Image via CrunchBase
Personally I love blogging. I write for the company blog on a regular basis, but I also write on several other blogs.
However I’d be the first to admit that I am not afraid of taking advantage of whatever tools I can find to help speed up the process and improve it.
Zemanta, in my opinion, is probably the most powerful and useful tool in my personal blogging “toolbox”.
You might have noticed the Zemanta icon on some of our blog posts in the past. It’s also the tool we use to help suggest “related” articles from sources we trust that end up in the footer of our posts here.
So what exactly is Zemanta?
Zemanta is a service which works by scanning your content as you write it and then makes “intelligent” suggestions for images, related links and tags.
That’s a very simplistic overview. In reality there’s quite a bit more “under the hood”.
Before getting under the hood, let’s cover a couple of the more basic things.
How do you get it?
You can just go here and install one of the browser plugins, or the plugin for your content management or blogging software.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. It’s 100% free.
Do I need to signup for an account to use it?
No, but if you do create an account you’ll be able to access the more powerful tools. See screenshot below (click to enlarge)
Zemanta preferences screen
You can also tell the system more about you, including things like your Flickr ID, Twitter handle and which sites you author.
Zemanta personalisation
Zemanta Flickr
And since the system works by suggesting content for you, including tags, photos and links, the more information you give it the more relevant the suggestions will be and the more time you’ll save, while also improving your blog writing.
Zemanta Monetisation via Amazon US
It also allows you to make money, in theory at least, as it hooks into the Amazon (US) affiliate program.
We spoke to Andraz from Zemanta a while back on the Technology.ie podcast. You can catch that interview here.
We’ve also been talking to Zemanta more recently about some of their upcoming services and all I can say is “wow!”. They’ve got some really cool things in the pipeline.
If you’re already using Zemanta, how do you find it?
If you’re a new user, what do you think?
Let us know via the comments!
About the Author: Michele Neylon
4 Comments
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I stumbled a cross Zemanta WP plugin a couple of years ago, and have always felt it was perfect for adding photos or links to related content. Best of all, it has suggested my content to other bloggers… an easy syndication tool.
Plan on listening to your interview and tweeking my Zemanta profile, thanks!
Doug
Thanks for your comment. The syndication angle is very true and I should have mentioned it.
Michele
Don’t you just love great web tools like this? Especially when they can be plugged into Firefox. And free too. Thanks the heads up on that Michele.
I haven’t been impressed yet after about 1 month of use. It has helped me to discover a lot of blogs similar to mine, but it doesn’t seem to crawl the sites as a search engine and make very good recommendations.
Even in the “My Sources” category it doesn’t make very many recommendations and I have to go to the sites and search them manually for valid recent content.
I hope that other bloggers are seeing that I am linking to their blogs and I am commenting on their blogs so that I can get links back to me.