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AOL Looking for New Search Partner(s)

Written on July 26, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

Aol. is still around folks. Back in June I heard CEO Tim Armstrong speak at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s content focused Innovation Days event. He was passionate about Aol. as a comeback story and was intent on focusing on how it would be generating a lot of custom content from real journalists. Honestly, I am not sure where that is at some 1 ½ months down the road but I’m sure Aol. will let us know of there is any success.

For now, though, there is a need to get their future search partners in order since the current $700 million a year deal with Google is set to expire in December. It appears as if Armstrong is looking to get creative which could mean more than one search partner for the company.

Fortune reports

“Search is heating up from a multi-partner space—we are not talking to two companies,” said Armstrong while speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference.

As he embarks on a turnaround that has yet to manifest, Armstrong is thinking long into the future. “What you do today is probably going to have a seven-year outcome,” he explained. When a new search deal is announced later in the year, AOL-watchers may not see Google, which currently supplies a large percentage of the company’s revenue, as its only partner.

Wow, Armstrong is certainly breaking the Internet mold by talking about seven-year outcomes. If something isn’t happening in seven weeks there will be more than a few folks getting antsy and wondering if Aol. is going to pull itself out of the Internet ditch or not.

Since Aol. is really banking on advertising that will be placed around their ‘in-house’ content production the conversation seems to always come around to Aol.’s technique in this area. Their SEED methodology which is usually bunched in with Yahoo’s Associated Content and Demand Media is another mass content production process from ‘writers’ that can submit material. It’s the editorial oversight of this material that has people worried that the Internet will be cluttered with keyword triggered ‘stories’ that may have little to do with accuracy or dependability.

It makes sense that if this technique were to drive more traffic to Aol. sites that a strong search partner or partners should be in place. Considering the cost of having Google do this in the past, Aol. is likely looking for some cost savings to try to see if any money will move to the bottom line in the near future.

Regardless of who ends up being Aol.’s search buddy, what are YOUR feelings about Aol. and it’s chances for the future? Is there any gas left in the Aol. tank or will the effort needed to ‘right the ship’ be for naught?

Feel free to give us your Aol. turnaround strategy. Maybe Tim Armstrong is looking for some user generated content in that area too.

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AOL Looking for New Search Partner(s)

How to Know When Your Site Needs Social Media Before SEO

Written on July 15, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, searchengineguide, seo

by Jennifer Laycock

Every now and then Search Engine Guide’s Associate Editor Stoney deGeyter finds himself on the phone with a potential client trying to talk them into putting their conversation on hold and giving me a call. Why? Because they’re in a position where they need to focus on both social media and search engine optimization to build a successful site, but they only have the budget to do one at a time…and at this time, they need to put search engine optimization on hold and focus on social media.

As much as Stoney enjoys working with companies to make sure their sites are search engine friendly and their content is fully optimized, the truth is his services are not always going to deliver the best bang for their buck. There are times when it simply makes more sense to focus on social media. In fact, making the right choice of where to start your marketing efforts can be essential to generating the additional revenue needed to invest in BOTH Social Media and SEO. (sound familiar? You must have been here Tuesday…)

If you’re in the position of trying to figure out where to start, here are three key ways to decide social media is your best starting point. (On Tuesday, we looked at when it’s best to begin with Search Engine Optimization.)

Clue #1 When You are Launching a Brand New Web Site

If your business is new to the web or you’re just getting ready to launch a new site, social media may be the best place for you to start. Brand new sites often

Break Your Goals into Micro-Goals to Make Them Achievable

Written on July 6, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide

by Jennifer Laycock

Here’s the thing about goals. They’re well intentioned and broad in focus and we wave them around as if we’re really proud of these lofty ideas we hope to achieve. But unless we take the time to create a plan of action to reach them, they rarely amount to more than warm-fuzzy inducing line items.

The problem with the way most people reach goals is that they do it without a proper plan. They establish a goal of increasing sales and then they rush off to social media sites to try and boost their sales. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t. Generally, it’s dumb luck either way.

