What is Pen.io? New online content publisher

Posted by Hayden Allen-Vercoe on February 02 2012
Filed in Online Marketing Tips and Advice, Social Media Marketing

When it comes to online content, Wordpress is the dominant platform. The vast majority of Orbital Media’s client sites are wordpress based.

The reason for this is Wordpress is clean, easy to update and, in our experience, Google seems to love it. Other online publishing platforms include Blogger, Tumblr and Posterous – but for us, Wordpress is king.

There is a new online content publisher on the block, called Pen.io. What is Pen.io? Well, if Wordpress is the equivalent of a smart graphics design package, Pen.io is a scrap of paper and a pencil.

Simplicity is key….and I love Pen.io for it.

The ‘quickest way to publish online’, Pen.io is superb at what it does. No technical skill is required and sign up is completed just by entering a page name and page password. These two fields are all you need to create a new webpage.

You can see below an example of Pen.io in action, our social media Pen.io page took minutes to publish. It takes me longer to make a sandwich…

“The original project and idea was simply to create the fastest way to put a piece of content online,” Pen.io founder Anthony Feint says. “I was looking at WordPress and thinking it was quite complicated just to put a recipe or quote online,” he adds. “I didn’t necessarily want to start a whole new blog just to quickly put up a single piece of content.”

This is what Pen.io is great for. A single page of online content published in a matter of minutes.

What you do with this simple webpage is up to you. Whilst not having the whistles and bells of Wordpress, Pen.io does have the capability to insert HTML, images and YouTube videos.

Pen.io can be used as a very basic business webpage, with contact detail (or anything you choose to add to the particular page). I would recommend Pen.io for publishing upcoming events, recipes, essays or songs. I guess the anonymity of Pen.io will see some pretty full on rants going on here too – sadly.

Pen.io sees 300,000 visitors a day and this number is increasing. Teachers and students are embracing it and it is easy to see why.

Pen.io has relevance. It sits nicely in the middle of the likes of Wordpress or Posterous and a social network status update. More than an update, less than a blog.

“WordPress and Posterous aren’t as relevant as they were before. People are definitely using Twitter and Facebook more, but they still want a place to put their content,” Feint says. “So used in conjunction with [Twitter and Facebook], Pen.io is great.”

Feint is correct. Using Pen.io in tandem with your social networks makes perfect sense. Announcing your latest Pen.io page to your followers really works. That list of tour dates can be mentioned on your facebook page with a link for you fans to the Pen.io tour dates page. Simple, yet effectively brilliant.

Pen.io – love it. Just need to get the band together now….

Look out for our ‘Pimp my Pen.io’, coming to this blog very soon!