Paper.li Receives Red Herring Europe Top-100 Award

Paper.li is a Red Herring Europe Top 100 Award winner for 2012!

The Red Herring award is the most prestigious award honoring the most promising disruptive private technology ventures across Europe positioned to grow at an explosive rate. We are extremely proud to be among them.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the most innovative companies from a pool of hundreds within Europe. They evaluated contenders on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy, and integration into their respective industries.

But excellence and strategy alone don't win awards. It takes a dedicated team behind the scenes and a community of loyal users working together to make a service shine.

So we dedicate this award to our engineers and our community: Paper.li engineers, THANK YOU for the endless hours you spend designing a service that is changing the way people can access, organize, share and discover content. 

Paper.li Community, THANK YOU for showing the world the power of content curation and niche publishing with your outstanding and original daily and weekly publications.

Publishers, keep up the great publishing!  Be sure to share your paper's URL with us when you have a chance. We love reading them and discovering new content through you!

Paper.li Community Blog - Where Our Stars Shine

Publisher Natasha Young, Shorty Award Nominee

If you haven't stopped by the Paper.li Community blog lately, it's high time to head on over!

The Paper.li community boasts so many knowledgeable, creative, connected and downright cool publishers to meet, that we've been working to bring you more interviews and guest posts as well as re-organize to make finding what interests you a little easier.

So, what's new?

For a start, we are shining the spotlight more brightly than ever on you, the community, and all of your talent!

We are beginning a new series of interviews, Expert Interviews, with Paper.li publishers who are thought leaders in their field. They are here to share insight, tips or actionable steps to help you.

We have more Case Studies than ever of publishers showing the unique ways they use Paper.li to connect and engage communities, build awareness and grow their business.

Our new Viewpoints column is for posts authored by the community and covering the things that interest you, from self-publishing, to content marketing, curation, and social media tips and tricks. Join the community and author a post! Just send us an email and we’ll come right back to you.


Additionally, we have made it really easy for you to find additional content not covered above by introducing new Categories:

• HOW TO – posts with those quick, clear, actionable tips we know you love.
• OPINION – speaks for itself.
• SPECIAL EVENTS – for when we cover a happening, big or small.
• EDITOR’S CHOICE – our all-time favourite interviews and articles.

The community blog is your site so get involved!  We would love to hear about your favourite publishers (and we’ll get the scoop on them) or for you to share your social media or productivity tips in a blog post, podcast or video clip. Contact us here.

Behind every publisher there's a great story. So go check it out now and let us know what you'd like to see more of!

Join Paper.li for #FollowFriday Fun

If you've been using Twitter for even the shortest amount of time, you're probably already familiar with Follow Friday, aka #FollowFriday or #FF.

For those of you who aren't familiar with #Followfriday, it's a recognition game where you suggest new people for your followers to follow that you believe they will benefit from.

Of course anyone can play and anyone can be mentioned! We are fortunate to discover and interact with amazing people each day at Paper.li.  We are often mentioned by our own community in #FFs...so we think it's only right to pay it forward!

Beginning April 28, each Friday we'll tweet the publishers that YOU recommend we discover and connect with. And to say thank you, we'll include your name in the #FF mention as well.

There are no real rules or guidelines to #FF tweets, however we would like to include why you feel they are deserving of an #FF.  Here's an example:

Paper.li #FF @shashib for helping small businesses go social! via @lizwilson2

How can you get your recommendation to us? Tweet us, or drop us an email, and include your @username, your #FF candidate's @username and WHY you believe they deserve a FollowFriday.

There are only 24 hours in a day so if your candidate is not mentioned right away... be patient! The next FollowFriday is just around the corner.

Using Twitter to Grow Your Business

How do you grow a relevant following on Twitter?

If you're active on Twitter and looking to raise awareness around your business, a project, an organization or event, this question has probably crossed your mind -- at least once.

In a new post by Rich Brooks,  4 Ways To Grow a Twitter Following That Matters, he outlines multiple actionable steps to improve your chances of growing a relevant Twitter following.  He mentions Paper.li as a good way to increase visibility and elevate brands. We're honored, and we couldn't agree more! (For those of you not familiar with Rich, he is a web marketing expert, expert blogger, speaker and President of web design and internet marketing consultancy Flyte.)

If you're already a Paper.li publisher then you know first hand how effective a fine-tuned, topic-based Paper.li can be in growing your Twitter following – as well as helping to increase awareness, establishing thought leadership, and sparking conversation.

Paper.li publishers who have experienced a noticeable increase in followers attribute their success to:

• having a well-defined target audience
• understanding their followers' content needs
• using Twitter lists to curate content
• including @mentions for contributors in the promo-tweet

Regardless of whether you’re actively looking to grow your Twitter following, or not, Rich provides fantastic insight and a comprehensive guide, including screenshots and video, on how to use Twitter to grow your business.

