Six Apart News & Events: Media

Those of you who've followed us over the years have seen us through a number of changes as Six Apart, and the industry we helped to create, has evolved.

What started with a simple goal to make creating and publishing content for the web easy, became a social publishing platform that today powers some of the biggest brands on the web, as well as passionate individuals—those of us who simply want to express ourselves, share our expertise or insights, and reach an audience of like-minded others.

Six Apart helped empower people and companies to publish. And they did. With amazing content they created valuable publishing properties with massive and engaged audiences—the influential audiences that advertisers want to reach. Over the past several years we have grown another side of our business, Six Apart Media, which has focused on helping publishers turn their passions into businesses and on helping marketers authentically engage these publishers and their audiences.

Today Six Apart announced its intention to join forces with VideoEgg to form a modern media company called SAY Media. The new entity will combine the engagement platform and insights of VideoEgg with our social publishing platform, conversational marketing tools, and robust network of publishers.

SAY Media will be a force—powering more efficient, useful and social advertising programs that tie rich and engaging advertising experiences to online communities with meaningful and measurable results. Good for publishers. Good for advertisers.

We believe SAY Media will become one of the world's most significant modern media companies, while still embracing the same goals we've always had at Six Apart—to empower people to create great content and make money doing it. Soon we'll have the capabilities to do it that much better. When you know more, I think you'll be as excited as we are. Get a glimpse of our future at www.saymedia.com.

Chris Alden Chairman & CEO Six Apart

P.S. You can follow SAY Media on Twitter at @saymediainc or like us and join the conversation on Facebook.

Is your company active in social media? Then you’re probably asking yourself where to allocate your budget: to paid media or earned media - or some combination of both. If this is on your mind, we hope you’ll join us at the OMMA Global conference in NYC on September 27th for a panel discussion entitled, Is Your Budget Being Well Spent in Social?

David Tokheim, EVP & GM of Six Apart Media, will weigh in on the discussion, joining panelists from Deep Focus, Catalyst, Bling Media and Rey Interactive. Tokheim will share his insights on how to decide where dollars should be spent and will delve into the role of the media team in a world where not all advertising is paid.

Come, listen, get some advice, and see how to apply this paradigm shift to your own business and budgets.  For more information go to: http://www.mediapost.com/events/?/showID/OMMAGlobal.10.NYC

We launched Six Apart Media just two years ago and can you believe that last month Six Apart Media reached over 42% of all US Internet users*, placing us #1 in blogs and #2 only to Facebook in the Conversational Media category?!

Marketers realize that engaging these influencers is an important part of any brand building campaign and our goal is to help them do so in authentic, scalable, and effective ways. In the past, marketers could only reach bloggers and their audiences through banners or through traditional promotional integration with a handful of sites. Today, with the launch of TypePad Conversations, we aim to change that.

What Is It?

At its core, TypePad Conversations is about powering discussions across a large set of bloggers and their audiences through provocative questions. We ask these questions to millions of bloggers and their readers, sparking conversations across a range of topics. You can join in the discussion here!
 
If you have ever been to an industry conference like iMedia, E3, Ad Tech, ShowWest, you have experienced a form of sponsored conversation. We are taking that principle online and allowing brands to join in the conversation, and as with those conferences, TypePad Conversations helps brands sponsor discussions without controlling them.

Participating in the conversation is strictly voluntary and we don't pay bloggers to post. If you are a member of the Six Apart Ad Program - open to bloggers on all platforms -- you will share revenue from impressions generated from the advertising that accompanies TypePad Conversations.

Like Facebook's engagement ads and Twitter's Sponsored Tweets, TypePad Conversations is about finding the right balance between the brand's desire to participate in the conversation, the publisher's desire to drive traffic to its site, and the reader's desire to engage with great content.

Nothing like this has existed for blogs before today.

How It Works

We work with leading voices in a category, such as Women's Lifestyle, to create questions that are syndicated to influential bloggers.   

Bloggers post their answers on their blogs and inspire their audience to participate. Readers invite people in their social networks to join in by sharing their answers on Twitter and Facebook.

Answers from all participating blogs are aggregated at conversations.typepad.com with the best featured in the "Awesome Bar," a branded content module that appears below the original post on each participating blogger's site.

