which marketing software differs from other enterprise functions: process.

  Process in marketing is simultaneously important and impossible

  Let's step back for a moment to acknowledge that life is process. Things move forward in organizations via processes — whether those processes are formal or informal, planned or improvised, optimal or dysfunctional. It may be a messy process, but there is one. Process is how strategy materializes, for better or worse.

  And a huge portion of the value of enterprise software for other corporate functions has been the systemization of processes it enables and enforces — the grand-daddy of which is enterprise resource planning (ERP), the broad umbrella of Oracle and SAP.

  See, while human beings struggle with process on their own — remember all the exact steps to take, at the right time, in the right order, in coordination with everyone else involved in the process — software is ideal for such precision synchronization. That was a big part of the value that software in these other enterprise functions was able to deliver. Automated and semi-automated processes can be incredibly efficient.

  

  But here's the key difference: to a very high degree, businesses can control their processes for finance, manufacturing, and HR. You can bend all of the participants to your will. "This is the process. Follow it." Employees, distributors, vendors, contractors, subcontractors — if they want their checks, they bow to the process. Wal-Mart's supply chain is the epitome of this for an extended enterprise.

  It's worth nothing that, along these lines, sales force automation was about automating salespeople, not sales. Important distinction, and confusing the two can lead to delusions of automation. ("Press this button and sales just flow in!")

  Marketing is made up of processes too. But the problem, like sales, is that there are two very different worlds of process that marketing faces:

  1. Processes within the marketing department (and its various collaborators).
  2. Processes that prospects and customers follow to engage with the business.

  While processes within the marketing department are as scriptable as any other enterprise function — e.g., here are the steps you must follow to execute an approved campaign-specific special offer — you can't dictate process to your prospects and customers. Or, more accurately, you can try to dictate process to them, but they can choose not to follow it. After all, your customers are primarily beholden to the processes of their own organizations. When there's a conflict, their process wins, not yours.

  And this is why marketing software will never be like ERP — we can't dictate the process end-to-end.

  Marketing is — or should be — obsessed with their customers' processes. How do we optimize the experiences we deliver to flow smoothly and successfully with their processes? If we're going to suggest that they follow our processes, at least in some circumstances, how do we make that enticing and rewarding? Since there's almost always tremendous variation among customers, this is very tricky. One size doesn't fit all.

  You could take some comfort in the the notion that at least processes internal to the marketing department should be able to be systematized by software. And some can be. But here's the rub: even internal marketing processes become entangled in addressing customer processes. Many of marketing's processes are inherently about acting on or reacting to customers.

  This is why marketing automation is so damn difficult.

  It's not that marketing automation software sucks. It's that its mission is impossible to achieve perfectly. The best we can do is systematize pieces of our marketing ecosystem, carefully interweaving what we automate, what we semi-automate, and what we leave under manual control.

  The balance is never perfect — but we can always asymptotically improve it. Of course, with the caveat that because marketing is neither stable nor standardized, so that balance is constantly changing. But when we get it even approximately right, the payoff can be huge — which is why I say that process in marketing is both important and impossible.

  Which leads me back to Ajay's article, where he proposes that a new generation of marketing software can be more focused on data than process — as a way of overcoming the limitations of the process-driven approach of current marketing automation solutions.

  I do agree that more data can help us make better decisions in a number of marketing processes. Yet I still think that process design and management will be the overarching challenge for marketers (and the software platforms that serve them). Better data and smarter use of that data will enable major advancements in marketing's capabilities. But I'm skeptical of the ability for data to self-generate process — at least outside of very specific contexts. Data is potential; process is activation of potential.

  So software that takes a hybrid approach to process and big data strikes me as the most promising.

  Still, no solution will be perfect. Machine learning, as powerful as it is, is a statistical method — there's always a margin of error. And if you apply machine learning to the wrong data, or extrapolate its conclusions into unjustified territory, or even just foul up the presentation layer of what it outputs, you can end up with a big flopping sound.

  Modern marketing software won't be perfect, but it will be amazing

  

  I have no doubt that the years ahead will have several billion-dollar exits in enterprise marketing software. The mostly likely candidates will be platforms that can serve as a backbone for core marketing processes and data repositories, your marketing "systems of record." Arguably, Salesforce.com is one example of this, since the CRM is increasingly owned by marketing. Adobe, Eloqua, IBM, Aprimo, Hubspot, IgnitionOne, Neolane, Pardot, ExactTarget, and many others are all competing to be the skeletal structure of marketing's IT. New entrants will arrive for sure.

  But unlike other enterprise functions, where a single platform such as SAP or Oracle pretty much covers everything, I don't believe that backbone marketing systems will be complete one-stop shops for the entirety of the marketing department.

  Instead, I think such primary systems will be complemented by a wide variety of so-called "point solutions." Almost all of them will interface to backbone systems, but their specialization will be the key to addressing the instability challenge — and differentiation dream — of marketing for the foreseeable future. (The big backbone winners will be those who make such interactions with other software especially easy.)

  The particular combination of backbone systems and point solutions will vary dramatically from company to company, depending on context, industry, vision, brand. The unique fabric of any one particular company's marketing software mix will be a big part of their competitive differentiation.

