The Open Source Marketer

Recently I came across yet another spam blog trackback in my moderated blog comments. I’ve tried to ignore these as they’ve continued to increase. But enough is enough and now I’m looking at ways to simplify the abuse reporting process.

There are two simple steps you can take to hit a splogger where it hurts. You can report them to their web hosting provider, and you can report them to Google.

The host will most likely suspend the splogger’s account until they remove the content or they may terminate their account entirely. For the most part, this is simply a short term deterrent because they can always re-establish their site with a new hosting company. But it gets the point across.

In most cases Google AdSense is used on spam blogs. If you report AdSense policy violations to Google they will suspend the splogger’s AdSense account.

Which approach you take is entirely up to you. In my opinion, having someone’s hosting account suspended is a lot less aggressive than having their AdSense account suspended. You might want to assess the degree of the offense before you decide which approach is best.

If the spam blog was their first attempt at experimenting with the idea of generating revenue then at least they can take the hosting suspension as a lesson and decide to move on to something more productive.

However, if you hit them at the AdSense level then they’ll be affected on a broader scale because it could get their whole AdSense account banned. To me this is much more aggressive and it depends on the situation to determine which route you may want to go.

If you want to take both routes then I recommend reporting the site to Google first, wait for their ads to come down and then report them to their host and get the entire site taken down.

To me this is the full meal deal of fighting sploggers, but just keep in mind that it’s going to take your own valuable time to step through the process and depending on the number of spam trackbacks you get, it might take more time than it’s worth.

That said, I recommend you use a combination of form letters and software to cut down on the time spent in the communication process.

Here is a simple email template that I used recently to request that a host remove my original content from a splogger site:

- - -
A website on your server is stealing my blog content. This site is scrapping my original content for their spam blog.

[Insert Offending Spam Blog URL Here]

Please have them remove the content from their site. The original content can be found here if you need to verify ownership.

[Insert Your Original Content URL Here]

Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com
- - -

This simple email received an immediate response and the host took the website down immediately. The communication does not have to be complicated or lengthy. Hosts and Google know what’s going on and all you have to do is provide them with the basic details and they will follow their own processes to handle the problem quickly.

I’m currently using this form letter along with macro software that lets me assign short cuts to just about anything. I assigned a short cut to this form letter and when I type in a key phrase the letter appears and I complete the url sections and send it off to be handled. Overall the process takes under thirty seconds and I’m done.

If you’re using a PC, I recommend using a text macro tool like PhraseExpress. It’s inexpensive and you can use it to create macros for starting applications, pasting blocks or text, form letters, website addresses, you name it. If you use a Mac, then I recommend TextExpander. It’s basically the same type of application, but it’s made for the Mac OS. I use TextExpander for email signatures, social networking greetings, support responses, blogging code snippets, and now splogger form letters.

Combine the form letter with either one of these macro tools and you’ll be able to gain an edge on spam bloggers and protect yourself from content theft.

What tools do you use?

Splog smashing,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

If you want to know how much website traffic a competitor is getting then you’ll want to take a look at Compete.com. Compete offers site analytic that let you do side by side website traffic comparisons between several sites. Compete also offers search analytics that can tell you what keywords a specific website is getting traffic for or what websites in general are getting traffic for specific keywords.

Here’s how the Compete website describes their Search Analytics, “It’s your starting point to build and optimize search marketing campaigns that create brand awareness, drive site traffic and increase sales. Use Compete Search Analytics to discover keywords driving traffic to any domain, identify gaps in your search strategy, invest in terms that drive the most engaged visitors, and track your performance against competitors and peers.”

Compete offers a great service that really puts important information in your hands. I personally like the site comparison tool because you can begin to get a rough idea of how sites are doing compared to each other in terms of traffic. You can use this information either as a benchmark for your current competitive efforts or you can use it as a gauge to research a market or plan strategies for acquiring visitor traffic.

The service offers some bare bones free information, but if you really want to dig into the keyword research, you’ll need to buy some Compete credits. Credits are purchased with real money and each report deducts a few credits from your overall balance. The system seems to be very fair.

I received free trial credits when I created a free account and the overall theme seemed to be that the more potential valuable you stand to gain from a report, the more credits it will cost you.

Perspective:

Gaining insight into what is going on with websites in your topic of interest is as much a necessity of picking a direction as it is a part of trying to gain a competitive edge.

