CompuKol Connection » article submision

The Coupling of Social Media and Journalism

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:00:00 +0000

With social media having such an incredibly strong foothold and print media stepping back a bit, you may wonder what is in the future for journalism. In the future, how will social media connect with journalism?

Social media has tremendously changed the way that journalists do their jobs. In order for journalists to be successful nowadays, they must be heavily involved with social media. They need to be tweeting, updating their various social media profiles and blogging. If they are not doing that, other journalists will be involved with social media and they will have a serious advantage over them. In the world of journalism, all successes depend on getting the story before anyone else does. Social media has created a filter for high-quality content. Another wonderful edge that journalists who are involved with social media have is that they are gaining the trust and credibility of their readers and they can interact and continue to strengthen the relationships. Journalists use social media to collect and syndicate the news. So, what will the relationship between social media and journalists be like in the future?

Journalists’ involvement in social media

Many businesses are actively using social media platforms to include news content in their web presences. There is an emphasis being placed on the quality and uniqueness of the news content. Many social media companies are either partnering with or buying news sites so that the two can offer both quality and quantity. The news content is customized for individuals and there is as much content as a person could possibly ever want or need.

Social media’ involvement in journalism

Nowadays, there are many journalists who no longer work with traditional print journalism at all. Their writing skills haven’t changed at all, however, the dissemination has changed dramatically. Because of the expansive capabilities of social media, journalists can offer all sorts of opportunities to their readers (such as being able to vote for their favorite news story, for example) that have never been available before. In short, the readers have much more direct and personal involvement with the journalists than ever before. With the interactive feature of social media platforms, it is completely conducive to the readers getting involved and interacting on a regular basis.

What will the future hold?

Social media will allow more people to be heard. Of course, the one thing that can happen is that a large amount of the content will not be high-quality content. Most people will only be interested in content that they really enjoy reading. When it comes to journalism, the facts must be backed up by credible sources and the credibility factor must be very high. There must be a great deal of substance to the content. Pretty, empty words really won’t go very far with the readers.

Conclusion

Journalists and the entire journalism industry has always been incredibly important. It is important to remember that staying in touch with the public is an objective that is at the top of the priority list and truly fulfills the needs of both sides—the journalists’ needs and the needs of the readers. The industry is ethical, filled with integrity, exciting, informative and educational. Journalists are a group of professionals who are well respected. It makes a great deal of sense for journalists to get involved with social media because, after all, it is all about the content and content is king!

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Blogging 101

Shari Weiss — Tue, 17 May 2011 09:00:00 +0000

“I see classes offered at the library all the time…how to use the Internet, etc. I guess for seniors who don’t have a clue about it, I kind of feel like them, but how to go about promoting my business online. I don’t know if a blog is the way to go and if it is, where and how do I do it right? It is not in my budget yet to build a quality website” – a CompuKol reader.

Yes, a blog is definitely a great way to promote a business online these days – now that everyone can become a publisher at NO cost, or at relatively low cost. Anyone with an Internet connection can post his or her thoughts, opinions, and activities on the Global Whiteboard for people to read and comment on.

Here are 10 basic reasons to start blogging:

Publishing platform
Control your message
Delivery system for your messages
24/7 Online network
New skill development
Increased perception through Web 2.0 sources
Visibility
Reputation management (your silence allows your critics to win)
Build Google presence
Research increases your expertise

Follow these 5 steps to get you blogging

Step 1: Before proceeding to Step 2, make sure that you really want to start a blog.

Are you passionate enough about a topic that you want to write and publish your ideas on a regular basis?
Can you commit to a consistent schedule, eg, once a week? Twice a week? Twice a day?
Will you be comfortable learning as you’re doing? Think of Picasso, who said, “I am always doing that which I don’t know how to do in order to learn to do it.”
Can you be patient about putting in effort before you see the big “payoff,” ie, results and lots of readers?
Will you make time to read other peoples’ blogs and comment on them?
Would you like to be an authentic, honest, interesting Voice in the blogosphere?

If the answer is YES to all six questions, proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Spend a little bit of time searching the Internet for How to Blog articles. Many may be more advanced than a beginner can understand, but that’s OK. Reading them will still help you, and they may provide links to more basic articles.

