Lijit

I write. A lot. And as I’ve done this blogging thing now for quite a few years, with 1000’s of posts now under my belt and submitted to the open interwebs for lurkers and loyal readers alike to enjoy, I’ve learned a few things:

a) Man, that’s a lot of posts. How the hell do I get people to enjoy my old stuff?

b) Man, I want people to HANG OUT on my site a while! How do I keep ‘em from leaping off too soon while trying to add color to my content with external links or anchoring text?

As it pertains to a) let’s just say that I discovered a little gem to help my readers do just that. Sometime in 2007 I started using Lijit Search and featured it prominently on my main blog and my other various blogs and sites I manage. Readers immediately started exploring my older content by searching for content and Lijit would take them directly to it where it lay on my blog as well as my social media content and where it lay on my friends sites via my trusted social graph. I liked it so much, I just HAD to work there (although I cannot say “I liked it so much I bought the company…ha!).

Now as it relates to b) there’s a lot of strategy that goes on by bloggers to keep those precious time-on-site metrics ticking ever longer. Ultimately, keeping folks on your site is about your content…good content…that engages readers and fundamentally shows who you really are. But very often it is about other content…content that can and should be used to help punctuate points within your posts and typically done by referencing something external to your site via hyper-linking. Yet the world of hyper-linking fundamentally jeopardizes time-on-site goals desired by bloggers because people LEAVE!

Enter: The Apture Experience.

All over this post and any of my blogs are examples of what Apture provides. The product offered by this Bay Area company essentially satisfies point b) above by creatively and elegantly displaying these punctuation points you desire to add color to your posts. Have a YouTube video that reminds you perfectly of that prose-like sentence you just wrote? Use Apture to link to it and pop up on your site. Have that perfect image that can elicit an emotive reaction to your text? Link to it with Apture and have it too pop up on your site. The installation of Apture caused zero brain damage (installed in ~2-3 minutes) and is just as easy to use. Once a post is either published or in a pre-published state, simply select text and allow Apture to search for similar content on the internet or input specific URLs to explicitly pop up content you desire.

Apture is so similar to Lijit in our focus on creating powerful tools for our publishers which at their core both help inspire and engage readers more thoroughly with your content. Lijit helps mine and discover content, Apture helps expose and punctuate your content with it. Like peanut butter and jelly. 

Finally, as blogger AND a manufacturer of publisher tools for our community. I am truly inspiring you to take a look at Apture and the types of features it can provide for your readers to creatively punctuate your content while ensuring the enjoyment of said content happens directly on YOUR site, keeping readers engaged and entertained post after post. Open up the “Apture” for your readers and keep ‘em engaged!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under partner, partners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.