While compete is not a complete picture of everything that is happening with a competitors website, it is a lot better than not knowing anything at all.

Combined with keyword research tools like WordTracker and Google Trends, Compete can be a very useful tool in your research toolbox.

Competing,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

How many times do you bookmark websites and then forget to submit them to StumbleUpon? I know I forget all the time. So, I have a big list of Del.icio.us bookmarks, but my StumbleUpon profile suffers from lack of love. But all that changes today thanks to the urber geekls over at GreaseMonkey.

If you haven’t heard, Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. There are hundreds of scripts available for free. And if you like to tinker, you can also write your own. These scripts are fantastic and they can easily add days back into your life by making you more productive online.

My most recent discovery is the Greasemonkey script, Delicious Stumbles. The script adds a link to your del.icio.us page that helps you submit links on the page to StumbleUpon.

The great part is it takes what you’ve already written as Del.icio.us comments and it submits them to StumbleUpon. It does the same thing with your tags. So all you have to do is click the link, verify the info, and then submit the link to StumbleUpon. I’m telling you, the thing is genius. You can hammer out a few past bookmarks in seconds and keep your StumbleUpon profile well nourished.

Productivity is an important topic for me because I am easily distracted and I already have a lot that needs to get done. So anything that speeds my work and keeps me on task is worth it’s weight in gold. Greasemonkey is free, and the time these scripts will save you is almost like getting paid to do what you have to do anyway.

What’s your favorite productivity tool or Greasemonkey script?

Monkeying around,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Twitter spam is officially a thing. Today I was followed on Twitter by “signupnow” which links to bux.to, a site that promotes getting paid to look at ads. This is the second bogus follower I received in a week.

According to the follower’s website, “At Bux.to, you get paid to click on ads and visit websites. The process is easy! You simply click a link and view a website for 30 seconds to earn money.”

I don’t know anything about the site, but it smell funny to me and I’d stay away from it unless you can confirm if they are legit. My guess is NO.

This is the start of Twitter spam and it’s a sign that Twitter is coming of age. Age more people use it and people learn to exploit it, Twitter will see more and more spam followings.

Signupnow already is following over 2,000 people and if all of them click through to see what it’s about then that’s a good bit of traffic generated. The conversion rate is another story, but for now my guess is it’s an effective way to get attention.

One blog I read said this about the problem.

“I haven’t seen an issue with this yet, but as we shift from primarily early adopters to more and more mainstreaming, I expect it will happen. Especially since Google is ranking tweets and twitterers quite well- the black hat SEO people will soon notice and try to exploit” - Brian Carter

For now the best way to combat Twitter spam is to remove the bogus Twitter followers to minimize their reach. But a long term defense will have to come from the developers at Twitter. They will have to implement a solution that requires you to approve followers before they can show up in your list, or they will have to implement a timed follow limit that will prevent people from following more than five people in a twenty minute period. That way it would be a pain for would be Twitter spammers to follow people by the thousands.

How would you fight Twitter spam?

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Today’s Microtween is about an Internet Marketing toolbar I’ve developed to help people get started with their online business ventures.

One of the things that I hear over and over is that people don’t understand the process for marketing online. They get confused or distracted and they’re not sure what order they should be doing things in.

So, I decided to take my own bookmarks from my Firefox bookmarks toolbar and turn them into an organized set of resources that anyone can use to do Internet Marketing.

The toolbar is organized from left to right and each set of resources are limited to just a few essential to cut down on distractions. I plan to add more to the toolbar over time, but I will continue to keep in mind the principle that more is not better in this case.

The toolbar is available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox (both Mac and Windows). In fact, I’m using it to supplement my own Firefox bookmarks toolbar so that I can download it and use it when I am away from my laptop.

Download the toolbar and let me know what you think is missing. Or let me know what you use the most. I’ll be adding a Getting Started button to it soon to help everyone get the most out of using it.

Idea seeking,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

Here’s a Microtween about putting thought bubbles in your videos to add interest, generate visitor traffic, and help people remember your videos better. The standard wisdom is to put your website address at the beginning and end of your videos when you post them to a video sharing service like YouTube so that people will see the address and visit your website. That’s a great piece of advice, but what if you could add a little bit of video spice to your promotional mix and get attention for it?

