iSnare & Article Marketing

Send Your Articles to Hundreds of Sites With Just One Click On iSnare!

I'd like to point out to you a useful site called iSnare. The article distribution site  iSnare enables you to submit one article to hundreds of article sites for a very low maximum cost of around $2 per article. If you purchase higher distribution credits from iSnare the amount of articles you can distribute increases and the price per article reduces.

Thousands of guides have been written on Article Marketing. There are as many strategies and ways to do it as there are trees in a forest. I'll answer a few questions you have below, I just wanted to introduce you to iSnare's article distribution service first.

Why Might You Want Do Article Marketing?

Sharing articles is a good way to get links back to your site and also an effective strategy to establish your expertise in your field. By publishing  "helpful tip's" articles to specific sites, variously called article banks, article directories, ezines etc you gain in two major ways.

Your Signature - Name, URL and Anchor Text

A standard article has a title, a subtitle, a summary, the text of the article and what is generally called the signature. It is the signature area that gives you the most benefit. This is where you can declare yourself the author of the article, you can link back to your site with your site's url and you can enter  anchor text for the url to target specific keywords.

If anchor text is the only html you ever learn, it's the most important piece to use.

This is an example signature - (minus the pic) - it's a like a very low key ad.

The author of this article, Brad Pitt is a renowned actor and is often referred to as the sexiest male lead in movies. Read more about Brad Pitt by visiting...

Brad Pitt - Sexiest Man On the Planet

(The text above is  fictional except for the sexy bit!)

Now visit the top article site online Ezine Articles and examine a few article author signatures.  They are short and highly relevant and they almost all have a clickable hyperlink ( a blue link you click on to visit a website).

But they are not all web addresses with the http or www in front of a domain name, they are far more often relevant keywords that people are trying to rank for in search engine results. These keywords are called anchor text. Click on that link to visit wikipedia and it will give you the html code you need.

Establishing Your Expert Status

The second benefit of article marketing is fourfold.

1. A quality article shows people you "know what you are talking about".
2. A quality article acts as a signpost and directs traffic to your website.
3. A quality article on an high ranking site appears in search results.
4. A quality article can be republished on other people's websites

Did you notice that I am emphasizing "A Quality Article". This is because it's a complete waste of time to submit an article is that is not of high quality.

An unchanged PLR article will not be accepted for publication.  A bad article can damage your reputation. A poor article will not be read right through to the signature. Articles that are not read don't stay indexed long and will not appear in search results or be republished.

So don't waste your time on article marketing unless you intend to submit original articles that do give helpful tips to establish your expertise.

Article Marketing & Duplicate Content Issue

Getting back to iSnare and article marketing there is one more issue to tackle. When multiple articles that are exactly the same are online, search engines "hide" some - you may have seen a link on Google for "similar results".

This has led to many discussions about the benefits of submitting the same article to multiple directories. It is certainly true that articles that are at least 30% unique are better but there are only so many hours in a day!

So far as I can gather the best strategy is to write 10 unique articles to start with. The best one should be on your site. Two should go to high rank article directories such as Ezine Articles or Go Articles and one perhaps to a site like Squidoo or Hubpages. The other six mass submit to an article distribution service such as iSnare.

That way you get the all the benefits. Your duplicate articles will still be read and republished and give you backlinks from article directories and that is why article marketing is so useful. So go check out iSnare...

Click To Send Your Quality Articles to Hundreds of Sites With iSnare!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Web Traffic Tips: Article Marketing (internetmarketingformommies.com)
• Squidoo And Hub Pages: Two Forces To Be Dealth With (ronmedlin.com)
• How to Accomplish Better SEO with Article Marketing (webmanmarketing.com)
• How To Make Money Online Every Day Writing Articles (docstoc.com)

Or Be Careful What You Say On Facebook!

Social sites are constantly shifting, changing and updating. View any trend analysis site and the graph is showing the constantly rising visitor rate especially for big community sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

You cannot afford to ignore the trends but neither should you jump in without a good plan. You need to be cautious before you post any content on the web especially if you are a business, but also as an employee.

This was brought home to me on a personal level twice. First when my nephew made unguarded comments on Facebook, agreeing with a friend's negative comment made about their boss and was fired. The boss wasn't even named!

Then my son joined a group on Facebook which was started by a workmate. This group was the opposite of a fan page and was let's say, less than positive, about the company they both worked for. They were also fired!

It's easy to say companies should ignore such minor infractions and accept the fact that people will get frustrated or be annoyed about something at work and then go into a social site such as Facebook and vent. But the web is a published document, there for all time, not just a few words soon forgotten.

