All Things Paper.li

Following up on a curation service "Either/OR" conversation that took place on G+ a couple of weeks, Marty Smith (markter, curator and Paper.li publisher) authored this post about why he loves Paper.li and where the value lies. 

Both Marty and I are firm believers that services such as Paper.li, Scoop.it, Storify ( and the list goes on) compliment each other nicely, however if there is only time for one in your busy day, then your requirements and marketing goals will ultimately decide which is most useful for you. 

Thanks Marty! YOU ROCK!

We have entered the age of the "Me Enterprise" and being our own social newsroom is an essential part of our daily work routine. How do you source, publish and promote the news relevant to your internal and external audiences? 

Here's a comprehensive list of 100 services that help PR professionals. I would stretch that category and say they are useful to anyone who is at the front line of publishing - we're all editors now and the online world is our social newsroom. How do you manage yours? 

Here are four services I use daily and I've found after two years of experimenting, I can get away with just these four, but am hard pressed to do as much as I do on a daily basis with less.  

As expected, Paper.li is at the top of my list. Here's how I do more with less (thanks Marty Smith for the inspiration - love that line!)

1. Paper.li:

-monitoring: I can use Paper.li as a personal, or team monitoring tool. It allows me to quickly, and easily aggregate the news I need on topics, trends or industry via mulitple news feeds source in order to gain social intelligence on topics, trends, industry, people, compeitors. It compliments traditional intel within the organization to give a full picture around a topic. 

-sourcing: from my paper(s) I can scan and quickly find engaging and relevant content to share with communities. 

-distribution:  Paper.li quickly surfaces the most relevant content and if there is something I don't find, but would like it included, I can curate it in by hand and distribute an email newsletter to anyone subscribed. As well as I can share papers with communities across social networks but as an intel tool, the automation of topic or industry relevant information, daily, is key. 

-engagement: not only can I use this as an intelligence tool, but with a paper laser focused, the content is relevent to external audiences and stands alone as a viable inbound marketing tactic(tool) to attract the right audience of like-minded people. 

The one thing that would top of the service is an integration with buffer or another scheduling tool. That would save me a step in my routine. As you can imagine, I'm on top of our team to get that implemented! 

2. Hootsuite: 

It is essential to be able to schedule information for consumption across networks. Hootsuite is one of the most affodabe tools available to help you distribute your news to the right audiences at the right times

3. Savepublishing:

Essential to anyone who manages and administers social networks. It identifies shareble (in length) tweetable phases within a body of text. It is an invaluable tool!

4. Your own blog, or Scoop.it. 

Every editor in chief needs a place to call home. If you don't have your own blog, then Scoop.it is an amazing place to call home. It allows you to not only build your web presence and establish yourself as a thought-leader within a niche or domain, but it also serves as a quasi-blog for those who don't have the time, or yet the desire, to maintain their own blog. 

These four tools are all I need. What does your social newsroom look like? Can you do more with less? 

Be More Visible hits the nail on the head with a trilogy of tools that work fantastically well together to increase visibility and drive traffic; Storify, Scoop.it and Paper.li

Paper.li: use it as a monitoring tool and automatically generate relevant news on any topic or use it to support your content marketing strategy. It's an efficient tool and time saver - let it do the heavy "content" lifting for you - you take it from there. 

Scoop.it:  Scoop.it's great at extending your web presence and establishing thought leadership on a topic.

Storify: quickly turn content into stories. I like using it to gathter quoatables on Twitter. 

The three are great stand-alone tools, but they also compliment each really well. Here's are two examples of how I use the tools together. 

Paper.li - Scoop.it: 

I use my Paper.li as a MONITORING tool, and then SCOOP articles and content of interest into my Mag on Scoop.it.

This "All Things Paper.li" is an example. Instead of checking Google news, alerts, RSS, daily, I go to my Paper.li paper and check what's new then decide from there where the content goes: a tweet, an editorial calender for blog posts, my Scoop.it...   It saves me time from scouring the web. 

It's quick, easy and efficient way to stay on top of news. 

Paper.li- Storify: 

I use Paper.li very often to creating Event Papers. I love using the service to build awareness moving up to an event, covering what's happening during the event and then posting the "best of" after the event.

During the event I always create a Storify to capture what's happening and share that during and after.

I love Storify for captuing what I call "quoatables" - tweets that can be used to give context about the event, highlight great speakers and convey the emotion and energy of the event. I also make Storify's for ÎweetChats. They are great for sparking ideas for blogposts! 

If you want an SEO strategy that works, Andy Crestodina from OrbitMedia is top of the game.

