Tool of the week for journalists: Repost
What is it? A tool that allows you to embed an article in the same way as you would embed a video.
How is it of use to journalists? Used by individual bloggers and international publishers, Repost creates an embed code for articles, scooping up the text, pictures, video, links, ads, publisher logo, attributions and anything else that appeared in the original to be reposted elsewhere.
Embedding content using Report offers offers an easy way to aggregate; offering the option to allow your content to be 'reposted' provides the potential for additional exposure which be beneficial in terms of attracting new readers and click throughs to your site.
John Pettitt, chief executive and founder of Repost, told Journalism.co.uk that 95 to 99 per cent of the audience that sees a reposted article is a new reader to the source site, with click through rates averaging more than 5 per cent.
Therefore, says Pettitt, reposted articles are essentially a huge advert for the original site – complete with links back to related content and original ads to ensure the continued monetisation – and Repost works "extremely hard" to ensure that the reposts aren't detrimental to the originating site's SEO.
Furthermore, it is free to make original content "repostable", as Repost adds its own advert at the end of the article, and reposted articles have a 'repost' button to allow the possibility of the content going viral.
At the time of publishing there have been more than 3.2 million articles reposted with big name publishers including AFP, Raw Story, and Christian Science Monitor, among others. Pettitt says it gives those outlets the opportunity to cover topics for which they otherwise may not have the scope, budget or contacts, and also allows them to continue updating their websites at the weekend with scheduled posts.
Repost was recommended by media commentator Jeff Jarvis in a keynote presentation he gave at the World Editors Forum in Bangkok earlier this month.
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