  As a result, this ecosystem will continue to support a tremendous number of smaller ventures, with many more waves of new marketing software start-ups every year. These will result in a number of exits at tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. In aggregate, these will represent multiple billion-dollar subfields within marketing.

  Rather than fantasize of "one platform to rule them all," marketers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists should embrace the complex, heterogeneous environment of modern marketing. There's no precedent for it in the history of enterprise software. But frankly, there's no precedent for any of the amazing revolutions that are erupting in marketing writ large.

  It's also a great time for marketing technologists and a move towards agile marketing management. But I'll close this post here.

  Agree? Disagree? Share your perspective in the comments.

  

• March 21, 2012
• 17:04

  Zemanta Power User – Stuart Aken

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  We’re proud to present Stuart Aken as our Power User of the week.  Happy readings!

  Who are you?

  

  I’m a writer, blogger, father and husband. As Stuart Aken, I’ve published five books and am currently working on three others and new short stories (Who says multi tasking is only for women?)

   What do you blog about?

  Much of my blog is related to books and writing, of course. However, I also touch on language (as in grammar & usage) issues, I interview other writers, post about events in the reading world, and I’ve recently started a weekly series of discussions on politico-social issues, which I hope to develop into a lively debating arena.

  When did you start using Zemanta?

  I’ve used this great enhancement since I started blogging, in May 2010. It was flagged as an add-on by Blogger and I was immediately attracted by its diversity and breadth of cover.

  How does Zemanta help you blog better?

  Zemanta increases my options when it comes to illustrations to break up the text in posts. It suggests articles that link into the content I produce. I like the way it offers links to relevant websites and articles, bringing new layers of depth to my posts.

  Power User Tip:

  If the first scan doesn’t pick up what you’re looking for, use the search facility, entering the key word(s) you need to illustrate and you’ll get a lot more choice.

  Related articles

  • Zemanta Power User – Stephanie Bernaba at Momma Be Thy Name (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Richard Butler of My Take Radio (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Lucas Whitefield Hixson of Enformable (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Robert Richardson of eCom Technology (zemanta.com)

  
• March 19, 2012
• 15:49

  How Losing Weight Makes Me a Better Blogger

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  My life seems to be a constant battle with my weight. A myriad of short lived diets, wishful thinking and daydreaming about how I should and how I could look like. Until one day I hit the gym for real, hired a great personal trainer and nutritionist. That is how I learned that losing weight isn’t only about good looks and diets. It’s about crucial changes to one’s life style. Believe it or not, losing weight is the easy part; keeping that new weight… well, let’s just say it isn’t easy at all.

  

  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.

  
• March 16, 2012
• 20:34

  Federated Media on Zemanta: Conversational Marketing is Hot – Again.

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  A great mention by John Battelle of Federated Media about how our partnership fits into their overall strategy. We have been very busy working on this project and can’t wait to share more when we it’s ready!

  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

  shared with Quotelove

  Related articles

  • e1evation on our Quotelove(zemantified.wordpress.com)
  • Zemanta NYC Meetup – March 20 – What’s New in Blogging? See what’s in store for 2012!(zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Michele Neylon of Blacknight(zemanta.com)

  
• March 15, 2012
• 17:39

  The Art of Writing Blog Comments

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Skillful blog commenting can be almost as effective a marketing technique as hosting a blog. Well composed, well aimed and carefully thought out comments produce a number of benefits, such as –

  • 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. 

  Related articles

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  • 20 Ways to Cultivate Brand Unawareness in Social Media(techipedia.com)
  • What Makes a Blogging Community a Real Community? (Hint – It’s Nothing to do With Tuna Casseroles)(awritersquery.wordpress.com)
  • Your Blog Is Like an Ecosystem, Part 2: Building a Sustainable Community(zemanta.com)

  
• 14:02

  SEO for New Bloggers

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  You’ve taken the plunge. You found an idea or a niche that you are passionate about, you’ve made the decision to start blogging, and you even have your first couple of posts written. You’re a blogger now and you’re going to have millions of visitors and adoring fans in no time, right?

  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:

  [michaelhyatt.com] (Michael Hyatt about leadership, social media, and more)
  [www.problogger.net] (Darren Rowse about blogging)
  [www.copyblogger.com] (Brian Clark about content and marketing)
  [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:

  Seo 101 – NYC Faith and Tech

  View more presentations from John Doherty

  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.

  
• March 14, 2012
• 21:13

  Zemanta Power User – Coral Russell of Alchemyofscrawl

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  

  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.

  Related articles

  • Zemanta Power User – Stephanie Bernaba at Momma Be Thy Name(zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Richard Butler of My Take Radio(zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Michele Neylon of Blacknight(zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Lucas Whitefield Hixson of Enformable(zemanta.com)

  
• 15:33

  Zemanta NYC Meetup – March 20 – What’s New in Blogging? See what’s in store for 2012!

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Join us on Tuesday, March 20 at 6pm at the new WeWork Labs space to chat about new trends in blogging and content marketing in general for 2012.

  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!

