If you guest post as much as I do, you are (1) probably guest blogging too much and (2) already losing track of what, where and when.

My guest posts are usually the best of what I can. It’s unfair to this blog readers if I am not sharing my best articles with them. Besides, sharing your guest posts on your own blog gives you much more:

• Link to your guest posts to give more exposure to them;
• Share your guest posts with your loyal community and readers;
• Create your guest posting portfolio for your clients and partners to check.

At MyBlogGuest.com one of our PRO features allows our users to automatically share all their guest posts via a customized widget (you can see the sample here in the right sidebar).

Besides, one of my old posts shares two more wicked ways to share your guest post on your blog.

This post adds to the above tips: let’s try to create a master feed of my main guest accounts and publicize the feed here!

1. Create a Feed Where You Don’t Have One

Some of the blogs I contribute to have no separate RSS feed for the author page. For those pages I have to create an RSS feed.

There are quite a few tools that can do that, but the one that has proved to be the most effective is Feed43

It requires no registration but it did require some considerable brain effort from my part. I don’t pretend to be too tech-savvy, nor am I too stupid, but I spent like 40 minutes trying to figure it out. I was quite happy with the result though!

RSS feed for the author pages should be no-brainer: the page consists of links to your articles – all those links have the same HTML markup, so all you need to so is to learn to extract that repetitive markup and turn it into the RSS feed.

Note: While creating your own author feeds is a good way out, it’s not the best option (most of your self-created feeds will lack “date” parameter). So whenever you can, use original author RSS feeds. In many cases, you can find your author RSS feed here: http://www.blogdomain.com/author/author-name/feed/

Also, “Fetch Feed” module inside Yahoo! Pipes will help you find an RSS feed where you lack one. Here’s Kristi’s guide on using the module.

In case neither of the above works, you’ll have to create a feed for your author page. To make your life easier, here’s what I did at Feed43 to create RSS feeds for my author page at MakeUseOf. All you need to do is to replicate these steps while adapting them to the HTML markup of your own author page:

Step 1: Specify your direct author page URL.

For me that’s:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/author/annsmarty/

Step 2: Identify the repetitive code:

Obviously, in my RSS feed I want:

• My article title
• My article direct link.

Looking at the source code of my MUO author page, I see that both the link and the title are wrapped up with <h2 class=”entry-title”> code:

Step 3: Define extraction rules at Feed43:

In this step we point the tool to the repeatable HTML patterns to extract the info we want to be present in our RSS feed.

All text you want to be extracted to the RSS feed should be substituted with {%} variable, see:

Step 4: Identify which parts exactly you want to make it to the feed

If you have done everything right in the above step, you should see the following:

Obviously, we need the following elements in our RSS feed:

• {%1} (direct link to the post)
• {%2} (the post title)

That’s what we specify to the tool:

Now preview:

And get the link to the RSS feed:

Note: the feed will be updated every 6 hours and there will be “– Delivered by Feed43 service” as long as you are using the free version. If you try to use the feed and love the service, you may want to upgrade (that’s what I did eventually).

2. Combine All Your RSS Feeds in One

OK, now take a deep breath. The hardest part is passed. Now to the easier step: combine all your author feeds in one master feed.

There have always been quite a few RSS feed mergers. Unfortunately most of them are unreliable or even discontinued due to massive use.

Yahoo! Pipes is still the most reliable one. I do hope Yahoo! will keep it alive!

So to merge all our author feeds, let’s do the following:

Step 1: Sign in to Yahoo! and click “Create a Pipe”

Step 2: Add “Fetch Feed” module to your dashboard and add all your author feeds in it:

Step 3: Connect it to “Pipe Output” module and click “Save”.

Step 5: (Optional) Sort the updates by date

If you want to just aggregate your guest articles, you may miss that step. However if you want to share this combined feed to let your readers keep track of your articles elsewhere, it is essential to sort all the updates by date.

For that click “Operations” section in the left-side panel and add “Sort” module. Put it in-between your feeds and the output feed and elect sort by “item.pubDate”:

Note: Why this step is “optional” while still being quite important is simple: if most of your feeds are “self-created”, most of them will lack the “date” and the filter will move them up or down.

Step 6: (Optional) Truncate most active feeds

In some places I blog (or used to blog) weekly, so they started dominating my author master feed. I used “Truncate” module + “Union” module to cut some of my most active feeds, then unite them and offer my dear followers some variety:

Step 7: Click “Run Feed” and grab your feed URL (HERE’S MY PIPE – feel free to clone it and create your own):

Note: This WordPress plugin seems to also combine various feeds and even publicize them on your blog automatically as round-ups. Feel free to try it if you only want to use your Master feed for your blog.

3. Import Your Feed into a Page

Update: eventually I ended up with the PRO features of this tool to publicize my feed. But you can use the tips below which are free:

Create a page which will be automatically updated whenever you have a new post published.

