Our goal at Paper.li has always been to help people find, engage and build communities of like-minded individuals through content curation. Today, we are excited to announce that we have closed a new round of funding for $2 million and we are one step closer to achieving this goal.
This fresh capital pushes our total investment past $7 million to date, and opens up exciting new opportunities to innovate for our content curators at a more accelerated pace.
Thank you
Over the past three years, your curation efforts have helped shape the market. Today with over 3.7 million monthly users curating over 50 million articles in 7 languages daily, your curation efforts confirm our shared belief that future of content discovery and engagement is through the interest graph, not the social graph.
The speed at which Paper.li continues to grow is attributed to just one thing: you, the richly diverse community of curators across professions, industries and markets that continue to use, and love, the service. From solopreneurs to the largest of brands, there is only one thing to say: thank you. You never cease to inspire us.
What’s next
In 2012 we invested heavily in our technical architecture, engineering and implementing a state-of-the-art telecom grade platform to replace the original content curation we launched with in 2010. In doing so, we decreased system down times and vastly improved content processing, loading times and platform stability.
For 2013 our focus has been, and remains, on branding, collaboration and engagement features to help marketers and small business owners increase the net gain from their curation efforts. In doing so, our PRO user base has grown by more than 400% in the past three months, and we are forecasting to hit break-even in the coming three quarters.
Clearly, we have come a long way together since the first Twitter timeline paper rolled off the presses. Since then, you have paved the road for the potential of content curation and you have validated the value proposition.
We look forward to sharing some exciting next steps in the evolution of Paper.li and content curation in the coming weeks. Stay tuned… and thank you!
We are co-hosting #LeanImpact Chat on September 18th and would like you to join us!
Nonprofits and social enterprises fill a very important gap in our society, taking a very important matter into hands: social change. Social change requires massive amounts of effort and is very often spearheaded with small teams and limited budget.
As a start-up we understand the challenges of maximizing effort while working with limited resources, so when Meg Rulli asked us to co-host the upcoming #LeanImpact Tweetchat organized by the Lean Impact organization, we didn't have to think twice: Yes, Yes, Yes!
The topic for Sept 18th is Content Creation Success For Social Good Enterprises.
We can't do this alone though. We can only speak about our own start-up best practices so we would like to join in the conversation and share your knowledge and tips on achieving more with less within your start-up non-profit or social enterprise.
What is, or who is, Lean Impact?
Modeled after The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries, the Lean Impact organization helps nonprofits and social enterprises leverage and apply Lean Startup principles to the non-profit and for-good organizations.
In a nutshell, Lean Impact means:
Figuring out what creates real impact and discarding what doesn’t
Shortening the time in the “create – measure – learn” cycle
Operating with fewer wasted resources
Leveraging forward-thinking technologies to achieve our goals
Gathering continual feedback from our community
This chat begins at 9am PST, 11am EST and 20h Central European Time. Follow @leanImpact now to learn more about their organization and feel free to contact me (@khdhungerford) or my colleague @MagdaATQ with any questions.
Have you ever wished you could add your own custom text to your newsletter?
Now you can!
Whether you are treating your subscribers to a full curated front page of content, or sending them a one article digest alert, now you can add up to 1000 characters of text to create your OWN call to action, and (drive traffic!)
promote your business
offer a deal
share a joke of the day...
The Email Newsletter Service tops the charts as our most popular PRO feature: more than eighty percent of PRO users make this the first feature they activate...so, you can be sure that there will be more enhancements rolling out around this feature and newsletter service.
Getting started is easy. Simply go to your Promotion & Emails tab -> Newsletter Service -> More options -- and start typing.
I had a lot of fun testing this feature this past week and I am really (really!) excited to hear how it works for you...so tweet me, or leave a comment below.
Welcome to my new 5 Things weekly post! This weekly post will highlight -- surprise! -- Five Things that I think are worth sharing every week.
From product updates to news from the community, upcoming events to cool new tools... content will be a surprise, but always helpful. Today I'm sharing a blend of all of the above. Here goes!
This is my second year attending #CMWorld and I can't wait! If you're planning on attending, please Tweet me and let's meet!