  Related articles

  • Zemanta Power User – Richard Butler of My Take Radio(zemanta.com)

   

  
• March 12, 2012
• 13:59

  It’s the Content, Not the Size

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  A post by Bostjan almost a month ago made me reevaluate my position on the significance of length. I didn’t want to comment right away on his post, because I didn’t want to compare apples and oranges. But last week, he wrote if “you disagree with something written somewhere else”, that can be an idea for your next post. And that’s how I was motivated to write why I, unlike Bostjan, think that a blog post size doesn’t matter.

  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?

  Related articles

  • Why the Size Really Matters(zemanta.com)
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• March 09, 2012
• 19:25

  Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Andrei Mikhailov

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Andrei joined our front end team and has been kicking butt ever since! His way around WordPress has helped us move really quickly in the last few months and we’ve been able to release some awesome new features!

  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!

  Related articles

  • Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Ronan Marquet(zemanta.com)
  • Meet the Team Casual Fridays – Drazen Peric(zemanta.com)
  • Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Ryan Lee(zemanta.com)

  
• March 08, 2012
• 16:47

  Your Blog Is Like an Ecosystem, Part 2: Building a Sustainable Community

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Last week I wrote about blogging as an evolved wide web of very complex ecosystems. I argued that in order “to get the most out of your blog, to know how to achieve the goals you have for your blog, it is becoming crucial to understand your ecosystem well”. Analogous to the studies of ecosystems I divided blogs into biotic (community) and abiotic components (a technical support system). This post is about the community: the blogger, readers, and ideas.

  

  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?

  Related articles

  • Your Blog Is Like an Ecosystem: Know It Well and It Will Have a Long Prosperous Life (zemanta.com)
  • Reblogged Vs. Retweet: A Case for the Former (zemanta.com)
  • A Blog Is Like a Print Magazine: So Spice It Up! (zemanta.com)

  
• 16:42

  New Featured Images Support on WordPress, Dropping Zemanta for Mail Support

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Another week, another great release! Users can now add images from Zemanta as the blog post’s Featured Image in WordPress and it’s just as easy to add them as is with any other content from Zemanta.

  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.

  Related articles

  • Zemanta WordPress Plugin is All Grown Up!(zemanta.com)

  

• March 07, 2012
• 21:38

  Webinar: Linked Data and SKOS. Connecting the dots.

   » ‎ The Semantic Puzzle

  Register now!
  For many organizations SKOS turned out to be the entry point to the Semantic Web. See how SKOS and Linked Data fit together:

  “Linked Data and SKOS. Connecting the dots.”
  (Wed, Apr 18, 2012 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM CEST)

  Learn more about:

  • How the creation of thesauri can become more efficient when built upon existing linked data sources
  • How SKOS thesauri can be aligned with LOD sources and can be published as an LOD source itself
  • How linked data mechanisms can be used to improve decentralized vocabulary management
  • How SKOS and linked data alignment can be used for efficient schema mapping and value mapping
  • How SKOS thesauri can be enriched with linked data to realise semantic search engines in a very efficient way
  • How collaborative platforms like Sharepoint or Confluence can benefit from SKOS based knowledge models in combination with linked data

  This webinar is powered by LOD2.

• 16:02

  Zemanta Power User – Stephanie of Fangs, Wands, and Fairy Dust

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  

  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.

  Related articles

  • Zemanta Power User – Richard Butler of My Take Radio (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Stephanie Bernaba at Momma Be Thy Name (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Lucas Whitefield Hixson of Enformable (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User: Juan from DreamActivist.org (zemanta.com)

  
• March 05, 2012
• 14:10

  (False) Dilemma: Adapt in Real Time or Vanish

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  The second screen viewing, a cross-media TV show. What’s next? How does this new trend affect the way business decisions are made?

  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?

  Related articles

  • Fear of social spoilers drives live TV viewing, finds survey(lostremote.com)
  • Six Attributes of Successful Social Media Marketing Campaigns(blogs.constantcontact.com)
  • We Now Watch Less Live TV, But More Programming Thanks to DVRs [STUDY](mashable.com)

  

• 9:00

  Is Irish an official language in Britain? – Five arguments in favour of thesauri

   » ‎ The Semantic Puzzle

  The article ‘Five arguments in favour of thesauri & controlled vocabularies‘ shall not only clarify if Irish is an official language in Britain but also how thesauri and linked data mechanisms can support the following tasks:

  • Make knowledge explicit and available throughout your department, your organization, your partner network, the whole world!
  • Conquer the Babylonian language confusion!
  • Help to make search and research activities more efficient!
  • Link all your information sources in a meaningful and standardized way!
  • Make skills, interests and knowledge of experts visible!

  The paper (PDF) should help to make the world of thesauri and semantic knowledge models accessible intuitively.

• March 02, 2012
• 15:11

  Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Ryan Lee

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Ryan joined our NY office in January as marketing intern and he’s been instrumental with reaching out to some of our existing users and finding new users and helping on all marketing and sales related stuff.

  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!

  Related articles

  • Meet The Team – Casual Fridays: Jason Bhatti (zemanta.com)
  • Meet the Team Casual Fridays – Drazen Peric (zemanta.com)
  • Meet the Team Casual Fridays – Jure Vizintin, UX – Zemanta (zemanta.com)

  
• 13:39

  Your Blog Is Like an Ecosystem: Know It Well and It Will Have a Long Prosperous Life

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  A blog isn’t just its domain name or a dashboard or even a blogger. No. Blogging has evolved into a wide web of very complex ecosystems. To get the most out of your blog, to know how to achieve the goals you have for your blog (if you haven’t defined them yet, you should), it is becoming crucial to understand your ecosystem well.