Andy says "Search engines are, of course, a way to find what you are looking for. But they’re also a way to find what your audience is looking for." and then he shows us exactly what we need to do, and how.

This post is packed with SEO-savvy content strategy tips for figuring out what topics your market is looking for and how to help them find it on your site.

Must read, you won't be sorry!

Paper.li was a #blogchat sponsor this past month of December. The partnership went off without a hitch and both Mack and I were really pleased with the sponsorship and how it turned out. Mostly we were pleased that it was good for both our communities. 

Mack's insight on getting sponsors for tweet chats applies to any sponsorship. Bottom line - it can't be just about the money. 

Back in November we launched what I think is one of the best features Paper.li has going: the curated email newsletter. Here's why:

The curated email newsletter extracts the entire front page of your paper and distributes it to the inbox of subscribers with every new edition. This is great for publishers who take the time to fine-tune their content, ensuring that articles, images and videos are on topic, but even BETTER for subscribers to that email. 

The curated email is like a recieving a visual RSS , daily. 

For publishers we've added the ability to export the html code so you can use it with your 3rd party email client. Additionally, we've just added a csv file upload so you can import up to 10k contacts to invite to your paper. 

Publishers that are using this feature and receiving raving reviews from their subscribers for providing top quality, topic specific content on a daily basis. 

Talk about service! 

The curated email newsletter is a Pro service. 

Did you hear the news? We launched a new look and feel based on Twitter's Bootstrap framework and CSS media queries. Result? Improved look and feel and responsive design across devices. 

"Our customers are hungry for good content. They expect it to be presented in a snackable and quickly-consumable format. So how should marketers engage their communities through the use of visuals?"

This is a great post by Ekaterina Walter (@ekaterina) on the power of visual images not only to build communities but to cut through social noise and clutter. 

P.S. Ektaterina has one of the most successful Social Media papers on the newsstand. Well worth checking out. 

Hot tip! Ektaterina's new book, Think Like Zuck is outstanding and available for pre-order.  I had the pleasure of receiving an early manuscript and highly recommend you add it to your 2013 must reads. It's not a FB only book. She explores entrepreneurship and its success factors. Fascinating read. 

Blogging is a great way to establish and market yourself as an expert. And so is curating content. 

Publisher Dan Galante explains the benefits of smart aggregation and curation to his communiy and share how Paper.li helps to support his Sales & Marketing activities. 

Thanks Dan for the write-up and sharing your insight. 

2012 marked the first full year of the Paper.li Community Blog. I started this blog in the summer of 2010 with a simple goal; to shine the spotlight on the amazing people we have in our community.

I wanted a place where we could share the knowledge of our own community with the community and beyond.  

This blog has been blessed with amazing contributions from the community and this year's success blew my socks off. If you haven't taken the time to read some of the posts, I've listed the top 15 in Interviews and How-tos for the year. 

Thanks to all of you who contributed and to Stephanie Booth, Liz Wilson and Evren Kiefer for generously contributing time and expertise.  

Our first blogchat as sponsor rocked the house and was Mack's 2nd biggest in terms of impressions of the year ( nearing 28m)

For those of you who missed it, the topic was "Curation in the Workplace". The turn-out was  spectacular and we had an awesome time chatting and mingling with everyone. Tips, tools and great advice were in abundance and it was a great learning exchange for everyone.

Our second #blogchat of December focused on Email as a part of your blogging strategy. Here were my take-aways:

Nr. 1. If email wasn't a part of your communication strategy in 2012, makie it a priority in 2013. 

Nr. 2. To be successful, you need a strategy. Email is not going to work as a stand alone tactic. 

Nr. 3. Email is content too! Deliver content that entertains, engages and solves a problem, interest or need. (Be sure to add a little personality, too)

Nr. 4: Be dedicated! Frequency matters and three times a week is too much, once every six months is not enough.

Nr. 5: There are a multitude of tools out there (pay and free) that allow you to easily get started with email. It can be as simple as a Paper.li newsletter digest, or a more sophisticated.

Nr. 6: When done right, email can grow traffic, convert leads and generate sales -- and there are numbers to prove it!

Nr. 7: The #blogchat community holds a wealth of experience and expertise. Reach out and ask questions. Guaranteed you will receive a helpful answers

Have you ever wished you could send a bundle of articles in a tweet instead of just one? 

In December we launched the Multi-share, a feature that allows anyone to curate content collections from the front page of a paper to share across networks. 

I think it is a fantastic and fresh new ways to distribute and discover "bundles" of relevent content from a paper, without sharing the entire paper itself. (I would say this even if I didn't work for Paper.li...)

Thanks to Cendrine Marrouat for the write up!