In a recent post we called CaringBridge^® a fundraising superstar. CaringBridge gives away websites to let users—150,000 to date, they report—stay in touch with family and friends during a critical illness, treatment, or recovery.

Recently the organization launched Version 3 of their site, aimed at “making personal CaringBridge websites easier to use, visually streamlined and more customizable.” A new feature is a Spanish-language option.

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Posted in Audience research and strategic planning, Technologies for publications and Web content No Comments »

Gyutae Park is an Internet entrepreneur and professional search engine optimizer. This post originally appeared, in a longer form, on his blog Winning the Web.

What’s the best frequency that will yield your blog the maximum results?

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Posted in Framing content in print and on the Web, Marketing and promotion, Technologies for publications and Web content No Comments »

Here’s a problem that often comes up when several people are working on multiple versions of the same document: how do you copy new text into an existing document and preserve the tracked changes in that new text?

It’s not too hard if the documents are different:

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About a year ago, the Capital PC Users Group conducted a very good presentation on wikis—namely, the do-it-yourself, non-hosted type.  We tried them, we gritted our teeth, we tried them again.

Now, in a flash, that era appears to be over.  Can it be?

For almost a year, we’ve been using free wiki software to store and organize large quantities of information for multiple users on a variety of projects. Our wiki sites have helped simplify management by reducing file transfers, allowing content to be updated without hassle, and giving all participants ready access to information.

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Posted in Technologies for publications and Web content 1 Comment »

Starbucks, in my opinion, is one of the more well-managed companies that is doing a lot of things right. I always feel welcome and believe I get value for the prices I pay for their products. (Their plain coffee is no bargain but I don’t ever drink that.)

Unfortunately, they fall into the same trap as many other companies. They let the techies run their website. Techies hate human contact and will do anything to avoid it: bury the contact information, FAQs, you’ve seen it all.

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Posted in Technologies for publications and Web content 1 Comment »

One of the reasons I love my job is the different kinds of people I have the opportunity to interact with. Over the past year, I’ve met with entrepreneurs, thought leaders, agency executives, top marketers, social media gurus, publishing veterans, authors and others—all with particular insights and challenges about how to sell more, do more and be more.

If 2008 was the year social media went mainstream, 2009 should be the year of content marketing, the corporation as media company, the brand as publisher and broadcaster. Why? Because everyone of those incredibly intelligent people I met with, in some way or another, told me that the difference for brands who make it versus those that don’t will be relevance. How can we, as brands, be relevant to our customers? How can we create and develop real relationships with them? How do we engage?

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Posted in Industry trends, Technologies for publications and Web content No Comments »

An analyst with the marketing research firm Forrester recently talked to the Custom Publishing Council about online content management strategies that publishers are using to achieve growth.

While the strategies look intelligent, closer examination of the analyst’s examples reveal that they still need a little work.

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Writing a script for a video is like running for an 80-yard touchdown after repeated penalties. It’s nice to be able to say you did it—better still to have others say you did it—but deep inside you know that it was possible only because of what other people did. That and some luck.

When I scripted a recruitment video for a government agency, it was the agency’s first attempt at recruitment marketing. Management wanted to train recruiters and also show the video at trade shows and job fairs, as well as hand out the CD.

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Like most organizations in the publications business, we’ve been intrigued by the Kindle, Amazon’s portable reading screen.

Did you know you can publish a book on Kindle right now? Go to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform for instructions. There is no charge up front—not a penny.

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Posted in Technologies for publications and Web content 2 Comments »

Does your organization have an abundant store of information that local affiliates or like-minded groups might want to make available to their readers? Then you should probably begin experimenting with an Application Programming Interface (API) like the ones introduced recently by The New York Times. We asked Nancy Scola if she’d let us share an abbreviated version of her recent piece on The Times’ APIs in the Columbia Journalism Review.

[A]PIs work by establishing a trusted relationship between computer programs so that they can share information, the way Google Maps are used by real estate Web sites to plot the latest listings. The first one launched by the Times, a presidential campaign finance data API, packages what the paper’s own reporters use to track the money chase of Barack Obama, John McCain, and third-party candidates and then sends that data out onto the Internet to see if it can make itself useful. The Times has [subsequently followed up with] APIs of movie reviews, restaurant reviews, and congressional vote records.

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