Movable Type

Recording Now Available: The Marketing Benefits of Social Media

2009-06-26T16:55:51Z

Thanks to all of you who attended Wednesday's online seminar for marketers, The Marketing Benefits of Social Media. Our chief evangelist Anil Dash was joined by social media pro extraordinnaire Lauren Kozak, who directs social media for one of the most recognized and highly valued brands in the world: Britney Spears. Anil and Lauren discussed why companies should engage in social media, shared best practices they have learned over years of using social media, and illustrated how to successfully implement a social media plan with some excellent case studies of Comcast, Wells Fargo, Britney Spears, Coca Cola, Amazon, and Cisco. They also answered several excellent questions from the audience.

We were pleased to see that three out of four of you who answered the post-event survey said you were inspired to try new forms of social media or augment your existing social media efforts. We hope that you'll contact us if you'd like to establish a social media platform that can serve as your home base amongst your various social media activities, and/or if you'd like to reach influential bloggers and their readers similar to the way that Cisco has been doing in the Million Acts of Green campaign.

If you missed the event, you can listen to it here - the password is "Marketing". We value your feedback so please tell us what you think in comments, or fill out the post-event survey.

Our next online seminar is planned for later this summer. If you’d like to be notified when the date has been set please email us at info@sixapart.com and we'll send you an invite.

Thanks.

Successful Social Media: Join Our Online Seminar

2009-06-15T13:00:20Z

Everybody's talking about Social Media. But who's succeeding at it, and how are they doing it?

We've invited an expert, who happens to use Movable Type, to help answer those questions in an online seminar on Wednesday, June 24, at 11 am Pacific/ 2 pm Eastern. Besides managing social media for Britney Spears, a billion-dollar brand, Lauren Kozak has advised businesses on the most effective use of social media for years. Anil Dash, our Chief Evangelist and social media practitioner extraordinaire, will moderate the event.

We'll share many case studies as we talk about how you can use social media to acquire and retain customers, save precious brand and product research dollars, reduce marketing and IT costs, and build and defend your brand.

This seminar focuses on social media for CMOs and corporate communications, brand and product executives, however all are welcome to attend regardless of job title.

We hope you'll join us for Let's Get Social: The Marketing Benefits of Social Media. You can register here.

The San Francisco Appeal Starts Up with Movable Type

2009-06-12T18:38:02Z

Eve Batey, formerly with the Gothamist network news site SFist and most recently with the San Francisco Chronicle*, launched new online newspaper The San Francisco Appeal a few months ago. The SF Appeal provides comprehensive coverage of local news and events, which means if you’re wondering about the latest on anything to do with San Francisco, this is the place to go. Eve recently came by to talk with us about working with the Six Apart Services and Media teams to build the site and drive revenue by placing quality ads on it. Eve also shared how Movable Type will help her grow her business as she expands coverage and how it helps her team be the first to get photos online during time-sensitive events like protests and, of course, the annual Bay to Breakers extravaganza.

We'll let her tell the story. Have a look.

** Both Gothamist and San Francisco Chronicle also use Movable Type. Thank you to both organizations!

Movable Type 4.26 is Now Available: An Optional Performance Release

2009-06-10T23:15:11Z

We want to let you all know that Movable Type 4.26 is now available. This is an optional performance release which includes bug fixes and feature improvements.

Movable Type 4.26 is recommended for Movable Type Enterprise 4.x customers because it provides dramatically better search performance for large datasets and improves background publishing performance and reliability (i.e. TheSchwartz). You can review the release notes on movabletype.org for full details on all changes. We recommend only updating to 4.26 if the documented changes will directly impact you.

Movable Type Update Advisor: Version 4.26

Release Type: Performance Release. This update fixes bugs and improves existing features. No new features are included.
Mandatory? No. This is an optional upgrade recommended for Movable Type Enterprise users.
Performance Implications: Better search performance for large datasets and improved reliability and performance around TheSchwartz.
Plugins Affected: None. Current plugins should continue to work as expected.
Templates Affected: None.
System Requirements: This release has no new or additional system requirements.
Licensing considerations: None. Movable Type 4.26 is a free update for users of any version of MT 4.x.
Upgrade Fatigue: No further mandatory updates are planned for 2009. Optional releases may become available.

Downloads are available in your account for current customers or through the download page.