Successful Marketing Relies on Formulas

Think back to your days in advanced math in high school or college. Remember how it was never enough to get the proper answer? You had to demonstrate your work and show the steps it took to get there? There’s a basic concept in both math and science that requires you to “reproduce” your work. This is why math and science rely so heavily on formulas.
The world of marketing is really no different. Yes, there’s an extraordinary amount of creativity required in the creation of your message…but the processes are incredibly formulaic. Relying exclusively on the creativity with little regard to process will not only make it difficult to replicate success, it will also make it difficult to learn from you failures.

This is why your process can’t move into the creative realm once you’ve defined your top three goals. It must move into the realm of micro-goals.

Break Down Your Primary Goals into Supportive Goals

Just like those annoying math teachers who wanted to make sure you understood the process, I want to impress just how important it is to follow a process when you are building your social media strategy. I’ve already written about the need to establish goals and even walked you through the concept of developing high level goals.

Today I want to explain how you take those top level goals and break them down into smaller, supportive goals. Following this process will help you reach the point where you can select your social media strategies based on what will help you achieve your goals rather than what “everyone else is doing.” (If you haven’t read my post “Understanding the Three Primary Goals of Social Media,” you may want to take a quick moment to go get some background.)

Step One: Examine Your Top Level Goal

Let’s say one of your top goals for social media involvement is to monitor the conversation around your brand. Perhaps you are launching a new product or perhaps you’ve been suffering from a lot of negative conversation online and you are ready to address it.
The temptation with this goal might be to jump in the conversation and start listening to everything that’s being said. A better plan is to sit down and consider a few smaller goals first. Think about the various goals related to monitoring your brand. Your list might look something like this:
Each of these four sub-goals are a very important part of how your primary goal integrates into social media marketing plans. They’re also necessary to define so you know you are taking the steps needed to actually reach the primary goal.

Consider how they all work together:

1)

Google Moderator Adds Greater Interactivity to YouTube Experience

Written on May 27, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

I don’t get very excited about many things that are touted as innovation in the Internet marketing space. Why? It’s because everyone wants to hype the newest and freshest updates to their service as a “game changer!” or some other form of hyperbole that always easily out runs the reality of the service. In other words, I am tired of being hyped (am I the only one here on this one?).

This time, however, I am pretty interested in the Google Moderator integration into YouTube that is being introduced. At first glance this looks like it gives the world of video a new level of interactivity that can actually create a better experience for the end user. How about that! The YouTube blog tells us more:

That’s why, starting today, we’ve integrated the ability to use Google Moderator into every single YouTube channel. Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time. We previously used Google Moderator as part of our interviews with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Here’s how it works: You set the parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Watch as submissions get voted up or down by your audience, and then respond to the top-voted submissions by posting a video on your channel. The platform operates in real-time, and you can remove any content that you or your audience flag as inappropriate. You can also embed the platform on your own website or blog.

Nice. Features like this help everyone from a content development standpoint because now you can get feedback and input from your users. As any good marketer will tell you, the longer (or dare I say, more intelligently) you can engage your customer or prospect the more likely they are to see you in the kind of light you wish: the kind that makes them want your product or service.

Here’s an example of the YouTube and Google Moderator that come from the post and features the New York Times’ Nick Kristof.

So what’s your take? Is this a real “game-changer” or is it just another hyped feature that will gather dust in the future?

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Google Moderator Adds Greater Interactivity to YouTube Experience

Link Building ROI: Measure With Caution

Written on May 18, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, book, marketing

In tough times when every marketing dollar matters, client questions about link building ROI tend to come up earlier in the conversation. If you are spending money to hire a link builder, you have every right to ask what the ROI might be for any tactic or service your link builder is suggesting you use. [...]



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Link Building ROI: Measure With Caution

Comment Management Tools You Should Know

Written on April 13, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

What is Comment Management?  Virtually all blog software offers commenting functionality, so why would you need a 3rd party comment management service?  Many of the comments and “reactions” to content posted on a blog never make it to the blog itself – the source of the conversation.

Comment Management tools provide all the expected features and also pull in mentions & citations of the post as well. That way when someone reads a post on your blog, they can see comments made directly on the post as well as mentions made of of the post on other sites like Twitter.

Should you add a comment manager tool to your blog? It depends how much of your social engagement is happening off your blog and also whether you feel it will add to the user experience to see a collected list of on and off site interactions. For many blogs, citing comment and reaction counts is simply a matter of social proofing and popularity. For others, it’s an attempt to harvest all the conversation about a post at the source.

