Blogging Functionality within easyeMerge!

May 31, 2011

In our continuing effort to expand our social media services, we released a new feature that allows you to connect to one or more blogs in your eMerge account. We support connections to Tumblr, WordPress, Posterous and Blogger.  Once you have linked your account with one of these blog platforms, you can send immediate or scheduled blog posts without having to leave our interface.  Below is a brief overview of each blog and the actions we support.

Tumblr

Tumblr is one of the newer blogging platforms available.  The focus of this blogging platform is to make posting items like text, images, video, etc. as easy and convenient as possible for the end-user. You can create new posts from the Tumblr site, your smartphone, via email, call in audio or third party platforms like eMerge. Tumblr is designed as “software as a service” so there is no program to download and accounts are free to create.  You can send posts from eMerge with full styling of the fonts including size, weight, color, underlines and italics.

WordPress

WordPress is a mature blogging platform that has expanded its feature set to the point that many consider it a full content management system. You can either set up a free, hosted account on WordPress.com or your can download the software yourself from WordPress.org and use your own hosting solution.   Because WordPress can be hosted in different ways, you have to be careful with your settings in order to allow for Remote Publishing.  By default, WordPress.com accounts allow for remote publishing, so no settings need to be modified.  If you use a solution hosted outside of WordPress.com, you will need to turn on the XML-RPC setting under Settings->Writing in your admin area in order to enable posting from eMerge. You can send posts from eMerge with full styling of the fonts including size, weight, color, underlines and italics.

Posterous

Posterous is another new-style blogging platform that recently hit the market. Their focus, much like Tumblr’s, is to make posting to blogs an easy process.  They have mobile apps for iPhone and Android plus they allow posting from email and other sources.  Accounts are free to create and they do the hosting for you.  Posterous has certain filters that do not allow for coloring your text when sending from eMerge, but styling options like weight and underline can still be sent.

 Blogger

Blogger is Google’s free blogging platform.  Having started in 1999, it was one of the original services that popularized blogging as a publishing format for the web.  You will need a Google Account to set up a Blogger site.  If you already use Gmail, this is a simple process.  You can send posts from eMerge with full styling of the fonts including size, weight, color, underlines and italics.