In support of my series, 99 Cent Articles, I have been exploring the quality and insight of the inexpensive content market, beginning with 99CentArticles.com — I dropped $100 on 20 articles (actually $92, but $100 sounds better) and I have been sharing them, over time, with you.  I would love to get your feedback on what you think about them and what you would use articles of this quality and consistency for.  This post is based on a series of articles I ordered with on the theme of How Businesses Use X where X is a topic:

How Businesses Use YouTube to Promote Their Brand

YouTube is a video sharing website where you can upload, view and share videos. YouTube has become one of the most important aspects of the internet culture. Because of this, businessmen have used it as an alternative medium to promote their goods or services. The visibility of YouTube in the online community is how businesses use YouTube to promote their brand.

If you are about to launch your business and is looking for a more cost efficient way of advertising, then you should look into having it promoted on YouTube. Millions of people visit YouTube everyday, and getting some part of that millions of viewers to get to check out your video is enough to generate buzz for your business. To help you get started, here is how businesses use YouTube to promote their brand:

• Create your own channel and upload your best videos. Upload only videos that you feel will standout from millions of uploaded videos similar to yours. An interesting video is enough to boost viewership.
• Start a conversation around your videos via YouTube’s Bulletin Board. The more response you get the better it will be for your business. Do not limit yourself to your own bulletin board, though. Being highly visible on this video-sharing community is how businesses use YouTube to promote their brand.
• YouTube is not only a video-sharing site but a social network as well. Add friends and mingle with them. This will generate loyal followers for your business. And if you leave a good impression on them, they will start telling their friends about your channel and your business.
• Search for videos that are related to yours and post one of your videos as a response. Take advantage of the views that other videos get. How businesses use YouTube to promote their brand is like how public relations practitioners would choose the right places to advertise.
• YouTube allows you to fill out a profile. Make your profile as informative as possible. Include a link to your website to generate traffic. In setting up your videos, be sure that all of them are linked to your profile. So when people click on your video, they will automatically go to your profile and from your profile they can click on the link to your website.
• Create playlists of related videos where you can include a lot of popular ones and your own. This will create a greater recall for your brand. Then join groups or start your own, and post both text and video comments. Encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel by asking viewers to subscribe at the end of each video. Reach out to as many audiences as possible.

Knowing how to take advantage of the technology available in YouTube and its popularity will greatly help you in promoting your brand. The possibility of getting your business known to millions of potential new clients is too great a chance to pass up. With a little work and internet savvy, you can save a lot on your advertising expenses.

How Businesses Use Search Engine Optimization to Promote their Brand

The internet has opened a whole new world out there. It is becoming less and less virtual every day. People use the internet to socialize and work. Because of these, search engine marketing has become an aggressive business. Directing quality traffic to their website is how businesses use search engine optimization to promote their brand.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO helps level the playing field for small businesses. Its affordability and accessibility has made it an excellent marketing strategy for them. SEO considers how search engines would rank your website and what users search for. The idea is to have your website appear on the first page of the search results list to lead more visitors to your site. This idea is how businesses use search engine optimization to promote their brand.

How businesses use search engine optimization to promote their brand is not as easy as it may sound. It may take up to six months before results can be seen and you may need to hire a professional to have successful search engine marketing for your product. Remember that you are competing against increasing numbers of documents from various media, blogs and websites along with more savvy search marketers. Therefore, effective SEO requires creative link building, creation of unique content, integration with other online/offline marketing, social media and optimization refinements.

There are still many ways on how businesses use search engine optimization to promote their brand, if hiring a professional search engine marketer is not in your budget. Register your site with directories like Yahoo and Google, this will have more high quality and high trafficked sites pointing to your site.

To help visitors and search engine spiders navigate your site easily, make sure that it is well-organized, utilize a site map if possible. Familiarize yourself with meta tags, these are hidden HTML directions for web browsers or search engines. Creating a meta tag that accurately describe your site content is essential in directing traffic to your website. Take into consideration likely words or phrases that users might type into search engines to find your site. Include these key words or phrases in the title portions of your site and in its relevant content.

To successfully use SEO to market your brand, you have to determine the ideals and goals that your company wants to pursue. Determine your market by searching volume across major engines for key terms associated with your brand. Find out what markets will return the highest result for your product and focus your optimization efforts towards those markets. Seek out non-reciprocal link relationships that are relevant to your site, make sure that it is high enough in influence to create a positive impact on your site. Most important factor in SEO marketing is your website content. It should contain unique and relevant information to sustain interests of customers.

SEO marketing is a great way to launch brand, product or services of small business owners. Considering the time people spend online and the how people have grown to rely on the internet for information, SEO marketing has changed advertising practices of today.