Step 3: Do NOT wait until you think you will write a perfect blog post. If I had waited, I might never have gotten started. Common Wisdom suggests that you listen to Nike, ie, Just Do It. You will learn from your mistakes. After all, when you do get started, few people will know you are “out there,” so you can build your chops and publish content, which can always be revised and/or deleted later on.

Step 4; Choose a blogging platform. My suggestion is that you go with WordPress – the most popular and well supported blog tool and publishing platform. Here you have another choice: the absolutely FREE http://wordpress.com or the companion platform http://wordpress.org, which requires you to (a) have a domain name that will cost you less than $10 a year and (b) a blog hosting company that will cost around $10 a month.

Why would you pay when you can blog for free?

Actually, my suggestion is that you do choose the free option, wordpress.com, for a month or so to make sure that you want to commit to the practice. My blog post: http://sharisax.com/2009/10/08/how-to-start-a-blog-step-by-step-and-voila-youre-a-publisher/ will help you set up a free blog.

Again, why would you want to pay to blog?

Self-hosting, ie, a blog on a platform like wordpress.org, will offer you much more control, including options like the following:

1. Your own URL and opportunity to build your brand without having to use the platform name, eg, http://sharisax.com vs my “free” blog that was at http://sharisaxiisoutthere.wordpress.com

2. An almost unlimited number of designs (or themes) that can be found free online or designed uniquely for your blog by a professional web developer

3. Opportunities to sell products and services as well as include advertising

4. Addition of a large variety of “plugins” or applications that will extend the capabilities of your blog

Step 5: Just do it! Get started. Here is how to write your first blog post on the free platform: http://sharisax.com/2010/04/09/how-to-write-that-first-blog-post-on-wordpress-com/.

Conclusion: Basically, a blog can put a human face on a company, and people do business with people, not organizations. Bloggers are the new influencers. You can build your authority and influence by knowing your audience and writing relevant, original, interesting, keyword-rich content. Use your blog to become the Go-To source for information in your area of expertise.

This article topic was suggested by Jean Linder.

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The Dos and Don’ts of Article Marketing

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You have heard the term “Article Marketing” many times and are hopefully publishing your articles to many websites and educating many people. Article marketing is an art and there are dos and don’ts when it comes to their success.

Electronic article marketing is not any different than traditional marketing. The principles upon which it stands are identical to traditional marketing. The objective of the articles that are being published is to promote your business. Additionally (as always), the main purpose is to build relationships with prospective and existing clients.

When you submit your articles to article directories, you are allowing them to get noticed by search engines, which in turn, will generate more website traffic for you. It is really quite easy to be successful when it comes to submitting, publishing, and syndicating articles. Here is a list of “dos” and “don’ts” when it comes to article marketing.

Dos

Do as much research as possible. It is essential that you know your target audience before you write a single word. You need to identify what your audience wants and needs. You must also try to acquire as much knowledge as possible about the particular subject that you are discussing.
Do make sure that your article content is compelling and informative. Always remember that the articles that you share with others should always be geared toward solving their problems.
Do market, not sell. Always bear in mind that article marketing is not advertising. What you are doing by sharing articles is offering a solution to the reader’s problems, which consequently will incite them to want to buy from you eventually.
Do make full use of search engine optimization tactics. Always make sure that you use strong and appropriate keywords and key phrases, choose the best title possible, make sure that you place your keywords where they will be most effective, put in strong links, and make sure that you have an appropriate author resource box in your articles so that you can optimize your traffic and search engine rankings.
Do choose quality over quantity. It is much wiser and more effective to writer fewer articles of high quality than many articles that are of mediocre quality. You really won’t be doing yourself or your business any favors if you don’t concentrate on the quality.

