Pinterest Releases New Business Tools, Gets Analytics from HelloInsights

Pinterest has announced that they are improving what the site offers its business users. The content sharing website has released new business centered guides and tools to help these companies promote their brand across the social platform.

Pinterest has been steadily improving their system since moving into the public sphere from an invitation only policy last year. Recently security updates to the system include a  website verification feature and user blocking.

Appealing to the Business Side of Social Media

By adapting a new set of tools Pinterest aims to make the website more appealing to businesses. According to a blog post from Cat Lee, Pinterest’s product manager, the company has instituted some new polices and tools that are geared towards improving their services.

Businesses who wish to use Pinterest merely have to sign up for a business account or convert their current account into a business one. By having a business account, Lee says that content on the website will be optimized to help improve the business customer experience, such as being able to verify their official website and adding key buttons and widgets to an account to improve customer traffic, such has the Pin It Button and the Board Widget.

As way to separate how the site works for the individual persons and businesses, Pinterest has also split their terms of service into one policy for the everyday user and one policy for businesses. Also, as way to ensure that businesses can use Pinterest successfully, the website offers a variety of help guides, which include:

• Case Studies: Users such as AllRecipes and Etsy have provided information, tips and metrics, so that others businesses can learn from their success.
• Best Practices: These guides show users how to properly navigate and engage customers through Pinterest.
• How-to Guides: These guides include the basics of Pinterest, such as a how to use Pin It, to more in depth reports, such as how to properly use Pinterest as a marketing tool.

It’s All About Analytics

The introduction of a more business friendly Pinterest isn't the only business centred news for the content sharing website. Science today has launched HelloInsights, a Pinterest analytics platform that helps users track their company's growth and interactions with customers. This tool joins other Pinterest-centered analytics tools, such as Pinfluencer and Curalate.

A free, leader board based platform, HelloInsights can either be used from Pinterest or the HelloInsights website. Some of the key factors that it tracks for businesses include:

• Tracking the must influential pinners and ranking pinners based on their overall influence on others.
• Moderating pin virality.
• Companies can see their real-time presence through a “Live Pin Stream.”
• Companies can schedule automatized pins.
• Companies can create custom charts to see how their company compares to its competitors.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Zend Integrates PhoneGap into PHP Tools for Mobile + Cloud Apps

Zend, providers of PHP based tools for mobile and enterprise app developers, has introduced updates to three flagship products during its ZendCon event this week, and a PhoneGap integration for building cross-platform apps.

PHP is a popular web scripting language, and it powers the likes of Web powerhouses Facebook and Wikipedia. Zend has debuted new versions of its development environment and other tools that promise to leverage the power of PHP for cloud and mobile.

Zend Studio 10

Zend Studio 10 is an integrated development platform meant for building PHP that can add tons of capabilities to apps on the Web or mobile. One of its most powerful attributes is that it can build apps across systems with the added PhoneGap integration.

Companies can use this handy feature to build apps for iOS, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone among others, and do it using familiar drag and drop features. That kind of add on is always appreciated by those building apps without having been totally immersed in a computer science background.

Mobile apps can me built quickly with drag and drop tools and customized for a variety of operating systems.

As the image above shows, the built in emulator displays what mobile apps will look like on a particular device, and it's another nice visual tool app developers are likely feeling should be standard on any platform. Zend Studio 10 also supports the latest version of PHP known as v5.4, and that means new syntax like traits can be used as well.

Zend Server 6 + Zend Server Gateway

Zend Server 6 is an application server that runs business critical apps in PHP, and the v6 update includes tools for automating app development and monitoring multiple apps at a more granular level. Zend Server Gateway then is the tool that allows apps to talk to other connected systems in the cloud for things like validation and authentication.

All of the new versions are now downloadable from the Zend website. Zend Server for Windows or Linux starts at about US $1,700 to nearly US $15,000, and there is also a Zend Server Production Solution. This is a full package offering complete with two available levels of support, starting at around US $7,000 with an annual subscription. There is also a free 30 day trial available for Zend Studio 10.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

HootSuite Teams Up with Compendium for Added Content Marketing Muscle

Managing social media teams with HootSuite just got a jolt of marketing juice, thanks to the integration of Compendium's content marketing tools.

Compendium helps companies create content for customized distribution, and its partnership with HootSuite now allows for that content to be saved as a HootSuite draft. Once the Compendium material is saved as a draft, it can then be scheduled and sent out to selected social networks.