Social Media Tips from a True Pro

2009-05-11T22:00:29Z

Lauren Kozak, Social Media Director for Britney Spears, recently stopped by our offices and shared her views about how corporations can use social media to grow their brands and engage with customers in meaningful ways. We enjoyed her talk so much that we videotaped some of her advice to share with you. Lauren's advice is the real thing - it not only comes from her current experience creating social media success for one of the biggest brands in the world, but also from her pre-Britney Spears work as a social media advisor to corporations when the medium was still in its infancy. We hope you find Lauren's insights helpful. Let us know what you think!

Six Apart Hosts Online Seminar: Strategic Social Media in a Customer-Driven World

2009-04-24T12:54:27Z

Update on 4/24: Here's the link to the recording of the seminar. Let us know what you think.

Update: Thanks to the hundreds of you who attended the seminar. Please leave a comment and tell us what you thought. Or please fill out our survey here. We'll post the link to the recording as soon as it is ready. Thanks!

This morning at 10 am Pacific we’ll host a seminar for marketers that looks at how companies can easily and quickly join their customers online in conversation. We’ll show many examples of companies that are already building their brands, nurturing relationships with customers, increasing sales and cutting costs through social media. The seminar will be led by Anil Dash, Chief Evangelist for Six Apart. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can do so here.

After the event, please check back here to get the link to the recording and to discuss the content. We’re interested in your experience with social media in marketing.

Comcast joins the Conversation

2009-04-10T13:39:20Z

Comcast’s digital approach to customer support has certainly attracted a lot of positive media attention recently, from both mainstream and online outlets. What a contrast from a year ago, when a video of a Comcast repairman who accidentally dozed off on a customer's couch made the rounds in snickering blogs and emails. Congratulations to the Comcast team for starting to steer a very large ship away from a potentially endless negative current.

Check out the BusinessWeek article that covers a Twitter-ful afternoon with director of digital care Frank Eliason. Or the report by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington last weekend of getting frustrated on the phone with Comcast customer’s support, only to find that a simple Tweet would deliver a solution to his problem in minutes.

Considering the company’s success on Twitter, it’s not surprising that they are augmenting their social media strategy by adding a blog to encourage longer-than-140-character conversations between Comcast customers and employees about all things Comcast.

The blog is called ComcastVoices, and it’s on Movable Type. It was launched just two weeks ago, and already the conversations are proving to be lively, informative, and respectful.

Let the folks at Comcast tell you directly what they’d like to achieve with the site:

For you marketing and customer support pros out there who might find the idea of such openness with customers a little daunting, here are a few things to note about the blog:

Comcast can set the tone and keep the conversation productive because this is their platform.

The “Rules of the Road” define expected behavior for the site. It’s very clear that comments are moderated by Comcast and that only polite, on-topic and respectful comments will be accepted.
The “About” page tells customers what they can expect from the blog, and refers them elsewhere for their personal support issues while encouraging them to tell Comcast directly what’s important to them.

You can see the negative comments of some customers turning positive as they engage in conversation with employees. For customers, simply being heard goes a long way.

It’s hard to view Comcast as a monolithic, monopolistic behemoth when you see and hear from employees and executives directly.

As we mentioned, the blog is still young, so we wish Comcast as much success with it as they’ve had with their Twitter account. And we hope that other companies will be inspired to open up new conversations with their customers in the same way.

Welcome, Comcast!

It's time to get in Motion

2009-03-17T22:37:37Z

After months of feedback, testing and improvements from our community, we're proud to announce that Motion for Movable Type is now available. Motion is an exciting new social application that is going to give marketers the ability to control their message across all the different social networks on the web. We first discussed the ideas behind Motion back in December, introduced the Laws of Motion a few days later, and talked about how a brand like Skittles could have improved its web marketing efforts by using Motion.

To understand what Motion's all about, take 3 quick minutes to check out the introductory video we've put together:

Of course, the best way to understand Motion is to see it in action. Check it out on BikeHugger (click on "Latest Activity" to see what they're doing with Action Streams), or see how it powers a microblogging community on Real Estate Channel. Once you've seen what Motion can do, sign up for a free demo and we'll tell you exactly how to get your company in Motion.

Featured Movable Type Site: Bike Hugger

2009-03-16T22:29:36Z

Movable Type Motion Connects a Fast-Moving Audience

When we released the beta version of Motion, our new social application for Movable Type, we knew that the first people to try it would be enthusiastic about social media and interested in how to more effectively share and publish content online.

That’s exactly what DL Byron and Jay Allen had in mind when they integrated Motion into the latest iteration of their Bike Hugger site. DL Byron is the principal of Textura Design, Inc., a Seattle-based company that offers creative social media strategies; Jay Allen is the founder of Endevver, a San-Francisco based web development firm that specializes in building and customizing Movable Type sites.