Don’ts

Don’t give the impression (ever) that you are trying to sell something. Blatant self-promotion is never a good thing. There are many other more discreet ways to get your point across when it comes to your offerings. The hard sell will be resented and a possible consequence for you might be that you will be banned from those particular directories. It also detracts from your credibility and from the trust that others have in you. It is just not worth it.
Don’t use links carelessly. You need to consider your articles as a sales tool but at the same time, you need to be very careful (and very discriminating) about how you use that tool. A good approach is to put your links in the resource box. If you spread the links throughout the body of your articles, you are putting the article in danger of being rejected. It is just too promotional.
Don’t be too verbose in the resource box. If possible, you should avoid words such as “click here,” which you have hyperlinked. It is important to make sure that your words in the resource box really count. You should put high-quality keywords in the resource box as well as other appropriate content and create links through them. This is your golden opportunity to really state what you do and how it connects with all of the great information that you have given to your online connections.
Don’t write excessively long paragraphs. Article directories don’t like long paragraphs. If that is what they receive, they will most likely reformat the content. It is recommended that you use phrases in the form of bullets, whenever you can. If you use that kind of a format, even if the people at the article directory switch things around, your content will still be easy to understand.

Conclusion

Article marketing is critical to the success of your business. You should consider it a great opportunity to educate others about what you do and what you have to offer. It also gives you the opportunity to position yourself as a subject matter expert in your field. Your content should always be fresh, original and compelling. If you can succeed at that type of writing, you will acquire a large number of loyal fans who will want to do business with you more and more.

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Getting People to Read Your Articles

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 11:00:00 +0000

You are diligent and consistent when it comes to posting articles online that are informative and educational for other people. The quality of the writing is superb but you notice that you don’t have a lot of readers. Why not?

If you find that the number of people who are reading your articles is smaller than you would like it to be, there are ways in which you can write that will drive many people to your articles, not only to read what you have written but also to compel people to leave comments and have meaningful interactions with you. Remember that the topic of your article must always touch your audience in some way and make them feel as though you have the answer to their problems.

The metrics of how many people are reading your articles are measurable and very valuable when it comes to being able to understand whether your social media marketing campaign is really working effectively or if it needs some adjustments. Remember that the greater the number of people who read your articles, the greater the potential number of people who will connect with you and eventually will become clients.

Of course, the number of readers will depend, to a certain extent, on your particular niche. However, there are other steps that you can take in order to help increase your readership:

A fantastic title: The power of your title rests with the first three to five words. If you choose the correct words for your title, you will be shocked at how dramatic the increase in your readership will be. On the other hand, if you choose a title that is ineffective, it will do nothing for your readership. Your title must contain high-quality keywords and it must give a clear idea of what the article is about. The success of your article is in the title, so you need to make sure that it is everything that it should be and more.
Keyword research: Before you write one word of your article, you need to do some research to identify the more powerful and appropriate keywords. You want to choose the keywords that will get the most attention from your readers. Part of your research will involve your target audience. Once you have learned as much information a as possible, you will be able to choose the keywords.
A killer summary: The article summary must be a real attention grabber. It is the part of the article that entices your readers to click on your link and want to read the rest of the article. After the title of the article, the summary is the next most important thing when it comes to grabbing the reader’s attention. The summary should be clear, concise and well organized.
Promotion of your articles through social media: Once you have posted an article, it is extremely important that you tell everyone whom you know about it. You not only want to share your article with those people but you also want them to share your article with other people. When it comes to social media, that is the only time when “viral” is a good thing.
Call-to-Action: It is very important to always include a call-to-action with your article. The main objective of offering an article is to get people to interact with you and they won’t be able to do that if they don’t have a way of reaching you. You should make it as easy as possible on them by including contact information (your URL, phone number, etc).

Conclusion

All of the tips that were mentioned here are simple, straightforward and effective. Sometimes it isn’t enough to just write a high-quality article. The promotion of that article as well as the strategic placement and distribution of it are as critical as the article itself. There is a great deal that goes into offering a successful article online. If you follow the advice given here, you will see that more and more people will want to read your articles and will reach out and interact with you.

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The Science Behind Enticing Blogs

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 10:00:18 +0000

It is well known that fresh and exciting content is critical to your web presence and online reputation. There are a lot of things to consider when writing a blog article. The science behind the success is just as important.

There are many different things to think about when it comes to writing and subsequently publishing an effective blog article.