Both Companies Growing

HootSuite and Compendium are both growing, and the list of their respective new integrations is proof of that. Because they are both involved in sharing the same or similar content to different networks and channels, this partnership is fairly intuitive.

Compendium has recently teamed up with marketing automation big shot Eloqua, and with cross-channel marketer ExactTarget. Both of those partnerships kicked off this summer, but more recently,

On the other side, HootSuite announced  Webtrends analytics integration, a new chat feature and a centralized Command Center tool in October.

Social Media Strategy

Compendium and HootSuite both can help companies build and deploy social media strategies, and Compendium even compiled some specific tactics it gathered from 200 companies into a little how-to infographic. It shows the best times to publish to each channel — Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter — how long the posts should be and a few do's and don'ts we never thought of.

LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have different peak visit times for B2C and B2B companies.

While this is hardly a controlled, comprehensive study, it does give insight into what many marketers are thinking when it comes to social media. We think the main takeaway here is that reusing original content is extremely valuable.

HootSuite and Compendium are hoping businesses will use their tools to help spread those messages to the right people at the right time. The free integration is available to all HootSutie Enterprise customers and is located in account settings.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

HR + Social = Like

 Social is big, and getting bigger.

Social is sweeping into the enterprise with astonishing speed. Corporations, government agencies and nonprofits are using social tools such as blogs, wikis and Twitter-like activity streams to collaborate internally, with both customers and the general public. It's an undeniable trend and it's quickly picking up speed.

The opportunity is immense. Most enterprise technology is in the business of automating human tasks: taking the creativity out of work and replacing it with rigid, formal process. Social software does just the opposite; it fosters, encourages and empowers the natural creativity of human beings working with each other towards a common goal.

Yvette Cameron of Constellation Research describes it this way:

For the first time, technologies are becoming available that better align the way people naturally work and think. As humans, we're social creatures. Until recently, technologies didn't really support that. A lot of the processes that we use in our business applications are about automating paperwork, as opposed to really fostering collaboration [and the] rapid discovery of information; getting to the people, content and the knowledge that's needed to get work done."

Enterprise social software is key to businesses of all sizes because it enables new relationships to be created amongst your employees. Classic examples where enterprise social software can help your company and your employees become more productive include: getting a question answered by the most knowledgeable person, joining a new cross-functional team or getting help resolving a complex customer problem.

Who Owns Social in the Enterprise?

Most enterprise technologies have natural owners inside the enterprise. Sales owns sales force automation. Finance owns the financial software. Marketing owns marketing automation. It’s not exactly rocket science.

But social software is different. It doesn’t map to a single business process. Social software is all about unlocking the potential of all employees across an entire organization — whether they’re in Sales, Marketing, R&D, Product, Support, Operations or whatever.

While social software may be new, human beings aren’t. We've been walking the earth for about 200,000 years, give or take. What's new is that for the first time we have the tools to collaborate effectively at large scale, without the benefit of physical proximity; and when we collaborate, each of our efforts becomes exponentially more valuable because we build on each other.

Large organizations are also nothing new, and for the past hundred or so years most of them have created a special group whose sole purpose is to optimize for the value of its people. This group is called Human Resources, but is better known as HR.

HR and enterprise social software were made for each other. Both are in the same business of making talent more productive.

“Aha!” you say, “But isn’t everyone in the enterprise trying to make talent more productive? So really each line of business should own social for itself!”

But remember that enterprise social is all about network effects. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter succeed precisely because everyone is on the same platform. People participate in the network because everyone else is participating. There’s no solution without scale. And the same is true in the enterprise. It’s only when we get everyone on a common platform that companies can offer a compelling value proposition.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Source Metrics Offers Social Marketing Optimization and Analytics Platform

So much social media, so little ROI. That’s the idea behind a variety of tools that try to measure the ROI of social campaigns, such as a new social marketing optimization platform from Source Metrics. 

Started in 2008, Source Metrics focuses on the metrics of leads, sales, click-throughs and conversions, presented in real-time by property. The aim, the Ottawa-based company said, is to answer the question "what works and how well?" Source Metrics had previously provided analytics and marketing campaign management tools, which are now included in the new platform, and it joins other social media management platforms, including HootSuite, Alinean, Google’s Wildfire Interactive and Salesforce’s Buddy Media.

