This morning we quietly released some huge enhancements to SocialSpark. When you said you were confused by the blog claim process and all of the fields that made up Blogger Account creation, we listened! Most of the blogger account management features have been completely overhauled. Here’s a rundown of what’s changed:
New Features and Enhancements
New Blogger Dashboard
When you go to Manage Blogger Account now, you’ll see your qualified Opportunities listed, as well as some “To-Do” items. We’ll be tweaking those as we go to make them more customized for you, but for now a few items there to help new users get acquainted with SocialSpark. All of the account management tools are now listed in the toolbar in the right-hand column of the Blogger Dashboard.
New Blog Claim Process
Claiming your blog is now incredibly simple, and there’s no separate submission necessary to get Customer Love to review a claimed blog. As soon as you put the code on your blog and SocialSpark verifies that it’s there, your blog is added to the reviewers’ queue. The new, simpler claim process is also a part of new blog submission for existing users, so you’ll never miss this important step of adding a blog again.
Separate Blogger & Advertiser Signups
Since the new Blogger signup has been streamlined and customized just for bloggers, there is a separate signup form for bloggers and advertisers (where there used to be one generic signup for both). Just select the type of account you’d like to create from the drop-down you see when you click “Get Started!”
Sponsored Post Opp Just for New Accounts
For users who signed up after this morning’s release, there is a new "I Signed Up for SocialSpark" Opportunity to get bloggers acquainted with the post creation process and let us know what their first impressions are. (This is only for new users, so if you don’t see it in your account, you won’t be able to participate in this one). Any new blogger with a claimed blog is eligible to take the Opp, but remember your blog must meet the marketplace requirements and be approved in order to be paid for the post. The post expires after five days, and only the first blog submitted by a new user is eligible.
New Blogger Account Profile Editing Form
The old blogger profile editing form was about 6 tabs, with dozens of checkboxes and text fields and radio buttons… Totally confusing. We’re sorry about that. The new one is much, much nicer. (Thanks, Marty!)
Upgraded Application Framework
Faster, more secure, other stuff to make Dray happy. (Nerdstuff, nerdstuff, nerdstuff.)
Other Cool Stuff
- Ability to Edit Privacy Preferences from SocialSpark. You can now edit your blog’s privacy preferences from SocialSpark, without logging into IZEARanks. There is only one privacy setting for blogger accounts now, too, which removed, what, 12 checkboxes from the profile form? : )
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Better user feedback. Did that profile form save? Is my blog in the reviewer queue? Am I dreaming? We’ve worked hard to provide better feedback to users for completed actions, especially when it comes to updating your profile and adding blogs.
- [Bugfix] Blogs belonging to deactivated users no longer appear in search results.
Prop for you!
I’d like to give a huge shout-out to the SocialSpark team — Eric, Dray, Marty (graphics), Steven (QA), and yours truly — who worked on this project and all of its dependencies for most of the last two months. We closed over 100 feature and bug tickets in order to get this thing done for you! And as always, I need to thank you, the bloggers, for all of the feedback you’ve given us to help us improve the signup and activation process for new users.
If you ever have questions or suggestions about SocialSpark, feel free to submit them to us at our Get Satisfaction support portal.
Amazing new updates, so really glad to see and test these new changes. Quick question, my wife’s blog http://www.rockalongproductions.com has been sitting in the review queue for weeks, and a ticket opened on GetSatisfaction hasn’t been answered in days.
Looks like this blog was claimed on the 5th of January, but not actually submitted until the 15th. Since we’re just coming off of a 3 day holiday weekend, I would expect to hear back from us on the review in the next few days.
I don’t see a thread related to the blog review in GS, but you do have one that you replied to regarding your blog and the issues you have been having with RealRank. Again, the 3 day weekend would be a factor in the delay and we will be sure to take another look as soon as we can.
All the Best,
Carri
[...] blog post which includes much more detail as well as outlining the new claiming process here on IZEA’s Blog.-Dragon BloggerShare and [...]
Awesome! The changes looks easier for newbie. Thanks for the updates guys.
Prop 4 U! Ha Ha…. you crack me up Jamie!
The new update looks good but one thing that I really want is a button to delete one of my stupid blogs. I can delete my 3rd blog but not the 1st and 2nd blogs. Hope you guys will work for that. Thank you.
@Dragon Blogger: I did respond to your wife’s ticket in Get Satisfaction 5 days ago. We’ve had two business days since then, so please be patient while the Customer Love team catches up with the backlog of blog reviews.
@Samsudin: You cannot delete a blog once it has had posts on it, but we have planned a feature to ‘deactivate’ blogs that are no longer active. That way we and advertisers can view the history of an inactive blog without the expectation that there will be future activity on it.
So awesome! Major, major improvements, and I have no doubt our new users will appreciate this.
Go, Team, Go!
great. but is there a way to claim blog even without putting the code in the HTML template? you see, I have another blog in wordpress. It has its own domain which I bought from WP as well. But I cannot edit the html because its not accessible for some reason unlike when you have a blog in Blogger and purchase the domain. I’m kind of mad with WP! lol. I hope there’s a claim process similar to PPP where you just put a word code in your existing post and claim your blog. Is that possible here in SS?
@jules: Sure, you can just uncheck the box for “include ITK code” and you’ll get a claim code that is just a text hash. You can put that in a post (or anything else that will show on the home page of your blog). That will claim your blog, but you won’t have ITK installed, so you won’t get a RealRank. Much of the targeting for SocialSpark is based off of RealRank (and other stats provided by ITK) so this is not recommended. If you can figure out how to get the script installed permanently on the homepage of your blog, it will be much more fruitful.
Hello! may I just know how long does it take for one to wait for blogs with pending verification?
I have waited for two weeks already.
Thank you so much! for taking time to reply.
@VernaLiza,
We apologize for the delay in review time. When the blogger sign-up changes went into effect, all of the blogs that were claimed in the system, but never submitted for review over the past 18 months were submitted to our team for review at once.
As you can imagine, this is a lot of blogs!
We will be sure to get to yours just as soon as we can and we appreciate your patience.
All the Best,
Carri
[...] I still think it was necessary, especially as it concerned collaboration and multi-writer blogs, but I’m not sure that the energy spent on this really bore fruit. update We were all very vocal about updating the sign up and claim process in Social Spark and I missed this update that came out about 3 weeks ago, drastically over hauling and improving the process. [...]
very cool and I’m very happy to see the improvement.
@Carri Holy Cow! Need some part time Insider help?
thank you very much for taking time to reply … if that’s the case then I have to wait further… that’s OK… all the best!
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