To help you decide, here are the three main comment management tools to consider:

ECHO from JS-Kit offers a wide array of features. It can be embedded on a blog or static web site and pull in comments from Twitter, Digg, comments from other blogs, FriendFeed and several others. Commenters can choose to promote their comments simultaneously to Twitter, Facebook or Google Friends. Sites like Technorati and Guy Kawasaki use ECHO.  We tried JS-Kit but didn’t like not being able to show comments on top of the off site citations under each post.  JS-Kit ECHO Live is $12/year and ECHO Live white label is $48/year. There is also a PRO version with many other controls and features with costs according to page views ranging from $195 to $1995 per year.

Disqus, as you may have noticed, is the commenting system we are currently using on Online Marketing Blog. Disqus lets readers choose their identity, via: Facebook Connect, OpenID, or Twitter Sign-in, when they leave a comment. Comments can be threaded and the moderation dashboard is easy to use. Off site references to your content on Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, and YouTube are pulled in as “Reactions”. You can sort comments as we do, on top, then show the reactions below. Readers can choose to cross post their comment to other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.   You can edit comment content but not the names of commenters, which is frustrating because some spammers write really useful comment content but spam them hell out of their names and links. The base version of Disqus is free. Disqus VIP offers much hand holding support and analytics. Cost is not disclosed on the site so it must be very expensive.

IntenseDebate was acquired by Automattic, the company behind WordPress and therefore, can be easily added to WordPress blogs as well as TypePad, Tumblr or Blogger blogs. There’s comment threading, notification by email, commenter profiles and points, moderation, cross posting to Twitter and several other features.  IntenseDebate is free.

Which comment management tool is right for you? It depends on your use. If you have a static web site and you’d like to add comment features, then ECHO might be a fit. If you want something that offers all the basics and works natively with WordPress then maybe IntenseDebate is your pick. If you want more features and also don’t want to pay anything, then it’s possible Disqus is the choice for you.

The great thing about these tools is that they are easy to install and test out.

Here are other reviews you might find useful on these comment management systems.

• Blog Comment System Shootout: Disqus vs. Intense Debate vs. JS-Kit Echo – 40 Tech
• 3rd Party Comment System Roundup – Dave Mosher’s Blog

Although I pinged Facebook and Twitter connections for examples of other 3rd party comment management tools that pull in off-site citations, I didn’t hear about any. I didn’t find much on Google either. There are other comment management services, tools and plug-ins, just not any (that I’ve found) that automatically pull in 3rd party mentions of your content.

If you know of other comment management systems that pull in comments from other social media sites, please share in the comments. Do you use any of the the tools mentioned above? What has your experience been? What features would you like to see added?

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Comment Management Tools You Should Know |
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Prior to Exit, FTC Commissioner Slams Google on Privacy

Written on March 18, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

We all know that it is virtually impossible for Google to keep a low profile on anything. When you are that big and influential everyone is paying attention and it seems like every time someone breaks wind at the Googleplex it’s news. It’s the price of fame I suppose.

Of course, if you create the kind of stir that Google recently did around its Buzz service and the apparent “mistake” of making way too much information public without asking the users, then people pay close attention.

One of those is the soon to be ex-Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, Pamela Jones Harbour. During an FTC roundtable discussion in which she noted that her remarks were her own and not those of the FTC (since she is the acting commissioner until April 6 I call BS on that statement but that’s another issue) and the Wall Street Journal reports

“Protecting consumer privacy is of utmost importance,” Ms. Harbour said during a Federal Trade Commission roundtable discussion about privacy Wednesday, speaking via videoconference from Barcelona, Spain. “Unfortunately, many of the companies that consumers look to as leaders — and that we expect to be leaders — still have not taken this message entirely to heart.”

She went on to rip Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt as well.

Privacy is a fundamental right that consumers still care about and have expectations for, Ms. Harbour said. Those norms do not change as technology evolves, and the stakes are growing as more information, such as genomic and public-health records, is made available, she said. Ms. Harbour cited recent comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who said during an interview with CNBC, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Ms. Harbour said she could not disagree more with that assertion. “The Commission will continue to evaluate consumers’ preferences, and armed with these insights, I hope and expect that the Commission will continue to shape the conversation about the intrinsic value of privacy,” she said. “But make no mistake: The Commission will unfailingly step in to protect consumers where we believe the law has been violated, and that includes violations relating to privacy promises.”