Don’t worry, our tutorial is getting easier step by step

Step 1: Install RSS Just Better WordPress plugin.

Step 2: Create a separate page where you want to aggregate all your guest articles and contributions and use the following code to embed your feed:


Feed URL not provided. This shortcode does require an attribute as feed = 'http://your-rss-or-atom-feed'. Please, enter one.

Where:

• RSSjb feed=”YOUR MASTER RSS FEED LINK”
• list=”ul” (for the bullet-style list)
• target=”_blank” (to open links to my guest posts in a new window)
• pubauthor=”false” (to remove the plugin credit link; I am crediting it in this post)

Note: I had to edit the plugin source code as well as it seemed to force the 5-post-from-feed limit. I edited this part:

The Result?

***Here’s my page listing all pages where I guest post and featuring a self-updating list of links to my contributions***.

What are your thoughts?

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by Open Kitchen España

Related posts:

1. Where I Contribute and Guest Post
2. How to Create a Useful Twitter Retweet Bot
3. The Ethics of Guest Posting – Am I Wrong?

This is not the first time I am doing a post on content re-packaging in different forms and types. Thus, I have already shared why giving your great articles a new life is so effective for content marketing:

✔ It brings traffic to your old content (and reanimates your old linkbait);

✔ It lets you share your guest post at your own site creatively;

✔ It brings links to both old content and its re-packaged version (which means at least twice as many links);

✔ It spurs your creativity and lets you test different types of content link bait (without the need to create new content and conduct any additional research).

This post looks at one type of content re-packaging: turning your old content into an image (and thus allowing it for download and easier spreading).

1. Create a Comic

Comics always go great and most of your content can become the source of inspiration for a great link-baity comic. Here’s the recipe that is sure to help:

• Get inspired: Read your own archives and browse through existing awesome comic collections: 1, 2, 3
• Find the best free tool: There are quite a few but my personal favorite is Strip Generator
• Create a few drafts and the idea will arrive!

Example please!

Here’s mine. I am not that great at humor (especially humor in a foreign English) but I got inspired by my own post on how blocking on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus works:

2. Create a Flowchart

A flowchart makes a great infographic especially when it is based on a detailed instruction. It makes things so much easier to follow and understand, and moreover, it will better explain the whole process. Therefore, a flowchart is a great idea for a how-to article, manual and tutorial (even if it’s a how-to on your own product or service!)

• Get inspired: Here’s a great collection of flowchart-based infographics.
• Find the best free tool: You can use this tool as a decent flowchart generator. This one is paid, but it’s free to try. Alternatively, you can just use a pen and paper (or a whiteboard) which (for me) somehow frees the creativity.

Example please!

It’s been always hard to prompt our MyBlogGuest members to follow the rules on creating and formatting a guest post. So I created a checklist to help them, and then later visualized the guest article quality check process using the flow chart on my whiteboard. If you write a lot of guest posts, that’s something you should do as well!

3. Create a Comparison Chart

You probably know I love comparison charts. I frequently make them and the feedback is always that they make the content much easier to digest and remember. So if you want to create a downloadable freebie to please your readers, here’s a great idea: throw your product review in a table, turn it into a .jpeg image and share it. If your content is useful, if doesn’t have to be well-designed!

• Get inspired: Here’s one comparing popular models of cameras. Here’s another good example that compares apples to oranges (in both cases, scroll down a bit to the actual table).
• Find the best free tool: Any HTML editor you are using that can insert and customize tables.

Example please!

Do you want to train your team to remember the difference between article marketing and guest blogging, let them save this table, print it and use for reference.

4. Create a Mind Map

Like a flowchart, a mind map is a great way to visualize the information structure, but while a flowchart is better for explaining the process, a mind map is perfect for structuring any content.

• Get inspired: Here’s a great collection of mind-map-based infographics.
• Find the best free tool: Here’s my old post that lists some tools and tips on mind-mapping (but as you’ll see from the comments, the preferred way is still to use pen and paper!). If you can come up with a cool idea, just use What Do You Suggest which is based on Google Suggestions.

Example please!

It has just occurred to me that you can use “What Do You Suggest” to tell your Google search story (similarly to the Youtube project of the same name):

5. Create a Typographic Image

While all the 4 four ideas above are perfect for better explaining what you meant to say, this one is purely for fun. But fun is a great content marketing tool as well!

• Get inspired: Here’s an awesome collection compiled by PsPrint for Inspired Magazine
• Find the best free tool: Both of these are totally awesome: Wordle and Tagxedo.

Example please!

Here’s one I have built based on one of my old posts on what guest blogging is NOT (notice how it almost looks like one of our brand elements (a cloud)):

Let’s Recap, Shall We?