Bike Hugger is “bike culture blogged”; it started with a series of evangelism events called “mobile socials” where cyclists would meet up to network, ride, and share information. Version 1.0 of the blog was built in Movable Type, and the community eagerly began connecting online. “A lot of people in the design and development community are also enthusiastic about cycling,” explains Byron. “The bike racks at tech conferences are always full.”

“Bikers are early technology adopters,” Jay adds. “They’re very open to experimentation. They’re an ideal audience for us to try out cool new technology and see what works.”

Both Textura Design and Endevver use Bike Hugger as a lab. The site is built entirely in Movable Type, and they use it to test new design ideas, plugins, and various ways of sharing content that they may eventually apply to the enterprise or other clients. “The key to successful blogging is to live it,” Byron explains. “That’s what we do every day with Bike Hugger.”

The newly re-designed 2.0 site uses Motion to create a single, one-page view of all of the latest Bike Hugger activity around the web, including Tweets, news articles and photos posted on Flickr. “We’ve carefully selected action streams that we think are relevant to our community,” Jay says. “We want Bike Hugger to offer timely content that our audience can use and share.”

The site also offers a unique way for visitors to find archived content, with an alphabetized tag cloud, a grid of monthly archives by year, and the ability to search by popularity, author or keyword.

The flexibility of the biking community has made this kind of experimentation possible. “If something doesn’t work, we’ll pull it down,” says Byron. “We don’t believe in the ‘Big Reveal’ - we build out an idea, take it live, and see if it works.”

“You can’t get this kind of testing in a QA Lab,” adds Jay.

Adapt to Social Media or Die

Bike Hugger is a perfect demonstration of a site that enables people to share information in multiple ways. “The blogosphere used to be very insular,” says Byron. “Now, tools like Twitter are breaking it wide open. Publishing online has become easy enough that almost anyone can do it.”

Jay agrees: “Action streams have turned the web on its head,” he says. “The ‘walled garden’ approach to publishing content online was too limiting. People want to stay in control of their content and share it with the communities they care about.”

That’s where Motion comes in. The application has the ability to import action streams from dozens of sites around the web, allowing community members to share content from a variety of networks, and allowing sites to evolve as technologies change. “I feel like Movable Type is supremely situated to take advantage of these evolving ways to share content,” says Jay. “MT is so flexible that it can integrate many different technologies into one platform.”

Bike Hugger plans to begin extending more publishing privileges to its community in the coming months, allowing people to share relevant information about the events, people, and topics that are important to cyclists.

“Mobile Socials are a great example of how we bring content together in innovative ways,” says Jay. They created custom fields in Movable Type to include pieces of information about their activities - from event name to start time to location - which makes adding new events a snap. From the site, people can RSVP on Facebook, and will soon be able to upload photos and related Tweets and other event-centric content. “Not only is Movable Type an amazing content management system, but it’s also an incredible event management system,” he says.

The new Bike Hugger site was built in less than two months, with the combined efforts of Endevver, designer Scott Benish, and the team at Textura Design. The site now has 4,000 daily subscribers and tracks at 10,000 impressions a day. On Flickr alone, they’ve surpassed 800K annual views. “Our growth is strong,” Byron says. “Motion has helped us grow by enabling us to provide timely, relevant content.”

Both Byron and Jay anticipate that the site will continue to grow and expand in the future: “This is such a forward-thinking community that we’re going to be able to keep on innovating,” says Byron. “We don’t care about industry buzzwords; we just want to do epic work.”

Featured Movable Type Site: National Geographic

2009-03-11T19:04:10Z

Engaging a Loyal Audience in Brand New Ways

In the fall of 2008, publishing giant National Geographic decided to re-vamp their online presence and create a network of blogs and forums to engage with audiences from both print publications and television shows. They chose Movable Type to power their new initiative for several reasons: they wanted to purchase a license that would allow them to own all of their content; they wanted to host their site locally for complete control; and they needed enterprise-level support.

“Movable Type offered a better level of support than we found with other companies,” says Anton Gelman, senior producer at National Geographic. “It gave us complete control over our content, and we felt that it was also a very cost-effective choice.”

The company consolidated all of its older blogs and launched a number of new ones, including the Dog Whisperer, the Explorer Blog and the DogEared Books Blog for Kids. “Launching communities is a complex process,” Gelman says. “You start out thinking that people want one thing, but you have to be flexible and open to tweaking things over time.”

The company has found that Movable Type allows them to do just that: “The fact that so many Movable Type functions are widgetized and can be modified by dragging and dropping enables our producers to make most changes themselves,” says Gelman.