First of all, it is important to remember that you have only 3 seconds in which to grab your readers before they will become disinterested and move on to someone else's website. If you are not able to entice them in 3 seconds, they won't pay any attention to the rest of your article.
If you are fortunate enough to get your readers beyond your title, they will arrive at your teaser (or first) paragraph. Your teaser paragraph really has to grab them and in that paragraph, you must communicate clearly with them about how you are going to solve their problems. Your expertise and wealth of experience are of little interest to them.
If you have gotten your readers past your teaser paragraph, they will most likely read the rest of the article. You should consider that your readers are very busy people and that they don't have the time or the patience to read long-winded prose. They like helpful ideas that are short and to the point. Bullet points are an excellent way to break up long, boring paragraphs.
Your concluding paragraph should be a quick summation of all of the concepts that you have already mentioned in your article. This paragraph can actually serve as a useful, little cheat sheet that they can carry with them in one form or another.
One of the most critical elements in your blog article is your Call-to-Action statement. If you have the most incredible, wise, informative article and you don't give your readers any opportunity to contact you, it has all been a wasted effort. in your Call-to-Action statement, you should make sure that you either give them an Email address or a phone number so that they can easily contact you. This will be the beginning of your interactions with your readers and you will build relationships with them that will hopefully last a very long time.

The science behind the success

Now that the parts of the actual article and specifically what to do in order to make them a success have been discussed, let's speak about the science behind syndicating your blog article. Regarding the frequency of your blog articles, if your goal is to continue to increase your online exposure and reputation, publishing three articles a week seems to work extremely well.

To drill down to even more specificity, posting your articles on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday seem to be the optimal days of the week. Research has shown that publishing on Mondays and Fridays is not a good idea. When people start their week on Monday, they have tons of Emails to go through as well as other important things that have been sitting throughout the weekend. Friday is also not a good day because people are anxious to start their weekend and don't have the patience to read new articles online. Saturday seems to work because, surprisingly, people want to stay connected on the weekend.

Now that the optimal days of the week have been established, let's speak for a minute about the times of the day to post. The best time to post is at 6 am (before people start their work day). You will find that a great deal of people are paying attention to what you are publishing at that hour and they will be more inclined to leave comments on your articles, which is exactly what you want to happen.

Regarding the length of your blog articles, anywhere from 500 to 1,000 words is perfectly acceptable. Anymore than that and people will grow impatient and not want to read the entire article. Of course, if your writing is compelling and exciting enough, they will read what you write no matter what the length.

Conclusion

As has been discussed here, there are two critical pieces to successfully enticing readers with your blog articles. The first piece, of course, is the quality of the writing. The second piece is how you choose to share your articles with your readers from a logistical perspective. If you follow the advice given here, you will enjoy a great deal of success and more and more readers will be wanting to read more and more of what you are offering and will want to interact with you on a regular basis.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Build Credibility and Trust With Content

Michael Cohn — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:22:46 +0000

You could have the most sophisticated and beautiful website design and the most interesting content and still, all of your visitors will have a different reaction to both. So, how do you maximize conversions?

You are communicating with visitors in some manner, simply by virtue of the fact that you have a Web presence (a website and valuable content). Your visitors will naturally want to take advantage of your call to action. You need to treat them as close friends who are going through some sort of crisis.

Your visitors need you to listen, validate and understand their needs on a deeper level than anyone else has ever shown to them. After you have proven yourself to them, you must guide them and make them feel confident that they can depend on you to fulfill their needs.

Article submission

Another excellent way to build trust and credibility is by submitting a large number of articles. Your valuable content will be appreciated by your visitors and before you realize it, they will be considering you a subject matter expert (SME) in your niche. Being an SME will continue to strengthen your credibility.

Your visitors will turn to you for the answers that they are seeking. Your content submissions can be in the form of blog postings or longer articles, which you submit to article directories.

The majority of article directories allow other people to publish your content on their websites without paying a penny for it. All they need to do is to leave the article and the resource box as is (including your link). The higher-quality your articles and the more frequently you submit them, the higher the probability that they will be picked up by other publishers. Also, you will find that your articles and your links will be all over the Web suddenly. All of this exposure was created by simply writing and publishing an article.

Increasing the number of links back to your website

To put it simply, the greater the number of websites that link back to your website, the more relevant your site will be considered in the eyes of the search engines and thus, the higher your website will appear in the search engine rankings.