  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?

  Related articles

  • A Blogging Ecosystem with One Stop Shopping(jimdew.wordpress.com)
  • Social Media Enchantment: The Guy Kawasaki way(blogs.communitiesrus.in)
  • Building The Ecosystem(avc.com)

  
• March 01, 2012
• 20:08

  Zemanta Team Blogging – Tweets for Sale, Gender Equality in Startups, Startup Growing Pains

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  We’ve been encouraging team Zemanta to be more active on their blogs and if they haven’t started blogging to do so. This week, Bostjan, Andraz and Greg have been very active on their blogs and here are some highlights of their recent posts. Greg actually just started blogging so a big hat tip to mr. Gortz for joining the blogosphere!

  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

  Related articles

  • Tools for content management; Quotelove(e1evation.com)
  • The 6 Near-Fatal Mistakes We Made In Year One, And How We Built A Company Anyway(fastcompany.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Michele Neylon of Blacknight(zemanta.com)

  
• February 29, 2012
• 16:03

  Zemanta Power User – Robert Richardson of eCom Technology

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  We’re pleased to present Robert Richardson of eCom Technology as our featured Power User for this week!  Happy readings

  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?

  I have been using Zemanta close to two years now or very close to it?  I wouldn’t leave home without it.

  How does Zemanta help you blog better? 

  It works consistently which is a big plus and I constantly update my sites with new version of WordPress and plugins and there never seems to be a problem there as a conflicting plugin. The images, articles, links and tags make blogging fast and more professional, not being one it really helps. Is great to read other peoples articles and then use their links as back up too, “I told you so”.

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

  Zemanta will increase your search engine presence; look at my 20+ sites that are getting well over 1.5 million hits a month and like I said before I am no blogging pro, I do internet payment solutions worldwide.

  Related articles

  • Zemanta Power User – Michele Neylon of Blacknight (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Stephanie Bernaba at Momma Be Thy Name (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Lucas Whitefield Hixson of Enformable (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Richard Butler of My Take Radio (zemanta.com)

  

• 15:50

  Looking for Thomson Reuters Clients (huh?)

   » ‎ OpenCalais - Official Blog

  Because usage and registration for OpenCalais is very open (all we really require is a name and an email address) – it’s basically impossible for us to know who’s actually using the service. We know there are many thousands of you out there sending us many millions of documents per day – but we’re a bit in the dark about who the vast majority of you actually are.

  We do know that you have a great affinity for Gmail and that the intersection of the sets “AOL mail users” and “OpenCalais users” is near zero.

  We’d like to open up some conversations with Thomson Reuters clients about how we might leverage OpenCalais, our in-house Calais capabilities and the products you use from Thomson Reuters to make some interesting things happen. As a first step, we’d just like to talk with you about what you’re doing and see if we can help.

  So – we’d appreciate it if you could raise your hand from the crowd and send us a note at team@opencalais.com and let us know who you are. We promise not to bug you – just a quick email and an invitation for a quick call if you’re interested.

  Tom

• February 28, 2012
• 15:17

  Blog Blasphemy? Sick of Bullet Points and Headlines with Numbers

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  I have a confession – I am tired of bullet points in blog posts and especially the use of “number reasons/ways” in blog posts’ headlines. William Green writes: “Bullet points are almost crucial for any blog. They benefit nearly every area of your blog be it traffic, SEO, Twitter follows, RSS subscribers, I mean EVERYTHING.” He lists several reasons, such as they make posts more readable, decrease bounce rate, save time, encourage readers to subscribe to your RSS or follow on Twitter, make the title sum up the whole post, and allegedly visitors will come back. And he’s definitely not the only one who preaches this.

  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.

  

• February 27, 2012
• 12:47

  State of the Marketing Technologist 2012

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  It's that time of year again. This blog's anniversary — our fourth (!) — and time to look at the evolution of the "marketing technologist" meme over the past year.

  First, let's start with an update on Google searches:

  Google Search	February 2008	February 2011	February 2012
  chief marketing technologist	320	320,000	265,000	↓ 17%
  director of marketing technology	7,520	847,000	1,670,000	↑ 97%
  marketing technology		625,000	2,670,000	↑ 327%
  marketing technologist		109,000	203,000	↑ 86%
  marketing technology manager		340,000	748,000	↑ 131%
  VP marketing technology		194,000	684,000	↑ 253%
  vice president marketing technology		232,000	694,000	↑ 199%
  creative technologist		103,000	247,000	↑ 140%
  geek marketer		9,830	22,300	↑ 127%

  Although Google's numerous algorithm changes make these year-over-year comparisons a little fuzzy, the overall trend seems clear. Marketing technology matches have grown 327% over the past year. And with the explosion of marketing technology, it follows that organizations are increasing establishing positions to manage it: matches for managers and VPs of marketing technology have more than doubled.

  Interestingly, the term "marketing technologist" has only grown 86% — and the "chief marketing technologist" namesake of this blog actually decreased 17%. But a rose by any other name...

  The label doesn't matter. The role does.