Had either of them been in the pub at the time talking, this wouldn't have been an issue (unless the boss was standing just behind them listening). Facebook is like the pub to most people. They let their guard down there, they chatter and gripe in text just as if they were relaxing after work over a few drinks.

I don't know where this will go. It's hard on the boys who have had a sharp lesson in why keeping their mouths shut (especially on the web) is a good policy. At the same time, it's like the right to free speech has been taken away and Big Brother really is watching everything we do and censoring it violently.

Keeping a good reputation online is going to get harder and harder. For companies trying to keep negative comments off the web and for kids who haven't learned to hold their tongues yet. Lawyers will be scrambling to update libel laws to keep up, while enforcement agencies pick their battles between genuinely disgruntled customers and people out to cause trouble for competing companies.

Companies are going to need extra staff uploading new positive content and staff to keep an eye on where their brand is being used in inappropriate ways.

Nothing has really changed. Any freedom comes at a price, including freedom of speech. If you wish to exercise it, you take the consequences. It's just another thing to consider in our increasingly complex world. Sigh...

Related articles by Zemanta

• Where Are the Nonprofit Social Media Strategists? (beth.typepad.com)
• Link Love Monthly: February (socialfish.org)
• What You Should Be Reading This Weekend (gigaom.com)

What's Twitter and Who's Twittering?

The micro blogging social media site Twitter is fast to use and very responsive. No long articles with 500 words to post here!

Just 2 lines to say what you are doing, reading, promoting or thinking.

Twitter is a quick way to link to any page in any niche you want to promote. Its a fast way to share a video you liked or an article you found helpful without writing a long post about it.

More than anything else though it's a way to gain a fast group following and link a feed to a blog or social site and vice versa.

You can converse with people on Twitter. You can private message your followers. You can say something or nothing. You can eavesdrop on other people's conversations.

What's Twitter? One of the most unassuming and useful tools around so far as social media sites is concerned.

How to Use Twitter Video

Watch this short video guide to Twitter about who is twittering or tweeting on Twitter and why.

The first following 2 articles give some valuable advice on how to use Twitter as a tool rather than getting sucked into the vortex of time consuming non productive chatter (or tweeting) . And if you think Twitter is a waste of time read the last one as well, these are stats that may well surprise you.

Twitter is probably the number one tool in your social media toolbox. learn how to use Twitter, don't just join the site and wonder why.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is Twitter Noise or a Valid Business Tool? (socialmediatoday.com)
• 10 Steps to Encouraging Your Customers to Become Evangelists (kylelacy.com)
• Facebook and Twitter Lead the Pack as Social Media Usage Skyrockets (mashable.com)

Establishing Facebook Privacy

How to set up who sees what on Facebook

Facebook is a place to relax with your friends and be yourself, to mix old friends with new friends and to have fun. But Facebook restricts you to only one profile with all your friends lumped in together.

Most people enjoy the social networking of Facebook and like to explore their friends profiles and the photos and videos that they may upload. You may not mind sharing a family photo with a few close friends but may prefer to not have the same photo available to kids at school if you are a teacher, to managers at work who may not approve or to complete strangers who can save a copy of the photo to their computer and use it as they please.

It is important if you are using your personal Facebook profile to network into the larger Facebook community to set up rules for "who sees what" on Facebook. These are called privacy settings and although it may take a little time to set up the friend groups, it's worth doing as soon as possible before your community of friends grows too large to manage.

It can be awkward if a work colleague or a complete stranger wants to friend you on Facebook. It could be unprofessional to refuse, but you'd prefer not to have your personal friends and family open to them, or to expose your personal friends to everyone you agree to friend, especially if they are marketers looking for prospects.

It is highly likely if you use Facebook for business as well as pleasure that you'll want to set up a Facebook page. You can set up "who sees what" on Facebook pages as well and establish further privacy rules. This excellent Facebook tutorial video will show you how to group your friends into networks and then to use the privacy settings to allow each of the groups to only see the specific areas of your Facebook space that you want them to.

Sun Sentinel Facebook privacy video tutorial ver 3 from andrew tran on Vimeo.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Creepy Ways Your Social Media Data Can Be Used (ecommercetimes.com)
• Limiting Access: Flickr and Archiving Our Children's Lives (gatheringinlight.com)
• The Age Of Privacy For Young People Is Far From Over (ypulse.com)
• Facebook's New Privacy Features: A Complete Guide (mashable.com)
• Protecting Your Child in Facebook - Photos (socialmediatoday.com)