How Businesses Use Twitter to Promote Their Product

Since Twitter is a social networking site with micro blogging as its primary purpose, businesses can use Twitter to promote their products. Since it is a social networking site, it has the potential to bring in more clients. Here are a few tips on how businesses use Twitter to promote their product.

1. Use keywords when setting up an account. Use keywords in filling up the biography section. Use keywords that are broad enough to describe the product and is popular enough that users will use the keywords in their search.
2. Get into discussions. As an expert in your product you can offer advice and answer questions concerning topics involving what you are promoting. People will then notice you and gain confidence in you and eventually do business with you.
3. Keep track of your tweets. Use search engines to look for tweets that may involve you and may contain feedback on your product and address concerns anyone may have on you or your business.
4. Be diligent in making tweets. Set up a time when you are not busy and dedicate that time for the business. This is for people to get used when they can reach you regularly.
5. Add a personal element in your account and your tweets. This will create a more welcoming effect and not a robot like impression on you by potential clients.
6. Start discussions. Ask some of your concerns and receive feedback and criticism. This way, you can find out what is lacking in your business and what needs improvement or if there is anything that people want that you might be able to give a solution to.
7. Since tweets can only contain 140 characters, it is important that your message be concise and informative. The reader of your tweets should not be scratching their heads after they read your tweets. It is also important that you connect with them by making it a bit more personal.
8. Use retweet every possible time. Retweeting makes other people’s tweets to be posted again on your page. This shows that you’re not only concerned with your business but also with what anyone thinks about it.
9. Make multiple accounts. Since different people like different things, create tweeter accounts that will cater to those kinds of needs. Do not flood your tweeter account with different kinds of products. Group them and divide them so that interest would be concentrated to those products. Just make sure that you can keep up with the demands of having multiple tweeter accounts.
10. There are certain software or services that will allow you to search for specific keywords that will help you in looking for discussions where you can join and promote your product. Or even look for discussions that mentions your account name. This way you can track what people are talking about you.
11. Personalize your tweeter web page. Personalize your background add-ons. Make sure your site will be attractive to visitors and potential buyers.

These ideas on how businesses use Twitter to promote their product can help those who want to start a business or have already started a business and want to extend their network and clientele.

How Businesses Use Facebook to Promote Their Brand

Social networking has increasingly become part of our daily lives. Rarely a day goes by without checking in to see what’s happening to our friends, virtual or not. We now have to the tendency to announce on these social networking sites important things that are happening to us. Facebook is one of the most popular of these sites. And because of its popularity, people are using it to freely advertise their businesses. Creating their own Facebook account is how businesses use Facebook to promote their brand.

How businesses use Facebook to promote their brand is uncomplicated. Once you have created an account and worked on the content of your business profile, you simply click on the “Advertising” link. Then click on the “Pages” link and it will lead you to Facebook Pages page. Clink the button that says “Create a Page”. It will ask you to select the type of business, enter the name, and just follow whatever you’re prompted to do. Be sure to upload all necessary information that will identify your business, like the logo, contact information, other web address that you may have, etc. Lastly to activate your page, just clink on “Publish”. You may also need to post it on the wall of your personal profile for your friends to see or send invites to your friends to become a fan of your new business page. Eventually, a link named “Ads and Pages” will appear and this will allow you to have access on both areas.

Using Facebook or other social networking sites to promote your business is the cheapest way to advertise. All you need is to spare some time each day to update and manage your business page. How businesses use Facebook to promote their brand is a clever and cost efficient way of creating a market to the hundreds of millions of users that lurk on this site every day.

The best feature of your business page is that you can send “Updates” to your fans. If you have a new product to launch, simply compose an interesting write-up that you can send out to your fans. You can also post link that will directly lead them to a particular part of company website. This is how businesses use Facebook to promote their brand. And it costs comparatively lower than any other forms of online advertising.

Using Facebook as your advertising medium entails a different salesman skill on your part. There are millions of users out there who log in everyday to relax and connect with other people. The opportunity of reaching a multitude of audience for your sales pitch should be managed carefully. Make your business page as arresting as possible. It has to catch their attention. Join groups that are related to your business and mingle with its members. There are tools you can use to broadcast upcoming events or syndicate your blog. Utilize these tools to the fullest. Make your presence felt by being a fan of other business pages, write on their walls or send virtual gifts of appreciation.

Facebook is the leader in social networking. Take advantage of its popularity and ease of use to promote your business.

So, what do you think?

