“Enrich your advice. Extend your brand. Help turn the consumable web into the usable web.”

The amount of consumable content available on the web is almost infinite.  But only a portion of that content is actually usable.  As bloggers and publishers, you work hard to create useful information and advice.  However, in order to make it usable, your readers often need to transform your information into something usable.  To do this, they create personal task lists & shopping lists, print out recipes, add things to their calendars or address books, and write notes to themselves.  In most cases, your readers do these things on paper or in another application that’s not related to your website -  the result is that your brand is nowhere to be found.

What is usable content?

We like to think of “usable content” as any piece of content that allows a reader to a take action on it.   For example, if a reader finds an article about vacationing, the usable portion would be a suggested packing list or a restaurant’s phone number or website to make a reservation. Or if a reader finds a blog post about how to roast a chicken, the usable portion would be the shopping list for ingredients & supplies.

How does springpad help bloggers and publishers share their usable content?

Springpad allows bloggers and publishers to easily structure and embed usable content into their articles or blog posts.  The method of doing it is simple; create related springIt! links.  SpringIt! links allow your users to “spring” branded, structured, and usable content into their springpads.  The usable content can take the form of simple things like shopping lists, alarms, or recipes as well as more robust offerings like branded springpads (e.g. Meal Planner, Trip Planner, etc). 

Example SpringIt! Implementation

Let’s take a look at one of the posts from the Spring Partners employee blog, thesimpleme.  After the user reads the post and decides that they’d like to save the recipe for later, they can click on the “Spring the recipe!” link.

The reader then gets a copy of the recipe, with the author’s brand attached to it, links back to the original article & even links to a few related articles.

The author of this recipe has now given their reader the benefit of using this recipe in springpad, provinding many features that would otherwise not be available to the reader:
– Sharing with family & friends (the author’s brand & links stay intact)
– Saving the branded recipe to use again & again
– Automatically creating shopping lists, which can be organized & reused
– Including the recipe in weekly meal plans & other food-related springpads

Implementing SpringIt! Links

Currently, bloggers & publishers need to contact us to put branded SpringIt! links in their websites. Please get in touch with me to get started.  (mfusco AT springpartners DOT com)

To learn more: Check out this video featuring Rookie Moms
Or see try SpringIt! it out for yourself on these websites:
– Sex and the Knitty: (Pumpkin) Patch It Together (a shopping list)
– Midlife’s a Trip: Spring Karen’s Kick-Ass Cranberry Sauce Recipe (a recipe)
– Good Girl Gone Blog: Every day should be bagel day! (a restaurant)
– thesimpleme: Make smaller mortgage payments (a budget, a task list & an alarm)

Similar to other authors of advice and useful content, bloggers employ many tactics to attract first-time readers.  It’s mostly in the form of writing creative & useful advice, commenting/linking throughout the blogosphere, and optimizing their posts for search engines.

After attracting readers for the first time, turning those new eyeballs into devoted, repeat readers takes work.  As I’ve discussed before, it starts with the constant creation of fresh, new content.  Beyond that, there are many creative options – here are the main ones I’ve seen:

• RSS Feeds are a great way to build a regular following and to monitor readership stats via services like FeedBurner, but this does not always bring readers back to the blog to interact via comments or discovery of old posts.  The Simple Dollar proudly displays their RSS feed.
• Email Newsletters are not all that different from RSS feeds.  And, with all the emails that people get nowadays, newsletters might get lost in the mix.  Lots of great food blogs, like Chocolate & Zucchini, Foodista and Tasting Table offer beautiful newsletters.
• Downloadable PDF’s and Excel files allow readers to take the blog’s advice one step further for life tasks, like creating a meal plan.  These downloads are great for deepening the quality of the advice, but may not always drive return readership.
• Bookmarking and Sharing Services allow readers to store and distribute a blogger’s advice and related brand.  They both re-engage readers & help to reach new readers.  To see how they work, check out the bottom of any of 101 Cookbook’s posts – you’ll notice the integrated del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Facebook buttons.
• Blog Carnivals solicit other bloggers to submit links to articles on a particular topic.  The benefit to the “carnival host” is the ability to both create return traffic and aggregate a lot of great content with minimal effort.  The contributing bloggers get the chance to distribute their advice in hopes of driving readers to their site.  Check out Org Junkie on Mondays, Rocks In My Dryer on Wednesdays, and Delicious Baby on Fridays.
• Contests encourage readers to comment on posts, driving repeat readers and encouraging interaction.  Within the Corners of My Kitchen runs a weekly product giveaway and Rookie Moms is currently offering a prize for feedback on their new site design.

While some of these methods are a one-time setup, many of them require a lot of work and commitment from bloggers.  Based on their widespread willingness to do this work, we believe that reader retention and re-engagement must be of high importance to these talented content creators.

Here at Spring Partners, we are developing a tool that might just help…
We believe that by helping readers to interact with bloggers’ advice we will not only be helping users, but also helping bloggers to further extend their advice, their brand, and their devoted readership.

Signup to be a part of the springpad private beta.  Or, if you are an interested blogger, consider being part of our life expert program.

Are you a blogger, a writer, or a traditional media company that people seek out to get advice on anything from organizing your closet, to cooking a turkey, to taking the kids on a trip to Chicago, to finding the hottest places to go in town tonight, to well… just about anything?

Do people often quote and share your advice with their friends?
Yes? Well then, you are a life expert!

But, once people read your advice, what do they do with it? Do they print it out, bookmark it, take a screen shot, or paste in into Excel? Even worse, do they forget that the advice came from you?

We’re building a product that will allow users to not only keep track of where they found the advice, but also put it into action. Interested in participating in our life expert pilot program? Please sign up.