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Amazing Details What Is Video Optimization And Info On Article To Video Converter!

By Mark Fleagle in Featured

What Is Video Optimization? It’s amazing that many veteran marketers have a tendency to be totally surprised when they learn that Youtube accounts for more that 99 percent (you can check these stats at comScore Video Metrix) of all videos viewed at Google sites. Wow! That means that Google video accounts for less than 1 percent. And they are also very surprised to see YouTube does not crawl the web looking for videos. Ok,what does this mean? Well that means that most videos are not found on Google video accounts, and that is alarming considering that more than 3 billion expanded search queries a month are conducted on YouTube (you can check these stats at comScore Video qSearch 2.0). This is excellent info to have if you plan on converting your articles to video using an article to video converter.

It’s amazing how many marketers in the online SEO community still do not understand that YouTube is the main player in the online video market today, and that they should not be concentrating their efforts on video search optimization, but pouring their efforts into learning how Youtube works. YouTube accounted for 79 percent of all U.S visits to online video sites in February 2009 (you can check this stat at Hitwise), Google Video received the second highest percentage of visits at 4.6 percent. This statistic alone, should signal that you need to concentrate your efforts at Youtube if you plan on converting your articles to video using an article to video converter.

There are differences in these percentages because Hitwise and comScore use different methods in their statistics. ComScore includes sites with video content,such as Viacom Digital’s Comedy Central, while Hitwise only looks at 60 of the leading online video specific websites. Their sample sizes and methodologies may also differ but that’s not the point I making here,no mater which set of statistics you look at YouTube is by far the dominant player. Video search engines even collectively have only a small slice of the market share totaling only in the single digits. If you plan on converting your articles to video using an article to video converter make sure you do your creation with YouTube in mind.

Now I am not trying to say the search engine industry is old news because it is not. It’s still a very import part of any online marketers marketing strategy. I am just pointing out if you plan on marketing online videos you need to listen to what Youtube is doing because their results speak for themselves. I am suggesting you need to switch your online video marketing strategy away from concentrating 90 percent of your efforts on optimizing website video for video search engines, which have less than 10 percent share of the market. Instead,focus 90 percent of your efforts on Youtube when you think about turning your articles to video using an article to video converter. Even Yahoo! Video doesn’t crawl websites anymore, Google Video has a market share in the low single digits, and other video search engines have even less. We need to face facts, and understand that Youtube is the overwhelming winner when it comes to online videos and they are here to stay.

So I want to be helpful and define some terms:

• Video optimization means optimizing video for both types of online video sites.
• Youtube optimization means optimizing video for YouTube search.
• Video search engine optimization means optimizing website video for Google Video and other video search engines.

Now that we have define what video optimation is, we need to take note of what it is not.

It doesn’t have anything to do with the best formats for uploading. It doesn’t have anything to do with video format, aspect ratio, resolution, audio format, frames per second, maximum length, and maximum file size. When I talk about video optimization, I’m talking about editing a video’s metatag and content in order to improve it’s search result rankings. For videos on YouTube, this means that when you are looking at creating articles to videos using an article video converter editing the title and description tags becomes very important to increase views and improving your video’s ratings. These video optimization techniques are important to help people discover a video, which is what video optimization is all about.

Well that concludes my article about Youtube Top Favorites. Have a great day and the the best of luck to you on coverting your articles to video!

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Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

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Google Takes a “Buzz” Saw to Twitter

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

We’ve all been expecting it, but today was the day Google decided to roll out their answer to Twitter: Google Buzz.

I haven’t had much of a play with it yet, but the fact that it’s integrated with Gmail will probably make it very popular, very quickly.

From the official Google Blog post:

“Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch – it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most.

We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.”

I plan to write a detailed article about Google Buzz, but here’s a quick run down of the main features:

• Runs within Gmail
• Embeds images
• Embeds inline video
• Emails status updates
• Automatically works on mobiles without 3rd party applications
• Connects to Picasa, Flickr & Twitter
• No 140 character limit

It’s interesting that it integrates with Twitter. That suggests a deal has been done behind closed doors to ensure both products don’t compete head to head, but Twitter may still lose some audience now that Gmail offers both chat and a link sharing tool.

