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.

My first Search Engine Land article was published today! Search Engine Land is one of the top SEM websites and gets over 500k visits a month! My article offers effective ways to measure the value of social media marketing when it comes to business.

To read it, please visit How to Measure The Value of a Fan or Follower in Social Media. Don’t forget to comment and share!

Also, SearchCap: The daily SEL digest also included my article as the 1st one in their list of top news:

Yay!

I did a presentation at my full-time job last week about the importance of social media and what it means to our business, a marketing agency (BIGSHOT). Everyone thought it was a great and informative presentation and I thought I’d share what I offered.

Here’s the video I showed as an introduction:

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/BIGSHOTmktg
Free micro-blogging website where users can only post updates (or “tweets”) of 140 characters or less. Good for promoting website links, coupons, and specials. Has grown from 1.6m to 32.1m users just in the last year.

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/bigshotKC
The most popular social networking/media site, where anyone with a valid email address can join for free. Separated into networks of schools (high school and colleges/universities), companies (they have to apply for their own network), and cities (usually only metros and capitol cities, as of now). Now has over 250m monthly active users (as of July 2009), with 120m users logging on at least 1x/day. The fastest growing demographic is adults ages 35+.

MySpace:
Like Facebook, except MySpace offers the ability to completely customize profiles. Bands, Businesses, and Individuals all have profiles, there are no pages. Monthly page views have decreased over 20% in the last year, from 47.4b to 38b. Focus is on music, video, and celebrities.

LinkedIn:
For professionals; focused on business and career networking. Their slogan is “Relationships Matter.”  Had 43m registered users in over 200 countries as of July 2009. Profile focus is on job experience, skill set, what the user is looking for, and recommendations (references) from other contacts.

Why Should You Care?
In the last year, social media has become one of the most influential components of the web. Because of it, newspaper readership has been steadily declining, about 10% from April 2008 to April 2009, according to comscore (during that same time period, online newspaper readership increased 5%). Studies show that internet users also let social media affect their online shopping choices.

More Resources:

• “Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter Statistics”
• “On Twitter, Most People Are Sheep”
• “Compete: Facebook US Traffic Nearing Google, Yahoo”
• “Lollapalooza Tracks Social Media”
• “The Future of Newspapers: Who Killed the Newspaper?”
• “What the Horizon Realty Fail Can Teach You About Social Media”

Headline image from: http://blog.host1plus.com

Last week the web was on fire over the news that a real estate development company was suing a woman over what she said on her Twitter page about mold in her apartment, in a building that the company owned. This woman only had 20 followers and the company has openly admitted that they are a “sue first, ask questions later” type of organization. But because of their outrageous lawsuit, instead of 20 or so people really reading the woman’s comment, now thousands of people have read about it.

Even though the lawsuit is outrageous in and of itself, it’s important to remember the real impact of this company’s organization. Their attempt to prevent libel against the way they manage their property has now backfired. Instead of publicly aiding the woman (possibly responding to her over Twitter), they have now alienated even more perspective customers by presenting a tough, unwavering, aggressive attitude that won’t make anyone want to live on their properties.

In the era of social media, organizations need to be careful how they respond to criticism and bad press. Many times, how they handle a situation has a lot worse impact than the effects of libel.

For more information, click here to read about it in the Chicago Tribune.

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For those who keep up with Twitter news, you couldn’t have missed the big news last week that Twitter was attempting to kill off all spam accounts on their website.

Twitter spam was getting out of control, and even though many users experienced heavy drops in the number of their followers because false accounts were being deleted, this can only have a positive impact on your business.

Once Twitter has mostly gotten rid of spam accounts, then you will have a more accurate picture of the genuine people are that are actually following you. For example, when you are thinking about tweeting about your newest blog post to your 10,000 followers, it will reach a much lower number of people, as almost everyone has some sort of spam account following them. Once these spam accounts are removed, you will have a more accurate number of people you are reaching through your tweets.

If you follow @tless, they will automatically send you a direct message every week with your total number of new followers and a total number of people who have ‘dropped’ you (stopped following you). For my personal Twitter account last week, I had 20 or so adds and 56 ‘drops’, due to the eradication of spam accounts.

While I’m not happy with the lower follower number, I do know that this is definitely more accurate, and I applaud Twitter for their efforts to get all that nasty spam outta’ there!

NOTE: If you don’t want your business account to be labeled as spam, read this great article on What is and Isn’t Spam on Twitter on ClickZ.

NOTE’S NOTE: Follow us on twitter: The Social Robot

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Image courtesy of: http://blogs.sun.com/davetong