The best way to understand how this all works is to join the conversation on some of our amazing publisher sites like Betty Confidential, Geekweek, and Jessica Gottlieb.

We are very pleased to be partnering with Sprint and their 4G campaign as the first sponsor of TypePad Conversations. Sprint has been fantastic to work with and we are grateful especially to Betsy Paynter, Sara Devine, Stephanie Wilroy, Jim Clark and Rich Pesce who said:

"TypePad Conversations are a unique way for us to avoid banner fatigue and organically reach highly engaged audiences." 

If you are a marketer who'd like to participate, please reach out.

I would like to thank the inspired team at Six Apart that has put countless hours of blood, sweat, tears and magic into the progress we have made over the last two years.

I look forward to seeing you join the conversation!

David Tokheim, EVP Six Apart Media

* comScore, April 2010

Last week Facebook announced a new version of the “Like” button that gives marketers and publishers the ability to embed a content-sharing button on their websites. Users can now signal the content they like on the Internet via their Facebook News Feed with a single click.

As we work on ways to help our clients distribute conversations around their brands across the web, Facebook “Like” will be an exciting and effective way to amplify those conversations.

The “Like” button allows publishers and marketers the ability to deliver a compelling social web experience on branded sites without the design constraints of a Facebook fan page. Just adding the Facebook “Like” button to your website or blog integrates it with Facebook.

Typing your company or product name into the Facebook search bar will display the site to which you’ve added the “Like” button. In short: ANY web page can now take the place of a Facebook fan page.

Most importantly, fans of your brand will get a consistent experience no matter where it’s accessed. Our powerful publishing and community solutions now have the ability to behave just like Facebook fan pages, leveraging the network for each engagement. And that is great news for everyone.

As we noted last week Six Apart was chosen by Facebook as an official launch partner for this release. Stay tuned for more announcements from Six Apart on how we can help you leverage social media as part of our conversational marketing platform.

One of the things we love most about blogging is the community it builds. One blog post can create a dialogue across the web that features divergent opinions, thoughtful comments and a real sense of conversation.

The Question of the Day on Vox has helped us spark some of those conversations amongst bloggers who might otherwise suffered from a case of writer’s block. Because we’ve seen such great success with the Vox QotD, we decided to introduce the same feature to TypePad. We are really excited to see how this new feature inspires creativity amongst TypePad bloggers and their loyal readers.

Learn more about the TypePad Question of the Day in the FAQ and let us know if you have a question you’d like to ask!

If your question is chosen, we will publish it, along with a “submitted by” message and a link to your blog. It’s a great way to connect with bloggers, and also to get more readers to your blog. Please keep in mind that QotDs should appeal to a wide audience and should be no more than 95 characters.

You can send your submissions for QotDs to qotd@typepad.com.

In April, we told you about our partnership with One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco, and our Green Badge program designed to encourage everyone to go green, one act at a time. We promised that when the Green Badges received 100,000 impressions across the blogosphere, Six Apart would donate $1000 to The Climate Project. Less than six weeks after that post, we surpassed our 100,000 goal by nearly two million impressions. Needless to say: a check is in the mail to The Climate Project!

So many of you adopted the Green Badges that we designed, we couldn’t help but wonder… What if we asked YOU to create an earth-friendly badge? After all, our bloggers are some of the most creative and eco-friendly out there and who better than you to spread the message that when we all do one act, we act as one, and help the planet? No one!

That’s why Six Apart partnered with One Million Acts of Green brought to you by Cisco to create the “Green by Design” contest. To enter, all you have to do is create a Green Badge with an earth-friendly design and/or message. One winner will be chosen each week in June and that person’s badge will be available on EverythingTypePad for people to put on their blogs, and will appear on blogs all across Six Apart Media’s advertising platform. Plus, when the badges receive a million impressions, Six Apart will donate another $1000 to The Climate Project.

Visit EverythingTypePad for all the details on how you can enter the “Green by Design” contest.

And don’t forget to record your Acts of Green on the One Million Acts of Green website. Because together, we are making a difference.

Earth Day was founded to inspire awareness and appreciation for our environment, and while today might be the official Earth Day, at Six Apart, we believe that every day is new opportunity to help make our planet clean and healthy. That’s why we’ve partnered with Cisco to promote the One Million Acts of Green website.

