The Reverb Blog

Welcome to today’s Reverberations, in which we tell you what our other blogs and products are up to.

On our publishers blog, we talk about the importance of knowing what people are saying about you and your blog:

It’s easy to think that the conversations about your blog take place on your site, your social media channels, or in emails addressed to you, but the fact is that people share, discuss, and talk about your content all over the Web.

It’s important to know what people are saying, regardless of whether it’s positive or not. These discussions can serve as constructive feedback or even present an opportunity for you to expand your readership by engaging in the conversation.

Here are 3 simple ways you can find where people are talking about you or your blog on the Web.

Read the rest.

On the Wordnik blog we say farewell to The Office by recounting some of our favorite words from the show.

This season wraps the eight-year run of the mockumentary about a little paper company. We’ve gathered our favorite words from the last season here.

Belsnickel

Dwight: “What about an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Christmas? Drink some gluhwein, enjoy some hasenpfeffer. Enjoy Christmas with St. Nicholas’s rural German companion, Belsnickel?”

“Dwight Christmas,” December 6, 2012

Belsnickel is “a crotchety, fur-clad Christmas gift-bringer figure in the folklore of the Palatinate region of southwestern Germany,” and is “preserved in Pennsylvania Dutch communities.” The name comes from the German pelz, “to pelt,” and the name Nikolaus. See also Krampus.

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Last week I was lucky to be able to be at TEDxMidwest, and even luckier, to be emceeing it (for the third year in a row).

TEDxMidwest is one of my favorite events of the year — not only do I get to go back to Chicago, where I lived for twenty years, I also get to hang out with some tremendously talented and interesting people, both speakers and attendees!

Since I’m not a professional emcee (the only other event I’ve been privileged to host has been the Literary Sojourn, run by the Bud Werner Memorial Library, in Steamboat Springs, Colorado) I have been learning as I go along … here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• Everybody in the audience is eager to hear the speakers … so intros and outros should be short!
• Great TEDx talks are always a little surprising … and so the speaker introductions should be surprising, too. I like to make sure that my introductions include information that isn’t in the speaker bio in the program (which the audience has probably read already).
• Always, always, ask the speaker to say their name to you so you can be 100% sure you have it right. (I ask: “Could you please tell me your name … as if you were talking to a slightly dim six-year-old?”)
• Tie things together! Two different speakers mention the same thing? It’s a trend! Keep it going! (This year, Baratunde Thurston and Ron Finley both mentioned shovels … which we then brought up again at every opportunity.)
• Be ready for anything. Luckily, no one has ever fainted or caught on fire on the TEDxMidwest stage, but you should be ready to nudge speakers who go past their time OFFstage and drag speakers who are getting standing ovations back ON.
• Don’t read. I write down every introduction on an index card, one for each speaker or performer (color-coded by session and numbered, in case I drop them!) … but I leave those cards in my pocket. A quick review before I go onstage is usually enough to prime me with what I have to say.
• Work on graceful nagging … remember that you’ll have to say things like “turn off your cell phone” and “don’t leave empty seats” quite a bit, so think about less-boring ways to deliver those messages.
• Wear comfortable shoes. You’ll be on stage (and on your feet) every twenty minutes or so, all day … you want to be thinking about the next great speaker, not about how much your feet hurt.
• Feeling nervous? Talk to the show director. They always know something reassuring to say.
• Pockets! If you like to wear dresses (as I do) make sure you have pockets or a strong belt so that the sound guy has somewhere to put the mic pack. (Because if you don’t, they have to hang it off your back bra strap, which is awkward for everybody.)
• Be caffeinated. Think you know how much caffeine you’ll need? Double it.

If you missed TEDxMidwest this year, follow the conference on Twitter for news about speaker videos and next year’s event!

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Welcome to today’s Reverberations, in which we tell you what our other blogs and products are up to.

On our publishers blog, we have part 2 of the importance of email marketing for bloggers:

In Part 1, we explored how to build your email list; the next step is when to send mailers, what to say, and how to say it in an effective and memorable way.

The people on your email list represent your most connected readers. They’ve taken the time to subscribe to your blog, so they’re clearly interested in your content. Reaching out on a regular basis is a great way to keep them engaged, but remember to be strategic about timing.

Read the rest.

On the Wordnik blog we have a post about the language of the 1920s:

No doubt: the 1920s were the bee’s knees. But the ads banking on the latest film adaptation of The Great Gatsby would have you believe the Jazz Age was all about flappers, fashion, and parties. It was more than that.

Read the rest.

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Welcome to the monthly Reverb news roundup. Every last Monday of the month we give a recap of Reverb, our products, and people in the news.

The search engine DuckDuckGo is now using the Brobdingnagian Wordnik as their featured dictionary.

Temboo, “1500+ cloud-based code components that let you create without limits,” used the Wordnik API among several others to put together Martha, a helper bot which can answer almost any question. Give it a try!

Our founder Erin McKean will be hosting TEDxMidwest May 2 through May 4, and don’t miss Erin’s latest Wall Street Journal Week in Words columns, which include words such as mongo, chamfered, smart pig, and uptalk.

Finally, be sure to check out our newly revamped About page.