MT Provides a Fast, Affordable Way to Update Content

Previously, he reports, National Geographic’s legacy systems required a great deal of technical know-how to manipulate; producers had to file requests with the IT department for every change they wanted to implement: “Now that producers can change things on their own, they can quickly respond to our what our audiences are doing.” For instance, if readers are clicking a lot on a certain widget, they can re-position it to a prominent spot on the site.

“It is significantly cheaper to do it this way,” Gelman says. “The Movable Type platform has saved us tremendously both on cost and speed to market.”

National Geographic often launches their blogs internally before revealing them to the public to get feedback, identify potential issues, and also to expose the whole company to the features and functions available on the MT platform. “Now that we have Movable Type, all of our internal ‘customers’ have access to the same innovations and tool sets,” Gelman explains. “Different departments don’t have to start from scratch when they want to build or change a blog.” The approach not only saves the company time and money, but it also benefits readers and visitors: “People now have a cohesive experience when they visit National Geographic blogs,” Gelman explains. “Each site will feel like a part of something bigger.”

The company has ambitious goals for growing its online presence in the years to come, and blogging will play a central role; it plans to create blogs for every television show and blogs that extend content from popular sections within its publications. A single sign-on will give members full access to all of the content created by National Geographic, thus building community and fostering connections. “We’re committed to making blogging an integral part of our publishing strategy in the future,” Gelman says.

Featured Movable Type Site: National Geographic Kid's Blogs

2009-03-03T19:31:05Z

Kid-Safe Blogs that Parents Can Trust

For more than three decades, National Geographic has reached out to kids in innovative ways through television and print with nature, sports and adventure-related content designed to inspire and motivate. Now the company has launched several kids blogs to engage with their young audiences online. The National Geographic Kids blog network includes DogEared Books, Global Bros, You Are Here, and Hands On Explorer, all of which are built in Movable Type. The majority of the blog posts are authored by real kids who blog about their adventures, and the voices of their peers have resonated with young readers.

“The mission of National Geographic Kids is to inspire kids to care about the planet, including all the people, places and animals in it,” says Michelle Sullivan, Executive Producer of National Geographic Digital Media, Kids. “The NG Kid's blogs are natural extension of that, because they bring the world right into their laps... or in this case, laptops!”

The editorial team finds most of its kid bloggers by reaching out to their own extended network of employees, colleagues and friends. The kids are then contracted to become bloggers and agree to an editorial schedule; a team of online editors reviews and posts content. “It seems so much more credible when it's a kid-to-kid conversation,” Sullivan explains. “That's what really make us unique and differentiates us from other kids' sites.

The editors review the content before they post it, but they’re careful not to use a heavy hand in the editing process. “Authenticity is important to us, says Sullivan. “We want it the blog posts to sound like the kids who wrote them, not like polished pieces written by an adult.”

Thus far, the process has worked wonderfully. “The kids are so excited to have a "voice",” Sullivan reports. “They love sharing their stories and opinions. It's really empowering.”

MT Enables Compliance with Legal Requirements

Creating websites for kids is more complicated than it seems. “There are a lot of legal and technical requirements involved in creating a blog for kids,” producer Anton Gelman explains. All National Geographic Kids content is COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act)-compliant, meaning that the site does not solicit or store any personal information without parental notification or verification. All ads that appear on the sites abide by COPPA, and also follow the suggested CARU (Children’s Advertising Review Unit) guidelines for advertisers. “Movable Type made it easy for us to add custom fields and rules that allow us to comply with all regulations related to having a kid’s site,” says Technical Lead Anton Gelman.

Comments have to be monitored to ensure that they meet strict content guidelines before they’re published; with the RSS subscription feature in Movable Type, producers can subscribe to the comments and approve them from anywhere, thus simplifying the process. “We make extra efforts to keep our community secure and give moms and dads peace of mind that their kids are in a safe online space,” explains Michelle Sullivan.

National Geographic enlisted Seattle-based Textura Design, Inc. and San Francisco development consultancy Endevver to build out the sites. They used Movable Type’s flexible comment moderation tools to enable editors to review and publish comments from multiple interfaces - inside the application, via email or mobile device. “The Movable Type software has made it easy for our team to manage and publish content,” Sullivan says. “We really love it.”

The company is committed to expanding its digital presence in the future, with plans for additional blogs, more exciting content, and new ways to engage its readers. “This is a generation of digital explorers,” says Sullivan. “They've grown up with technology and the Web is a central focus for them. We have a great opportunity to reach this young audience and help build loyalty to National Geographic and its mission.”