ROI Measurement

Targeted at advertisers, digital agencies, PR agencies and chief marketing officers, the Source Metrics platform enables marketing campaigns to be adjusted as metrics indicate. Users can publish, promote, monitor and analyze their social marketing efforts across channels, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs and email campaigns.

In Source Metrics, ROI is measured through such end results as online revenue or inducing people to respond to a call-to-action, such as a download or a signup.

Brand mentions are ranked by reach and categorized by sentiment, so that the platform user can engage with the commenter. Various social channels are tracked for growth, engagement and performance, allowing a marketer to see trends at a glance. The platform’s API can be utilized for integrating the data with in-house applications.

Social Metrics Campaigns/Reporting
 

CEO and co-founder Scott Lake, the co-founder and former CEO of create-your-own-ecommerce site Shopify.com, noted in a statement that there is no shortage of social media monitoring services. "But what do brands do with the data?” he asked.

Is Revenue All?

He said that Source Metrics’ solution is to provide “visibility into social marketing activity, and then take it one step further with real-time intelligence that shows how campaigns are performing,” coupled with the capacity to take action. Source Metric’s solution is one of a series of efforts to help businesses determine which parts, if any, of their social media marketing budgets are worthwhile.

A recent report from the Altimeter Group surveyed approaches to determining social media ROI. The report, called the "Social Media ROI Cookbook", noted that only 30 percent of brands consider themselves effective in connecting their social media campaigns to revenue. Fifty-six percent said the disconnect was because they were not able to tie social media to business outcomes, 39 percent pointed to a lack of analytics expertise or resources, and 38 percent blamed poor tools.

But ROI, measured as revenue generated, “isn’t everything” when measuring the value of social media, the report said. The vast majority of respondents — 84 percent — said the primary business impact of social media marketing was creating “insight that helped us meet customer experience goals.” In other words, boosting the brand can be a separate and more important goal than enlarging the bank account.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Aprimo Digital Messaging Center Provides a Single Location to Manage Cross-Channel Marketing

Marketing automation provider Aprimo has released its Digital Messaging Center, a cloud based hub for combining marketing tools with social media, analytics and CRM systems.

Aprimo announced the news at the DMA2012 conference in Las Vegas this week, and it offers real-time access to customer preferences and behavioral data from mobile, Web and integrated systems.

Another Step Toward Personalized Experience

Marketers want more information about potential customers, and putting disparate data together about the same person or company is getting easier. Harvesting tidbits from social media and using ever more powerful analytics systems is popular way of doing just that. Now companies like Teradata, Aprimo's parent company, are automating this tactic and pushing it out as an all in one, plug and play product.

The Digital Messaging Center provides automated processes for:

• Message Creation — Streamline content with an online library, functional messaging templates and display optimization.
• Deliverability — Increase inbox delivery rates for up to 10 million emails per hour with personalized rules, automatic bounce-back processing and list integration among others.
• Personalization — Tailor offers and other messages based on complex customer data.
• Recipient Management — Integrate big data/analytics.
• Tracking and Reporting — Break down what’s working for individuals and/or target groups.

The Digital Messaging Center is available as a standalone solution or as part of Aprimo's Integrated Marketing Management (IMM) Platform.

Aprimo News Recap

Teradata bought Aprimo in 2011, and earlier this year, bought up eCircle for its email and digital marketing expertise. The Digital Messaging Center is a culmination of that eCircle purchase. 

In August, Aprimo debuted its Real-Time Interaction Manager to improve customer experience. Then in September, Aprimo Service to Sales became available on the Salesforce.com AppExchange for better business intelligence.

The Digital Messaging Center is Aprimo's most robust integrated marketing management platform to date, and as Gartner pointed out in its eCircle buyout report, the move puts Aprimo in a good position among global digital marketing companies.

A Digital Marketer's Dream

There's a common theme running among vendors of digital marketing solutions, and that is the marketers want a single location to manage the cross-channel marketing they do and the information they have. We saw that with the acquisition of Pardot by ExactTarget last week, we saw it with Ektron's addition of HubSpot into its Digital Marketing Hub (DMH) and with Adobe's integration of AdLens with SiteCatalyst. Of course Adobe's integration is not a complete package, but it demonstrates the need for integrated solutions that make it easier for marketers to design, build and manage cross-channel campaigns. So we ask…who's next?