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Welcome to today’s Reverberations, in which we tell you what our other blogs and products are up to.

On our publishers blog, we have our weekly blogger news roundup:

This week Facebook announced its purchase of Parse, a mobile-backend-as-a-service startup (say that five times fast), for a reported $85 million. Meanwhile, Google closed the deal on Wavii, a natural language processing startup, for more than $30 million.

Read the rest.

On the Wordnik blog is our weekly language blog roundup:

Ben Zimmer took a look at a surreal week in Boston; Lucy Ferriss examined the phrase, first responder; and Jen Doll discussed the words we use when we talk about terrorists. Republicans are watching their language in debates about undocumented immigrants, and teens in Baltimore have created their own gender neutral pronoun.

Read the rest.

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Welcome to today’s Reverberations, in which we tell you what our other blogs and products are up to.

On the Wordnik blog we celebrated Talk Like Shakespeare Day with a short dictionary of Shakespearean insults:

assinego

Thersites: “Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinego may tutor thee.”

Act 2. Scene I, Troiles and Cressida

Assinego, also spelled asinego, is “a little ass” or “foolish fellow.” The word comes from the Spanish asnico, diminutive of asno, “ass.”

Read the rest.

On our publishers blog, we have some tips on how to write for search engine optimization:

One of the most powerful ways for a blogger to get their content discovered is through online searches. The goal, of course, is to have your article rank at the top of the search results for relevant queries. The process of improving your article’s search rank is known as search engine optimization (SEO), and there are several things bloggers can do to rank higher by the way they write and publish their blog posts.

Read the rest.

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Welcome to today’s Reverberations, in which we tell you what our other blogs and products are up to.

On the Wordnik blog, we have our latest roundup of favorite TV words:

baby boom

Jenny: “We’re in the middle of a baby boom.”

Episode 2, Season 2, Call the Midwife, April 7, 2013

A baby boom is “a sudden large increase in the birthrate,” especially referring to the one that occurred starting in the early 1940s through the early 1960s in the United States. The post WWII-baby boom in the United Kingdom was shorter, “peaking in 1946.” A baby boomer is someone born during these years.

The earliest use of baby boom is from 1880, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

Read the rest.

On our publishers blog, we have post about how to find your voice:

There’s a term in pop culture for when a mediocre TV show suddenly becomes better: Riker’s beard. It refers to Captain William T. Riker, a character from Star Trek: The Next Generation. After Riker grew a beard, the show improved greatly, according to fans.

As per TV Tropes, the show’s sudden improvement probably had less to do with Riker’s hirsuteness and more to do with “a change in direction” and “an increased willingness to experiment with the format and scope of the show.”

Your blog and personal branding are like a television show in that it may take you a while to go from average to “completely awesome,” as Urban Dictionary says. Here are a five ways that may help.

Read the rest.

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Welcome to today’s Reverberations, in which we tell you what our other blogs and products are up to.

On the Wordnik blog we have a roundup of 10 weird taxes:

pannage

“The importance of the family had thus dwindled, but they still retained the old Saxon manor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough to afford pannage to a hundred pigs – ‘sylva de centum porcis,’ as the old family parchments describe it.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company, 1890

Pannage was, in medieval England, “a tax paid for the privilege of feeding swine in the woods.” It was apparently a common practice to release domestic pigs in the forest to let them feed on “ fallen acorns, beechmast, chestnuts or other nuts.”

Pannage also refers to the act of pigs foraging in the woods, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), as well as the fallen acorns, etc. that they feed on. The word ultimately comes from the Latin pastio, “feeding, pasturing.”

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On the publishers blog we have some tips on how to write compelling blog titles:

Think of your title like a movie preview: after viewing it, everybody will have an opinion. “Wow, I’m going to see that.” “Ugh, boring.” “I don’t get it.” Based on that initial opinion, your readers will make a judgment about whether or not they’ll read on. The best way to ensure that they will is to hook them from the start with a straightforward and memorable title.

Read the rest.

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Welcome to today’s Reverberations, in which we tell you what our other blogs and products are up to.

On the Wordnik blog, we have our latest roundup of favorite TV words:

arabber

Andrew Zimmern: “Starting in the late 1800s, arabbers were a common sight in east coast cities, markets on wheels, bringing fresh produce to people before there were neighborhood supermarkets and offering a living to African Americans who were barred from taking jobs traditionally offered to whites.”

“Baltimore and Chesapeake Bay,” Bizarre Foods America, March 25, 2013

An arabber is “a street merchant who sells fruits and vegetables from a colorful, horse-drawn cart.” The term seems to come from street arab, an obsolete and now offensive term for “a homeless vagabond in the streets of a city.” (Fans of The Wire will remember that arabbers played a part in several seasons of that show.)

Read the rest.

On our publishers blog is our weekly Blogger News Roundup:

Yesterday legendary film critic Roger Ebert died after a long battle with cancer. Matthew Ingram wrote about Ebert’s enthusiastic use of Twitter while Mental Floss reminded us of 10 movies Ebert really hated. Even The Onion was sincere with its tribute. Ebert was, and is, an inspiration to all who love stories. We’ll miss him.

Read the rest.

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