  In the past year: Forrester repeatedly advocated for an office of marketing technology and launched their first CIO-CMO summit to focus on this intersection. Gartner predicted that CMOs may have larger IT budgets than CIOs.

  And the job boards reflect this. For instance, do a search for "marketing technology" on SimplyHired.com:

  

  Marketing Technologist Content from Around the Web

  In addition to the Forrester and Gartner research mentioned above, many others continued to spread the word about marketing technologists rising. Here are just a few:

  • David Nickelson started the Marketing Technologist group on LinkedIn
  • John Refford published a terrific amount of marketing technologist focused content on his marketing technology blog ("use technology to make marketing more awesome")
  • Eric Brown, my favorite voice for the new IT, wrote a number of great IT-meets-marketing posts on his blog, such as this one of a story of a CIO, IT and marketing
  • Matthew Grant of MarketingProfs did a podcast with me on Why you need a marketing technologist
  • ITSMA ran a research interview with me on the question of Do you need a Chief Marketing Technologist?
  • Alterian published a guest post of mine answering this question as well, Do you need a chief marketing technology officer (CMTO)? to promote a webinar on 10 reasons why you need a chief marketing technology officer with Marcus Tewksbury
  • Chief Content Officer magazine ran a feature story I wrote on the Rise of the Marketing Technologist
  • The Australian Direct Marketing Association published their own opinion of The Rise of the Marketing Technologist
  • Many great posts by Elmer Boutin on his blog on the crossing of marketing and IT
  • Jim Suchara presented the idea of the marketing technologist to a group of IT executives and managers in Detroit, inspiring this piece on finding marketing technologists
  • Ray van Hilst organized a great session on untangling and understanding the marketing department's technology at the ASAE Technology Conference
  • Michael Brenner pulled together a panel-like article on marketing tools and technology — how does a marketer decide
  • Widen published a post on digital asset management and the marketing technologist
  • Code Worldwide, an innovative firm coming out of Omnicom, published their presentation on the marketing technologist: why clients need new vendors

  ...and I'm just scratching the surface (apologies to those posts I left out).

  A Brief Chief Marketing Technologist Retrospective

  A big thank you to everyone who read, shared, and inspired the ideas on this blog over the past year. Looking back, some of my favorite posts included:

  • Marketing Technology Landscape Infographic
  • Why marketers should learn how to program
  • 7 Laws of Technology for Marketers
  • 14 marketing technology organizational models
  • Agencies and the marketing technologist revolution
  • You might be a marketing technologist if...
  • 5 strategies for business, life, and really hard math problems

  We even had a couple of video presentations to boot, thanks to Adobe and Search Insider Summit:

  • 3-minute interview: why marketing technologists now
  • The Book of Marketing Technology on Broadway
  • A brief, hand-wavy history of marketing fragmentation

  I'm looking forward to what the next 12 months will bring us on this "marketing technologist" — or whichever name you prefer — journey together.

  P.S. Any additional Google searches we should count this year to see how far they'll grow by next February?

  

• February 24, 2012
• 17:49

  Meet The Team Casual Fridays – Ronan Marquet

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  For this week’s Meet The Team Casual Fridays post, we’re presenting Ron from the Ljubljana front-end team!  He’s already been hard at work on new website designs and the new step-by-step demo. Enjoy!

  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.

  Related articles

  • Meet the Team Casual Fridays – Drazen Peric(zemanta.com)
  • Meet The Team Casual Fridays: Mateja Verlic(zemanta.com)
  • Meet The Team – Casual Fridays: Jure Ham(zemanta.com)
  • Meet The Team – Casual Fridays: Tom Primozic(zemanta.com)

  
• 15:40

  Internal Reflection: Future of Writing

   » ‎ Z-Blog
  

  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.

  Related articles

  • Collaborating To Transform An Idea Into A Book(scrambledup.blogspot.com)
  • Great Writing Website Resources for Writers Young and Old for 2012(unlocktheteacher.wordpress.com)

  
• February 22, 2012
• 22:36

  Zemanta WordPress Plugin is All Grown Up!

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  We’re proud to announce the release of 1.o version of the Zemanta WordPress plugin. After a few years and many thousands of downloads in the 0.x, we’re finally ready to make the jump. The 1.0 release includes a number of cool improvements and is now available for download.

  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!

  Related articles

  • 2011 – Zemanta Year in Numbers(zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Stephanie Bernaba at Momma Be Thy Name(zemanta.com)
  • Guest Blog Post – Is Blogging Still Relevant?(zemanta.com)

  
• 22:05

  Zemanta Power User – Lucas Whitefield Hixson of Enformable

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Lucas Whitefield Hixson of Enformable shares his insight on Zemanta and blogging this week, happy readings! 

  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.

  Related articles

  • Zemanta Power User – Richard Butler of My Take Radio (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User: Todd Lohenry, e1evation – Part 2 of 2 (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Michele Neylon of Blacknight (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Stephanie Bernaba at Momma Be Thy Name (zemanta.com)

   

  
• February 21, 2012
• 15:24

  Upcoming Webinar – 7 Steps to Creating Engaging Content

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Zemanta and InboundWriter are teaming up for an informative webinar on Tuesday, February 28th at noon EST.