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Rio SEO Launches Keyword Discovery Tool for Better Landing Pages

When consumers search for a need that could be met by your product or service, what keywords are they actually using? There are a variety of tools and techniques for discovering those magic words, and now Rio SEO has unveiled a new one. 

The company said that its new Keyword Discovery Automation platform is the first of its kind to identify the specific web landing pages that have the highest relevancy for the recommended keywords.

Identifying High-Opportunity Keywords

The idea is that, in addition to suggesting the highest-opportunity keywords for searching, the tool also points to the strongest landing pages on the existing website that correspond to the specific keyword — even if those pages need a complete content overhaul. In this way, the tool is designed to offer the best keyword-to-landing-page flow.

The San Diego, California-based Rio SEO is a provider of software-as-a-service SEO automation solutions. Its modules are designed for organic search and social media analysis, with functionality supporting:

• Content marketing
• Auditing
• Reporting
• Change tracking
• Keyword discovery
• Competitive analysis
• Mobile site optimization
• SEO execution
• Local SEO automation

Pete Dudchenko, Rio SEO’s senior director for product management, said in a statement that the new tool is a “powerful decision-making and workflow management resource that clearly shows what people are saying across the competitive landscape, in various social media conversations, and through traditional search marketing data sources.”

Easier Management and Reporting

To arrive at its keyword discovery, the tool analyzes the competitive landscape, drawing on both social media and traditional search data sources. The workflow guides the user through the steps needed to discover keywords and the most appropriate pages. The user can categorize keywords and pages in multiple categories for easier management and reporting, and can associate keyword and page combinations for analysis.

Keyword Discovery Automation utilizes the patented SEO Audit Score system of Rio SEO’s parent company, Covario, which describes itself as the “nation’s largest independent provider of global search marketing services and technology solutions.” Rio SEO was spun off from the privately-held firm in April 2012.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

HootSuite Integrates with Webtrends Analytics, Seeks Social Media ROI

HootSuite is launching an integration with Webtrends Analytics, a move the company says will increase the range of measurement tools available to HootSuite Enterprise users.

As a result of the integration, HootSuite enterprise users can now create custom, automatically generated reports that show the impact of social media messaging on customer conversion. In addition, users can compare the effect of social media messaging across different channels to determine where engagement is highest.

HootSuite says the integrated Webtrends Analytics capabilities also allow users to evaluate metrics such as which specific social media account or page provides the most valuable traffic, which time of day produces the highest volumes of traffic and engagement, and which specific types of messages and words drive the highest conversion rates.

HootSuite Pursues Integrations

Hootsuite has been aggressively pursuing integrations with a variety of social media networks and service providers to expand the functionality of its enterprise social media management platform. HootSuite is designed to allow users to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple networks from a single Web dashboard. Integrations and plug-ins make campaign measurement — and management — more robust and easier to perform.

In August, HootSuite refreshed its GetSatisfaction app to include integrations with Facebook and Twitter. Users of GetSatisfaction, which was designed to ease the building of online social communities by transforming social media interactions into conversations between companies and customers, now have the ability to push and pull content across both platforms from one dashboard.  

In July, HootSuite started offering all users full access to Google+ Pages. As a result of this expanded integration, all HootSuite users (both paid and free) can manage Google+ Pages alongside other social channels, and have access to Google+ Pages functionality in the HootSuite dashboard. In August, HootSuite collaborated with Yammer, allowing all Yammer users to monitor and reply to Yammer conversations within HootSuite.

Other recent notable HootSuite integrations include a partnership with HubSpot for social lead generation and integrations with Instagram and Slideshare, all occurring in June.

In Pursuit of the Holy Grail

According to the Vancouver Sun's "Digital Life" blog, the integration of Webtrends Analytics signals that HootSuite is chasing the “Holy Grail” of corporate social media: ROI. Calling social media ROI “a complex puzzle that taxes companies as they struggle to balance investment in social media with its returns to the bottom line,” the Sun concludes this partnership is “aimed at putting the pieces of that puzzle together, delivering quantifiable results that tell a company or organization exactly how much money they’re making or what their return is for each and every tweet, Facebook post or other social media interaction that delivers a web link through the HootSuite dashboard.”

