This week I'm really excited to announce the launch of two great features to help you increase engagement and reach new audiences: customized Promo-Tweets and auto-posting to Facebook and Linkedin.
As the Twitter community grows, so does the competition. Over the past months you have told us that getting your message heard across Twitter is becoming more difficult by the day. You asked for control over your Promo-Tweet messaging as well as more options for promotion. Create custom messaging:
Now you can tailor your message to best fit your niche. You know best what makes your community tick, and click. Add a #tag, modify your mentions and customize your text. Read more about getting started with this new feature here.
Don't want to change a thing? No problem. The "daily is out" is set as the default tweet. Changing it is up to you!
Automatically promote on Linkedin and Facebook:
We've added auto-posting to Facebook and Linkedin. Create a custom post and share your paper url, or just the featured article, automatically, with each new edition.
Branding tip! Add a thumbnail cover image to represent your paper when shared.
Paper thumbnails increase clicks. When your paper is shared across social platforms you can share your branding along with it. Create graphic or upload your and replace the Paper.li standard "P" with each share.
If you choose to share an article from your paper, we'll post the article image instead of the cover image.
Leave us a comment below, or Tweet us @SmallRivers and let us know what you think once you've tried them out. We look forward to hearing from you.
The week has only just begun but I am already looking ahead...so, this this week's Tuesday tip is: join me and @Smallrivers for #blogchat Europe on Tuesday, October 8!
Whether your company has 2 or 2000 employees, blogging ranks as one of the most widely trusted and sure-fire way to build authority, grow relationships and generate new business leads. But how? Well, that's what #blogchat is all about!
Mack Collier's #blogchat is a Twitter power-house Tweetchat dedicated to helping YOU get the most out of blogging.
Whether you are a small business owner or a marketer working for a large mega-company, Mack and the #blogchat community provide great insight and help answer your blogging questions.
Because the North American version of #Blogchat is tough for us Europeans to make (it takes place at 3am, CET) Mack offers a European friendly version at 20h, every second Tuesday of the month.
Don't miss out! Pencil in the last three European #blogchats of 2013 into your calendar now:
Tuesday, October 8 - Blog Plug-ins that increase business networking and productivity Tuesday, November 12 - tba (aka: something really cool) Tuesday, December 10 - tba (aka: something really cool)
20h CET, 1pm Central.
Just because this chat is called '#Blogchat Europe' it doesn't mean it is for Europeans only. This just means it is held at a time that the European, North American, South American, African and Middle Eastern continents can manage. How cool is that? (Sorry Australasia, we'll have to work on that)
You'll find me there @kdhungford and don't worry about language barriers or making mistakes. We learn a lot and even more important -- we have fun! (And, we score cameo's in blog posts like this one from Tom Martin on Social Media Examiner!)
It's been an exciting couple of weeks here at Paper.li. Two weeks ago we announced fresh funding and since then we've been working fast to implement more of the features you've been asking for.
This week I have the pleasure of announcing that we have just rolled out a new Pro feature that you have been waiting for: Email Subscriber Export
We're starting off the week with a couple of new bells and whistles. Here's what's new for you!
Pro feature: "Private" papers
If you have a paper that you don't want anyone to see, you can now completely exclude it from being discovered on the newsstand or via search engines by taking it "Private" and making it stealth!
This is a great feature if you:
are in the process of branding and fine-tuning your Pro paper, but it isn't finished quite yet
use Paper.li for monitoring market trends and the competition, and would like to keep it under the radar
create content for a team and only want them to have access to it
have an event Paper.li and only want it visible before, during and after an event
This is a handy new source that allows you to add content gems that you come across during the day to your next edition without needing to modify your sources.
To get started go to your Content tab -> Accounts -> and click on your Twitter account. You'll see a favorites option appear.
Have a question? Leave a comment or Tweet us @smallrivers.
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.
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