One Million Acts of Green is a collaborative environmental campaign encouraging everyone to go green one act at a time. The goal? One million acts of green. Because, as we all know, we’re more powerful together than we can ever be apart.

That’s where you—our bloggers and readers—come in. We’ve come up with a few easy ways to inspire you to help the planet because we truly believe that every act of green makes a difference.

Here’s how you can do your part:

1. Adopt a Green Badge for Your Blog & Six Apart Will Donate $1000 to The Climate Project

We created four Green Badges for you to choose from. Each badge links to the One Million Acts of Green, brought to you by Cisco website. By putting a badge on your blog, you’ll not only be spreading the message of the importance of going green, you’ll be participating in an environmental campaign that will impact the world forever.

Plus, when the badges receive 100,000 impressions across the blogosphere, Six Apart will donate $1000 to The Climate Project.

Visit Everything TypePad to learn how to add a Green Badge to your blog.

2. Add the Million Acts of Green Widget to Your Blog

Learn and share tips and advice to help make the world a greener place with the One Million Acts of Green widget. In addition, you can track the total acts of green being performed as well as the greenhouse gases saved as a result of those acts.

Get the Million Acts of Green Widget Now.

3. Answer today’s QotD on Blogs.com

How could you better “green” your life? What’s holding you back?

Read what other people are saying, get new ideas, and share your thoughts at Blogs.com.

4. Visit the One Million Acts of Green Website

Change can start with one person. One action. One million acts of green. Visit the One Million Acts of Green website and register your acts of green.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and for doing your part. Because when we all do one act, we act as one, and help the planet. And that is what today, and every day, should be about.

For years, the goings-on inside Guantanamo Bay were a closely held government secret. Now, for the first time, National Geographic exclusively captures what life is like in one of the world's most famous prisons in the television show "Inside Guantanamo."

In order to create interest and engagement around this controversial subject, Six Apart Media spent this week asking relevant questions on Vox, LiveJournal and Blogs.com. Bloggers have been weighing in on everything from which food they'd miss most if they were sent to prison to whether or not the prisoners in the War on Terror should be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

It's not too late for you to weigh in on these topics. Join the conversation at Blogs.com.

And be sure to tune in to "Inside Guantanamo" on the National Geographic Channel this Sunday at 9 p.m. to learn more about what life on the inside is really like.

It's been about a year since we announced the launch of Six Apart Services and Six Apart Media and our new role as a full-service blogging company. These days, Six Apart provides just about everything bloggers, publishers and companies need to achieve success: great technology, personalized services and innovative advertising. As always, our community and customers tell the story better than we ever could. Take the University of Phoenix, which approached us to build Think Ahead California, a new political action site focusing on the issues surrounding the upcoming workforce shortage in California. Their smart and thoughtful ideas were hugely inspiring, but we were also excited because we knew that the combination of technology, services and media that we offer at Six Apart these days was perfect for the job.

Last April, we launched Six Apart Media, our innovative advertising program that helps make bloggers and advertisers successful.

Today’s bloggers are savvy, outspoken and influential, inspiring a record number of people to join conversations throughout the social web. We’re happy to report that to date, Six Apart Media reaches over 2.4 million of these influential bloggers with more than 85.5 million engaged readers. Since our launch, we’ve had some incredibly talented bloggers join our advertising program, including:

• Unreality Magazine
• Cake and Commerce
• Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Most recently, we’ve been hard at work on a campaign for Nature Made, who asked us to help inspire people to share their stories of greatness. Since we know how much bloggers love sharing and because we believe that each of us has a personal story of greatness to tell, this was a campaign we couldn’t wait to kick off.

You can share your story of greatness by answering today’s QotD on Vox, LiveJournal and within your TypePad profile. If you don’t have an account with any of those services, don’t worry, anyone can answer the Question of the Day on Blogs.com! Once you’ve answered, be sure to submit your story on the Nature Made website. You could win $1,000 and appear in the Nature Made “Fuel Your Greatness” documentary.

With so many great bloggers and advertisers on board, we are very excited for what the future holds. Are you ready to join the conversation? Whether you're a blogger who wants to generate income from your blog, or an advertiser looking for creative ways to reach your target audience, we have a solution for you.

Visit Six Apart Advertising to learn more.