National Geographic Kid's Blogs Built in Movable Type

DogEared Books
DogEared Books is community for young readers and the books they love. The blog features seven kids ages 8-12 who blog their thoughts about the books they’re reading. “Kids love giving their feedback on the books,” says Michelle Sullivan. “The blog gives them a place where they can be heard, and where their opinion matters.”

Global Bros
The Global Bros blog follows the adventures of two “cool brothers” - 11-year-old Stefan and 8-year-old Tyler - who are having the enviable experience of traveling around the globe with their parents for an entire year. The boys post photos, stories and videos from wherever they are - from Germany to Japan - and kids everywhere can follow along at home.

You Are Here
The “You Are Here” blog shines a spotlight on bloggers in different countries; last year, it was written by 12-year-old David, a blogger who lives in Beijing and blogged about his visits to the Olympic Games and what it is like to live in China. Currently, the blog is being authored by 10-year-old Ayat, who lives in Jordan and blogs about Middle East geography, her family traditions, and trips to nearby Petra and the Dead Sea.

Hands On Explorer
The Hands on Explorer blog tracks the adventures of National Geographic Kids’ Hands-On Explorer Challenge contest expedition team on their worldwide adventures. Australia with the destination in 2008; in 2009, the team will take a 12-day trip to Peru. The team will be made up of 15 kid contest winners and two teachers who will travel to Peru together to learn about the culture, people and history of this ancient civilization.

Movable Type 4.25/Motion release candidate 3 released

2009-03-03T06:33:22Z

Just a quick note to say that we have released the third release candidate for Movable Type 4.25/Motion. This release fixes the same significant security issue that was fixed in Movable Type 4.24, and also includes the improved password recovery feature. This release is recommended for all publicly accessible installs of MT 4.25/Motion.

Download link

Movable Type 4.24: Get Updated With Better Password Recovery

2009-02-27T19:52:00Z

We have just made available Movable Type 4.24. This mandatory security release is recommended for all users (see update advisor below), and fixes a significant security issue affecting users of Movable Type Pro or the Movable Type Community Solution, versions 4.0 or greater. In addition to fixing the potential security issue, Movable Type 4.24 introduces a vastly improved password recovery system for all users of Movable Type.

Movable Type Update Advisor: Version 4.24

Release Type: Security Release. This update fixes a serious potential vulnerability which has not yet been exploited in the wild.
Mandatory? Yes, this is a mandatory security upgrade.
Performance Implications: None.
Plugins Affected: None. Your current plugins should continue to work as expected.
Templates Affected: None.
System Requirements: This release has no new or additional system requirements.
Licensing considerations: None. MT 4.24 is a free update for users of any version of MT 4.x.
Upgrade Fatigue: No further mandatory updates are planned for Movable Type 4.2.

Downloads are available in your account for current customers or through the download page.

Enterprise customers and clients of Six Apart Services should already have received full details on this update from your account representative.

While MT 4.24 is primarily a security fix release, because we had to update some related code, we have also included one of the most-requested features for Movable Type 4.2's community features: Better password recovery.

The old password recovery system for MT required users to remember a password recovery hint which, put simply, was often confusing and ineffective. Instead. with MT 4.24, Movable Type communities now automatically get a standard password recovery system that emails a password reset link to the email address that a user has on file.

We have updated the Movable Type documentation with full instructions on how to reset your password if needed, and upgrading to this new version should automatically enable the new feature with no effort required on your part.

Social Media in Small and Medium Business Conversation on Motion

2009-02-05T17:30:04Z

The webinar mentioned in our earlier post will take place today, and be followed by a conversation on this Motion-powered site.

We hope you'll visit the site and contribute your expertise, thoughts or questions about the use of social media in small and medium business.

See you there.

Webinar this Thursday extended with the help of Motion

2009-02-03T20:00:33Z

Don't miss our VP of Product Strategy, Michael Sippey, this Thursday in a web panel sponsored by Intel and featuring Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang as they discuss "Leveraging Social Media into your Business Strategy".

What does this have to do with Movable Type, you may ask? Well, have you ever attended a live or online event and wanted to discuss the topic in more depth, but been limited by time? We have. So we've started a Motion-powered microblogging community to continue the conversation after the webinar ends. We invite you to join in.

Michael Sippey and others involved in the webinar will participate in the community site, and you'll have a chance to contribute too by sharing your knowledge about social media in small and medium business, asking questions, or giving feedback on the webinar.

Sign up for the web panel here. We'll post the URL to the Motion site here tomorrow.

See you then.