Zemanta Is Your Virtual Blogging Assistant
I was pleased to learn that Zemanta is now available on WordPress.com. I had the pleasure of doing a guest post for fellow blogger Kiesha of We Blog Better called Blog more efficiently with the Zemanta Google Chrome Plugin, and now that WordPress.com is offering Zemanta to it's family of bloggers, it's time to have a closer look. The easiest way to describe Zemanta is to liken it to a virtual blogging assistant.
If WordPress.com is your blogging platform, you can activate Zemanta from your Personal settings by clicking the box next the words “Additional Post Content”. Save your changes and as you compose a new post, Zemanta simultaneously searches through blog feeds, to find content closely related to what you're writing, directly from it's library of
“Vanilla” Zemanta
Compared to the Zemanta extension for Chrome, the WordPress.com version offers what I call a watered down or “vanilla” version of Zemanta by serving up related content and images but minus the library of “My Sources” to choose from.
In this screenshot check out the Blogger version of Zemanta (which mimics the Chrome blogging extension) represented on the left.
Notice at the top there is a “My Sources” tab, and if you look at the list of articles below you'll see a little icon next to the links that belong to YOU and the feeds you have set-up in the “Zemanta Preferences” area. When you're ready to set up your preferences in Zemanta watch my short video tutorial.
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The right hand side of the screenshot represents the Zemanta interface as it appears in the WordPress.com post editor. You still have plenty of resources to create outbound links to and you can also use these links to gather more research for your topic before you hit the publish button. I'm sure you're aware that including links to fresh content will keep your readers coming back to your blog for more.
Experience “Related articles by Zemanta”
I often tell the funny story about the first time I saw Related articles by Zemanta – I was thinking, “who the heck is Zemanta?”
Don't laugh, you were thinking that too! But now you know better.
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