Image via WikipediaA couple months ago I downloaded Zemanta, a free blog publishing tool that’s coming in really handy. Once you’ve installed Zemanta on your hard drive, which takes only a few minutes, it will appear automatically in your post writing screen in WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal, Blogger, Tumblr, Live Journal, or Ning.
As you write your post, Zemanta finds images and blog posts/articles that relate to your content. Here’s what I’m seeing as I’m typing this post (click on thumbnail below) –
Zemanta – Blog Post Composition Tool
Images are pulled from Wikipedia Commons. You can preview them and check their copyright status before inserting in your post. Likewise, you can click on the article permalink and check it out in advance. Inserting images and article links is a matter of one click — it could not possibly be any easier.
Relevance of images and articles varies. I couldn’t find a particularly relevant image for this post, but I used one anyway (a Drupal icon) so you could see what it looks like. I have noticed the quality of content in the article links is consistently high, relevant or not. You can judge for yourself by reading the Zemanta-supplied links at the bottom of this post.
Zemanta – SEO & Social Networking Tool
Once you become a Zemanta user, Zemanta starts indexing your blog. As I’ve used Zemanta more and more, I’m noticing my own blog posts showing up as Zemanta links on other blogs, in one case, a very highly rated blog — my post on RSS feeds appeared on this Chris Brogan post just last week.
Zemanta – Useful Tool or Merely a Shortcut?
As I mentioned, Zemanta hasn’t been useful on every post. But when images and/or articles are relevant, Zemanta is a huge time saver. You have some flexibility to change the size and positioning of images, but if you are really into graphics, you probably won’t be satisfied with image choices from an aesthetic or layout standpoint. When I’m doing a post where the graphics are critical, I’ll barely look at Zemanta options. Still, for my purposes, when Zemanta is good, it is very, very good. When it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.
How about you? Are you using Zemanta? What’s your experience been? Are their other tools you can recommend?
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Brad, that’s a great roundup of what Zemanta does. Regarding the times Zemanta is not useful – I’d be very much interested about those blog posts. If you send me links to them – jure@zemanta.com – I’ll add them to our internal quality assurance engine, and we can tune the system to work better for your blogging style in the future.
Jure Cuhalev, Zemanta
Hi Jure, thanks for the response. I may take you up on your offer! Another question – is it important to use keyword phrases early in the post composition? Sometimes I’ll use an obscure reference early on and it generates a number of images/articles.
Brad, this sounds very cool! I have used MS Live Writer and found it much easier to post and insert pics but this sounds so much better. I am going to give it a try. I’ll be sure to come back and share my experience. Thanks!
Hi Karen, I’m not familiar with Live Writer, so I not only look forward to hearing how you like Zemanta, perhaps you could compare the two products … (blog post, perhaps?)
This would be useful for my posts on one of the sites I write for. I’m going to try it out and see how it works with that site.
Brad, we try to evaluate the text, and what matter is the context – what is in the sentence, the paragraph, the text, but not whether information is at the beginning or end of text.
Jure Cuhalev, Zemanta
Hi Brad, thanks for sharing this. I’ve been noticing your links at the foot of your posts (and Chris Brogan’s) and was wondering how it worked. Presumably you can choose as to whether or not you include the links to the articles – they’re not automatically included?
Joanna
Karen, let me know how Zemanta works for you please.
Joanna, yes, you choose which links (if any) to include. I always preview articles and only add ones that I think contribute to the topic.
Brad, I downloaded the Zemanta plug-in from WordPress. Have not yet installed. Is this what you use or did you do the browser download?
Karen, both versions work identically. Use the one that’s more convenient for you to install.
Jure Cuhalev, Zemanta
Karen, I used the browser download. Not sure how the WP plugin works, but the browser works fine for me.
Zemanta is based on semantics. At least one Uber geek (I am in a technology institute) told me very recently that semantics is the future of the net. There are some mind-boggling potentials for stuff like zemanta (basically semtantics) for gleaning “interest” feeds (one step ahead of RSS feeds) and in general making the web more personal and relevant than ever.
Sounds like an efficient way to pick up research for your post as you’re typing… Sure beats keeping various tabs open and Googling things of the top of your head!
Jeevaniyoti, I’ve heard of semantics technology, but that’s about it. Sounds like a topic to learn more about. As Zemanta’s database grows, will matches become ever more relevant?
Ricardo, Zemanta saves me about half an hour of work dealing with images and finding relevant links, maybe more.
Just for the record…I am not the uber geek
But yes, what you say, Brad, does seem logical…but the strength of this technology stems not from gigantic databases but the “intelligence” to pick up appropriate cues and show up really relevant results. Even I use Zemanta in my blog but then since it is such a niche topic that I am interested in and my blog style having almost a ritualistic style…zemanta’s suggestions sometimes seem crazy! But then, hyperlinking and labeling has become a breeze using zemanta…I believe I have atleast two-thirds of my life left to see semantics technology grow
show details Jul 30 (7 days ago)
Reply
Hi,
I wrote a FireFox extension that helps bloggers easily add links to their posts. It uses Google search for link suggestions (not only Wikipedia) and OpenCalais for the semantic analysis.
It’s still alpha code, but I think it’s already useful and fun to use.
Check it out in kaalga.com
Would love to hear what you think.
Thanks, Amit.
Thanks for the link, Amit!
cool..
keep the good job..
Busby SEO Challenge
good ./
nice info keep posting man
Busby Seo test
Never heard of this tools, will try this on my network of blog. i think the coolest feature is the way zemanta find image related to the blog, that actually saves time. Thanks for sharing…
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Hi Eligio, Zemata’s improved quite a bit since this post. Faster, better image selection, a few more features. Hope it works for you.
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Cool. I’m a Zemanta user, too. Here are my thoughts about it:
1. Searching for appropriate image for a post can be time consuming. Zemanta is a big help as I always find myself scrambling to finish my post. I have no editorial calendar yet. *sighs*
2. When I was just starting I used its related posts a lot. But now I don’t use it anymore because I’m adding my own posts. Oh, I do this manually. Blogger has not plug in for this.
3. It’s big surprise Zemanta helps a bit when it comes to SEO. I’m glad to hear that.
I did not know (and at this point, I’m not surprised anymore) you can resize Zemanta pics. How do I go about doing this, Brad?
Thanks for visiting my blog. And for tweeting my latest post. I’ve followed you in Twitter, sir.
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Hi Jan, Thanks for stopping by Word Sell! I found your excellent blog through Terry Heath, Bloggity. It’s been so long since I tried to resize an image in Zemata, I’ve forgotten how I did it. It seems to me the code sometimes included pixel dimensions which could be changed. I’m not seeing that now. All I can do now is position images on the left or right. When my blog was in Blogger I used to create internal related post links manually – what a chore! Very worthwhile, though. One thing I really like about WordPress is it automatically creates related posts. For me, that saves as much time as image selection and uploading.
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