Natural (or organic) links are just as, if not more, effective than links that you have to pay for. At the end of every article that you publish, you can put a resource box, which will include a link back to your website. You are also allowed to decide which anchor text you want the link to have. Each article that you publish brings visitors and provides you with a back link.

The power of suggestion

The very first thing that you need to do in your relationships with your visitors is to find a way to get inside their heads. You need to truly understand what they are looking for. Each of your visitors may have a different idea of what will make them happy. It is your responsibility to figure out what each one needs and give it to them.

An effective way to find out what your visitors want and need is to ask them directly. Once you have figured out what they need, your offerings should be of products and services that make them feel really good about themselves and their problems.

Identifying with your visitors builds trust

All of your meaningful relationships (personal and professional) share a common foundation. Both sides need to understand and empathize with each other. Trust will never exist in any relationship if the two people involved don’t truly understand each other.

When it comes to business relationships, if you can convince your website visitors that you really understand them and their needs, they will want to do business with you and they will trust you.

The following are ways that your website content can increase the credibility of your website:

Although you will most likely customize the content that relates to the relationships with each visitor, be very careful not to contradict yourself. Each part of your website content should be complementary to the rest of the content on your website.
Don’t be terrified of expressing some concepts that may be considered negative, such as some shortcoming of your business. That content will make you seem human to your visitors and admitting mistakes will make you seem more trustworthy because you are being honest.
Connecting with your visitors is an excellent idea. However, you must understand that at some point in the future, you will either receive some negative comments or you will be asked a question that you are not able to answer, or both. If and when that occurs, you should never hide from it. You should admit that you don’t know the answer and offer to find out and get back to the visitor who asked the question. In the case with the negative comments, you should deal with them as fairly and humbly as possible.

Conclusion

Building trust and credibility through your website content is not necessarily a difficult thing. You just need to understand that it takes a long time. All relationships that are worthwhile take time.It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. – Confucius

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Captivate Your Readers With a Mind-blowing Blog Article Introduction

Carolyn Cohn — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:51:00 +0000

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."-Lao-tzu. The first paragraph of your blog article is crucial. The reader will only give you three seconds to grab them. Your journey to success begins with those three seconds.

The concept of captivating the reader right off the bat is one that applies to all types of writing. Of course, the first thing that must grab the reader is your headline. After the reader has decided to continue reading, your opening (or teaser) paragraph must not disappoint them. You will lay the groundwork for the entire article with your introductory paragraph.

You need to make your opening paragraph compelling and interesting, of course, but it is only effective once the reader has gotten past your headline. Now, let’s speak about the most effective ways to introduce a blog posting.

You should aim to make it as personal as possible. Try to write something with which the reader will be able to connect. It is of utmost importance for the reader to feel that the information that you are providing will satisfy at least one of their needs.

The way in which you approach the writing of your blog article will determine whether your readers will remain interested in what you have to say or will move on to someone else’s blog posting. If you have figured out how to draw them to your blog article through your headline, you have a responsibility to keep them interested in the rest of the article.

Writing the creative lead

If you can figure out how to effectively present the creative lead (or hook), you will effectively grab the readers’ interest each time. Remember that your hook must be interesting and brief. If you read blog postings of other persuasive bloggers, you will see that those bloggers consistently present enticing opening paragraphs.

In your creative lead, you should be able to captivate the interest your reader in one sentence. As a writer, of course, you will find that it is not always easy to create the perfect hook.

Sometimes the sentence will come easily and naturally and sometimes it will take some time to come up with the perfect hook. In either case, devoting whatever time it takes to writing the perfect lead is worth it. You need to make sure that it is the best that it can possibly be. That will set the stage for the success of the entire article.

