by Todd Jatras |  July 22, 2020

The recent release of Live Blog 3.8 introduced a new tagging feature that improves the discoverability of live blogging content for digital news publishers and their readers.

Previously, it was only possible to search on the content within a timeline by three criteria: newest, oldest, and editor’s choice. But editors can now create and apply as many tags as they want to each post as it’s published, making posts within a blog timeline searchable on a granular level. 

Readers will now see an additional dropdown menu, labeled Filter Content, that displays all the available tags they can search on. If, to use one example, a reader of a blog on Premier League football was a fan of Liverpool F.C. and was interested only in items relevant to their team, they could pull down the menu, find their team’s name, select it, and the blog timeline would only display Liverpool-related posts.

To create tags to include in a post, go to Live Blog’s General Settings (see image below) and type them into the Global Tags dialogue box. If a term is not already there, you will be given the option to create that tag. These tags are global, and once they’ve been created they will be available to all the different timelines within a publisher’s blogging portfolio.

To apply these tags, there is a Tag(s) dialogue box in the editor field, on the bottom of each post. Type in the first few letters of the desired tag, and the predictive text will list available tags below it based on that criteria. In the example below “pr” brought up “press freedom” (highlighted in blue). Select the tag(s) you want, and click update. If the tag you’re looking for is not there, go to General Settings and add it.

When looking at the same post live, from the reader’s perspective (see below), the “press freedom” tag we just created appears under Filter Content.

When the reader selects that tag, only content containing that term will be displayed in the blog timeline. 

This new level of search granularity is convenient for both readers, who may be interested in dipping far back into their favourite blog’s archive, and publishers looking to get a better handle on their overall blog content production.

Want to see what Live Blog can do for your publication? Sign up for your free trial here: https://liveblog.pro/en/try-liveblog-free/

by Todd Jatras |  July 01, 2020

With the release of Live Blog 3.8, we’ve introduced local and global tagging functionality that streamlines the process of syndicating blog content for news agencies and their clients.

Until now, it was only possible to filter content within a timeline based on three options: newest first, oldest first or editor’s choice. This was useful for readers following a story, but limiting for news outlets looking for posts relevant to their audience. Editors had to wade through what could be a sea of posts to find what they were looking for. But users now have a drop-down menu that displays the list of tags editors have assigned to a specific blog, and can find appropriate content by filtering on these tags.

In addition to global tags that can be applied across Live Blog instances, editors can also create and apply local tags to individual posts within a timeline. Then, using these tags, they can filter content and create syndication channels for news topics based on single or multiple preset tags. (Note: Using global or local tags is an either-or decision; it is not possible to use both at the same time.)

Creating and applying tags across instances or within timelines is now a standard Live Blog syndication feature.

For instance, if an agency is running a live blog on the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, editors could tag each post within that blog timeline according to location or region (Germany, Austria, Norway, etc.) and media outlets in those countries would be able to identify appropriate items by filtering with their relevant tags. 

Some of our Live Blog clients, such as German news agency DPA, have dozens of live blogs going at a time, and are constantly adding new ones as big news stories break that require live coverage. 

Finding particular topics among all of those blogs was the goal of introducing tag-based filtering in the latest Live Blog release. Now, news agencies and their clients can search across blog instances and within individual blog timelines, and set up more targeted syndication output channels. With an embed link created on the back end of Live Blog, clients will only see the content that has been filtered based on those tags.

If you are not yet a Live Blog user and you’re looking for live blogging software to cover real-time news, you can try Live Blog for free here, no strings attached.