Keep an eye open for our upcoming interview with Rich in which he will share his web marketing expertise – coming soon on the community blog!

Paper.li's a Red Herring Europe Top 100 Finalist!

We're thrilled to announce that Paper.li is a 2012 Red Herring Top 100 Europe award finalist!

The Red Herring Top 100 is one of Europe's most prestigious awards, honoring the year’s most promising private technology ventures from the European business region.

Award nominees are cutting edge European companies positioned to grow at an explosive rate. They have been evaluated through quantitative and qualitative criteria as well as a review of their actual track record and standing.

"This year was very rewarding," said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. "The global economic situation has abated and there are many great companies producing really innovative and amazing products. We had a very difficult time narrowing the pool and selecting the finalists. Paper.li shows great promise therefore deserves to be among the Finalists. Now we’re faced with the difficult task of selecting the Top 100 winners of Red Herring Europe. We know that the 2012 crop will grow into some amazing companies that are sure to make an impact."

All finalists are invited to present their winning strategies at the Red Herring Europe Forum in Amsterdam, April 23-25, 2012. Winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony on the last evening.

We thank the Red Herring editorial staff for the nomination. It's a real honor and we are looking forward to presenting Paper.li at the forum and meeting our techonology peers in Amsterdam.

How Paper.li Can Help Increase Your Tweet's CTR

You spend time curating your Twitter list, editing your content and fine-tuning your paper, but then the question of how you will promote it on Twitter arises: auto-tweet or manual tweet.

We frequently hear from publishers debating which way to go and also wondering if the auto-tweet is an effective call to action at all.  Although we probably can't help you decide which method is going to work best for your readership, we can share this:

According to a study by Dan Zarrella, tweets with the words "daily is out" have more than a 30% higher CTR than those without. Wow!


How to increase CTR on Twitter, the Dan Zarrella way

In late 2011, Dan analysed 200,000 tweets containing a link to see which words, phrases or characters increased (or decreased) click-through rates.

If you aren't familiar with Dan, he's HubSpot's “social media scientist”. He studies the statistics behind activity on Twitter and other social media to draw conclusions about what motivates people to click.

He's also the author of Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas, which is well worth a quick read; if you don’t want to buy the e-book, Dan has made most of the information available on his blog.

In Dan's study, he concludes:

“Perhaps the most surprising thing I found is that Tweets that contained the words “daily is out” (which is the signature of the paper.li automated Tweets) had much higher CTRs [click-through rates] than Tweets that did not. It turns out, paper.li works, at least for driving clicks.”

Dan also highlighted the fact that the auto-tweet contains at least three @ mentions, which helps:

“Somewhat unsurprisingly, Tweets specifically directed at a person tend to have a higher CTR since I’m much more likely to pay attention to a Tweet if it’s sent to me. This is probably the reason the paper.li Tweets do so well, they tend to contain 3 @-mentions.”

In January 2012 he updated his findings and concluded:

“Of all the words and phrases I analysed, the phrase that had the greatest positive effect on CTR was from Paper.li tweets ‘daily is out’.”

Dan shares a lot of other great information on how to get the most out of your Tweets as well, such as

• the optimal character length in a tweet
• link placement
• Tweet frequency
• keyword and phrase placement

This infographic is definitely worth looking at if you are interested in increasing your CTR.

Depending on your audience and how you are using Paper.li, this information may help you to decide which way to promote your online newspaper.  However, a continuous and loyal readership will ultimately depend on the quality of your publication: the time you invest in curating your sources and editing your paper.

You can be sure there is another post coming soon on that topic!

How Do You Reach Your Audience?

Last night during Mack Collier's weekly #blogchat an interesting conversation took place around Paper.li.

For those of you who are not familiar with #blogchat, it's a weekly Twitter conversation that focuses on personal and business blogging. It's a great all-around source of information for tools, techniques and inspiration and the participant list is as impressive as the guest list and topics covered.

Although the #blogchat topic of the evening was "using your email newsletter and blog to build an audience, and not "curation tools or services", at one point during the chat Paper.li got a good amount of air time. (You can see the transcripts here)

This didn't surprise me as much as it may have surprised #blogchat participants. Why? Because active publishers already know that Paper.li is a highly effective tool for any size of organization to deliver relevant, topic-specific news to audiences.

In recent months, Paper.li has quickly found its place within inbound and content marketing strategies as an easy-to-use, cost-effective and powerful way to win the attention of prospective clients through offering valuable content.

Whether you’re a business blogger engaging with prospects, or an individual blogger looking for new ways to grow your audience, Paper.li provides a suite of tools to help you grow your audience and promote your business, blog or interests.