Any more ideas here? Please share them in the comments!

Image credits: 1, 2

Related posts:

1. HOW TO: Re-package Your Best Content for More Exposure (and Links)
2. Find Your Most Useful Content with Help of Copy Heat Map
3. Quick SEO Company Evaluation – Don’t Buy it…

One thing I have clearly realized while being a full-time guest post editor at SEJ is that most (guest) contributors (no matter how much we love them) are terrible at formatting.

It very seldom happens that a guest blogger will browse your blog for a few minutes and copy your obvious formatting preferences to his own post. Or even that he tries to make the article formatting web-friendly at all.

While your guest post style guide is up to you (by “style guide”, I mean the required article length, preferred topics, writing manner, good article samples, etc), formatting is usually similar across the blogs: we need clear code, readable paragraphs, working links, etc.

A properly written formatting guide won’t let you fire your editor: most contributors will still fail to follow all the steps properly, but you’ll be amazed at how easier your editor’s (or your own) work will become.

A good formatting checklist should be:

• As short as possible (The longer it is, the more chances there are that none of your contributors will follow all the steps);
• As concise as possible (Avoid explaining the reason why you want it to be formatted that way. The more you explain, the less obvious your point becomes. Just list your requirements)
• As easy to understand as possible (Add a few screenshots, bold most important points, etc).

Now, here’s my formatting checklist for guest bloggers and paid contributors. Feel free to download it, edit minor details (like the preferred width of images) and use it to edit your blog. It will be suitable and (hopefully) useful for:

• Guest-contributor-driven blog;
• A blog network with multiple co-authors;
• A business managing multiple paid contributors;
• A business owner outsourcing content to ghost writers, etc.

Attention: This guide requires that your blog contributor has a wp-admin (Contributor) access to your blog. Otherwise, you may ask to send you the articles in HTML.

*Download the formatting guidelines here. Read some explanations below*

Structuring Standards

We know that breaking the article into sections is very important: blog readers tend to scan through the articles jumping from a subheading to a subheading (and probably reading the sections that seem most relevant to them).

One of the most efficient ways to capture your readers’ attention is to provide catchy subheadings that would summarize your article content nicely. Ideally, the reader of the article should understand what it is about by just scanning through the subheadings which should effectively summarize the article content while still encouraging the reader to go more indepth. Here’s a short but sweet checklist for using subheadings for SEO and usability I did a couple of years ago.

Other important guidelines that (may) go in this section:

• Make your sentences and paragraphs short (that makes the whole article easier to read)
• Introduce your article effectively in the opening paragraphs and encourage a discussion in the conclusion (by asking some questions)

Adding Links

Links are always great (unless links are brutally self-serving and anchor-text-dirty). I always encourage all my authors include links to any app, business or person they are mentioning. Links are user-friendly, so in my guidelines I always prompt contributors to:

• Link to relevant articles on my blog;
• Link to others relevant articles elsewhere (as well as sources of information, apps, etc)
• Normally link words (not image files or subheadings)
• Always make sure they are using the full URL and the original “clean” link (now a shortened version, stripping all tracking parameters, etc).

If that’s *guest posting* guidelines, consider also adding a caution against self-serving links in the content of your body. Here’s a post that explains my attitude to them.

Lists

Including lists is also highly appreciated. A well-formatted list is likely to draw readers’ attention and make them stay.

Sadly, contributors tend to format lists in all possible ways using -, *, or any other inappropriate symbols instead proper <ul><li> coding. Therefore it’s a good idea to remind them of proper formatting here.

Images

Another very important element of any blog post. Images will never be added unless you clearly ask for them.

Here I specify the proper style and size of the images as well as encourage authors to include a relevant, catchy and properly attributed Creative Commons image.

If you find the guidelines useful or have any improvements to suggest, please comment below!

cc licensed ( BY SD ) flickr photo shared by mt 23

No related posts.

It is amazing how many new things we may discover in very familiar services by just experimenting… I’ve been using Google for ages and I am quite familiar with its advanced operators but I just discovered a new one a couple of week ago.

Actually, I’ve been aware of it for quite some time but I thought it was supported only by Blog Search (and it never occurred to me to use it anyway) until one of our very awesome moderators shared it worked great in Google as well.

The operator is INPOSTAUTHOR:”Author Name” and it allows to filter search results by the author name. Try! [inpostauthor:"ann smarty"]

Now, if you come to think of it, there may be some great ways to take the full advantage of it!

Search For Guest Blogging Opportunities!

If you guest post (and if you are following me for some time, I may have already persuaded you to start guest blogging), this operator could turn a life saver for finding new guest posting opportunities.