The integrated HootSuite-Webtrends capabilities are now available free to HootSuite Enterprise and Webtrends Analytics On-Demand clients.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Seeing is Believing: Catalyst Insight Offers Visual Analytics

Thanks to the rise of Big Data, the process of eDiscovery has become more important to the enterprise. While there are there are many tools and platforms that make it easier and faster to sift through Big Data, have you ever really seen your data? Catalyst says that they have the solution.

Now You See It …

Thanks to Insight, the next generation eDiscovery platform from Catalyst, companies can see their data for the first time. Engineered from the ground up, Catalyst Insight harnesses the power of an XML engine — combining metadata, tags and text in a unified, searchable data store. As a result, Insight provides users with visual analytics that let users see deep into their data, and with timelines and social-networking diagrams, which are updated instantly thanks to a "Smart" coding feature (which learns from your review team).

But visual analytics are only as good as the speed and precision at which they are generated. Fortunately, Insight features unprecedented speed for complex searches involving millions of documents, as well as the ability to conduct searches with strings of up to one million characters.

We spoke with John Tredennick, CEO at Catalyst and he gave us a real-time demo of Insight. Not only is it fast — it also offers many insightful ways to see how information flows through your company. Let's take a look.

With Communication Tracker, users can search for documents and see how they are connected to specific people within the organization. Users can click on a recipient to track communications, or click on the number to display the documents featured between the recipients.

Through a single dashboard, users can see the progress of the project review as well as the number of documents assigned, unassigned and completed.

A chart's functionality not only allows users to visually account for the documents by author, but also provides a variety of chart options, from 3D bar and pie graphs to splines and waterfalls.

Users can review reports to better understand the status of the documents collected within different search parameters. They can review reports by custodian, productivity and other conditions.

Speaking My Language

While visual analytics is a big part of what sets Catalyst Insight apart from its competitors. Its multilingual review capabilities should not be overlooked. Insight is able to search data in over 270 languages — and change the interface language with one click. As more companies become global enterprises, the ability to search for, collect and review data isn't only relevant to the English language. Making it easy to search for information in another language is one thing. Being able to transform the user interface, so that users can engage with the platform in a native language, is brilliant.

A Clear Picture of eDiscovery

Catalyst Insight serves to speed up search and refine methods for "Smart" coding — but most importantly, it helps to make document review visually relevant. It's not secret that 65 percent of us are visual learners. And when you undertake a process as daunting as eDiscovery, seeing is believing.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Oracle Debuts Free Version of its ADF Application Building Tools #oow

Developers who have been thinking about building enterprise level apps now have a chance to use the same tools the big boys use because Oracle has released a free version of its Application Development Framework.

It's called ADF Essentials, and it's a Java platform that provides a ready to use base upon which new apps can be built and integrated into legacy systems.

Build UIs and Reusable Components

ADF Essentials includes tools for easily building advanced UIs and reusable components with common design patterns. It does not feature tools like a granular security layer, declarative customization, integration with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle ADF Mobile like the full Oracle ADF does. However, ADF Essentials will be supported in a future Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse release.

ADF Essentials is a core tool for building multi-channel apps that access a variety of data sources and business services.

Oracle OpenWorld Looms

Oracle's yearly trade show OpenWorld starts Sept. 30, so this a good chance to get started with ADF and then hit the conference with some big ideas and well thought out questions. OpenWorld has several tracts, one of which is the JavaOne section that is tailored to developers and Java technologists. 

Hasan Rizvi, Oracle senior VP of product development will be giving a keynote on Java product strategy that should be a good overview for those just getting started with the company's developer tools. Additionally, Judson Althoff, Oracle senior VP, will be giving a Java market strategy keynote that could be a good source for new app ideas. 

For more in depth sessions, check out Tim Ellison, senior technical staff member, IBM UK, and his take on some of Java's real world compatibility issues. Also, try the GlassFish Unconference to meet some of the leading minds on Java EE and GlassFish open source server. GlassFish Server Open Source Edition is how Oracle ADF Essentials is deployed, so this session would be very advantageous for any new ADF developers. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

The Digital Workplace: The Need for Good Practices in a Complex Work Environment

Today's workforce has a growing number of tools at their disposal to communicate, collaborate and get work done. But there is a concurrent increase in workflow complexity, which, left unmanaged, results in time lost and inefficiencies. It's time to bridge the gap between the two.