In some ways, it’s more like Stumble Upon in that it’s a more powerful tool for sharing links, videos and images than Twitter is. But because it operates within Gmail, I’m concerned that much of the conversation will be lost between email threads. We’ll have to wait and see.

I for one won’t be abandoning Twitter in a hurry.

The Next 10 Online Trends

By Patrick Stafford in Featured

It’s never been harder to keep up with the latest web trends with the expansion onto mobile platforms, the growth of social media and the need for start ups to be aware of new SEO techniques.

As a result, we’ve assembled a team of web experts to help you and your business keep on top of the most important trends on the web. Constructing a mobile website, creating social media campaigns and selling online are just some of the challenges businesses will face during 2010.

Here are top online trends for the next 12 months.

The End Of Dumb Affiliate Marketing

By Willie Crawford in Featured

One of the saddest things that I witness day after day is affiliate marketers who really struggle to make sales. They send out email after email, promotion after promotion, yet often make very few sales.

This is not only sad, it’s also needless “practice bleeding.” Making affiliate sales is easy when you know the secret. It’s even very scientific and does have fairly predictable results.

Let’s look at what most affiliates are doing wrong, what I’ve termed “dumb affiliate marketing” and how that can be easily corrected.

Before I offend anyone, I should explain that when I use the word “dumb” I mean untargeted. I come from a military background, and I think of “dumb bombs.” Those are bombs that are dropped off of an airplane and they tumble unguided towards a target. They may or may not hit the target but once they are released they get no guidance.

A “smart” bomb often has a built in navigation system, and after it is dropped from an airplane it often flies a precise, pre-programmed route of flight to a target – often getting satellite GPS updates enroute. A smart bomb can be dropped from miles away, and be steered right though a window on a building that the pilot flying the aircraft never even sees.

Your affiliate marketing can be just as on-target when you acknowledge and harness just a little know-how.

Promoting an affiliate product no longer needs to be a gamble.

First of all, you need to tap into data that is readily available on which products are already selling. One source of this data is the blogs maintained during many affiliate sales contests. Monitor these to see how well a given product is selling, and to see if you want to invest your time and effort into setting up a protracted marketing campaign. You can market many of these products after the big initial launch is over – often with lessened competition.

I personally also rely upon my network of friends who readily share with each other which affiliate products are proven sellers. Many of us are members of a Facebook Group called “Affiliate Products Proven To Sell.” If you are on Facebook, you can join this group for free by registering at http://timic.org/APPTS

Many affiliates also struggle because they use marketing methods that are outdated, and simply no longer work. One newer method that works like CRAZY is using quality videos. You can now have CUSTOM videos created for you for under $50 each, and that includes professional voice talent. For that,

I personally use Jason Anderson’s team at: http://timic.org/ProVideos

These are not PLR videos. They are produced from scratch and are mini-commercials. Mine are 1-minute because, just like your audience, viewers of my videos have short attention spans. So, take a clue from the television industry. They’ve mastered getting the message across in 30 seconds to 1 minute. You need to do the same.

Another fact that you need to “get” – a fact most struggling affiliate marketers still refuse to acknowledge is that your promotion needs to be for just ONE product. If the purpose of a solo mailing or ezine issue is to promote a specific product, then just mention that ONE product in the email.

Without fail, when I’ve tried to promote multiple products in an email, even if they were all free, overall response rate significantly decreased. I think that it’s because when you promote several products in an email, it comes across as too desperate. Be laser focused rather than using the shotgun approach.

Many affiliate marketers fail to make sales because they promote something that they like rather than something customers are ALREADY buying. With so many great products out there, I do not believe in being the guinea pig. You should only promote affiliate products where the product owner has thoroughly tested market demand AND his conversion process.

It’s foolish to put time and effort into promoting unproven products when you can just pick the low-hanging fruit by offering your customers the products that they’ve proven to you that they want.