  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

  

  
• February 20, 2012
• 20:15

  5 Ways to Spread Conversation with Your Blog

   » ‎ Z-Blog
  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?

  Related articles

  • Reblogged Vs. Retweet: A Case for the Former (zemanta.com)
  • Why the Size Really Matters (zemanta.com)
  • Guest Blog Post – Who’s Going To Read My Blog? (zemanta.com)

  
• February 17, 2012
• 18:10

  Meet the Team Casual Fridays – Drazen Peric

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  

  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!

  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)
  • Meet The Team – Casual Fridays: Jure Ham (zemanta.com)

  
• 14:32

  Why the Size Really Matters

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  There are thousands of blog posts on how long a blog post should be. The question, “How long should my blog post be?” is asked as much as any other important question in life. Although every woman who is honest with you will tell you that the size of you-know-what does matter, if you ask for a detailed measure, you will get completely different answers from all of them. It’s the same with blog posts. I think, the size does matter in a sense of the blog post’s longevity, how it behaves in the long run.

  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.

  Related articles

  • The Anatomy of a Better Blog Post (problogger.net)
  • 5 reasons why you should consider blogging (zemanta.com)
  • Guest Blog Post – Who’s Going To Read My Blog? (zemanta.com)

  

• 12:38

  Digital marketing matures beyond "best practices"

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  

  My latest article on Search Engine Land, Landing Pages 3.0, makes the case that landing pages and conversion optimization are moving beyond the era of "best practices."

  But I actually believe this is a representative sign of digital marketing maturing more broadly.

  Consider this excerpt from the article:

  Whereas the height of Landing Pages 2.0 was an ever-expanding list of rules and rubrics for implementing good landing pages, marketers who have graduated to a Landing Pages 3.0 mindset have outgrown such checklists and cheat sheets.

  Instead, they're now driving conversion programs from a higher set of principles:

  1. Deliver meaningful, context-relevant content
  2. Present that content with an engaging, affective design
  3. Offer a compelling, but not coercive, "next step" to take

  Like an architect who has completed his or her basic design studio courses, practiced and perfected the fundamentals, who is now ready to start breaking the cookie-cutter "rules" in pursuit of more impressive and imaginative ideas. Or like a musician who has mastered scales, riffs, and progressions — hours and hours of the mechanics of their instrument — who is now ready to improvise and jam with the pros.

  Landing Page 3.0 marketers have studied best practices, absorbed them into their thinking, but they're now ready to synthesize new creative ideas of their own — unafraid to break the "rules" to deliver remarkable experiences to their audience.

  Now substitute "landing pages" with any of a number of other subdisciplines in modern marketing: marketing automation, demand generation, email marketing (!), social media marketing, etc.

  It's the confidence and wisdom to favor what's "best" over what's "best practice."

  

• February 16, 2012
• 17:41

  The Benefits of Building Deep Links

   » ‎ Z-Blog
  

  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.

  Related articles

  • What is a Deep Link? [Video FAQ Series] (seo.com)
  • Guest Blog Post: Five Ways to Build Links With Quality Blog Content (zemanta.com)

  
• 16:25

  Zemanta Power User – Richard Butler of My Take Radio

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Richard Butler of My Take Radio was kind enough to give us his thoughts about blogging and Zemanta. Enjoy!

  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!

  Related articles

  • Zemanta Power User – Stephanie Bernaba at Momma Be Thy Name (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User – Michele Neylon of Blacknight (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User: Allison Boyer of BlogWorld and Blog Zombies (zemanta.com)
  • Zemanta Power User: Ted Curran, Instructional Designer (zemanta.com)

  
• February 15, 2012
• 17:15

  Valentine’s Day Hangover Observations – Santa Trumps Cupid!

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  
  

  

  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!

  
• February 14, 2012
• 21:30

  Reblogged: Blogging Tops Advertising as Highest ROI for Online Marketing

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Our friends at HubSpot released a case study about the effectiveness of blogging vs. traditional TV advertising and found some interesting results. Although the TV advertising campaign had some short term benefits, the client saw an increase of 567% in organic search traffic and its overall traffic grew by 583% in under a year as a result of their blog content.

  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

   

   

  
• 17:40

  Things We Like at Zemanta – That’s Lijit!

   » ‎ Z-Blog
  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.

  Related articles

  • Lijit Networks Exceeds One Billion Monthly Pageviews (prweb.com)
  • Lijit Networks Expands Executive Team by Hiring Top Sales Executive (prweb.com)
  • Lijit Continues to See Explosive Growth in its Publisher Network (prweb.com)

  

• 10:34

  José Manuel Alonso: “If you want to scale up, you should consider LOD”

   » ‎ The Semantic Puzzle

  José Manuel Alonso has been working for W3C and CTIC in many open data projects. At the Web Foundation he promotes and supports (linked) open data in developing countries. Martin Kaltenböck from SWC talked with José about ongoing activities in the area of Open Government Data.

  Open Data is a powerful worldwide movement these days. Regarding open data projects in developing countries and in high industrialised countries (Europe, US, Australia et al) where do you see the main differences – regarding organisational – cultural – technical issues?

