Product update: bring content to life with LIVE BLOGGING

2020 looks set to be a major year for the world of sport. With a number of world-class events lined up ahead of this summer, including the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympics, it’s never been more important for rights holders and rights owners to execute a content strategy that will sit at the core of every sports fan’s experience this year.

In a fast-moving market, it’s a priority for every sports entity to provide the end-user with detailed, real-time coverage. LIVE BLOGGING, Deltatre’s powerful tool that enhances fan engagement through in-depth storytelling, enters the new year with a fresh update.

The new version introduces improved functionality to increase the levels of fan engagement during live coverage of events, as well as a friendlier environment for editorial teams to control the workflow when publishing new content.

Excited? Read on below.

#1. ‘Key moments’ for improved navigation

The new concept of ‘key moments’ is at the core of this update for LIVE BLOGGING. A timeline of posts now provides ‘at-a-glance’ overviews of all the most important moments of the live coverage of events.

Picture this. You’re following an event in real-time but you have joined halfway through the game. Key moments allow you to quickly catch-up on the “need-to-know” aspects of what’s happened so far, live from the venue or taken from third-party sources.

The feature also has a high degree of customization. Editorial teams remain in full control, able to easily select which posts should be considered a key moment in the back office and attribute SEO-friendly titles.

Better yet, the general layout of the timeline can be configured and implemented to better fit the branding of the website.

#2. Customized posts appearance for a more impactful experience

Storytelling and speed - the two defining criteria of success in digital publishing around sports. And that’s where we put our focus on the latest LIVE BLOGGING release.

We’ve updated our composer panel to allow content makers and editors to leverage ‘presets’ to streamline the delivery of content. Have a group of different reporters contributing to a single live match reporting stream? Easily attribute their posts to their profile at the click of a button. Does a sponsor ‘own’ a proportion of your updates? Give them visibility around the most exciting moment of the game, right as it happens, by simply selecting them from a drop-down list.

Captions, descriptions, customized titles and short previews are also a few examples of the configurable capabilities available within the back office.

This release is all about giving operators granular control, in an uncomplicated fashion. So you have the flexibility to make each update your own, but without lifting any heavy technical weight.

#3. Measure performances in a smarter way

Analysis, implementation, iteration - the secret to any successful content strategy. Being able to measure the performance of your posts is essential to every editorial team. This latest update adds further functionality for content makers to understand how users engage with your content.

Analytics is now available as an out-of-the-box capability through integrating a standard widget. Easily configure Google Analytics to support additional tracking systems for specific, selected metrics. Focus on specific posts, how many users read a piece, or how much time they spend on a specific item. Additionally, the tracking model allows you to measure the levels of interaction with other types of published content - think carousels, links and other rich media.

Other improvements

And here are some of the other improvements we’ve made to LIVE BLOGGING this quarter.

• Simplified the management of blog updates. Editing titles, descriptions, tags and more is more streamlined from the back office than previously.
  
• Inclusion of additional filtering options for published content, allowing users to quickly find what they’re looking for.
  
• Improved findability on main search engines thanks to support for enriched metadata on content.

Final thoughts

The first release for LIVE BLOGGING in 2020 gives even more power to editorial teams to provide fans with a spot-on live coverage and an unprecedented depth of detail. And what’s coming next? We’re already working through our Q2 release which will come out well in time before a busy summer of sports.