Given that often there are numerous affiliates for a product that’s a proven seller, you may need to differentiate yourself from all of the other affiliates. One easy way to do that is to offer a valuable, related bonus. I like using unique audio interviews or related courses as bonuses.

If you’ve taken the time to actually communicate with your subscribers and customers, your offer isn’t identical to that made by others marketing the same affiliate product anyway. Just the fact that it’s YOU, whom your clients have grown to know, like and trust, that’s marketing the product… makes it different. The difference is that purchasing through your affiliate link is less risky.

That is one of the key factors in smart affiliate marketing. Earn their trust and the sales come a lot easier. I actually have subscribers email me doing a big product launch ASKING for my affiliate link. Over the past 13 years, I have built that kind of customer loyalty. If you work at doing that, everything else will fall in place.

Now that you know the secret, it’s time to stop doing dumb marketing. If your sales aren’t what they should be start by looking at WHAT you are marketing. Is it something that your customers really want? If it is, then next look at HOW you are marketing it. Read back thought this article for tips on the profitable way to do that.

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Willie Crawford is a seasoned affiliate marketer with 13 years of experience selling goods and services online. He now spends several hours many days mentoring other online marketers on a private discussion forum that’s part of a tight-knit membership community called “The Internet Marketing Inner Circle.” Join them at: http://timic.org/

The Road To Online Marketing Success Requires Commitment

By Bill Platt in Featured

Unsuccessful online marketers are notorious opportunity seekers – giving an opportunity only a couple of weeks to start showing results, before changing directions to chase the next flavor of the week. It almost seems that the majority of online marketers are chasing get-rich-quick schemes, rather than trying to develop a legitimate business.

Sometimes it seems like the majority of online marketers change the program that they are promoting, almost as often as they are putting gasoline into their car. “Okay honey… I filled up the car today… it is time for us to find another business opportunity to promote…”

There is also another group of online marketers, who seem to make a real commitment to a specific business opportunity, but success continues to elude this group is well. The second group fails to make a commitment to a particular marketing plan that is designed to help them to achieve success. Like the first group, they change directions, as often as they put gasoline into the car.

Those who are successful online, are the kind of people who make a solid commitment to a particular business model and make a long-term commitment to a realistic marketing plan.

I am not telling you these things because I think I’m better than you… In fact, I am telling you these things because I am guilty of having done the exact same things myself.

Towards the end of 2001, I finally started making serious money online, after having spun my wheels online for more than four years, chasing one opportunity after another, until I made a commitment to a particular business model.

I managed to increase my income year-over-year, and in March of 2005, I quit my job and started working full-time online. I have continued to earn a nice living online, ever since.

My 2009 revenues were down, but primarily because I was working less than normal… In November 2008, I learned that my father was ill… I had my suspicions right away, but we did not have verification of cancer until February 2009. (Contrary to popular belief, he was a non-smoker.)

As 2008 wound down, I made a commitment to my father that if he needed any assistance whatsoever, that I would make myself available to help him. That meant, if he needed transportation to and from doctors’ appointments, I would drive the one-hour to his house, and then take him wherever he needed to go. If he needed me to come to his house to help him with anything whatsoever, I would come to his house to help him.

I made the commitment to him, and I honored that commitment to him.

My online business suffered considerably, as a result of my making that decision. But, I have no regrets… It was the right thing to do, and I am grateful that I did it.

My dad passed away in November of 2009.

I continued to miss work, through November and December of 2009, while doing those things that must be done in relation to matters of his funeral and his estate.

Just a couple weeks ago, I sat down and calculated exactly how much time I actually spent outside the office in 2009.

Not all of my absenteeism, during 2009, could be attributed directly to the time I spent assisting my father during his illness. In March of 2009, I had missed two weeks when we moved across town. My websites had also suffered a 16-day shut down in May, because I was unable to update the DNS records for my domains, when my web hosting company migrated my account to a new server. When I went to do the DNS updates, I discovered that ICAAN was in the process of shutting down my domain registrar and moving my domain registration information to a new domain registrar. Unfortunately, during a move of that type, updates cannot be made to the DNS records. So, my websites were offline until ICAAN finished its work.