The most effective hook is simple and brief and will immediately grab the attention of anyone who reads it. The following are some tips to help you to come up with superb leads:

Open with a quotation: If you are able to open your article with a quotation of someone who is respected and well known, more and more people will start to take an interest in your article.
Ask a question: Asking a question works very well in headlines so it can also work very well in an introductory paragraph. You should try to come up with a question that cannot be answered by the reader without reading your entire article or ask a question that is closely connected to your blog article headline.
Start your introductory paragraph with a statistic or interesting fact: This is a very powerful tool. The more interesting the information that you use, the more interested people will become. Readers love to be fascinated and amazed by shocking statistics or unusual facts.
Speak in metaphors: When it comes to literary devices, metaphors are very powerful and they cause the readers to really think. If you are able to choose a strong enough metaphor that relates to your headline, you will definitely succeed at getting people to start reading and thinking.
Be funny: A great way to connect with your readers is through humor. If you are able to succeed at amusing someone or making them laugh, they will probably want to continue reading your article so that they are amused again and again. Being amused feels really good.

Formatting

In addition to the actual words themselves, you should always keep the formatting of your introductory paragraphs in mind. Using a drop cap is an attention grabber for the reader. It is a very simple technique and works very well with blog articles. You should apply this formatting to every blog article. This will then become a part of your branding.

Changing the font attributes can definitely have a positive effect on the look and feel of your opening paragraph. Readers like to read interesting articles that also appeal to their sense of aesthetics.

Graphic images

Using graphic images in the introductory paragraph will absolutely contribute to the success of your article. The more you are able to connect a graphic image to the significance of your article, the more the reader will be able to relate to it. It is a good idea to try to use graphic images that use the hook techniques mentioned above (humor, metaphors, shock value, etc).

Again, please remember that your opening paragraph is one of the most important paragraphs in your entire article. The closer you tie that paragraph to your headline, the more successful you will be in holding the interest of your readers to the end.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Syndicating Your Content Using RSS Feeds

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:05:26 +0000

You have a website and/or blog and you want to share them with others. You can syndicate your content to other websites related to your industry or niche using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

Syndicating your content not only helps you to promote your website and/or blog but it also is a wonderful strategy for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

The benefits of sharing your content

There are many benefits of sharing (or syndicating) your content to other websites. When you connect with other websites, you are creating a community around your content.

There are many people who own websites who are constantly looking for good-quality content. If you share valuable content with them, you will be creating exposure for your business and your website. More exposure means more website traffic and more links to your website, which is exactly what you want to happen.

Having a lot of traffic as a result of syndicating your content will bring visitors who will be inclined to leave comments, ask questions, share their own thoughts, and give feedback on your content. The result of this is a community around your website and blog content with members who want to interact with each other and are more than happy to tell other people about what you have to offer.

The more links and the more website traffic you generate, the more popular you will be. Search engines love popular websites. The more your popularity increases, the higher your search engine rankings will be.

You may ask how you go about syndicating your content. Let’s discuss how you go about starting your content syndication strategy:

The basics of RSS

The RSS feed format is used to spread content that is published frequently. The feeds that result can be sent to RSS readers and Web pages, allowing you to share your content with other people. Members of your community can subscribe to whichever RSS feeds they like and then they will have access to new information as it becomes available.

RSS is an important part of Web community participation. You may want to look at RSS as the adhesive that holds together the social Web. You can find RSS in many different places and it is used in various ways. Whenever you find a website that updates its content frequently, you will most likely find an RSS feed. RSS feeds are an excellent way to keep track of the latest offerings of the people and websites that you follow.

You should join the Syndication Alliance also. Once you have joined, you will be considered as part of a tribe. Tribing lets you build relationships with other people who share your interests, while syndicating each others’ content at the same time. Everybody wins in that situation.

You can also create a content syndication campaign using Social Media Science Synnd, which is a social media bookmarking tool. A content syndication campaign will allow your visitors to vote and make comments on your content with the goal of your content turning viral.

The following are some simple steps to get you started in RSS:

Set up a Feedburner account and let others read your feeds.
Share your RSS feed on your social networking profiles. There are several social networking sites that are able to accept and display your RSS feed to those in your community.
Submit your content to multiple RSS submission directories.

Bookmarking and social networking

Several social networking sites will accept your RSS feed and display it as a status update to your community members. This is really great because it lets you add new content to your Website and/or blog, which will then be automatically updated and displayed on your various social media profiles.

TwitterFeed is a wonderful tool that allows you to syndicate your RSS feed to many social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, you should submit your new content postings to social bookmarking sites, such as Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reditt.com, Digg, LinkedIn, Google Bookmarks, and Yahoo Buzz.