Let’s create some smart search queries:

• inpostauthor:”guest author” {your topic here}
• inpostauthor:”guest post” {your topic here}

Let’s try to broaden the search by including each of the slight variation above:

inpostauthor:”guest post” OR inpostauthor:”guest author”{your topic here}

Tons of new guest posting opportunities you would never be able to find otherwise! Some of them are not even labeled as “guest post” in any way – but they are!

Now, try playing with search sidebar looking for the most recent guest posts (some of those blogs may have just started accepting guest posts, so you’ll be one of the first featured!)

Follow Any Author

Remember that sweet little tool that lets you create daily email alerts of new search results indexed within the past 24 hours? All you need to is to search for your favorite author (let it be me… what? I am the owner of this blog: I can do whatever I want here )

[inpostauthor:"ann smarty"]

Click “Show more options” to the right and filter the results to see those indexed within past 24 hours. Now grab the resulting URL and create a new free alert in the TrackEngine.

Alternatively, you can use Google Blog Search, filter results and:

• Subscribe to RSS to track your favorite author throughout all blogs he contribute to;
• Subscribe to email alerts of your favorite author’s new articles;

Note: You may see some content scrapers now and then which you can filter out with help of [-site:scraper.com]:

inpostauthor:”ann smarty” -site:scraper1.com -site:scraper2.com -site:scraper3.com

3. Aggregate Your Articles in One Place

If you do a lot of guest posts (and I hope you do) or contribute to multiple blogs on a regular basis, you may want to collect your posts in one place. The above Google Blog Search RSS feed would work like a charm for that!

Note: Obviously, it will only pull posts where you contribute from your own author account.

All you need to is to grab RSS link (framed in yellow in the above screenshot) and use either (or both of these plugins):

• RSS Import to embed your posts in your blog sidebar;
• FeedList to embed your posts in any page

Ann Smarty’s Articles:

Hope it will turn useful!

Note: I just want to apologize to all my readers that I don’t update my blog too often. The thing is that this blog is too special for me. I only post here if I really have something really useful to say. So stay tuned!

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Pink Sherbet Photography

Related posts:

1. How to Ghost-Google: Searching Google without Google to Know about You
2. My Google’s Addiction : Sorry Guys, but I Do Love Google Search
3. The Ethics of Guest Posting – Am I Wrong?

A couple of weeks ago I did an article at our BlueGlass blog on the 3Rs of *really* great content (http://bit.ly/ecw8zK). The third “R” was about smart re-packaging or re-purposing your content which obviously requires more information and clarification.

Your best content doesn’t have to live only once. If you have managed to create something awesome that resonated with the audience, go ahead and make the most of it.

Re-purposing or re-packaging an article means giving it another form and format based on the exiting content and research. By re-packaging, you spread your article even further. You expose it to new audiences; you allow to download it and save for further reference.

Repackaging is one of the most powerful content marketing tactics. It does require time, effort and inspiration but it pays back with more exposure, links and recognition.

This post is about different ways to re-package your content to give it wings. This post means to inspire.

1. Presentations

You can turn almost any article into the PowerPoint presentation:

• Collect all the screenshots and put them into a pretty slideshow;
• Turn your list part into an appealing presentation;
• Create an easy-to-digest summary of your article (move the key points into the presentation);
• Move any statistics data or case studies you are mentioning to the presentation (to make your point clearer); etc

Tools to promote:

Platform	Alexa Rank (January 2011)	Best points
	289	Social media friendly: LinkedIn and Facebook applications (presentations are easy to promote); Huge community (more exposure).
	12,531	Shows which page each presentation is ranked in Google and displays viewing stats for each slide (which you can use to craft a smarter re-packaging strategy)

Helpful tips!

If you consider using SlideShare to expand your content reach, be sure to go through these tips on promoting your presentations on Slideshare. Some most useful tips include:

• Don’t forget your keywords (and put them in tags and presentation title);
• Take part in SlideShare contests (like this World’s Best Presentation Contest)
• Use LinkedIn and Facebook SlideShare application to sync up your presentations so friends and fans can view.
• Create a group that’s exclusive to your brand and advertise your product or services
• Integrate some sound into your presentation with Slidecasting
• Launch a channel (Check out some of the newest channels and contact SlideShare for details on how to get started.)

Example?

Back in 2008, when I was doing my very first guest post for SEJ, I got so excited that decided to find a prettier way to share my guest post with my personal blog audience. So I came up with the short but pretty (and surprisingly well-branded) presentation to embed to my blog:

2. eBooks and PDF’s

Like with presentations, you can always re-package your content into PDF’s to let users download it and view on iPad, share with friends and save locally for further reference:

• Re-organize your tips into one-page cheat sheet;
• Re-arrange your article to create a mini eBook;
• Interview a few really prominent people on the topic of your post and collect the interview into an eBook;
• Collect related statistics to create a white paper.

Best tool to promote:

Platform	Alexa Rank (January 2011)	Best points
	225	Heavy Facebook integration (login and reading recommendations via Facebook) which gives your content more social media exposure; Huge community.