  We conducted feasibility studies in Ghana and Chile several months ago, are supporting the Ghana government on the development of its national initiative and have visited and have engaged in Open Data discussions with many other countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
  The situations are quite diverse and can vary significantly from country to country. It is always difficult to generalize, but I think there are a few important differences that can be highlighted (in no particular order):

  • The amount of information available in digital form is generally much lower
  • The IT infrastructure is yet to be fully developed or under development
  • The capacities on the government and civil society side have to be improved
  • The mobile phone is the main device to access information but data connectivity is still scarce, only available in the big cities and not at all in the rural areas
  • Digital literacy related issues have to be seriously considered and addressed
  • Multilingualism is an important factor, as there are dozens of dialects being spoken in many countries

  Said all of the above, I would say that there are also quite a number of commonalities such as privacy and security concerns, the resistance to change but also the existence of champions within government, and the interest and willingness in civil society, that is already producing a number of interesting applications.

  You are also very familiar with the concept of Linked Open Data (LOD) – where do you see the main benefit in using LOD – where do you think are the main challenges – where the main obstacles?

  Having managed a few projects achieving 5-star open data, I’ve learned a thing or two about the pros and cons. I’ve been saying consistently that there are a few important issues:

  • There is still little knowledge about LOD out there and it is perceived as too complex
  • The demand for LOD is, hence, very low
  • The tooling is not powerful enough yet, specially when compared to XML tooling and others
  • The modeling part is very tough

  People are used to work with XML and Web Services and believe that anything along this line such as REST+JSON fulfils most expectations and needs. But this is not fully true. In my opinion, the power of LOD resides on the linking part more than anything else. Combination of data from disparate sources using RESTful techniques is much more difficult while it’s a natural fit for LOD.
  My experience tells me that for dealing with few and simple datasets, investing in LOD is not really needed, but if you want to scale up and, specially, if you want to link and integrate, then you should consider LOD. It is generally a bigger investment but it pays back for interlinking big volumes of information, facilitates re-use in multiple formats, and can get very powerful when using SPARQL appropriately as it allows access to the whole underlying knowledge base.

  Where do you see the main differences regarding effort of publishing and benefit in re-use (or the re-use itself) between Open Data and Linked Open Data?

  I would say that the main difference here is between using the Web as an archive for files and using the full potential of the Web. If one publishes hundreds of spreadsheets on the Web using an open format and license, he is already doing Open Data, but more than using the Web, he is going back to the FTP days. And that is not too different from giving away a USB stick with the files. We can do much better nowadays.

  The often cited Tim Berners-Lee’s 5-star scale is a good reference here. The higher you can achieve on that scale, the more power of the Web you are using, the more you are facilitating reuse.

  Are there differences regarding the use of LOD principles and technologies between developing countries and industrialised countries in your opinion? For example: does it make sense to start an Open Data Initiative in a developing country using Linked Open Data from the scratch?

  All the issues with LOD I mentioned above apply and are even more strongly found in the developing world. I think we should take a step by step approach and start going from no data to some-star data in the very near term, lower the barriers one by one and start to building capacities in government and civil society but always with Web architecture principles in mind.
  We will have to address the specificities of the developing world. For example, given that the LOD community is relying more and more on cloud-based options, on centralized data stores that require stable high-speed internet, how would one deploy a LOD solution in a country where clients (computers/mobile phones) have limited resources (disk, cpu) and where connectivity is unstable and with low-bandwidth? We’re participating in a worskhop to explore these issues.

  This does not mean that LOD is completely ruled out from the beginning. As I pointed out before, there are cases on which it can be extremely useful and powerful and in those, we intend to accelerate adoption, likely piloting and building capacities as a first step.

  Could you please tell us a few words about the Web Foundation?

  The Web Foundation was launched by the inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in 2009 to address global challenges by connecting humanity and empowering individuals through an increasingly inclusive and powerful Web. More on the vision of the Web Foundation at:
  [www.webfoundation.org]

  Jose, many thanks for this interview. It seems that there is a quick progress in open data in developing countries as well as there are different requirements there to be taken into account in comparison to open data projects in Australia, the US or in Europe! Also the potential of Linked Open Data seems an interesting point for these countries!
  We are looking forward to staying in touch with you on this in the future and wish you all the best for your future work in this area!

  

• February 13, 2012
• 16:40

  A Blog Is Like a Print Magazine: So Spice It Up!

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Bloggers, you are publishers who think like a publisher, whether you are aware of this or not. You’re basically writing your own magazine. So, to increase traffic to your blog, spice it up with multimedia.

  

  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.

  
• February 10, 2012
• 6:13

  I Believe in the Power of Blogs: They Make Us Understand

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  A whole bunch of media companies have been closing access to their digital content by paywall systems. Many of them aren’t capable of illustrating issues at hand in a way that all of us would understand or for some reason they just don’t get it. I say, this is a great opportunity for bloggers to take over the role of generating public awareness.

  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?

  Related articles

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  • Reblogged Vs. Retweet: A Case for the Former (zemanta.com)
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• February 06, 2012
• 17:15

  A Letter by a Selfish Consumer: Why I Prefer Company Blogs (Vs. Websites)

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  I’m really excited to introduce Nenad Senic who will regulary contribute posts to our blog. He is a content marketing expert and is working as european editor at Content Marketing Institute and also regularly blogs at his own blog at Disput. – Tin

  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.

