God bless Zemanta

Let me give you a little insight into the way I blog. First I think of a premise for a posting, I then follow that up with a headline and then click save as draft.

OK not always - sometimes I write the first couple of paragraphs then click save and other times I just add a long list of links or rambling ideas before making it a draft.

Then, eventually I might just go back to that blog post at some point in the future and write it up - the more I manage to write in that first flourish of idea - the more likely I am to finish it.

Source: WikipediaBut more often than not I just write a summary paragraph or a headline, leave it and never come back to it again. I’ve currently got about 50 draft posts sitting in Wordpress with some dating back 8 months!

This is partly because I’m lazy and partly because, when I come to my Wordpress Dashboard it’s to write a post around an idea I’ve already had and not update one that’s already there - so the one’s already there never actually get finished.

In fact tonight is a prime example - I logged into my Dashboard, clicked Write and instead of finishing an article already in place I started this one after seeing the Zemanta box on the right hand side.

And that brings me nicely to the point of the post and the reason for the headline.

Zemanta is basically a blog enricher - you install the plugin (it only works with Firefox but that’s not a biggie) and then when you go to write a page in Wordpress a whole world of resources is open to you.

Basically it adds a small box to the right hand menu that, once you’ve written 300 characters, adds a whole load of images and article links - based on the words you type. It also offers body links and metadata (tags).

If you click on an image it automatically adds it to the blog post, if you click on a link it adds it to the suggested word, tags add to tags and if you click on an article it adds it to the bottom of the post in a ‘related articles’ box.

But the Articles section is what I’ve found so useful - when I go back to those posts where I’ve written a couple of paragraphs I’m suddenly given a list of related links I can visit for background info - a place to add additional text without having to ramble - a resource tool.

Of course this is the first post I’ve made using Zemanta so I don’t know how useful it will be on a post that isn’t about Zemanta but the links and related info has proved pretty useful so far. The other question is - will I still remember to use it with my next post?

Related articles

• Bloggers Can Write in Chunks With Paragraphr [via Zemanta]
• Rich blog content at the click of a button - Zemanta has gone live! [via Zemanta]
• Drilling Down Your Blogging Niche? [via Zemanta]
• Zementa Brings a Semantic Layer to Your Blog [via Zemanta]
• A content suggestion engine for blogging? That could work… [via Zemanta]
• Zemanta For Bloggers? Good Idea, Bad Idea, Or Great Idea? [via Zemanta]
• Zemanta - Content Suggestion for Bloggers [via Zemanta]

Sphere: Related Content

Share This