I have a larger list in this post on sharing your (SEO) documents. There are also eBook sharing and reviewing sites like GetFreeEbooks you can try to use to increase exposure of your content.

Here’s also a very sweet tip on how to promote your eBook which I thoroughly enjoyed because it is very practical and genuine.

Example?

I have mentioned this in my 3-R post, but I decided to include it here just because I really enjoyed the execution. Allison Boyer re-crafted her The 12 Days of Blogging 2010 series into an appealing eBook: each page of the eBook is dedicated to one prominent blogger with the citation from his article and Allison’s comment below it.

3. Cheat Sheets

If you want to give your content some huge exposure, consider creating a useful cheat sheet or a quick-reference guide – that always results in insane popularity because people love sharing and printing out cheat sheets that offer an easy way to remember and use complex guidelines.

Tools to promote:

Note: Cheat sheets are very easy to promote via blogger outreach. Most bloggers (including myself) love sharing and creating round-ups of relevant and useful reference guides – so just take some time looking for such bloggers in your niche.

Example?

Ian Lurie did an awesome guest post at SEOmoz and then followed up with this equally awesome (do I start sounding like Steve Jobs already? ) Google Analytics Cheatsheet containing both basic and advanced tips on setting up the proper tracking. Obviously, he now owns Google SERPs for [Google Analytics Cheatsheet] term and also enjoys plenty of backlinks naturally flowing in (including mine):

4. Screencasts

If you (like myself) tend to shy away from creating a screencast, let me tell you that today it seems to be as easy as making a screenshot:

• Here’s one fun free tool I shared previously that makes screencasting fun.
• You can convert your PowerPoint presentation into a video as well!. Here is the post that lists some tools to do that).

By creating a screencast showing what you are explaining in the post you will cater for “visual learning” part of your audience. Besides, you’ll be able to increase your content exposure to highly popular online video sharing websites.

Tools to promote?

Video sharing websites are plenty. Of course, I suggest focusing your efforts to max 5: you will get extra exposure only if you develop and promote your profiles at the selected video sharing websites (instead of trying to distribute your video to hundreds of them). Video social media websites work like any social networks: you need to commit to get noticed there!

URL	Alexa Rank (January 2011)	Best points
	3	It’s huge and very active.
	2,242	It caters for how-to video fans (and it is great to promote your Youtube uploads as it accepts third-party0hosted videos)
	4,040	It allows a lot of text context for each video. It is easier to get noticed there.
	2,541	Allows for all sorts of “dofollow” links both in the video description and author profiles and is overall the best in terms of driving people from the video page back to your site.

Examples?

Here’s a good one: create a post about setting up event tracking in Google Analytics and make your point stronger by promoting the video tutorial. The video alone got about 14, 000 views so far! A great way to promote your presence on Youtube!

5. Infographics (and Other Image Content)

If you take time creating some pretty charts, venn diagrams or other types of infographics, be sure to promote those separately. (Here are some free tools to help you quickly create useful infographic). But not only infographics are worth sharing. If you have created a good collection of screenshots, for example, share and promote your collection as well!

Best tool to promote?

URL	Alexa Rank (January 2011)	Best points
	35	It is fairly easy to get ranked high in Creative Commons search results.

Example?

When I was launching MyBlogGuest, it struck me that not all people actually were familiar with the concept of guest blogging, so I created a short intro to explain what it was all about and one of our members did a great job visualizing the concept through infographic (which became a powerful independent piece of content):

cc licensed flickr photo shared by balanced.crafts

Related posts:

1. 5 *Quick and Easy* Ways to Re-package Your Content into a Viral Image
2. Baiting for Links with Fake Websites
3. Blatant Content Plagiarism – Am I To Thank You?

If you write several blog posts weekly for many years, you are very well aware of what “writer’s block” means. It happens very often that you just need a couple of words, a single line of text to get inspired. But where to find those words?

To me keyword research and Google search has always been huge sources of inspiration. Whenever I have nothing to write about, I either start searching randomly using some wicked search operators or turn to one of my favorite keyword research tools.

Last week I randomly stumbled upon another cool way to get inspired: use your Gmail as your keyword research tool.

Now, that idea may seem a bit forced at first but what if we start thinking about it:

• Gmail stores tons of relevant information. If you are interested in the topic or have expertise in it (or both), you are likely to be subscribed to at least dozen of related newsletters – that’s a huge resource of relevant content weekly.
• Gmail stores tons of relevant user-generated content. Again, being interested in some topic, you are likely to discuss it daily and at least 50% of the most substantial relevant conversation happens via email (which is again, Gmail for many people)
• Gmail has killer search feature (Google is good at that stuff, you know) which can be further improved!

