In the coming months, several European countries will start electing (and possibly replacing) their current political figures. In particular, this year is seen by many as a crucial one for the future of the European Union, with the elections in France and Germany leading the charge. The recent general elections in the Netherlands and last year’s political events in the US serve as strong examples of how news organisations must adapt to the changing demands of their clients and the technological resources they use in order to provide moment-by-moment coverage of live events.

It’s in moments like these when a blogging tool like Sourcefabric’s Live Blog bridges the gap between the substantial amount of content and the consumer need for up-to-the-minute updates.

Apart from its ability to instantly synthesize and share live breaking news content such as polling results, party tweets, quotes, and coverage of live streams – all done by posting a link or using the embed feature – Live Blog 3.1 has recently been outfitted with several new live blogging tools which optimise breaking news coverage. This provides viewers and readers with engaging, minute-by-minute content.

Custom Post Types – Show Percentages as They Arrive

Among the new features is the Custom Post Types, a free-types management tool which gives you creative freedom over how to present the latest news best-suited to your coverage (available for Live Blog instances of type Team or higher). When you cover the French elections, one of the uses of the free-types tool would be to create custom-designed posts for all the party names in color-coded, image-containing graphs or charts. As the polling results change with each passing moment, all you need to do is simply add the percentage to your blog feed and then publish it for your audience.