#lauraatembedly

We'll be in NYC this weekend at the Hacking Journalism Hackathon.  We're thrilled to be hosting such an influential event on how we consume and share media. 

A study from March of 2014, found that

---Millennials spend 18 hours a day consuming media---

18 hours a day! If you're not sleeping then you're likely consuming media. Think about that. What else do you spend 18 hours a day doing, besides breathing? We see a lot of new trends in the media consumption space, and can't wait to see what will surface from the weekend. 

A big shout out to our sponsors for the weekend, Conde Naste, Parse.ly, Ramp, and the MIT Media Lab.  We are excited to have them at the table as we engage in conversations around media, with an emphasis on video. 

Check out the New York Times section, Watching. It's a new feature that highlights developing news from around the web that lives on the right side of the homepage. 

What's pretty cool and collaborative about this new feature, is how it pulls in content from external news sources. As a reader, you can stay on the homepage for the New York Times, and see what content is surfacing on other sites. It's a new way to consume your news.

One thing we love to see is how people use our products. We've got thousands of people using cards daily for one time projects, and then we have others who have set up the API to plug and play as part of their core business. It's fun for us to dig deeper and see what off the beaten path projects use Embedly!

We were pumped to see what InkTober was doing with our Extract API. InkTober started in 2009, and is a drawing challenge to complete one ink drawing a day the entire month. 31 days, 31 drawings. A single individual started it to improve their inking skills and to develop positive drawing habits. It's grown into a global project, with thousands of artists participating each year. 

The power of InkTober comes in the number of artists that participate each year. The volume of artists posting their work across a variety of platforms can make harnessing all the work a bit of a challenge.  Checking Twitter, Instagram, blogs, and Facebook daily wasn't a feasible option, and wouldn't have provided a holistic picture either.  In already using Embedly in other areas of work, they knew we had a solution for them.  The alternative was writing over 2 full weeks of code, and for a month long hobby, that wasn't happening. 

What did InkTober like best, besides not having to write code? The ease of setting up Extract! There is no laborious authentication process needed, no tokens that expire, no code to be modified. The URL is removed from Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc and then goes through the Extract API, to then store the info to display it on the InkTober website. The simple implementation made this integration a no brainer. Here is a visual on how the project displays.

If you've been checking out Airbnb for places to stay, you've likely seen a  new button on their social sharing list! Airbnb and Embedly have teamed up to include the Embed Button on their site, which lets you share the listing on other sites. This new button will let you add the accommodation information to your blog, wedding website, company, site etc. 

In additon to seeing the new button on Airbnb's site, you may see Airbnb listings look a little different on other sites too. Airbnb now has custom cards, which let's you see their listings on other pages.

A great use case of this is on Anders and Marisa's wedding website, on where to stay. These custom cards lets users see where the listing is coming from, but displays the content nicely outside of its original site. Check out the example below from Anders and Marisa site, it neatly packages all the options their guests have in one easy to read place and showcases Airbnb's custom cards. Embedly can help increase your brands overall awareness with custom cards too. 

Here's the value you'll gain by implementing custom cards and embed button. It provides an opportunity for viewers to share the content on your site. By doing this, you're increasing the chances that others see it, and will come to your site for additional information. You're also strengthening your overall brand awareness to a whole new audience.   

The branded cards you're seeing for Airbnb's listings outside of their website are something to think about too. It is a great way to increase brand awareness on sites outside of your own and improve your SEO. With your content living outside of your own domain, you're increasing the number of sites pointing back to your own. A few sites pointing back to your own will go a long way.  So think about adding a custom Embed Button and some Branded Cards too. 

Tint figured out a smarter way to work, which means so can you.  Tint displays brand specific feeds for event displays, marketing contests, hashtag campaigns, and in-store screens. They leave us to do the work behind the scenes when it comes to embedding content into their database to process urls. This leaves them to focus on what they are great at: the consumer facing result of displaying social feeds across any device.  Tint has a strong list of clients who reply on them, such as Travelocity, The Dallas Cowboys and even Krispy Kreme. With clients that sweet, there is no room for anything to go sour. 

Tint: Display and Embed Any Social Feed Anywhere You Want // <![CDATA[ (function(a){var b="embedly-platform",c="script";if(!a.getElementById(b)){var d=a.createElement(c);d.id=b;d.async=true;d.src=("https:"===document.location.protocol?"https":"http")+"://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js";var e=document.getElementsByTagName(c)[0];e.parentNode.insertBefore(d,e)}})(document); // ]]>

What can we all learn from Tint as a customer of Embedly?  Outsource some tasks so you can stick to what your good at. By utilizing the skills others have, you'll be amazed just how efficient your day can be. Kudos to Tint for creating an impactful product that millions engage with on an annual basis.  

Something else Tint is able to do, obtain analytics on the embeds we provide. This let's them take the data and learn from it to make informed decisions on what to do the next time around. 

The moral of this story, stick to what you're good at, and look to others for what your not. It'll save you time, and the end result will likely be better anyways. 

As a blogger or journalist do you wonder how content ends up on certain sites? Content is starting to become less about what you write, and more about the tools you use to get it there instead. Here are three tools you should be using to increase the attention minutes of your content. The higher those minutes are the better, because attention minutes are the actual time a user is engaged in media on your site. Our friends at UpWorthy wrote a blog piece about it in case you're looking for a little more info on attention minutes!

What Uniques And Pageviews Leave Out (And Why We're Measuring Attention Minutes Instead)

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Embed Content On Your Own Page

As a writer, it’s important to continuously learn about tools available to help you in content delivery. One tool you should be using, if you’re not, are embeds. Embeds package content across the web so it can be displayed outside of it’s original source. Embedding content on your site is invaluable, as it keeps people on your page. Many people are still hyperlinking to other articles, which works, but not as well.  If you’re referencing an article or video, it’s best to embed the content right on your page, so viewers can keep scrolling. Hyperlinking takes your viewers to other pages-which means they are leaving yours.  You didn’t write an article to have people leave it midway through, did you?

Below is an embed, and a hyperlink to the same story. See how the embed is more engaging?

Apple Sells 10 Million iPhone 6 And 6 Plus Devices During Launch Weekend

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  Integration and Tags

If you’re not currently using tags or integrating your content with other platforms, it’s another thing for you to consider to compete for the attention minutes of your audience.  Tags about the content in your article will help your piece be found by others. Each tag provides a path to your article. Relevant tags will help you by making your content indexable, searchable and rankable. Tags will help these metrics move upward, giving your content a better chance to surface. Integrating your content with platforms like Facebook or Twitter will also help you compete for additional minutes. Utilizing these integrations will allow your content to be seen by your networks in an effortless way. 

How to Use Tags

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  Set Up Google Alerts

Another tool you should think of enabling are Google alerts. Google alerts let you know when specific keywords you’ve chosen surface online. This helps you keep an eye on topics or trends, making it so you don’t need to go hunting for this information. This tool helps you to react with speed to breaking news. Knowing what is being said about you, your content, and topics you’re writing about is essential.

Google Alerts - Monitor the Web for interesting new content

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  Your New Toolbox of Tools

Now that you know what you need to be doing for maximum content discovery, the next step is bookmarking the tools. Here are the sites we’ve found that are free to help you accomplish your goals:

Embed.ly

Best Practice on Tags Across Sites