Content syndication is a very powerful tool that will help you to get your content out there and noticed. It is important for you to take the time to learn more about the techniques that were discussed here and start syndicating your content.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Syndicating Your Content: How to Achieve Ultimate Exposure

Michael Cohn — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:30:25 +0000

Syndication means creating content once and having it automatically spread all over the place. The goal is to get maximum exposure for the minimum amount of work.

Web syndication refers to making web feeds available from one site in order to provide other people with a summary of the website's content that was added recently (for example, the latest forum posts or news). Web syndication can also be used to describe other types of licensing website content so that other websites can use it.

Syndication is advantageous to both the websites that provide information and the websites that display that information. For the website that receives the information, web syndication is a good way to add more depth and immediacy of information to its pages, which will make it more attractive to users. For the website that transmits the information, syndication drives exposure to numerous online platforms, which, in turn, generates new traffic for the transmitting site — making syndication a free and easy form of advertisement.

Newspapers commonly syndicate with popular columnists and comic strips. Radio stations commonly syndicate personalities and programs. You can also syndicate with website articles, blog posts, and Emails.

To illustrate this, if you have a blog, which you are updating on a regular basis, you can set it up so that the updates automatically appear on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, where everyone connected to you can click on the updates so that they can read more. If you syndicate to Twitter, a small note is sent to your followers so that they will be able to read what you have sent out.

This is accomplished through applications that are available on the different websites of which you are a member.

EzineArticles (an article directory) and Aweber (an email manager) will ask you, when you’re about to publish something, if you have a Twitter login that you’d like to send a note to. Facebook also has a number of applications that you can use to do a number of things, including automatically pull your Tweets into your Facebook account and publish them on your wall.

Facebook can also publish your blog posts to your wall automatically. Take a look at http://www.facebook.com/apps for a full list of applications.

You can also link a blog feed to your LinkedIn profile by using the Blog Link or WordPress applications. You can promote your blog and, subsequently, develop your brand. It is common knowledge that blogs are the best way to grow your brand. With blogs, you can share your thoughts and insights through your blog on LinkedIn.

If you are linking to your personal blog, include your name or descriptive terms in the link, and instantaneously, you have search engine optimization (SEO) for your site. To ensure that this will work, be sure that your public profile setting is set to “Full View.”

Another very valuable feature on LinkedIn that is underutilized is the Groups feature. The focus of your intention, when getting involved with groups on LinkedIn, should be “how can I help someone else” instead of “what’s in it for me.” The feature is very user-friendly and you will feel very comfortable navigating in no time.

Since LinkedIn allows you to subscribe to a maximum of 50 groups, you should take advantage of this and subscribe to as many groups as possible that relate to your business. However, to protect you from being perceived as a spammer, you shouldn’t post the same article to more than a few groups at a time.

You have to post to each LinkedIn group manually. The process to post an article to a group is:

Go to the specific group.
Click on the News tab.
Click on Submit a News Article.
Paste the URL of your article (which comes from your blog).
Your article title and summary will now be retrieved from your blog.
You have an option to add a comment and check a box to be notified when other people post comments on your article.

The more relevant the article is to the group, the more likely people will be to click on and read your article on your blog and to leave comments.

In addition to freely distributed material, some businesses use similar methods for the controlled placement of proprietary content on multiple partnering Internet destinations. Commercial syndicators may also use other methods to distribute their content such as Reuters, Associated Press, and All Headline News.

This type of commercial web syndication gets its business models from syndication in other media, such as print, television, and radio. Syndication caught on in those other media so that content creators could distribute their content to a larger audience.

Commercial web syndication involves partnerships between content producers and distribution outlets.

Distribution partners benefit because they receive content either for no charge or at a discounted price. However, one potential drawback for publishers is that they are not allowed to have a monopoly on the content because it is duplicated at other publisher sites.

On a positive note, because syndication enables the production and maintenance of content, the users can find and consume content on the Internet.

We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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Article Marketing Strategies to Increase the Visibility of Your Business

Michael Cohn — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:31:10 +0000

Article marketing is the process of writing and publishing online articles with the goal of increasing the credibility of your business by positioning you as an expert, as well as improving the search engine visibility of your business.