Rumor has it I'll be yodeling, but we'll see about that. I usually leave yodeling to my Swiss colleagues...
2. New! RSS for Topic Sections
Product enhancement! We just implemented RSS for Topic Sections so now you and your readers can subscribe either to the entire paper by RSS, or a particular Topic on it. Here's a quick how-to to get you started.
3. #Back2School with Paper.li in the Classroom
Well, summer's over (at least in the northern hemisphere) and school's back in. To get back in the swing of things my colleague Magda wrote this post on 5 Online Tools for Educators and Students. As a bonus, she includes a list of over 100 tools and apps for the classroom.
If you are using Paper.li in the classroom, please me know so I can add you to my List.ly.
4. We heart our community Did you know that we deliver almost 24 hour 'round the clock support to our community from Switzerland? That's right, that's where we're based and it's true. We make it our business to go out of our way to provide you with support when you need it.
We answer all of your questions, feedback, requests and even gripes the way we would would like to be answered; honestly, with empathy for the situation, with a helpful answer and as quickly as possible.
We just buffed up our team, so now when you send us an email or contact us at support, you'll meet Julia. And when you FB, Plus or Tweet us, you'll be greeted by Magda.
Twitter is our number one channel for proving quick tips and trouble shooting to get you going. Tweet us when you need us!
By the way, Julia is in the process of re-organizing our Support Forum and creating a series of how-to videos, like the one below, to better support you. Leave a comment and let her know which videos she should create next.
5. The #90DaystoEllen Campaign
Last, but not least, I want to share one of the best campaigns I have come across this year; the 90 Day to Ellen campaign. You may have noticed tweets of support coming from our Twitter account -- thanks to all of you joined us in supporting the campaign. We had a great time!
The team and I loved this campaign so much that on day 41 of the campaign, Julia and I wrangled some cows into making a video with us for the campaign. We're video number 20 on this list.
In short, the goal of the campaign was to prove that real relationships, i.e. a physical meet-up in the form of lunch with television talk host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres, could be fostered via social media by two guys, Bryan Kramer and DJ Waldow, while raising money for charity; Feeding America.
After 90 days and 66 million impressions (on Twitter alone!) the question is -- did Ellen say "Yes!"?
No, she didn't. In fact, she didn't say a peep. Not even a "No, thank you, I can't do that because (fill in the blank)...
But set aside the fact that Ellen didn't say yes or even participate in the campaign, the campaign itself was a clearly a success all the way around. Money was still raised for Feeding America, a stand-in for Ellen was selected to fill her shoes at the lunch table and a whole lot of good old fashioned networking and digital community building took place over 90 days.
What impressed me the most about this campaign was the outreach and recognition by the 90Days team to each and every person who tweeted, posted or created a piece of content to support the cause.
Grab your favorite drink and sit down for 10 minutes to check out the 90DaystoEllen.com site. If you are planning a campaign in the future this is a great place to begin for best practices. And don't be shy in reaching out to Bryan, DJ or their "90-Days-to-Ellen-Meme-Master", Courtney. They are all genuinely helpful, nice people that made us feel right at home participating.
That's it for today. Thanks for reading and have a great week!
Image: a big thank you to publisher Dorian Staten for creating the 5 Things image for this series.
Gmail recently launched their new Tabs feature to help users keep email more organized. If you haven't tried them out yet, or are still trying to make sense of them, here's a very short video from Michael Stelzner on how to ensure your favorite newsletters and important updates make it straight to your Primary tab.
But before you rush over and start making changes to move all of your newsletters and updates back over to the Primary tab (like I did) stop and think for a minute: isn't the purpose of Tabs to group your mails, help you de-clutter and be more focused? Hmm.
Newsletters
Speaking of email -- did you know that email, not social media, is the most reliable and preferred marketing channel by marketers today to build relationships and prospect clients? It's true, but one of the major stumbling block for many in getting started is idea generation and finding the time to source content.
Knowing this we launched our Email Newsletter Service a while back as a part of our Pro offering. The service allows you to easily get the most out of your content efforts by automatically turning your online newspaper into a beautiful newsletter, with no extra work. You can also export the html and use it in a third party email service.