For easily repeatable tasks, the process has often been defined and implemented in the systems you are using, such as an ERP system. In knowledge-intense and highly dynamic and collaborative work environments, processes are often barely repeatable (check out Thingamy for more on the concept of barely repeatable processes).

This means that knowledge workers who participate in a task have to design or redesign the process each time it is executed. Much more is required from those who participate in a barely repeatable process than an easily repeatable. Instead of simply following instructions created by a process engineer, you have to be a process engineer yourself and design the process on the fly as you execute it.

Efficient Practices Lead to Results

In such a work environment, it is very important to have efficient practices — ways to perform common individual tasks — that allow you to execute the job in an efficient way. You also need to have those practices in common with the other people who will be involved, otherwise you will have to revert to “whatever works” practices, using the most convenient but not necessarily most suitable tools and methods to collaborate, such as email and ad hoc physical meetings.

Here’s my key point: how efficiently tasks and processes are executed is very much dependent on the practices and tools used. For example, there can be extreme differences in efficiency between a scenario where you co-author content by emailing documents back and forth and a scenario where you can co-author the content directly using a tool like Google Docs or the co-authoring capabilities of SharePoint 2010 in Word.

First Identify the Problem

When I talk to people they often recognize the symptoms of bad practices, but they often lack the insight and awareness of what causes the symptoms and why, which of course makes it harder to treat and cure the “disease." Many of the underlying problems can be fixed by developing better practices using new tools. 

You hear people complaining about too many emails and information overload and when they hear about new tools or new ways of working, they often react negatively, saying they can’t handle more tools or information. What you really need to do is to help them get an understanding of why their situation looks like it does and that it is related to how they currently work with information and communicate and collaborate with each other.

It all starts with asking questions:

• How do you overcome geographical and time differences, i.e. how do you handle a task that involves several people but all people cannot be physically present at the same time to execute the task?
• How do you overcome organizational barriers, .i.e. how do you involve external parties in the execution of a task or process? How do you exchange information with external parties in secure and efficient ways?
• How and where is information created, stored, organized, shared and accessed for each task?
• How and where is information created for one task made available for other tasks performed later by the same or other people?
• How and where are tasks that are inter-dependent coordinated? How do you get notified about the need to execute a certain task, and how do you signal current status to the people you collaborate with — that it has been executed, delayed, interrupted or stopped?
• How and where is information shared in an efficient way to stakeholders that need, or could need, the information?
• How are generic, frequently performed tasks carried out, .e.g.
  • Find information
  • Find a person
  • Co-create information
  • Update information
  • Review information
  • Collect feedback

The Solution Often Already Exists

When questions such as the ones above have been asked and answered, we need to ask ourselves how existing — and new — technologies can be leveraged to work smarter and be used to develop better practices, in particular for tasks that require collaboration and interaction between several people from different organizations, locations and time zones. 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

PublishThis Gives Content New Life, Previews Future of Content Marketing Strategy

When the founder of paid content, Rafat Ali, started his new venture Skift, he wanted not only to provide news, but data, tools and services, as well. To make this happen, he turned to the folks at PublishThis.

Four Critical Content Elements

Skift, a travel intelligence media company, brings together four elements that have become the hallmark of PublishThis — aggregation, content curation, licensed and original content — all of which aim to add value and a customizable experience for the user.

We met up with PublishThis last week at Content Marketing World and got a glimpse of the what the content curation platform can do.

Create, Curate and Customize Content

During the conference we learned that a majority of content marketing professionals think their biggest challenge is producing enough content. PublishThis helps to diffuse this challenge by offering a plethora of content tools that help publishers keep their users engaged even if they don’t have enough original content to fill their feeds.

The idea is that publishers can supplement their sites with information that’s not only relevant to their audience, but easy to update and customize. The web-based app allows users to customize the content that feeds into their site based on unique keywords, conditions and outlets.

When we think of social media marketing, we emphasize the need to assert your authority by not just talking about what you do, but by incorporating information from other sources, as well. When it comes to content marketing, the same strategy applies. The goal for many sites isn’t just to provide the best original content, but also to serve as a hub for best content from across the web. This way, customers don’t get bored — and they find a reason to come back.

The Future of Content Marketing, Publishing

Currently PublishThis is available through an API or via their app. Soon, however, it will serve as a home base for clients who wish to host their sites with it, giving them the ability to build microsites. Additionally, PublishThis is working to improve the quality of content with a social trending algorithm that measures what is trending or popular in social based on the number of retweets, shares and likes based on your specific topic filters. This helps with content discovery for the curator, and the algorithm can be leveraged on a website topic page to publish automated content that defaults to what is "trending" rather than the more traditional "most recent" category.

