Make Your Blog Content Count —Be Social & Syndicate!

If you’ve toiled over the content for your website, written articles or are building a blog, you should be thinking of syndicating your work.

What is syndication?

Content syndication is a term used to describe the process of content distribution. Whether it is video, audio or text copy, syndication is how you move your content so that your content is seen by as many viewers, listeners and readers as possible. If you’re not syndicating your content then the investment of time you’ve spent working on that content is low. To raise your rate of return and make larger gains in your time investment, syndicate!  

What syndication can do:

• Attract highly targeted visitors to your website.
• Increase the amount of people that read and comment on your blog.
• Give your website a higher ranking in the search engines.
• Create and build a constant following of like-minded people interested in your content.
• Help you build a platform that makes you an expert in your field of interest.
• Increase your rate of return on the time invested in creating your content.

All of the above are great business goals and solid reasons to syndicate your content. But how do you go about getting syndicated? 

Repurpose your content:

Current or new content can be re-formatted or re-used. This is an effective way to maximize the value of your content. Here are a few ideas on how to repurpose the same content so it becomes the right type of content and ready for syndication:

• Take your website copy and break it down into blog posts.
• Break up text articles and turn that into website copy and blog posts.
• Create an audio version of your blog posts.
• Turn your blog posts into a slideshow.
• Convert your slideshow into a short video with audio narration.

How you can syndicate your content:

Most content can be easily syndicated and here’s three easy steps on how to syndicate your content:

1.       Learn what an RSS feed is and then use it.

• RSS stands for “really simple syndication”.
• RSS takes your content and puts it into a special format so your content can be shared across the internet.
• Many of the social networking sites use RSS.
• Take your RSS feeds and submit them to RSS search engines like Bloglines, Blogpulse, DayPop and Feedstar.

2.       Forward your blog posts to your Twitter feed.

Twitter updates are searchable in the search engines and tweets are updated regularly. By sending your blog posts to your Twitter feed, you can stay on top of your search engine ranking and your content will get in front of many more people.

• If your blog has been built in Wordpress, configure a plugin like Twitter Tools to send your blog posts to your Twitterfeed.
• This feed can increase your website traffic.
• Be careful to not overtweet your new content.

3.       Import your content into Facebook and Linked In

By focusing on strong titles and compelling content you can count on seeing click throughs to your website. You can also look forward to establishing yourself as an expert with credibility by growing your brand on these two sites.

• In Facebook, publish your blog posts to your Notes application.
• For Linked In, use the Wordpress application to place your blog content.

You can create profitability for your business by sending your message to as many people as possible. Syndication is a powerful tool to increase your brand and grow your online following. As you work to increase your audience there is more opportunity for your business to expand. Make your content count and syndicate so your business can flourish and grow!

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

Trick Google by Tricking Out Your Website with SEO — Search Engine Optimization!
It’s not hard to figure out why there’s so much buzz about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) lately. With information pouring from every direction, all points lead to the King of Content: Google.
To fully understand how to make the most of your website and drive traffic home, first we should take a look at how Google works.
• The most popular search engine is Google
• 90% of internet traffic flows through Google
• Google AdWords drive more traffic to your website
• Google regularly crawls social network sites looking for backlinks
• As a popularity search engine, Google “sees” sites loaded with backlinks as being “popular”
• The more popular a website appears, the higher ranking Google will make that website
• Text and images are indexed by Google

Trick out your website by focusing on the key points that will make you look successful in Google’s crawlers. Like a spider web, connect all your threads by following this simple To Do List:

1. Register with Google
By submitting your site to Google you automatically get listed on websites to be crawled.
• Get website traffic flowing through your site by signing up for Google AdWords
• Budget your AdWord program costs by capping your monthly budget
• Start small and build up to a larger budget when the money starts rolling in

2. Become Popular
Google loves a popular website and will offer a higher ranking to your website if its crawlers think you’re important.
• Make some friends and get them to backlink to your site
• Create a blog and post comments on other blogs; this can also backlink to your website
• Offer special deals or affiliate programs to sell your products and you get more backlinks

3. Content is King
Google crawls the World Wide Web like a spider crawls its own garden web. Looking for food, Google considers text and images good to eat—or index, as techies call it. So, make your website copy content the king of your site:
• Create extra pages—like about 100—and you’re wearing Emperor’s Clothes
• Add articles, make comments, create blog pages, offer areas for comments, split up your articles and resize them to be smaller so you use more pages; spend as much time as you can afford creating your text copy because Google indexes each page as a separate entry—the more the merrier
• When designing your pages, create keywords and phrases that you think surfers will try to look up, then use those keywords and phrases as much as you can in your text content
• Entitle your pages with important keywords and phrases too because Google considers a title more valuable to index and offers it a higher level than a description
• Add images to your pages to make your website pages stand out—not only to Google, but your surfers as well

4. Be Social
Rumor has it that getting your site listed on Google is enough. It’s not. Google loves the social network sites.
• Get your site listed on the social media network sites
• Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are great social network sites to join
• Once you join as many social network sites as you can, list your website on your profile page
• Get others to link to you and your website and Google will automatically think your website is popular

It’s not hard to come up with new ways to market your website. The key to unlocking the mystery of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is to understand how search engines work, what they look for and how they rank websites. To be on top, you will need to work your way there. One by one, by following a few simple steps you can look forward to weaving your own spider web and getting listed as a top website that attracts heavy traffic.
We’re all in this together because the web was created to catch social butterflies. We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

by Sara Hassler