Google’s arrogance, whether perceived or real, doesn’t appear to be serving it well in Washington. If this is the attitude of the exiting Commissioner then they better hope that the next one is a little more Google-friendly. Google’s response to this is what one would expect.

A Google spokesman said in a statement that user transparency and control are “top of mind” for the company. “When we realized that we’d unintentionally made many of our users unhappy, we moved quickly to make significant product improvements to address their concerns,” he said. “Our door is open to additional feedback and we’re continuing to make more improvements based on that feedback.”

While I am not a big fan of government being too involved in anything I am beginning to wonder about privacy more and more. Ms. Harbour’s following statement made sense and made me think a bit.

“Deeds speak louder than words, and this is turning into a dangerous game of ‘copycat’ behavior,” she said. “Unlike a lot of tech products, consumer privacy cannot be run in beta.”

Hmmm. Maybe this is why she is leaving the FTC. She makes some sense here and there appears to be little room for that kind of behavior in Washington these days.

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Prior to Exit, FTC Commissioner Slams Google on Privacy

Listen to Your Customers to Adjust Your Keywords

Written on February 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide, seo

by Mike Moran

Image by ~~Jo~~ via Flickr

You probably use many sources to brainstorm your search keywords, but how do you know if your customers are starting to change the way they search for your products? Have you listened to what your customers are saying? Time was that listening to customers demanded expensive focus groups and surveys, but that time has passed. Nowadays, you can listen to social media conversations and analyze them for any number of purposes, including search keywords.

Think about how you do keyword research normally. You probably start by entering into the search engines some keywords you know are relevant. Then you look at what pages come up and start to catalog in your mind some other words that you see on those pages. Then you start entering some of those words and continue the process until you start to see that you are getting too far away from the original subject.

Then you take those words and use a keyword research tool to help you see which words are searched for frequently enough to be valuable, and then you let those tools show you other popular variations. And while all of that is very smart, you know that over time your customers start to shift what they are looking for.

The language around your product might change, due to technology changes (cell phone becomes smart phone), changes in customer needs (low cost becomes total cost of ownership), or simple shifts in the language (energy efficient becomes green). When it does, you need some way of picking up on what’s happening so you can adjust your keyword mix in response.

For large businesses, you can use social media listening services to help you find new words that your regular keyword research might not have uncovered. The listening companies will do the work for you and find those nuggets that you might have missed. [Full disclosure: I serve as Chief Strategist at Converseon, one of those companies happy to listen to your conversation and help you with search marketing also.]

But for small businesses with limited (no?) budgets, what can they do to listen to their customers’ conversations?

Google Alerts to the rescue. You probably already use Google Alerts to monitor mentions about yourself and your company, but you can also use it for keyword research. You can load up Google Alerts with a bunch of your keywords and start reading the stories that come your way for new keywords.

But, gee, that seems like a lot of work, doesn’t it?

To take the drudgery out of it, use a word cloud (as pictured above), which visualizes the words being used so that you can see which ones seem to be occurring more than others. To automatically generate a word cloud from your Google Alerts, set up an RSS feed for your Google Alerts, rather than e-mail notification. Then, enter the URL for that RSS feed into Wordle, which creates a word cloud from any RSS feed.

Just point your RSS feed at this tool every once in a while, and immediately see what you are missing. When you listen to what your customers tell you, it’s amazing how smart you can look. (Only you and I know the truth…)

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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Listen to Your Customers to Adjust Your Keywords

SEO 101 - Part 8: Everything You Need to Know About Keywords

Written on February 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide, seo

by Stoney deGeyter

The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Keywords are the blue-prints from which all your marketing efforts are built upon. Keyword research tools provide valuable insight into what words people are searching on the major search engines. But research tools are just the first step in a thorough and well-planned keyword research process. Great tools like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker or even Google’s tools don’t tell you the intent of each search, however that information can be deduced with a bit of analysis and keyword organization.

But before we get into that, let’s look at how people search so we can better understand how to segment and organize your keywords into an effective optimization campaign.