All told, I missed two weeks while moving, two weeks while waiting for ICAAN to get everything moved so that I could update my DNS records, and another 12 to 14 weeks while assisting my father and taking care of the things that I needed to take care of after he passed away.

During the course of the last eight years, there has only been one year in which I was not fully committed to my business. That year was 2009. I did not walk away from my business, but I had made the decision that taking care of my family was more important than my business.

While my business, my reputation, and my income suffered tremendously in 2009, due to my frequent absences and slow responses, the commitment that I had shown my customers in previous years helped my business survive 2009 intact.

Now that I have returned to my business full-time, my revenue is starting to bounce back.

The past nine years has been a wild and exciting ride. The thrill of growing a business from nothing to something worthwhile has been an awesome experience for me.

But to the point of this article, this story would have been very different if I had not committed to a specific business model in 2001, and it would have been very different if I had not committed to a specific marketing plan for the promotion of that business.

If I had not made the commitment to develop a viable business model and commit to a specific marketing plan, I would have probably still been working 60 hours per week on a job when my dad got sick. If I had still been working in the brick-and-mortar world of retail sales, I would not have had the opportunity to help my dad when he most needed my help.

Then again, I would have had a different job than I had previously, because my last employer went out of business in January 2009.

With all that has happened in the last 16 months, I count among my greatest blessings the care and concern that was shown to me by my clients. Sure, some of the new people had absolutely no patience for my absences… But, I received a large number of personal phone calls, snail-mail letters, e-mails, blog comments, and tweets from my clients and people that I know from online, who wanted to offer their support to me, during my emotional roller coaster ride.

My greatest blessings have been realized in 2009 and 2010. I am blessed by the wonderful people, whom I have met online through my online business. And I am blessed to have a business that was strong enough to survive my frequent absences, during the last 16 months.

Those blessings were available to me, because I made a commitment in 2001 to stop chasing new opportunities every couple of weeks. I made the commitment to a business model that I believed could be successful, and I made the commitment to promote that business in a consistent and reliable manner.

When I brought commitment to my online marketing endeavors, I finally started to make money online. As I maintained that commitment over several years, I was able to grow my business to the point where I would be able to consistently earn enough money from my business, so that I would never have to have an outside job again.

To be honest, I believe that the reason my business continued to attract new customers through 2009 was because I had used article marketing to promote my businesses. The articles I write and distribute, for the promotion of my online businesses, seem to have real staying power.

The articles that I wrote and distributed, over the last nine years, continue to influence readers to visit my websites and to learn more about my businesses and what I can do for the reader.

Between September 2008 and January of 2010, I only wrote and distributed four articles for the promotion of my websites. During those 16 months, I barely wrote and distributed one article every four months, yet the traffic to my website was only diminished during May of 2009, when my sites were off-line.

I honestly believe that the reason my websites continued to attract new visitors and new customers, during this period of time, is because I had more than 150 articles online, posted on thousands of websites, doing the hard work of convincing people that they needed to visit my websites to see how I could help them to accomplish their goals.

When your articles are as useful five years from now as they are today, your articles will have the same potential of continuing to send visitors to your website for many more years to come.

If you are seeking true success online, and you are still chasing the flavor of the week in business opportunities, I strongly recommend that you pick out something that seems to have real potential for you and to make a commitment to see it through to success.

If you would like to learn more about how to make article marketing work for you in the same positive manner that it has worked for me, pick up one or both of my article marketing ebooks shown below in my author information.

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I encourage you to download my free ebook, “Article Marketing: Beyond The Basics” ebook at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/advanced-article-marketing.html If you find my free ebook useful, and most people do, I would encourage you to purchase the more advanced ebook, “How To Use Article Marketing To Positively Impact Your SEO Efforts”. It is 70-pages of hard-hitting information about how to make your article marketing truly profitable: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-seo.html My name is Bill Platt, and I have been earning a nice living from article marketing for more than a decade. In my ebooks, I try to share with you the lessons that I have learned about how to get the most from your article marketing.

