Blogging

Fresh, original content is a website’s most valuable asset. It keeps users coming back, and most importantly, gives a website a higher search ranking and more ad sales. So when a service promises to add tons of fresh, user-generated content with only a few lines of code — for free — you can see why a lot of heads have been turning — many of which have money to invest.

Wetpaint, a Seattle-based wiki provider whose technology is used in almost a million social communities, has announced $25 million in venture capital funding for its new embeddable social publishing platform, Injected. The deal, which includes major investors like DAG Ventures, Trinity Ventures, and Accel Partners, brings total funding to around US $40 million.

Originally posted here:
Wetpaint Injected With Mega Investment Bucks

We’ve covered the wiki company Wetpaint’s experiments in expanding its products several times over the past two years. The company has had a solid wiki service for consumers since 2005. It has continued to improve the core product by layering in the capability to embed widgets in wiki pages (now pretty much a standard feature), and it’s even tried to meld wikis with social networking through a Facebook app. Today the company is heading off in yet another direction with Wetpaint Injected, a service that enables content sites to not just embed wikis in their sites, but to integrate wiki content and community deeply into their architecture. It’s a smart model.

Wetpaint Injected is a simple concept. It lets users create content in Web site, and it lets the site’s publishers make sure that the new content fits in their look and feel. For example, if we wanted to have a database of company info for each product we cover, but didn’t want to actually have Webware editors write that content, we could create a Wetpaint Injected form that collected structured data (company name, list of execs, location, description, etc.), and embed that in our reviews. Users could edit that content using Wetpaint’s tools, which are quite good, and add Wetpaint widgets or even additional pages. Wetpaint maintains wiki-style revision histories so changes can be rolled back, argued over, and so on.

Web publishers can turn their readers in to contributors with Wetpaint Injected.

Wiki content is no substitute for forums or blog comment threads. Nor is it a suitable replacement for a content type like user reviews, where you want users to see multiple opinions, not just the one that the site’s user-editors agree on. But it is a strong way to get users involved with any site; Wetpaint co-founder Kevin Flaherty says the service, “helps any site become a social publishing site,” and I agree. I will look forward to seeing this capability even on commerce sites; I imagine my favorite computer hardware site NewEgg using this capability for building out a robust specs and capabilities pages for the products it sells, for example.

Wetpaint Injected content is not hosted at Wetpaint, it is actually embedded in customer sites. This means the site owner gets all that user content indexed by search engines, which is a big plus. For comparison’s sake, some plug-in comment systems, like Disqus, host all content on their site, depriving customers of SEO benefit. Also, since the content is integrated into the site, any of the site’s native social features can tap into it. Again, in contrast, Google’s new Friend Connect service is not actually hosted on the site itself, but appears on a site via an i-Frame, so cannot interact with a site’s user database.

The downside of this deep integration is that implementing Wetpaint Injected takes a bit of work. It’s got to be embedded in site’s content management system; it is not a simple drop-in service. It requires hands-on participation of Wetpaint engineers, at least at launch. The company does hope to make Wetpaint Injected self-serve in the third quarter, with plug-ins for popular blog platforms like Wordpress and Movable Type. Wetpaint’s default business arrangement is that it takes a portion of advertising revenues on Wetpaint Injected pages.

Customers at launch include Flixster and IGN. The company is also announcing that it just closed a third funding round of $25 million, bringing the total funds raised to almost $40 million.

See more here:
Wetpaint Injected brings user content to old-fashioned Web sites

Note: the following is a guest post from expert researcher and freelance writer Heather Johnson on how businesses can effectively use social media as a component of PR efforts, and efficiently focus their efforts on the most productive sites.

Social media sites, no longer relegated to just teens and college students, are now the most cost-effective way for a company to drum up international attention. In fact, social networking serves as a great equalizer for small businesses, as anyone with an Internet connection can now launch a successful, global marketing campaign.

With so many sites to choose from, however, one can easily become overwhelmed. Small businesses have neither the time nor the manpower to cover every major site. Instead, it is best to strongly focus on several and then let the viral nature of social media take over.

Below, I have listed the five best social media sites for small businesses, as well as related tips for each one.

1. StumbleUpon - A recent post cited StumbleUpon as the best social media site for driving B2B Web traffic. Indeed, it is currently the reigning champ for promoting many types of Websites. Not only it is easier to gain attention on StumbleUpon than many other bookmarking sites, the tail of traffic is much longer.

Tip: After your business is “discovered” on StumbleUpon, give your site a little boost by starting a StumbleUpon ad campaign. For just 5 cents a visitor, you can drive a specifically targeted audience to your businesses’ homepage.

2. Twitter – Twitter is a great way for business owners to network at their own convenience. With this tool, you have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing?” People on your Twitter friends list will see each of your posts (aka “tweets”), which can be used to promote new ideas and features for your business.

Tip: Don’t promote your site with every tweet, lest you become labeled a spammer. Point out other sites that interest you or something amusing that is really affecting you that day. With those tweets, you can sprinkle in a link to your latest blog entry or a special feature offered by the company.

3. LinkedIn – Everyone is truly connected in the business world and LinkedIn offers a way to visualize this massive network. By starting a professional profile on this site, you will be able to add real-world business contacts to your friends list, as well as the contacts of those people. And so on.

Tip: According to Guy Kawasaki, those with 20 or more connections on LinkedIn are 34 times more likely to be approached about business opportunities through the site.

4. Wikipedia – It is a boon to your small business to be mentioned on Wikipedia. The site’s many entries are highly ranked in Google and read by millions each day. One caveat: Wikipedia editors can be ruthless about removing external links from the site, so it isn’t an easy feat to make your small business “stick.”

Tip: Before you go bounding for the world’s largest wiki and adding a link to your business, start an account with the site and become active for a few weeks. Only after you educate yourself on how to contribute to Wikipedia should you attempt to start your own page. This will increase your chances of remaining on the site.

5. Wetpaint – Wikipedia isn’t the only wiki on the map. With Wetpaint, you can create your company’s own wiki for free. This wiki platform is attractive and easy to create. A “What You See is What You Get” (WYSIWYG) editor, even technical novices can customize the site, upload articles and widgets, etc. No programming knowledge required.

Tip: What Wetpaint offers is a way to get direct feedback from customers, as well as high Google ranking. If you don’t want the public to edit the pages on your Wetpaint site, as administrator you can lock each one.

Rather than starting a blog and tirelessly plugging your entries on Digg or Reddit, you should use the sites above to create long-term business contacts and continuous traffic. These five sites require less commitment and cost little to no money for a successful marketing campaign. Small businesses will truly be on an even playing field.

Heather Johnson is a freelance business, finance and economics writer, as well as a regular contributor at Business Credit Cards, a site for best business credit cards and best business credit card offers. Heather welcomes comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read more here:
The 5 Best Social Media Sites for Small Businesses