Planning an article for article marketing requires strategic placement of not only keywords but also links in the article. The writer needs to know how to create a story of interest and one that will compel the reader to click on the links to get more information on the topic.

You need to use the articles to build a relationship between the reader and you. Your main goal should be to offer quality content that they can trust. If they feel that the article is useful and of high quality, they will trust that your website will offer always offer the same quality.

How does article marketing help your business?

Initially, it enables you to get high-quality backlinks, which, in turn, helps to increase your page rankings. It also draws more focused traffic to your website, considering that the visitors clicking on the links in all of your articles are prospective customers already.

Article submission helps you to acquire more credibility through the content of your articles. Your articles demonstrate your knowledge on the topic being discussed to your readers.

Additionally, article submission is also a very effective marketing tool for a website because it provides immediate results. Links that are generated from content-rich pages are always preferred by search engines.

If you continually submit articles to article directories, there will be a continual flow of links to your site and that is something that search engines respond to favorably.

A good article marketing strategy

Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your article marketing campaign:

Content – A critical element that attracts and compels readers to return is the content. People search the internet for useful and valuable information. Your visitors will keep returning if your content is always informative and interesting.

Clear and concise – Online articles should be clear and concise so that they hold (and keep) the attention of your readers.

Headline – Your title, if it is effective, will cause the reader to want to read your article.

Variety – While maintaining the focus on your website, in other words, the products and services that you are offering, consider the many angles from which you can approach your topics. A variety of articles that are customized for your target audience will enable you to draw a larger audience.

Keywords – Keywords are the words that your readers will type into the search engine. This is important to you because the end result is that your article will pop up at the top of the list of relevant articles to be viewed based on those keywords. However, please be aware that if you have too many keywords, your article won’t seem natural. If, on the other hand, you have too few keywords, the search engines may not pick up your article at all. It is very important to maintain a balance and have a good sense of how much is the right amount of key words.

Get a writer – If you can’t or won’t write your own articles, there are many freelance writers whom you can hire to write for you. Before putting your reputation into a writer’s hands, however, make sure that his or her work is original and of high quality.

Proofreading – After the article is written, proofread it. Careless writing and spelling and grammatical errors reflect badly on you and your business. After you have proofread the article, ask friends, family, and colleagues to read through the article. Take their feedback very seriously. Even the smallest positive change can make a difference in the way that the article is viewed by your readers.

Link your articles – Insert links to other articles in your article. The links should be for other articles that you have written on the same subject. This will strengthen your credibility and cause your readers to be loyal. If you have affiliates, allow them to use your articles as well and to promote them for you.

Include a resource box – The resource box is the small paragraph at the end of your article that contains your information. The minimum amount of information that your resource box should contain is your name; one or two key phrases, including an incentive for readers to visit your site; and a direct hyperlink to your website. The resource box is critical to the success of your article marketing campaign and should be planned carefully. Your planning should be done in conjunction with the guidelines of the article directory, which you must use because there is generally a limit to the number of links that you are able to include. You can use the same resource box for all of your articles or you can customize the information to fit the topic of the article.

Article Submission

The submission of articles is an ethical search engine optimization (SEO) strategy used to promote a website and to gain a continual stream of high-quality and valuable links. It is a powerful strategy in which the submission of articles in various article directories occurs to gain quick exposure. When those articles containing unique content are distributed across the web, a larger audience can view them. This enables the website to gain greater popularity, publicity, and traffic.

How does article submission work?

The first step in the process of article submission is to write content-rich and unusual articles. You can either do the writing yourself or you can hire others to write the articles for you. Once the article is ready for publication, you should post it in the article directories. You can accomplish this in one of two ways:

By using submission software. If you choose this submission option, you will have to obtain the software in which you can load all of your articles and submit them. After this part of the process, the software will automatically submit your articles in the article directories.

By hiring professionals for article submission. Professionals can be hired who will submit articles for you. This will save you the time that you would have spent on doing it yourself.

To learn more about how to use Article Marketing for the success of your business, please visit us at CompuKol Communications.

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