How to Conduct Keyword Research Like the Pros

By Brett Lindenberg in Featured

Ever wonder how the pros find the perfect keywords for their website? What secrets or proprietary tools do they possess mere mortals like us do not?

The truth is, most search gurus don’t use any special keyword research tools. They employ the same set of tools available to you or me—most are even free to use.

This article will show you how to find high-volume keywords and determine if the competition warrants a realistic attempt at ranking for these phrases.

Obama, Giant Lollipops and Unique Selling Propositions

By David Jackson in Featured

If you’ve been involved in sales and/or marketing for any length of time, you’ve probably heard the term “Unique Selling Proposition.” But just in case you haven’t, let me explain what a USP is.

A Unique Selling Proposition is what makes a business unique and/or different from all other businesses in its category. For example, the USP for a high-end restaurant, might include the exclusive clientele it serves, a specialized menu, white glove service, as well as other exclusive amenities.

Two Classic Unique Selling Propositions

To further illustrate what I’m talking about, following are two examples of the most famous and successful USP’s in the history of advertising:

You get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less – or it’s free.

That USP allowed Domino’s Pizza to take over and dominate the pizza delivery market. And it clearly differentiates Domino’s from its many competitors.

Here’s Another Classic

When your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight.

When they developed that USP, almost overnight, Federal Express (FedEx) became the dominant force in the overnight delivery industry. How dominant? It’s safe to say, the term “fedex” has permanent residence in the American business lexicon.

So, why is having a USP so important? Because with tens of millions of websites on the Internet all vying for attention, and thousands more signing on by the minute, if your business is the same as everyone else’s in your field, you might as well be invisible.

And if you don’t differentiate your business from the rest of the pack, I can almost guarantee, you will be invisible.

Giant Lollipops

Allow me to tell you a true story. When I was a child, I remember my mother taking me to the new doctor in town, Dr. Vosburgh to get some type of childhood vaccine. I was petrified. Like most kids, I hated needles. And each time the doctor tried to vaccinate me I’d pull away.

After failed multiple attempts to vaccinate me, the frustrated doctor said, “If you sit still while I vaccinate you, I’ll give you a lollipop, afterwards.”

“I’ve got lollipops at home,” I defiantly replied. “Not like mine,” the doctor responded teasingly. He then reached into his desk drawer, and pulled out the biggest lollipop I’d ever seen in my life. I’m not kidding.

That lollipop was so big and round, it could have easily covered up my entire face. It was a giant white lollipop, flat like a pancake, and it had a rainbow of different colors swirling all through the middle. Needless to say, I let the good doctor stick that needle in my arm.

Anyway, that new doctor quickly became the most popular doctor in town. All the kids liked him. And for some strange reason, I didn’t mind getting vaccinated anymore after that.
I was too young to realize it at the time, but that doctor had a Unique Selling Proposition – giant rainbow lollipops. And they worked like a charm!

Barack Obama’s USP

Here’s a more recent example of the importance of a USP. Before he was elected the 44th president of the United States, then candidate Barack Obama wisely positioned himself as the candidate of “change.” He captivated the nation with three little words, “Yes, We Can!”

Whenever he appeared on the campaign trail, huge crowds repeatedly chanted “Yes, We Can!” Hip-Hop producer and founding member of the popular singing group Black Eyed Peas, Will.i.am even created a viral video around the phrase. Needless to say, it was absolute smash hit online!

That catch phrase not only caught on like wildfire in America, people around the world soon began chanting “Yes We Can!” That catch phrase, along with his message of hope and change was Obama’s USP. That’s what made him different.

Obviously, he had other important qualities as well. I mean, you don’t get elected president of the United States simply because of a catch phrase.

That being said, you could reasonably argue that without that simple catch phrase, Obama might not have gotten the attention of millions of Americans. And as a consequence might never have been elected president.

And here’s an interesting bit of irony: Reportedly, Obama hated the “Yes, We Can” phrase when it was first presented to him by his campaign manager, David Axelrod. Obama thought the phrase was corny.