• Promo-tweets: the most well-known Paper.li promotional tool, you can activate your paper to auto-tweet that “your daily is out” with each new edition. These tweets are a powerful way to get people reading your Paper.li. (We’ll be writing more about that soon!)

• News widgets: integrate your Paper.li, and curated content, onto your blog. News widgets can  be customized in color and size and are perfect for keeping fresh, curated news flowing daily.

• Email notifications:  upload your own contact lists and invite existing or potential clients to subscribe to your daily paper and Paper.li sends an email digest to anyone who has subscribed as soon as a new edition is published. 

If you aren't yet using Paper.li to deliver curated news to your existing or potential customers, give it a try. Let us know how it works for you and feel free to share other tools, tips and tricks as well. We always look forward to hearing from you.

Paper.li Joins StartUp Canada's National Tour as Media Partner

Today StartUp Canada launches the country’s first national entrepreneurship tour and campaign aimed at build Canada into a StartUp Nation -- and Paper.li is proud to be an official media partner.

Co-founded by Victoria Lennox and media tech entrepreneur Cyprian Szalankiewicz, StartUp Canada is a grassroots entrepreneurial movement designed to foster growth and cooperation between entrepreneurs, and put Canada on the global Start-up map.

Working together with organizations, individuals and communities, the tour will travel Canada coast to coast over the next 6 months, holding more than 30 town halls across the nation and engaging more than 25,000 entrepreneurs to develop a local and national 3-year action plan and a white paper toward a national entrepreneurship strategy.

We're really excited to be an official media partner and part of StartUp's massive media strategy covering the tour. We'll be bringing readers fresh campaign news, daily and weekly, via two publications:

• The Daily WiRE, a daily publication focused on the Canadian entrepreneurial community
• The Start-up Canada Weekly Update, a dedicated town hall news publication documenting the campaign as Startup tours the nation.

You can learn more about StartUp Canada's dream, and team, in our interview with co-founder Victoria Lennox.  Be sure to follow the tour and all the happenings via their Paper.lis, and on Twitter and Facebook.

We wish StartUp Canada and fellow entrepreneurs a great start and much success!

"The Daily is Out" - But is Yours in Top Form?

When was the last time someone thanked you for a mention in your Paper.li? If it hasn't happened recently, it's possible that your Paper.li is due for a content tune-up.

Here are a few tips for keeping your paper, and your readers' content discovery experience, in top form.

1. Review your sources

Trends come and go and people's tastes can change. If your content sources are still relevant, then your paper will be rich with articles of interest.

Pencil in an hour a month to review your social media sources and experts. Recheck your queries, searches, #tags, keywords, user lists and those you follow. Twitter's advanced search is a great place to start, then follow up with Google+ and Facebook.


2. Edit your content

Paper.li is great for fetching, analyzing and making sense of the content that you desire, but your readers need YOU to make the final cut for them. Your paper and its content are an extension of your online presence, so take a few minutes daily to make sure that the content reflects you, and your topic.

Take the time to weed out content that you think your readers might have already seen, or that you feel isn't relevant to them, and add content from the web that you think they would appreciate.

Reposition the articles you like and put your favorite news spotters in a headline position. While doing so, look for trends when you edit and use your filters to reflect better what you would like to see more, and less of.

3. Personalize your paper

You never have a second chance to make a first impression, so before you begin promoting your Paper.li...

• create a custom title
• add an editor's note
• upload a custom background.

Change your note as often as you can to let your loyal readers know that you are present and thinking of them, and give them a new background to enjoy every now and then. They'll thank you with RTs, subscriptions, likes and shares.

Let us know what you do to keep your Paper.li in top form and don't hesitate to let a publisher know when you see something you like. We're sure they'll appreciate the feedback!

Team Tip: Add an Editor's Note

The Editor's Note is an excellent tool for providing context around your Paper.li and is your space to say "Hi" to readers and share important information with them.

In fact, Paper.lis that have an active Editor's Note are more frequently shared,  subscribed to, written about in posts, mentioned or referenced as an "information destination" than those that do not.

If your Editor's Note isn't currently active, take a couple of minutes to add it to your paper today. It's easy to do -- Here's how:  

1. Log into Paper.li
2. Go to the front page and click on the green bar to add your Editor's note
3. Greet your readers with a welcome and interesting information about you and your Paper.li
4. Hyperlink to your website, blog, FB or Twitter account. Editor's notes are SEO optimized. 
5. Save, and your finished 

Interested in learning more about how the Editor's Note can help to tell your paper's story? Try this article by Evren Kiefer.  Be sure to leave a comment and let us know how it's working for you. As always, we look forward to hearing from you.