In pursuit of The Idea

At Social Media Camp 08 I presented how Zemanta internally organizes buzz from bloggers and our work-flow. Basic idea is to use a bookmarking service, to categorize different responses, while at the same time use a collection of different tools like Google Alerts and Twitter Search to follow other mentions.

The whole setup seems obvious looking back, but it took as a few months to make it work so I wanted to share this with others that need to have some sort of way to track buzz about their company and product online.

I am aware that there are a number of different solutions for this out there, but I’m sorry that none of them worked for us. I’m always happy to talk to number of them at different conferences, but for now I guess our needs are just different from what they’re building.

Transport to airport has been traditionally very complicated issue in Slovenia. We’re often engaging our relatives or work collegues to gives us a ride or to pick us up. It turns out that there is a better alternative for getting to Ljubljana Jože Pučnik Airport - Brnik. It’s called a Shuttle bus.

Image by yewenyi via Flickr

The company I’m usually using is Prevozi Markun (Markun Transports), that will give you a ride from main terminal (main bus/railways station) for 5 Eur, and it costs you 9 Eur if they pick you up somewhere. Do check the current prices, as this economy makes everything change so quickly.

But the best part of this service is that in order to catch the 7.20 am flight, you now just have to step out of your door at about 5am and then they take care of everything else. They’ll also drive you back home, if you ever decide to return from far away lands.

The best way to get in contact with them is to give them a call at 041 792 865.

Tom Whitwell knows a lot about headlines, since he’s Assistant Editor, online, for The Times. This are notes from his talk at Social Media Camp ‘08.

Image via Wikipedia

• If you’re using Gmail, you should start thinking about SEO-ing your subjects, so you’ll actually find something in 10-years time.
• For first hundred years of newspapers, they were really rubbish at selling stories
• 1967: Headlines finally get clever
• Internet: suddenly headlines start to go different
• Times internet: lots of data points to figure out what works
• The clearest example of “good headlines” is the Drudge Report
• The difference of headlines is not 5% but 5x or even 20x
• What makes people click? It’s working out what the story is, what your reader will respond to, and how to squeeze all the goodness into 68 characters

Rules of thumb:

Image by joe_reach via Flickr

• Be specific
• The the whole story in the headline
• Don’t try to be clever
• Don’t try to be funny
• Play to your niche. Don’t over simplify or patronize in the headline

Quick wins:

• Lists = force you to do research and explain your points properly
• Quotes = Often the most interesting bit in the story
• Numbers = Often the most interesting bit in the story
• Names = Most likely who the story is about

• Don’t worry about “being boring”
• Write the headline first. Really. Always.
• Great story which you can’t explain in the headline = crap story
• Spend a lot of time on headline. Remember: 20x the traffic.

Questions:

Image by gruntzooki via Flickr

• Do you do split tests? It’s quite tricky in practice, so only in limited amount.
• Do you seed your stories on Digg? Not really.
• How much traffic do you get from Digg? Big Digg - over 100k visits. Fark sends you about 30k.
• How much traffic you get from Drudge report? It will send you about 50k visits.
• Do you automatically promote stories? No, not yet. We look at it manually and go to news desk as we see stories get picked up.
• Is there a difference between headline that you want someone to read vs. to respond to? We’re focusing for the purpose for this talk on how to get people to click.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How to write awesome Headlines (So People read your Stuff) by Tom Whitwell [Times Online]
• Slobbering pup uncovers Digg’s true purpose [Social News]
• The Associated Press to Set Guidelines for Using Its Articles

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