However, instinctively savvy Michelle Obama told her husband the phrase would work. Obama eventually gave in, and the rest as they say is history. Such is the importance of having a Unique Selling Proposition – and an instinctively savvy wife!

Unique Selling Proposition Defined

This is what brilliant advertising executive, Rosser Reeves wrote in his book, Reality in Advertising:

“Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.”

The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique – either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.”

That’s an accurate and profound observation. However, it’s not enough to just have a USP. You have to flaunt it. You have to constantly remind people what makes your company unique. You have to tell them over and over again everyday – until they get it. And when they do get it, you have to tell them some more.

You Have to Flaunt Your Uniqueness

Unfortunately, many businesses don’t communicate effectively enough how they’re different from the competition. They expect consumers to just know that they’re different. And as a result, consumers assume that your business is just like every other business in your field.

You see, unless you tell them differently, consumers generally perceive one lawyer to just like the next, one mechanic to be like the next, and one plumber to be like the next. And if you haven’t told them otherwise, why wouldn’t they? Indeed, why shouldn’t they?

By demonstrating how you’re different on a consistent basis, the value of your business will rise in the eyes of your target audience. And when your business value rises, so too will your profits. The two go hand in hand.

By the way, a Unique Selling Proposition doesn’t have to be an material object like a giant lollipop, or a sequence of words like a catch phrase. A USP can be virtually anything that makes your business unique and interesting.

Another Effective USP

For example, a friend of mine, who is a website designer has a very interesting and gutsy USP. Before meeting with prospects for the first time, he builds actual turnkey websites with the prospects company colors, logo and even some basic content. These websites often take up to a week to build.

But here’s the kicker… his prospects don’t even know that he does this. The completed-in-advance websites are a complete surprise to them, when they actually meet. So, in essence, my friend is taking a huge gamble, using his valuable time building websites without so much as a small deposit.

When I asked him why he invested so much sweat equity into building websites for free, he told me that since he started using this technique, his prospects are so impressed with his designs and initiative, over 70% of them end up purchasing the websites on the spot – over 70%!

That’s some closing ratio! He said his conversion ratio is twice as high as it was before he started building websites in advance. I guess you can’t argue with success.

So there you have it – the importance of having a Unique Selling Proposition. So if you haven’t done so already, get to work on developing an effective USP for your business. I’m not promising it will get you elected president of the United States…but hey, you never know!

About the author:

David Jackson is a writer, marketing consultant and entrepreneur. Which online services can you trust? Find out here: http://reviews-by-customers.com

Reader Rescue: How do I choose what keywords to target?

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Hi Kalena

I have two questions.

1) How do I know if a keyword merits my time and energy? For example, when I use Google’s Keyword tool, it says “debt settlement facts” has “not enough data” in the local search volume , when I input in “debt settlement texas,” I get 1,600 searches. Is this tool accurate to estimate the potential traffic to keywords ?

2) How do I know which keywords my competitors are using ? What I did was check each competitors site maps and looked at individual pages to see what they were targeting.

William

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Hi William

1) It sounds like you’re using Google’s PPC Keyword Tool, which is helpful for choosing which keywords to target using pay per click advertising, but I’ve found it not so helpful for SEO campaigns. I would use other KW research tools such as Keyword Discovery, Word Tracker and iSpionage to get a better idea what people are typing in as search queries. All KW tools should be used with a grain of salt in terms of search data anyway – they can give you a general idea based on traffic figures, but trial and error is really your best bet when targeting keywords for your site.

2) Yes, looking at your competitor’s pages to see what keywords they are targeting is a very good idea. You can also view the source code for their pages to see what keywords their Title, META Description and META Keyword tags contain.

Kalena

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Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Send it to kjordan [ at ] sitepronews [ dot ] com and you might see it featured here.

How to Participate in a Tweetchat

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller in Featured

You can get to know people on Twitter in your area of interest by participating in a tweetchat on a related subject.

What is a tweetchat?