  
• February 03, 2012
• 20:17

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

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  In line with today’s post by Boštjan, Marcus Sheridan makes a strong case why blogging is here to stay.

  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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• 11:50

  3-minute interview: why marketing technologists now

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  Bertil Snel, who arranged for me to present on the marketing technologist role at last year's Adobe Partner Day, just posted a follow-up — the marketer of the future is a "techy" — including a post-event video interview we did backstage.

  His post is in Dutch, but thanks to the miracle of Google Translate, I'm pretty sure that he's not making fun of my exaggerated hand waving. But judge for yourself. Here's the 3-minute "short version" of the marketing technologist pitch:

  

• 7:00

  5 reasons why you should consider blogging

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  Some argue that blogging is passé, but nothing could be further from the truth. Available tools enable all of us to express ourselves, share our views and especially knowledge and experience with a much wider audience than ever before. I really believe that everyone should and can blog. Indeed, it’s not surprising to anyone who knows me that that is a reason why Zemanta is part of my life: to make blogging easier for everyone.

  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?

  Related articles

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• February 02, 2012
• 17:30

  Zemanta and Federated Media Announce Strategic Partnership

   » ‎ Z-Blog

  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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• 12:16

  Marketing as an object-oriented program?

   » ‎ Chief Marketing Technologist

  I ran across an inspiring blog post this week by Jacques Spilka of Whatsnexx, titled Complexity killed marketing automation! (The if-it-bleeds-it-leads school of blog post headlines.)

  Jacques made two insightful points:

  1. Marketing automation programming can get complicated fast

  

  First, he cut right to the quick of the challenge of marketing automation: for marketing automation to be really effective, it needs to be wielded by the marketer, not by the marketing automation expert.

  Most marketing automation packages require fairly extensive setup and configuration, frequently done by high-priced consultants. (It's no accident of strategy that IBM, arguably primarily a technology services company, acquired enterprise marketing software provider Unica.)

  "The purpose of automation is to simplify and speed up processes — not complicate things!" writes Jacques. But as marketing automation providers continually add new and disparate features, such as merging in more social media capabilities, the "automated" solution can unintentionally become more complicated to wield than the processes that you originally wanted to automate in the first place.

  This complexity can dampen the actual adoption of automation — even if a company has installed an amazing marketing automation platform, they may only be leveraging a small sliver of its capabilities.

  Of course, Whatsnexx offers its own marketing automation solution that proposes to address this challenge, so Jacques does have an ulterior motive for making this point. But the statement of the problem they're trying to solve rings true.

  2. If marketing is being programmed, can we use an object-oriented paradigm?

  Jacques describes their solution as customer state marketing. (Akin Arikan did a nice post on them last year.) If you have some software engineering background, your synapses may already be firing associations with state machines, and that seems to be part of Whatsnexx's intention.

  According to Jacques, the key benefits of their approach are:

  1. Scenarios display the characteristics of object-oriented programming
  2. Scenario programming is procedural

  Whoa. Let me do a double take.

  We're reading a blog by a marketing solutions provider — selling to marketers — that is touting the characteristics of object-oriented programming as one of the benefits it provides customers. That's pretty bold. I mean, I just recently wrote that marketers should learn how to program, but to have a marketing technology company trying to sell a "better" programming paradigm to marketers is kind of striking.

  Yet it resonated with me instantly. (And apparently with Akin too.)

  To quote a bit from Jacques's post:

  For programmers, [the above two benefits] are significant. For everyone else this sounds like some foreign language — definitely very obscure. Let me put it another way:

  1) Scenarios are self-contained. They know how to behave in response to external stimulus (i.e., an event). This stimulus occurs randomly, and the scenarios will automatically respond to the event according to the rules contained in the scenario itself. The scenario only knows what it needs to know in order to respond to the stimulus, and contains all of the information necessary in order to carry out its functions properly (i.e., actions), such as sending the appropriate email.

  2) Scenarios follow simple rules, and have a simple program flow and limited branching options. This makes it easy to design state-based event/action program flows that govern how and when a scenario responds to a random customer event.

  

  If that's not pitching to a new generation of marketers — and marketing technologists — I don't know what is.

  Even if the net functionality that Whatsnexx delivers is similar to traditional marketing automation systems, the power of a paradigm can't be denied.

  Thinking about the modern marketing function as a large-scale object-oriented program stirs the imagination — at least it does for me — and suggests a number of intriguing new ways to organize and coordinate the multitude of moving parts in marketing's environment.

  Just as object-oriented programming dramatically changed the development of software — without directly changing what that software was able to do — such object orientation could have a big impact in the way that marketing automation processes are conceived, implemented, and maintained.

  Following the object-oriented train of thought, I can't help but ruminate about how object-oriented design patterns might be adapted in the context of marketing-as-a-system. Maybe there are marketing analogs to Adapter, Decorator, Singleton, and Strategy patterns. Or maybe there are entirely different pattern concepts — but patterns nonetheless — that can help structure and standardize this space.

  It is unlikely a panacea for marketing complexity, but it could be a better architecture for managing such complexity. I don't know if Whatsnexx actually delivers on this promise — I've only read a few of their blog posts and browsed their web site — but I give them full props for promoting a brilliant way to frame "programmable" marketing.