Just try it now. Pick a random search term, go to Gmail and try searching. Now scan through the search snippets (which are short extracts from your email containing your search term). Look how much keyword research help it can turn to be!

Now, let’s try to have a bit more fun with the idea.

1. Highlight your search terms more vividly

If you have Google Toolbar installed (which you are very likely do), set it to search your Gmail and that will give you the way to highlight your search terms from the Google Toolbar:

2. Search all folders

By default, Gmail will only search through Inbox folder. To make your search broader (and include Spam folder, for example, which can include various promotional emails that will turn useful for keyword research inspiration).

This Greasemonkey script will put ‘in:anywhere’ in your search requests to Gmail by default to force it to include all folders.

3. Make your search more targeted

Gmail labels can turn to be great help in using Gmail as keyword research tool. Let’s say you have subscribed to a number of email newsletters but don’t want them to clutter your email inbox (and/or want to be able to search within these emails only).

All you need is to go to Gmail settings and create a new filter by the sender’s email address (or addresses):

In the second step you can set all those emails to skip the Inbox (wile still being available for searching) and create an easy-to-remember label to organize them:

Now, whenever you want to search within the “TechWebNews” folder, just use label:techwebnews in the search field!

This could work for Google Alerts, Twitter Alerts and many other community updates you need (like LinkedIn groups alerts for example).

4. Gmail Advanced Search!

Don’t forget that Gmail is Google’s service – so it has a great advanced search platform. Some of the most useful (in this case) Gmail advanced search options include:

• [-word] to exclude any word from your search;
• [subject:word] to force any word to appear in the email subject
• “Date within” feature available in “search Options” that allows to control how fresh the content is going to be:

5. How far can we go?

If we think about it, email search can turn so useful!

• Subscribe to your competitors’ email newsletter, filter it with Gmail label and check which keywords they tend to search and how.
• Subscribe to Twitter alerts via email and track which words your base term tends to appear with;
• Subscribe to Google alerts and search most instant Google results and search within them.
• You name it!

Post images via opacity and DonnaGrayson

Related posts:

1. Keyword Research Services
2. SEO Competitive Research Series at Search Engine Journal
3. Organizing Your Keyword Modifiers (SEJ)

Your blogging style is up to you. I for one usually shy away from newly hot and trending topics for various reasons: firstly, I am not based in the USA and thus I am slow in learning what everyone says, secondly, seeing great coverage, I usually have hard time finding what to add.

And to tell you the truth, I come to realize this is a mistake. Trending topic coverage is GOLD. Oftentimes it never fails to engage existing readers and attract new ones no matter how well it has been covered before you.

Let me just share one personal example. Do you remember the time when Google started experimenting with “search within search” option allowing users to search within a popular site right from the initial SERPs? I didn’t cover the news but my guest blogger did: and voila! I had tons of comments, trackbacks and even CNN coverage (journalists always look for bloggers’ take on the trending topic)!

So no matter what your attitude towards blogging on what everyone blogs is, my advice would be: do it. Chances are that will bring you plenty of exposure, fans and links. The key of course is to make it right.

Now, how you actually track hot trends and choose the trending topic to cover is up to you, your niche and your purposes. Here’s a quick helpful list of resources that might help you choose the right tool to do that:

• Track Hot Trends With Twitter Tools (by me at SEJ, an old one actually but can still be applied);
• 7 Ways to Track Hot Trends on the Internet

The aim of this post is not to share how you spot the trends – it’s how you cover them:

Stand Out: Provide Fresh (Unexpected) Perspective

Just covering the news won’t give you much. It’s your personal take (and a catchy title summarizing it) that would make you famous. Re-blogging news is not worth your time or effort – you may be lucky enough to make it to Google News and pop up in general search for a few hours (if you are in indexed in Google news) – but that’s the maximum benefit you are likely to get (unless you were the first to cover the news which is almost impossible in today’s world of instant information exchange).

This is why your unique perspective and catchy representation would be your chance to win:

• Rant (if you are that type of the blogger which is good – I for one have never been good at ranting while plenty of people are building careers on ranting alone!)
• Pose a question (contradicting the overall opinion);
• Be sincere: your attempt to merely stand out by trying to arise artificial discussion would be noticed and mocked out. Do your homework: read lots of material, look for convincing examples, express your sincere point of view.

An example? With all that buzz around “Old Spice” commercials, a good contradiction would be a refresher. I am aware of only one article which instead of covering the campaign, posed a good question:

Time will show if this coverage will attract some media attention but I guess that was a worthwhile effort!

Link to Official Sources

I have a suspicion that that’s how that guest post I mentioned above got noticed (but pst! That’s a secret. The official story is that my blog is so awesome that CNN journalists read it regularly!): Rishil linked to the official post introducing the feature and the catchy title should have attracted eager minds who were looking for sources to cite in their own coverage:

So the killer tip here: ALWAYS link to the official source. Even if they don’t list trackbacks, chances are they will notice your unique coverage from their traffic sources.

