Yabot Blog

But it's not just about finding and gathering news. It's just as important to look at distribution. A classic error of news clipping was that they all ended up in a pile on the marking manager's desk or at best on a billboard in the reception area where nobody had the time to stop and read. Now, when all news is electronic they can be distributed, shared and consumed electronically so everyone with interest can participate. This relates not only to staff, partners and the board of directors but also to prospects, customers and suppliers. It is important that you have the freedom to choose how you distribute the news stories as different readers will prefer different channels including:

• Email
• Blog
  Comment on the story or use it at a basis for a new personal entry
• SMS Text message
  Quick distribution to important readers
• Widget
  Add to a start page such as Netvibes or iGoogle or on the desktop for Mac and Windows Vista users
• Web page
  Present the news on you intranet or Internet
• Twitter
  Update your Twitter followers with relevant news stories
• RSS

Summary

To monitor news is fun and educating but do not let this become a full time task. And keep the following in mind:

1. It has become easier to monitor news on a personal and departmental level but with the increased diversity of news also more complex;
2. Use the services available online. Most are good value for money and some even free;
3. Make sure you can distribute and share the news you find without costing you an arm and a leg or demand lots of work

Media monitoring 2.0 will empower you and your staff by giving you easy access to the really interesting news and filtering the vast amount of media blur.

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This series of four blog posts was originally an article by Yabot's founder Mats Ingelborn published by the Swedish Chamber of Commerce (http://www.scc.org.uk)

Posted by Mats Ingelborn At 00:03 Location cz | Comments (0)

As the range of online news sites and RSS feeds are becoming too huge to manage there are now several online services at you assistance by gathering news stories and/or blog entries and present them in a single interface. To name some that are free:

• Google News (http://news.google.co.uk)
  4500 sources (not UK but English language), 30 days archive
• Yabot (http://www.yabot.co.uk)
  About 1000 British sources, 13 months archive
• News Now (http://www.newsnow.co.uk)
  National and international
• NewsIsFree (http://newsisfree.com)
  About 500 UK sources
• Technorati (http://technorati.com)
  Millions of blogs (not just British)

Apart from these there are several paid-for services in all price ranges.

To be continued with Distribution & Summary

Posted by Mats Ingelborn At 23:59 Location cz | Comments (0)

As basically every local, regional and national newspaper is online today you can visit these sites and perform searches to find the articles you are interested in. But with the vast amount of web news, blogs and forums it can easily become a full time task.

Most news sites and blogs offer their stories as RSS feeds (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). RSS is a data format that provides the publisher with a simple and fast route to its readers.  An RSS-reader gives you the opportunity to subscribe to several feeds and consume all news in one interface. So, there is no further need to jump between different sites to read news you just click through to the story that is of interest to you regardless of its source.

To be continued with News Monitoring 2.0

Posted by Mats Ingelborn At 23:56 Location cz | Comments (0)

Regardless of whether you run your own business, manage a multinational corporation or are heading a local department it is becoming increasingly important to know what is being talked about in the world around you. What is being said about your company, your competition, the products or the industry?

With the emergence of increasing amount of media information on the Internet, media monitoring has changed, it has become easier yet harder.  Harder because there are now thousands of media channels and no geographical boundaries to limit the reach and with blogs the number of opinion leaders is reaching ridiculous levels.  Easier because all news is within easy reach online and now available to everyone at every level within the organisation reaching the person that need the information.

To be continued with DIY Monitoring

Posted by Mats Ingelborn At 23:52 Location cz | Comments (0)

After just three years blog monitoring tool and search engine Tailrank.com is being closed down. "We're shutting down the consumer facing website because the architecture was difficult (and expensive) to maintain..." according to a statement on the website. The underlying technology, called Spinn3r, lives on and is being marketed as a business-to-business tool for monitoring and analyzing the blogosphere.

It is costly to develop and maintain free consumer facing websites, that is the case for Yabot as well, and the move towards a business-to-business model will make it easier to keep track on cost vs revenue. It is however extremely important for organisation's of today to monitor the blogs and social media. If this is done using free tools or more sophisticated paid-for dittos are irrelevant as long as you are on top of the information. It is important that you can monitor on the keywords that are relevant to your organisation and that sharing this information is as easy as retrieving it (or even easier).

Adding a blog-serach to your Yabot-account can be done today, and with the next release it will be even easier, giving you a simple form to fill out and then the blogosphere is monitored for you as with any other source.

Posted by Mats Ingelborn At 22:59 Location cz | Comments (0)