Online Article Marketing

1:31 PM / Comments (0) / by Rags

Promowear Magazine, July/August 2009.

In this issue of Promowear we explore the avenue of marketing through writing and submitting articles to online distribution web sites. Here are a few links to browse through after reading the article. I recommend reading through a few articles - your choice of subject - to get a feel for the content that makes article marketing successful. Keep in mind the use of keywords and good headlines.

You may also want to read Article Marketing and Article Writing Tips and consider their free e-zine download for more tips and tricks.

Good luck!

Read the Digital Issue Online
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From Trash To Twitter

5:18 PM / Comments (0) / by Rags


News from Canada rarely crosses my desktop here in Texas, however recently a fellow dart player from Toronto alerted me to the garbage situation up there. Apparently there's a garbage strike going on and no signs of a speedy resolution. As a result trash is piling up on residents and businesses.

This fellow dart player - Roofer Dave - threw a concept and a question to some of us on a darts forum. He picked up www.fivebucksabag.com and wanted to know how to get the word out.

My suggestion was that a business like garbage collection would be able to utilize Twitter as more of an online marketing tool than a web site. No doubt the web site itself is important, but given the nature of the business consider how Twitter can benefit Dave's new service. He can literally Tweet his location, where he is on route and have users Tweet to him if they are in need of a pick up. Other Twitter users will eventually catch on and follow and before you know it, Dave can run this business from his cell phone during his route rather than having to rely on checking email and updating the web site (or hiring someone to do so).

I thought I'd throw this here on the blog as an example of how some businesses can use Twitter effectively, as well as to alert any readers from the Toronto area about this new service.

To find out more check in at www.fivebucksabag.com or follow @fivebucksabag on Twitter.

For Immediate Release:
July 4, 2009
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

As many residents of Toronto face the challenges that the current garbage strike has left them, one man has taken a new approach to a solution. Roofer Dave of Toronto has suspended his regular business tasks, and now offers residents a way to get rid of their trash in a safe and environmentally friendly way. Trash is collected for merely five dollars per twenty pound bag and taken to licenced disposal facilities for disposal (NOT THE CITY TEMPORARY DUMP SITES) Dave's plan is to ease the pain residents are feeling not add to it. According to Roofer Dave, "We are currently working on recycling efforts to divert as much as we can from land fills. We will have more on this as facilities get back to us." Finding Roofer Dave on his route is easy, simply follow @fivebucksabag on Twitter to see where and when he may be in your neighbourhood or contact him through his web site at www.fivebucksabag.com.

Generating a YouTube RSS Feed

2:41 PM / Comments (0) / by Rags

I recently stumbled across a great tip on how to generate an RSS feed from YouTube.

YouTube has RSS feeds however they do not make them easily available. You can create a feed for your channel, your favorite channel or even have one generated by keywords.

Here are a couple of example feeds I created for myself:

1) Feed for videos tagged with "darts":

http://youtube.com/rss/tag/darts.rss

2) Feed from my favorite YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/crackingdarts/videos.rss

3) Feed for Internet Marketing Videos

http://youtube.com/rss/tag/internet+marketing.rss

As you can see, by modifying the string you can create an RSS feed for virtually any topic. If you market your business on YouTube you can push the information using your feed. If you are looking for ineteresting web content for your blog or web site you can create a custom feed to update on it's own that interests your visitors. You can also plug the feed into Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

Here are the strings in plain text you can use to copy and paste, creating your own YouTube RSS feeds. Simply change the words in all caps to the elements you'd like to use:

Videos by tag:

http://youtube.com/rss/tag/TAG.rss

Videos by multiple tags:

http://youtube.com/rss/tag/TAG1+TAG2.rss

Videos by channel:

http://www.youtube.com/rss/user/USERNAME/videos.rss

Why is the @ character ignored in search queries?

12:25 PM / Comments (1) / by Rags

In the past I've heard many related questions. Can I use the @ sign in my domain name? I use the @ sign in my branding but why do the search engines don't seem to pick it up? With Twitter's increase in popularity and use of the @ character when addressing a Twitter user even more questions are bouncing around.

I experimented with this following yesterday's Indy 500 and entered a Google search for @danicapatrick (who finished a solid third), @h3lio (3rd time Indy 500 winner Helio Castronevez) and @TonyKanaan (current points leader who met the wall hard at 198mph suffering a DNF for the second straight year at The Brickyard).

The query produced the same results as a search for these drivers without the @ character, while WebMynd for FireFox produced a list of kudos and congrats from Indy Racing Fans across the Twittersphere. With the exception of Helio who uses the number 3 from his Team Penske Dallara/Honda in his Twitter name, the @ character was virtually ignored.

Google of course has their own answers to this in this short video.