It’s a stream of tweets on the same topic in real time. Imagine it as a gigantic instant messaging free-for-all on a stated topic.

First let’s talk about participating in one. Then we’ll talk about how starting one can help you market on Twitter.

Let’s take this scenario:

I announce that a tweetchat on #ficbkmkt (hashtag for fiction book marketing) will take place on a specific date and time. (I make sure to state what time zone in the U.S. this is.) I tweet about this ahead of time and get others to also tweet the topic, time and date.

At the specific date and time I use a third-party application to participate in a tweetchat in real time. This way I can follow the tweets of people I’m not following yet and people who are not following me yet can see my tweets on the subject.

While there are other third-party ways to participate in tweetchats, I like tweetchat.com the best. Just know that you can change the speed of how fast you get the new tweets. I’m a fast typist so I choose to get new updates every five seconds (the fastest). For others that may be too hard to follow and you’ll want to leave it at the 10 seconds default or even increase to a longer interval between tweets.

At the date and time I go to tweetchat.com and enter my Twitter username and password. Then in the room prompt I enter #ficbkmkt and I’m part of the conversation.

When I tweet from inside this “room” the hashtag #ficbkmkt will be automatically added to my tweet (which is why I don’t have the full 140 characters in a tweet).

If people not participating in the chat are following any of the people in the chat, these outside people can see in their regular Twitter stream the tweets with the hashtag of the people they’re following. And the outside people can respond from their regular Twitter stream but must manually add #fictbkmkt to their tweets so these tweets will show up in the tweetchat room.

Tweetchats are usually for an hour or more. Some are the same time every week and others are for a special event.

The regularly scheduled tweetchats may have a specified topic for each chat or they may be an open exchange of information. The tweetchat organizer decides the format.

I will admit that the tweets can fly fast and furious. Leaders of well-organized tweetchats often have a series of questions and ask people to put the question number before the reply to make it easier for people to follow the conversation. Thus a tweet reply inside the tweetchat that answers “How do you search on Twitter?” (which has been designated as question 4) may look like this:

Q4: There are numerous applications that allow you to search Twitter by different criteria. [hashtag of tweetchat automatically attached]

Now let’s say you want to host a special event tweetchat or start a regularly scheduled tweetchat:

Why would you do this? To establish yourself as a leader in a specific niche. To be known as someone who truly contributes to the conversation in this area. To help out someone.

For example, when getglue.com was new, I offered to host a special tweetchat with a representative from getglue so that he could explain to book authors how getglue could be used for book marketing. The tweetchat afforded book authors the opportunity to learn from the getglue representative and also share tips with each other.

Now I admit I offered to do a tweetchat for getglue for a self-interested reason: I wanted myself to understand how getglue could be used for book marketing. But I did put effort into promoting the tweetchat ahead of time plus I edited the transcript from the tweetchat and put it on my FictionMarketing.com blog so that others who didn’t participate in the live tweetchat could benefit from the advice.

This I utilized the Twitter marketing strategy of providing valuable information for others while learning information for myself.

One other hosting tip: Because many people on Twitter don’t know what a tweetchat is, when I sponsor a special event tweetchat I create an announcement through twitwall.com. This way I can have a headline about the tweetchat (which becomes the tweet) and then a link to the twitwall announcement with instructions about how to join the tweetchat.

P.S. And if you’ve added good information as a participant or host of a tweetchat, you’ll discover that a lot of people from the tweetchat who weren’t following you before will now be following you.

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. If you liked this article, you’ll love her FREE report on “How to Become a Twitter Marketing Expert” – download the report now from www.millermosaicllc.com/free-twitter-report

Guide to Listing on Dmoz

By Rob Fenn in Featured

What is Dmoz? Dmoz is a human edited directory that has been running since 1998. It was created as a cooperative environment that would allow volunteer editors to keep up with the internet explosion. Way back, Yahoo used to be a directory – not a search engine – and Dmoz was an (eventually bigger) alternative to this. The only difference of course is that we are now well into the Google era of information at your fingertips. Dmoz on the other hand, is pretty much where it started.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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