Wednesday, March 17, 2010

To Bot, or not to Bot?

FTC and Debunking The Article Submission Software Myth

Advertising that looks like advertising is 3rd-rate advertising in my book. Furthermore, when my personal space is broached by commercial messages I haven’t requested, I feel spammed. Despite my efforts to treat others as I would like to be treated, many call me a spammer because I use commercial broadcast techniques in my home-based business.

It seems like there is an anti-spam group up at Stanford University that wants to label everything slightly automated as spam. Headed by B.J. Fogg, this center for the study of Computers As Persuasive Technology, aka Captology, can define double-opt-in emails as spam. I don’t mean to get technical, but he’s making it tough for me to do business.

FTC and others are coming down hard on small marketers. If I give a testimonial I have to also say what my average customer experience is. You want to know my average customer experience of my learning products and software is? Fewer than 50% install or open what they buy. FTC gets some of its positions from Stanford’s Captology papers. Of course these rhetoricians have rarely worked with an auto-responder or the tools of commerce.

Recently, a student of Captology at Stanford posted a blog about how he proposed we get rid of spam, that we make it illegal to use automated software to send email. HELLO? How exactly do you send email without using automated software. Just because I can send an email to over 10,000 people at once doesn’t make me a spammer.

WHEN DID BEING A MARKETER MAKE ME A CRIMINAL?

Automated is the only way we can send virtual mail. Duh. There’s no human relay. What’s the line in the sand he’s attempting to see? It’s twirps like these that scare me because they actually impact public policy.

CONFESSION: My fiancé Audrey Kerwood and I both use semi-automated article submission software.

Let me ask you this… What’s so wrong about leveraging modern technology? Do these same luddites drive around town because using a telephone is cheating?

“Anybody that markets more aggressive than you is an asshole. Anybody who doesn’t market as aggressively as you think they should is an idiot.” ~David Ogilvy

You can buy software to assist you in article submission, but you should be aware that it’s still very labor intensive. It is far from being automatic. However, if you want to build your own audience online, getting the words you write read is what gives you an audience, what they call in publishing, a platform.

Here’s the labor to be aware of when using my fiancĂ©’s article submission software Traffic Incubator. First, you will have to click on one of the places to submit your articles, and enter all the field information, once. Each new place you want to submit an article, the software remembers your information and makes that go faster. When you buy a cloud-based software, article directory site information automatically updates, all managed by the provider.

Yes, even though the software completes the form information using what you have entered, and massages your sentences with synonyms to avoid duplicate content slaps,
you do still need to read through the form before hitting submit. Hitting enter without reading for readability is formula for disaster. You will look like a bot.

Bots that make you look like a bot are stupid bots. Marketers who don’t leveraging the emerging technologies are called laggards.

Think about it, if there were effective pieces of article submission software that would get your articles distributed almost instantly, wouldn’t you feel slow waiting for people to repost your articles?

Not all article and video submission software is alike. Most cost $97 or more a month and specialize in one media like articles or videos. You’ll notice that ones with a one-time fee are not cloud-based, so they are often outdated before you have it installed, if you can figure that out on your server. Cloud-based software is essential because social media changes so quickly. At $37 a month, we love the ability to broadcast our articles, videos and press-releases far more efficiently.

Finally, the power of broadcasting multimedia content is in the hands of the small offices and home offices. What this means is that I can move the needle. Have you ever wondered how somebody creates a Google Bomb, well it is the same technology that gives you your search engine optimization.

Have you ever seen how somebody can own a phrase on Google? Have you ever seen somebody do this in 72-hours for a commercial kerword. I have. SEO automation being sold is usually black hat or weird because they are dealing with spammers.

How you use this technology is up to you. However, if you are doing business online and you aren’t using content submission software then it’s hard for me to say that you are online. If you want to become the obvious expert, the online search lead for your key words, then you gotsta get your words out there. Not using article submission software is like a door-to-door sales person not using motorized transportation. Putting a press-release up on P.R.Web is not enough. If you aren’t using Traffic Incubator, you are working far harder than you need to.

3 comments:

JT said...

@cms design, mmmmmmmmmm, botspam, good with cheese!

Profitable Adsense said...

Article submission info is always the best part of online money making for me. Thanks for the info.

regards,
Esaul Daris
Article Submission Master

JT said...

More SPAM. . .Delicious! These are great. They tell me exactly who NEVER to do business with!