Everything Typepad

The Friday Roundup: World Cup Edition

We're back for the second installment of Friday Roundup! Once again, we're sharing great posts that caught our attention. This week, we've got a slew of World Cup posts, some NBA Finals drama and a mix of other good stuff.

• National Geographic Adventure shares six travel tips for visiting the World Cup in South Africa.

• Robert Evans, a former soccer referee, now runs For the Integrity of Soccer which covers the "art and science of refereeing". Earlier this week, the site shared thoughts on the refereeing in the Argentina v. Nigeria match.

• I Am Baker, a lovely blog with even lovelier photography, shares some Facebook Like cookies that were made for a bachelorette party.

• Soccer by Ives has been providing fantastic coverage of the World Cup. In addition to recaps and news, they've also been liveblogging.

• The Photodiarist takes photos of ordinary moments and posted some sleepy NYC moments last week.

• On a more serious note, The Health Care Blog ran an op-ed piece about encouraging medical students to choose primary care.

• Finally, Red's Army, a Boston Celtics blog, posts a touching tribute to Doc Rivers, the Celtics' coach.

Now it's your turn! Share your favorite TypePad (or any blog!) post from the last couple weeks in the comments.

What you should "Like" about Facebook Integration on TypePad

Facebook Like connects your blog to millions of people on Facebook and we have the fancy graphs to prove it!  For those of you who haven't considered integrating the Facebook Like buttons into your blog, you may want to take a look at these stats and give it a second thought. TypePad has full integration of the Facebook Like button, both for your blog sidebar and your post footer, so there's no reason to not give it a try.

When we introduced Facebook Like for the blog sidebar, allowing any reader from Facebook to "Like" your blog and receive post updates directly in their news streams, over 1500 bloggers installed the widget leading to an overall 50% increase of referral traffic from Facebook to all TypePad blogs. This is, as we say, a good thing.

Referral Traffic from Facebook Like

But wait, it gets even better! After hearing all of your requests we added the Facebook Like button for the post footer in a second release, allowing readers to "Like" just a post and share that update with their Facebook networks. Turns out that considerably boosted traffic as well. Within a few weeks, over 2,400 bloggers added this widget and referral traffic from Facebook has increased by 200%.

As you can tell, there's no denying that readership on Facebook can have a  powerful impact on a blog's traffic with the right tools. TypePad bloggers such as Andrew Bleiman of Zooborns.com and Jennifer of realia reported in the Everything TypePad comments some healthy growth in their traffic numbers since they added the "Like" button. We encourage the rest of you to try it out and let us know if you see any fruitful results!

The Friday Roundup

Lots of things are baking here at TypePad including this awesome new update that we'll be doing weekly. Check out the posts that made the rounds at our office. Keep your eyes open for a shout out on your own blog in the coming weeks.

• Velveteen Minds shows us how to "carry the big stick" in social media.
• Our very own, NataliePo, explains the "NEXT" phenomenon and how awkward situations are avoided in the office.
• The Scenestar jams to Stars new video for "Fixed", off their upcoming second album debuting at the end of June.
• Demented beasts as art? Try not to scare the kids with mmooch's paintings for the "Too Art 4 TV" show .
• Still top of our minds, Ries talks about branding in the wake of BP's oil spill."They talked the talk but never walked the walk."
• Rahul made us laugh with this meme poster: Michael Cera is Superbad, ya know?
• Thank you, Social Media Handyman, for this great write-up about why TypePad works for Small Businesses. We couldn't have agreed more. :)
• Some food for thought from Seth Godin. For work, life or both.

Like what you've read? Be sure to follow the linked profiles to stay up to date on these blogs. Until next week, we'll be seeing you at the ballpark. Have you seen a really awesome post on TypePad? Tell us about it in the comments!

Bay Area Bloggers — We Want to Meet You!

Following suit with our Gotham City office, we've started the TypePad San Francisco Meetup with our very first pow-wow Thursday, June 10th @ 6pm, right here in our Six Apart office!

Join the Meetup!

The first meetup will primarily focus on you, the TypePad blogger. We'll be answering questions, providing demos of the latest and greatest TypePad goodies, and attempt to connect userpics to faces. Folks from the team will be here so come by and say HI! even if you don't have questions. We'd love to meet you and hear your thoughts about the product. Our next gathering will be more developer-focused, with loads of information on the TypePad Platform API's and client-libraries.

We're open for ideas for future meetups, so chime in with your suggestions here in the comments. Looking forward to seeing y'all in the near future!

Gotham City Blogging

We held our very first TypePad NYC Meetup last week in the Six Apart office! Good turnout, good pizza, great bloggers. TypePad has changed a lot in the last few months, so we talked through the new interface and some of the new features. We covered better content management for bloggers, better design and discoverability tools (search!) for bloggers and their readers, and a ton of new community features that are just plain good for everybody. Here are some of the folks who attended and shared their blogs:

• Daryn from mrpoplife.com, entertainment and celebrity news extraordinaire
• Luis from Latino Small Business Owner, a blog (en Español) supporting Latino businesses in the tri-state area
• Eric from brandng.com, his blog about marketing and advertising
• Serge the Concierge -- the "French Guy from New Jersey" :)
• Pam from Infosearcher, and a fellow librarian

A few others stopped by to check out the latest in TypePad, including Vivek from Links Alpha, Eric from NY Drinker, and Andrew, a designer.  Thanks to all of the folks who made it out amidst the torrential downpour!

We want to keep these meetups useful and relevant for you, the bloggers, so be sure to check out our TypePad NYC Meetup group for polls and feedback from the event.  We'll be having meetups regularly in our offices, and the topics will rotate depending on your suggestions.

Not in New York? How about San Francisco? Keep your eyes peeled for an announcement about TypePad happenings on the West Coast!