Same goes about your retweeting your coverage, always “tag” the official Twitter account as the source for them to see your tweet.

3. Get the Maximum SEO Benefit

If you are not one of powerful niche blogs covering some hot topical news, you have few chances to land your coverage on the first page of Google (even if you were (one of) the first bloggers to cover it).

Getting a bit tricky in terms of keyword selection to name your coverage will increase your chances though. You won’t have to spend plenty of time researching which keywords people use to search for the news coverage. I suggest using just two free tools: Google Suggest and Google Insights.

Google Suggest accompanies your search, so it won’t take you long to check it out. However if you need to go a bit more indepth (which will also get you inspired and help find more articles covering the story), try using this simply genius tool: Ubersuggest – it does the following:

1. Takes your base term and extracts Google suggestions for it,
2. Then attaches each letter of the alphabet to your base term and extracts Google suggestions for those as well.

At the end you get dozens of terms starting with your base term: see this file for [Old Spice +] results: ~250 possible angles for your coverage!

Google Insights is another source of coverage inspiration as well as keyword selection and expansion assistant. It is very easy to use, just search for your base term and scroll down to the “Search terms” section:

Also, if you plan to use the tool more extensively, here’s a post on what Google Insights CANNOT do or cannot show.

Have you ever success with hot trend coverage? Please share your tips!

Post image is by key2day.blogspot.com

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If you are addicted to WordPress as much as I am, you are most likely to be subscribed to Yoast.com and you should have seen this post reviewing WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM plugin. As I was just looking for some good plugin to enhance my contact page as well as organize my leads, I promptly decided to give it a go.

This post described my whole experience of the plugin installation and customization.

The steps are as follows:

1. Create a Trial Account at SalesForce

(to test things out)

2. Upload and activate the plugin

(as an avid WordPress user, you are likely to be familiar with the process).

3. Configure the plugin:

3.1. Basic settings: Customize status messages displayed after the message is sent or if there was an error:

3.2. Connect to your Salesforce account by providing your company ID (located in your Salesforce.com account, go to Setup » Company Profile » Company Information):

3.3. Customize the form settings: the form phrases and look:

3.4. Customize the form fields:

• Specify which fields you want the customer to complete;
• Select the required fields;
• Specify the type of each field;
• Set the field order:

4. Use the form

To use this form, copy the following shortcode into a post or page:

Additionally you can use the sidebar widget to have the form blog-wide (this is where I am having it now as I am testing it so far):

Here’s how the plugin looks when added to the sidebar:

The whole process just over-viewed above is clearly described in this video as well.

5. Enjoy the service

Now I should be able to:

• Track all conversations and interactions
• Organize your contacts and tasks in a single spot
• Easily synch with Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo!, and more

Which tools are you using to organize your leads? Which other WordPress tutorials for beginners can you recommend?

Post image by batega

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*The following is the guest post by Stacey*

This already looks like a series: first The Roast of the Silver Surfers, then Hal’s Geriatric Surfers – Should We Pull The Plug? and now this great and funny post on how Stacey’s Nan sees the Internet.

If you want to find new blogging friends and exchange cool guest posts like the one below, join MyBlogGuest

A couple of recent guest posts here on SEO Smarty have covered the topic of the more, ahem, mature web surfers. Hal Brown in particular raised a laugh from me when ending his post with, “Us old farts may look stupid to youngsters, but consider how you look to us.” Good point!

But all this talk of the sixty something surfers got me thinking of my wonderful Nan. She doesn’t use the Internet – in fact I’m not even sure she knows what it is really. Let me offer a little insight into the ‘Internet According to Nan.’

Very Intelligent Men Live in Computers

A number of years ago, search engine ‘Ask Jeeves’ (ask.com) ran a series of TV ads here in the UK. They invited British surfers to go online and ask a rather well dressed cartoon butler anything! It was actually a rather clever marketing campaign really, particularly as even Nan (who generally turns off when anything in an advertisement mentions ‘www’) noticed it. I know she noticed it because several days later as she sat puzzling over a crossword she sought my assistance.

‘Stacey?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Nan?’

‘You’ve got one of them computer things haven’t you?’

‘Yes Nan.’

‘Ok, can you get hold of that Jeeves fellow from that telly ad? I need help with my crossword.’

Yes, it seems Nan genuinely thought that Internet users have unrestricted access to a very knowledgeable gentleman by the name of Jeeves and that whenever I wanted to know anything I could simply switch on my computer and ‘talk’ to the butler himself, personally.

Google is a T-Shirt Printing Business

When I first began working in SEO and online marketing, I was trying to explain the concept to my Nan. I started by explaining search engines and why someone would want to ‘rank’ within them. However, I was interrupted in the middle of my very ‘back to basics’ explanation of Google.