How People Search

Over the years searching trends have changed. Once upon a time the majority of searchers used one word queries. Eventually they started realizing they they get better, more accurate, results when you give the search engine a bit more information about what you are looking for.

The more accurate the search phrase you use in your search is, the more accurate the results will be that are returned. Studies have shown that four and five-word phrases often have a higher ROI than one and two word phrases because the searcher is more likely to get results that meet their needs.

The downside of longer phrases is this increases the keyword combination potentials so the number of searches for any one phrase reduces dramatically. This makes optimization more difficult. Instead of optimizing for one general phrase you have to optimize for five very specific phrases. This is the long-tail of keywords, also known as the low hanging fruit. These longer phrases have far less competition and are much easier to get ranked, but also produce lower traffic volumes.

Long-tail phrases should not constitute the primary focus of your optimization efforts. Nor should you focus primarily on short-tail phrases either. A good keyword optimization strategy goes after both simultaneously.

keyword Buying Cycle

Every user has different needs and ultimately different goals they wish to achieve when they begin a search process. Many searches are quick with a sole purpose of learning something such as “how many days does it take the Starship Enterprise to travel from Earth to Vulcan at Warp 7?” A few searches may give you a satisfactory answer and then the sci-fi geek Trekker can go back to watching her ST:TNG marathon.

Other searches have another simple goal: to buy a product that best suites your wants and needs. While that goal maybe simple the process to reach it isn’t. Most searchers–no matter what the goal–will ultimately use at least parts of the following research cycle.

Every search starts with an interest. The interest generally uses broad keywords with one or maybe two words. As the user moves through the other stages–gather, research, exclude and purchase, they make their queries more and more specific. Every change in query, brings the searcher closer and closer to their goal, each giving them more information along the way.

Most searchers go through this process unintentionally, but as they start in the lower stages they learn more about what they want and how to search more accurately. How does a searcher know they want a 1080p blu-ray player (for his Star Trek Blu-rays) until they learn that 1080i isn’t quite as good?

Most businesses want to be ranked for the interest level searches because that’s where the most traffic is. This can often be a mistake because searchers will often use those sites as a springboard to get to the other sites that meet their more specific queries. There is still valid reasons to be ranked on these broader searches as that can help brand your site and bring people back as they know more of what they want, but the conversions come from the more specific terms.

What You Learn

Once you understand how the searcher progresses through the buying cycle you can then learn something from the keywords that were used to search. The information you glean can be crucial in determining how to develop the content and direction of your website.

Target Audience: The more you know about who your target audience is the better position you will be in to meet their needs. The keywords used by business professionals will often be different from keywords used by students and hobbyists. Both will be using keywords that appear to be relevant but depending on what you offer, not all of them truly have the same intent or delivered to the same page.

Areas of Interest: Keywords can tell you what is important to your target audience. Are they looking to satisfy a quick query about warp speed travel or are they looking for the quantum mechanical details of how warp propulsion works? Both of these queries take you to Star Trek sites but the latter would certainly turn the non hard-core Trekker away muttering, “stupid sci-fi geeks” under their breath.

Needs to be met: Finally, your keywords can tell you what needs the searcher is looking to have met. Some hobbyists are looking for a strategy for tackling their next project and a business leader may be looking for a community of like-minded individual.

Unlike the chart above, keyword research isn’t always a linear process. There is a lot of overlap and much that you do in the process requires going back and repeating once you have new data on hand. Keeping your keyword research fluid helps you maintain accuracy and adapt as changes are made in visitor search patterns.

Missed a part of this series?
Part 1: Everything You Need To Know About SEO
Part 2: Everything You Need To Know About Title Tags
Part 3: Everything You Need To Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags
Part 4: Everything You Need To Know About Heading Tags and Alt Attributes
Part 5: Everything You Need To Know About Domain Names
Part 6: Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Friendly URLs & Broken Links
Part 7: Everything You Need To Know About Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Part 8: Everything You Need To Know About Keywords

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

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SEO 101 - Part 8: Everything You Need to Know About Keywords

5 Ways to Source Content on Twitter

Written on January 25, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, chat, marketing, seo

With the increasing emphasis on content marketing for both SEO and Social Media, I thought I’d offer some specific tips on dealing with one of the most prevalent issues companies face in this area:  long term sourcing of content.  While we’ve written about content sourcing for corporate blogs in the past, but this post will emphasize how to use social media darling Twitter to find a goldmine of useful resources, tips and information that your customers will love and keep coming back for more.