Whether or not you agree that curation and aggregation is the future of content marketing, there’s no denying that the way users interact and engage with content is changing the face of web publishing. PublishThis gives content publishers a means for discovering and optimizing content, while giving content creators an opportunity to extend their reach of their words.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Limelight Launches Orchestrate Platform for High-Tech Marketers

B2B technology marketers have a new set of tools they can choose. This week, Limelight Networks introduced its Orchestrate for High-Tech Marketers, a platform for delivering a digital presence across channels to business-oriented buyers.

The new solution offers web content management, online video publishing, mobile publishing, web and mobile acceleration, web personalization, content targeting, social media integration and SEO. These tools are intended to assist marketers in enhancing customer relationships, driving brand awareness and increasing sales conversions.

Single Interface

The new Orchestrate’s features include the ability to utilize a single interface for managing and publishing web and video content, for segmenting visitor data in order to direct messaging to the appropriate prospect, and for re-purposing assets across web and mobile domains in order to simplify workflow, publish more quickly and maintain brand consistency.

The platform automatically optimizes web and video content for best viewing on the target devices. The company said that the tight integration between the new platform and email/marketing automation systems allows easier synchronization with email campaigns.

Technology buyers, the key business users targeted by this platform, typically seek out online sources of product information and peer recommendations before making a business decision, according to unspecific studies cited by Limelight.

The company said that this due diligence on the part of the buyer goes beyond the information found on the sites of product vendors, and includes research on third-party sites, blogs, professional social networks such as LinkedIn, RSS feeds and other sources.

Selling to a Tough Crowd

These business-oriented buyers can be a tough group with high expectations, according to Limelight. Jeff Freund, Limelight’s CTO of DPM Solutions and VP/GM for the Web Content Management Group, said in a statement that, to reach these business technology buyers, “high-tech marketers must provide rich, fresh content,” such as whitepapers, webinars, data sheets, research reports, videos and animation across a variety of channels.

He added that doing so requires an “integrated, easy to use solution that allows them to update their collateral content and video assets without IT support.”

Based in Tempe, Arizona, Limelight Networks specializes in Digital Presence Management, provided through integrated suites of cloud-based applications to manage and optimize online presence across web, mobile, social and large screen channels.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Autonomy Product Innovations for Law Firms & Legal Departments More Social, Mobile

Lawyers have some new tools with which to fight their battles. Today, HP-owned Autonomy unveiled three new innovations for its products that are designed to help law firms and corporate legal departments utilize the convergence of social, cloud and mobile technologies.

Neil Araujo, chief executive officer of Autonomy Project Legal, noted in a statement that his company has “long been an innovator in information management for the legal industry,” and that these new innovations help lawyers “take advantage of consumer technologies,” while maintaining their security and enterprise system requirements.

‘Self-Curated Collections’

One of the enhancements utilizes HP Labs’ patent-pending Compass technology, which allows users to more easily find personal connections and share content inside a company. This technology will be integrated into iManage Universal Search, Autonomy’s knowledge management application.

This new functionality automatically suggests relevant people, collections and content based on content or a person currently selected. It also enables the creation of communities that Autonomy described as “self-curated collections” revolving around a given topic. The interface is designed to act like a social network’s, so users can follow collections and receive updates from communities.

Doc Exchange, Mobile Scanning

A second enhancement provides a secure, cloud-based document exchange within Autonomy WorkSite, which is used by law firms and legal departments for document and email management. The new functionality is intended to make document sharing with outsiders easier, more secure and more auditable.

An improved process for capturing images from mobile devices is the third enhancement Autonomy is rolling out. This capability allows mobile camera users to remove extraneous background, de-skew an image or remove page creases.

Once cleaned up, the image can be read more easily on an Optical Character Recognition system, and then utilized as a text-based document. The company said that use cases include attorneys-in-the-field capturing signatures on engagement letters, affidavits or other legal documents.

Autonomy, founded in 1996, said it currently has over 65,000 customers worldwide and more than 400 OEM partners for its products, which seek to extract meaning in real time from all forms of information. Product areas include content management, knowledge and records management, compliance, business process management and collaboration.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com