‘Google?’ she began, ‘They make T-shirts, don’t they?’

Despite my insistence that Google isn’t a local t-shirt printing company, I think she still believes that they are… which I suppose by default means that if anyone asks what her Grand Daughter does for a living, there’s a very real chance she’ll reply, “Gets things on T-shirts.” Yes, honest, I’m a T-shirt printer!

Facebook Makes People Get Divorced

Now, while there is no arguing with the fact that some people have divorced as a result of an encounter they’ve had with someone they met or got back in touch with through Facebook, I’m not sure it’s fair to assume that Facebook is singlehandedly responsible for as many divorces as my Nan seems to think it is. Of course, she’s basing her in depth knowledge of the platform on one or two dodgy articles she’s read in tabloid newspapers. But there’s no arguing with Nan. Her opinion is gold. My Auntie and I were having a discussion in my Nan’s house a few months back. She had recently joined Facebook and having previously been as much of a novice as Nan, was asking for a little help getting to grips with it.

‘Can you come round to my house when you get chance,’ she asked me, ‘and help me out with Facebook?’

‘Facebook?’ Nan piped in. ‘What are you looking at that for? You’re not even married.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ my Auntie enquired.

‘Well that’s a thing on the Internet for married people who want mistresses or toyboys isn’t it?’

I don’t think she’ll be signing up for a profile anytime time soon.

The Internet Closes at 5

Several months ago I was sitting in my Nan’s house (minding my own business) and when I decided to get the laptop out and enjoy some early evening online shopping time.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked me as I turned my laptop on (It’s worth noting that as far as my Nan is concerned, if your eyes aren’t on the TV, you must be up to something).

‘Shopping.’

‘On that internet thingie?’

‘Yep.’

‘You’re too late, love. It’s nearly seven now. Shops shut ages ago.’

Even after explaining to her that Internet shops don’t really work like that and that they are open 24 hours, she simply accused the retailers of ‘exploiting their staff,’ by making them work day and night. I stopped trying to explain right there.

So you’re unlikely to ever see my Nan on Facebook – she’s not in the market for a toyboy. She’s not keen on Google because she prefers long sleeved sweaters to t-shirts and she remains one of the tiny minority who still insist on booking their travel in a High Street Travel Agency. Apparently online shopping is all a big conspiracy.

So while we talk and blog and debate the progress of technology and the web, it might be worth remembering that the Internet revolution hasn’t quite happened for everyone yet!

Stacey is from Manchester, UK and works in online marketing and SEO (that t-shirt printing business, right?) for Tecmark: SEO Liverpool. She’s regularly sniffing around the My Blog Guest forums! You can follow Stacey on Twitter!

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This is a guest post by Hal Brown, in response to a previously published one (Yes, I love listening to all types of opinions here).

The two things most difficult to write are humor and satire. Humor writing can be targeted to a specific audience, in which case not everyone is expected to get the joke. Broad-based humor is not so forgiving; Invariably someone will be offended. In other words, you might get away with calling obese people fat if your audience is skinny, just don’t make a habit of saying things like that in public.

Satire is the most difficult of all things to write. The target is most specific and some people will be offended. That’s life. The degree of resentment that can be caused is in direct correlation to the writer’s talent for satire. Age has a lot to do with this as well; parents don’t like kids to satirize life, especially when the kids have not lived long enough to have the wisdom that comes with age.

Attacking an entire generation as “doomed”, “too old to give a damn” is not satire, or “tongue in cheek.” Accusations of Cognitive lock-in (My generation called this the RC factor, resistance to change) is anything but objective – it is an indictment of baby-boomers stuck in some fixed time period, unable to comprehend technology. I don’t believe this is true.

Regardless of age, change is not an easy thing to accept. But to say, “…despite logic, these old farts will prefer to do things the old way even if there are new and objectively ‘better” ways of doing the same thing” is to pigeon-hole the people who made it possible to write this as afflicted with dementia. Our kids generation may be using the technology, but we invented it.

Until a couple of years ago I owned a computer company. Besides consulting, designing and implementing networks in the health-care industry, I taught employees basic computer skills. Two aspects of this business always held true: Interest in learning and general ability to learn. Age was never a factor.

I’m not going to say that age has no bearing on using the Internet. Of course it does. Conversely, the ability to thumb an iPhone to text, or use social networking sites does not make a technology expert. Regardless of age, most people do not know how to effectively use Facebook or Twitter – 80% of the population doesn’t know what a web browser is.

At some point all of us will use some part of technology we don’t understand. Most of us drive cars – how many embedded systems are in the average car made today? Who cares, we drive it and that’s all we need to know. Us old farts may look stupid to youngsters, but consider how you look to us.

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