The irony here is that there’s been speculation as to whether the growing popularity of Twitter has reduced the effectiveness and popularity of blogging. The reality is that Twitter and blogging compliment each other exceptionally well. Here are 5 tips on how to use Twitter to do just that:

Polls – Ask And You Shall Receive

Active participants on Twitter that have developed a certain momentum of followers and conversations can offer their Twitter network the opportunity to interact and engage on topically relevant poll questions.  Polls are a great opportunity to ask for help and recognize participation.

Some guidelines on Twitter polls:

1. Announce that you will be asking a series of poll questions.
2. Use an intuitive #hashtag after each poll question to thread them together
3. Make sure you ask questions relevant to your Tweeting history
4. Thank particpants and let them know what you will do with the answers
5. Acknowledge participants in the blog post. If there are a nominal number of participants, cite them in the post itself. If there are many participants, you might consider creating a Twitter list just for the poll and link to the poll from the blog post.

Annotated poll results can be published alone or the answers can be incorporated as supporting points to a post on the topic being polled.

#TwitterChats – Make a Date to Tweet

The conversation aspect of Twitter is one of the most powerful. Hidden amongst what appears to be an ongoing dinner party conversation, one can find threaded discussions amongst some of the smartest people in their fields.  As mentioned above, the use of a #hashtag in tweets threads conversations together.  Interested parties agree upon a set time and topic then start the conversation.

A few examples relevant to Online Marketing Blog readers include: #blogchat on Sunday nights run by @MackCollier that discusses all things blogging (example archive).  Another example is #journchat on Monday nights run by @prsarahevens and it provides Public Relations professionals and journalists an opportunity to discuss issues and how they can work together more effectively (archive).

To source these threaded discussions into blog content, a search on the hashtag will present discussion as search results and can be copied into a post. There are also services you can use to automatically archive these kinds of scheduled Twitter chats. 140 characters keeps interaction succinct and often very tips focused.

Crowdsource – Wisdom of the Twitter Crowd

One of the major reasons people network is to interact and be helpful. When you have a good rapport with a Twitter network, blog topics and information can be crowdsourced.  Topics can be solicited as well as sources of facts, research and other information. Followers are often happy to provide suggestions or even links to facts that can be used in a blog post.  These solicitations can be public but can also be sent via direct message to specific individuals.

For example, you might post a question about which of 3 topics to post on your blog next.  You can ask this directly or frame it with the context of something currently being discussed in your industry. Asking provocative questions to see what the response is can provide great feedback as to what people are interested in and can develop discussions that will help inspire the writing of a blog post. It’s important with any kind of take that there is give as well. Recognition goes a long way as does being helpful back to other Tweeple.

Search.Twitter for ?’s – Seek and You Shall Find

Being helpful is a key piece of what makes the social web go round. Twitter provides a platform for easy questions and answers.  As a subject matter expert, you can use Twitter search to find out what people are asking in your area of expertise.

For example: “blog host” ? Then aggregate some of the best questions into a blog post, with answers of course.

Search.Twitter for Tips – Search for Twitter Smarties

On the flip side, you can use Twitter search to find useful tips being offered by other Twitter users. The best tips on relevant topics can be aggregated summarized in a blog post. With credit/attribution of course.  Also look for tweets that include links, since 140 characters is pretty limited for useful tips. For example, iPhone apps camera OR photos

Also, there’s nothing wrong with following individuals that offer useful tips and ask them if it’s ok to repost on your blog.  Not only is this coureous but it develops goodwill and creates an entre to discussion with that person.

So now you have 5 ways to source content using Twitter. Most people using Twitter have seen these tactics in practice, not as many have implemented them or found a way to do so effectively.  How have you used Twitter to source content? Have you used any of the tactics above? If so, how did they work for you?

Tags: a-good-rapport ,a-platform-for ,answers ,content marketing ,conversation ,effectiveness ,exceptionally ,online ,post ,seo ,source ,twitter marketing

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