Round about 245 billion emails are sent out daily worldwide and here at Paper.li we send out 20 million a month on behalf of Paper.li publishers.
So with all that email competition how do you get your emails noticed, and more importantly opened, in a busy email inbox?
With a strong subject line and personalizing the From/ Sender field!
I asked publisher Alice Krueser-Lowe from Art and Design Matters about the importance customizing her paper's subject line is playing in marketing her paper and she said this:
“The ability to personalize the subject line of our paper is a fantastic feature as it grasps the attention of our readers. It’s our way of being able to let them know that it’s worth their attention so that the email does not get in their lineup of deletions”
Here's a tip! Alice hooks me daily with her catchy headlines, which usually are based on the title of the featured article. It's a great way to give readers a sneak peek of what's in the edition and the variety of the headline truly keeps me on the alert for her mails. Needless to say, her content is fantastic and that's what keeps me clicking!
If you're looking for additional tips on creating "must click" subject lines, check out this Subject Line Study Report by Adestra. It contains the best performing subject line keywords along with a lot of other helpful information on creating stellar marketing emails.
Gmail recently launched their new Tabs feature to help users keep email more organized. If you haven't tried them out yet, or are still trying to make sense of them, here's a very short video from Michael Stelzner on how to ensure your favorite newsletters and important updates make it straight to your Primary tab.
But before you rush over and start making changes to move all of your newsletters and updates back over to the Primary tab (like I did) stop and think for a minute: isn't the purpose of Tabs to group your mails, help you de-clutter and be more focused? Hmm.
Newsletters
Speaking of email -- did you know that email, not social media, is the most reliable and preferred marketing channel by marketers today to build relationships and prospect clients? It's true, but one of the major stumbling block for many in getting started is idea generation and finding the time to source content.
Knowing this we launched our Email Newsletter Service a while back as a part of our Pro offering. The service allows you to easily get the most out of your content efforts by automatically turning your online newspaper into a beautiful newsletter, with no extra work. You can also export the html and use it in a third party email service.
Round about 245 billion emails are sent out daily worldwide and here at Paper.li we send out 20 million a month on behalf of Paper.li publishers.
So with all that email competition how do you get your emails noticed, and more importantly opened, in a busy email inbox?
With a strong subject line and personalizing the From/ Sender field!
I asked publisher Alice Krueser-Lowe from Art and Design Matters about the importance customizing her paper's subject line is playing in marketing her paper and she said this:
“The ability to personalize the subject line of our paper is a fantastic feature as it grasps the attention of our readers. It’s our way of being able to let them know that it’s worth their attention so that the email does not get in their lineup of deletions”
Here's a tip! Alice hooks me daily with her catchy headlines, which usually are based on the title of the featured article. It's a great way to give readers a sneak peek of what's in the edition and the variety of the headline truly keeps me on the alert for her mails. Needless to say, her content is fantastic and that's what keeps me clicking!
If you're looking for additional tips on creating "must click" subject lines, check out this Subject Line Study Report by Adestra. It contains the best performing subject line keywords along with a lot of other helpful information on creating stellar marketing emails.
Since then, we've been seeing some amazing papers rolling off the presses. From slightly modified to completely customized and seamlessly integrated into an existing website we're are really excited to see so many of you putting Pro to work!
In fact, the papers are so inspiring that I started this List.ly to capturing some of my favorites. (Please feel free to add your customized paper to the list!)
Some of you may be thinking "That's great, but I can't code"! Well, neither can I. So I have also created a list of 15 really easy CSS changes that anyone can make. I've tested them myself here and they work like a charm! I've included modifications such as
hiding the title to replace it with just a banner
modifying the featured image background
removing the powered by Paper.li at the bottom
The first step to customizing your CSS is signing up for Paper.li Pro. Once you've done that, configure your custom domain and then you can get started styling your paper.
If you have questions, Tweet me @smallrivers or leave a comment here. I look forward to seeing your papers and hearing how Pro is working for you.