That’s where BubblePly.com comes in to help you out. You can you add thought bubbles to your videos and then share them anywhere. This is a very cool tool and it’s extremely simple to use. I’m not going to try and give you ideas for how to use it. Just take a look and I’m sure you’ll come up with you own promotional ideas.

Bubbling,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

So, who are you following on Twitter? I mean really following? Do you have a list only of people you know or is it mixed between real personal contacts and complete strangers?

My guess is you’re like most people using Twitter and you have a mixed list. Maybe your following Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak. Maybe your following me. It’s hard not to have one or two curiosity follows. So, the next question is why are you following strangers on Twitter? Do you expect them to say something interesting or do you think they will one day be your close friend? Again my guess is your like most people and you don’t know. Let’s come back to this in a moment.

What if you don’t know who to follow? Maybe your new to Twitter and you want to follow someone, because that’s what your suppose to do right? But who, who do you follow in a sea of little thumbnail faces and cartoon icons?

Well whether you’re following Steve Jobs for no apparent reason or your looking for someone to follow, you might want to check out the Twitter friend finder tool at Twubble.com.

According to their website, “Twubble can help expand your Twitter bubble—it searches your friend graph and picks out people who you may like to follow.”

This is an interesting way to stalk, er research people to follow on Twitter because it gives you a loose reason to choose those people. Twubble looks at your follow list and tries to match you up with other people you might be interested in following. I’m not sure exactly how they determine who to recommend, but I think it has to do with common friends.

Twubble gives you a list similar to this one and you can choose who you want to follow from there. You can also Google search the person to find out more about them.

There is a transference of trust and an element of social proof that is carried in the list that is returned because Twubble tells you who and how many people are following the people they recommend to you. So six of your friends are following someone, you might want to follow them too.

Personally I see this as a research tool that can lead you to groups of people who are thought leaders in a particular subject.

Let me give you an example of why this might be useful information.

A few days ago I received an email from Twitter telling me that ObamaNews was following me. I didn’t think it too strange because I am following Obama and Hillary on Twitter. But when I eventually went to check out ObamaNews to see if I wanted to follow them I found more of an adsense site than a campaign site. This got me to thinking. Is it possible to follow people just to get them to follow you, or at the very least to visit your blog?

I think the answer is definitely yes. It is possible to find a Twitter group, follow everyone within that group and wait for them to either follow you in return or at least visit your blog to check our who you are.

This might not be your thing and you might see it as underhanded. I’m not debating that point here. What I am saying is that there are unexplored automatic response at work here that are largely untapped on Twitter. But, as people discover this you can bet you’ll see more of it and it will likely make some people a lot of money.

Perspective:

Take some time and evaluate exactly who you’re following on Twitter and honestly ask yourself why you’re following them. If there is a reason fine. If there isn’t a reason fine. Just know that there is more to Twitter than just following strangers for no apparent reason and don’t be surprised when people you don’t know start following you.

Use the tools we’ve discussed so far to find people to follow and look for trends and opportunity in the connections you create. You’ll be amazed at what’s there if you just that the time to look.

Researching,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

I’m on the road to Austin Texas today to visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Conservatory so this Microtween will be really short. Last time you learned that you can get a variety of Twitter stats by individual from TweetStats.com.

Today, let’s find out who the top followed people are on Twitter so we can begin to explore trends and look for people we might be interested in following. Remember, when we follow people they are inclined to do the same which in turn raises our perceived value. For a good example of this be sure to read my article on how Obama and Hillary are using Twitter for their political campaigns.

To find the top people on Twitter we’ll be using Twitterholic. According to Twitterholic, “Our twittastic robots scan the Twitter public timeline for new users to watch. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each user in our database.”

Twitterholic provides a top 100 list of most followed people on Twitter. This gives us a nice list of prospective people to watch and analyze for trends. It also gives us the chance to drill down into their lists and look for people and trends that might be interesting.

Perspective:

Dig around with this tool and the other tools we’ve talked about to do your own research. See if you can find interesting connections between people and look for valuable conversations. Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters, but the frequency and nature of the messages may tell you all you need to know.

The next Microtween will be about how to find people to follow and we’ll talk about why you might want to target specific groups of people to follow.

Do you know why people are following you?

Off to the flowers,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com