EZineArticles.com, as well as other article marketing websites, can be a great resource for anyone that is wanting to grab some content or great story ideas. You can re-post the content on your page if it includes the user’s bio at the bottom (however, this isn’t recommended, as it counts as duplicate content). Article marketing sites consist of free articles that people use for linkbuilding purposes. By including their own website link in the bio portion of the article, they get exposure while reinforcing their expertise in a certain area or industry.

Not surprisingly, a lot of articles on EZineArticles and other article marketing sites are simply keyword-riddled drivel that barely makes sense. However, if you take a closer look, a lot of the content is actually well-written, useful, and informative. To find these quality articles, do a search or look in the applicable section. You’ll find that the most useful articles have a longer word count (300-500 words), don’t include links or free offers in the article, and have unique and catchy titles (like the first example article below).

I’ve included a few quick links to a small sample of articles I feel can really contribute to the discussion on social media, the internet, and search engine marketing (SEM).
Is It Anti-Social Media for the New York Times to Charge Online Subscribers?
How to Use Social Media to Improve Your Rankings
AdWords Mistakes You Should Avoid at All Costs
Why You Should Care When Someone Tweets About His Lunch

If you are facing writer’s block when trying to write entries for your own blog or website, these articles can certainly get the juices flowing.

Here’s your weekly dish of top search engine marketing and social media links for the week of January 18, 2010:

Can Search Engine Optimization survive google?

Search engine marketing on the rise, survey shows

Coakley v Brown: the social media divide may decide the election

Social media websites strengthened holiday season for retailers

Haitian relief dominates social media
NOTE: If you’re looking for a way to donate to Haiti relief, you can simply text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts. The $10 will be charged to your cell phone bill. If you have Sprint, they are waiving any text message fees for users who are using text to donate to Haiti. The damage done to Haiti is going to cost billions of dollars, and they have little water, clean medical supplies, and are having to use mass graves in order to bury the dead because there are no other alternatives. Please help!

30 tips for using social media

7 questions key to social networking success

Microsoft has a plan to improve Bing’s poor indexing

‘Old school’ SEO can address google’s ‘new school’ real-time search

Does anyone think the boom of social media is a cause of newspapers and magazines slowly dying?

Infographic by CartridgeSAVE.co.uk

Courtesy of Creative Cloud.

Other Links on the Decline of Print Media:

The Decline of Print Media: Blame Free Access

Newsday to Charge Fees to Non-Subscribers

Newspapers fold as Readers Defect and Economy Sours

After reading a great post by Erik Qualman on social media, I found out that his book, Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business has just been released this month. I quickly ordered it from Amazon.com and am excited to check it out. It’s only $17 and has gotten great reviews so far.

If you don’t want to order Erik’s book, he also has some great posts about social media and internet marketing on his blog, http://socialnomics.net

It’s good to know that people are finally paying attention to the value of social media as a means of online marketing– this is something I talk about a lot on The Social Robot.