We're excited to announce the release of some great new features today like our Paper.li White Label solution, multi-collaborators and integrated RSS feeds
These features have been rolled into our already awesome $9.00 /per month Paper.li Pro package. If you haven't taken the plunge yet to upgrade, now's a good time!
Paper.li White Label
Back in March we launched custom domains and that feature took off like wildfire. You loved the feature but wanted more control of over your branding and the ability to seamlessly integrate your paper into existing sites or blogs.
Here's what we've got for you:
CSS styling: from header to footer, you can style your paper as you'd like with via a new CSS editor
Optional header & footer: don't like to dabble with code? Then you can simply hide the standard Paper.li header and footer with a click of the mouse
Favicon: extend your branding with a logo at the top of your browser tab
Iframe: copy and paste the iframe html and quickly power your site with your paper
Email banner: include your paper banner at the top of your newsletter
Edit newsletter subject: modify your email's subject line to better suit your audience
Add an email alias: personalize your email newsletters and modify the "from" field to reflect your name
Tip! To modify your CSS and add a favicon, configure your custom domain first.
Multiple editors
One of the most frequently requested features we've received over the past months has been a collaboration feature. So we've added a co-editor functionality for you.
Now you can ask colleagues, team members, or fellow-hobbyists to lend their expertise and co-edit papers with you. You can get started under the Collaboration tab on your dashboard.
Paper RSS feed
We often hear that Paper.li is used to keep up with favorite content as a sort of "alternative" to an RSS reader but lately the requests to add an RSS feed option to papers have shot through the roof.
So today were excited to announce that we've added an RSS feed option for all Pro papers. You can activate your feed via the Add-ons tab in your dashboard. The standard RSS icon will appear at the top of your paper next to the archives.
We're looking forward to hearing what you think about the new features. Tweet us @SmallRivers or leave a comment here and let us know how the new features are working for you.
Hi publishers, here's what's new this week at Paper.li!
New Twitter widget:
Last year Twitter announced that they would be retiring their original API this spring and rolling out a new version (1.1) in order to foster a more consistent Twitter experience across the Twitter eco-system.
We completed the switchover with no impact on the service, however we were required to retire the older version of the Twitter conversation widget we were displaying on papers.
What does this mean?
Only good news. We made a few changes on our side and now you have the option of creating a Twitter widget and adding it to your paper (or not).
The widgets can be created via your own Twitter account and you determine the content you would like to display. If you prefer not to have a widget on your paper at all, that's an option too.
To get started, simply go to the Add-ons tab under in your paper settings and look for the Twitter widget option.
Like what you see, Email me!
Recently we've seen an increase in readers and visitors to papers contacting us in order to get in touch with publishers. Not very effective, to say the least. So we have created a new widget, "Email me" that will help readers and publishers connect more easily.
Once activated an "Email me" icon will appear next to your profile and your readers can contact you. Of course, we'll send the email on your reader's behalf, keeping your email address concealed until you share it with them yourself.
Sneak-peek: White-label solution
The one feature that PRO publishers have unanimously said they would pay a whole lot more for is the ability to have control over the footer, header and other aspects of branding.
Well, good news! Our Paper.li white label solution will be available in May and you won't have to pay a cent more for it. It will be included in the PRO package at $9 per month (or $99 per year). We'll let you know as soon as it is ready!
Have a great week and be sure to tweet us @smallrivers if we can help you with anything.
Pro publishers now you can integrate Google Analytics into your paper and track the stats on your own GA dashboard!
Getting started is easy. Go to your Google Analytics account and add your paper url. Then simply paste the Property ID into the Analytics field located on the Stats Tab in your paper's settings. In about 24 hours you will be able view your paper's activity in your GA dashboard.
If you don't yet have a GA account, you can go to this page to set one up.
PayPal Payment Option
Not a Pro publisher yet? No problem. You can upgrade your paper to Pro from within your paper's settings at any time. And to make upgrading even easier, we've added PayPal as a payment option.
If you have any questions about adding Google Analytics, or our Pro package, visit our customer support forum or tweet us @smallrivers. We're always here to answers questions and lend a hand.
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