I feel like continuing my experiment in cheap article-writing quality. I ordered 20 500-word blog posts for around $100 ($46 for ten) and I am going to be sharing them, unedited, online for your reading enjoyment.  This particular post is thematic: The History of X, thanks to 99 Cent Articles (read them all here):

The History Of Facebook

The history of Facebook is somewhat a peculiar one.  It all started with a man named Mark Zuckerberg. Mark is a computer programmer. While studying in Harvard University taking up psychology, he created a website called Facemash. On October 28, 2003 he launched the site where Harvard students can pick which person is more attractive in the two pictures shown side by side. These pictures are pictures of Harvard students that come from the nine houses on campus. Zuckerberg hacked into the private database of Harvard’s computer network and copied the pictures of students that resided in the dormitories. After the site spread and gained popularity in campus, Harvard University administration shut it down and charged mark with violation of copyrights, breach of security, and violation of individual privacy. He faced expulsion but the charges were later dropped.

The following semester, on February 4, 2004 Mark created Facebook under the site thefacebook.com. He created it because he thought that the University needed a campus-wide facebook. He took the initiative and within the first 24 hours membership reached 1,200 students and within the first month, membership consisted of more than half of the university population. With the help of Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz , Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes the website became a hit and after just a month membership, which originally was exclusive to only Harvard students, expanded to Stanford, Columbia and Yale. Then eventually it opened to all Ivy league schools. Before June of 2004 the site was opened to most schools in the United States and Canada. On June 2004, the base of operations of the site transferred to Palo Alto, California. In August 2005, Mark and his colleagues bought the domain name of Facebook.com for $200,000. In September 2005, High schools can now join, but high school students required an invitation before they can join. Later on registration opened to members of companies. On September 26, 2006, face book officially opened its doors to everyone around the world ages 13 and above.

The history of facebook so far is a short one yet in that short span of time it has garnered unparalleled popularity among its peers of social networking web sites. As of the present, joining in is for free. The site receives its revenues from advertising. Yahoo and Google is interested in a buyout and a rumoured amount of 2 billion dollars was being offered, but Zuckerberg has not expressed any interest in selling the company. As of July 2007, a reported 30 million members have an account and rising.

The site’s features have also evolved. A number of add-ons can now be used by embers, not to mention add-ons they can make by themselves. Members can even post advertisements, play games, and join smaller networks and fan profiles. A user can even send gifts to friends and chat directly to friends that are online. Games can be played with or against friends or even people not in one’s network of friends. Updates on activities of friends can be easily tracked.

Here’s another one:

The History Of Twitter

Since the boom of social networking websites, people have been addicted to being connected with friends and getting up to date information about their favourite artists and hobbies and stuff. None of these sites are as unique and gives personal updates of friends and other interests the networker has than Twitter. Not like any other social networking sites, Twitter’s main feature is its messaging service.

Making use of present technology like PDA’s (Personal Digital assistants), SMS, mobile internet, laptops, and countless technology utilizing wireless internet, Twitter broadcasts messages from and to a network of people connected through Twitter. The messages called tweets are personal messages composed of 140 characters sent by users through their Twitter account to a network of friends and following. The main idea behind Twitter is giving the user an opportunity to send and receive updates from friends and other people of interest without the hassle of sending large number of e-mail and SMS. Twitter broadcasts a user’s tweet to his network, composed of friends and whoever wants to get updates from that user called followers, and receives updates from that network at the same time.

But, how did Twitter begin? The history of Twitter is a long and interesting one. It all starts with a man named Jack Dorsey. Jack is a software engineer who has been interested in the flow of information around a network and developed software for a dispatch company at age 14. At age 18, he moved from his hometown of St. Louis, MO to New York to study at NYU and work as a programmer who writes dispatch software for a courier service named DMS. Dorsey’s fascination about dispatching, which was really just a network of taxi drivers and couriers giving an update on what they were doing started the idea that eventually became Twitter. In 1999, 8 years after starting to write dispatch software, at age 22 Dorsey created a software for his RIM850, the predecessor of BlackBerry, to broadcast an e-mail to his friends by just sending one e-mail. The idea was shelved however since most people then didn’t own a RIM850 but owned personal computers and there were no chance of a back-and-forth messaging. In 2000, Jack created his own company that provides dispatching services that made use of the Internet to taxi companies, courier services and emergency services.

For the next couple of years, with the advancement of communication technology and mobile communication, Jack Dorsey continued to develop a software that would meld together instant messaging and text messaging. In 2006, he met up with ODEO co-founder Evan Williams and Biz Stone and discussed his idea. In just 2 weeks, a prototype of Twitter was implemented by ODEO as internal services for its employees. On July 2006, they launched a full scale version of Twitter and it became Twitter.com. Three months after, Jack, Biz and Evan created Obvious Corp and acquired ODEO from its shareholders and investors. Then in 2007, Twitter became an independent company. In March 2007, Twitter attracted success and acquired $22 million from venture capitalists and was launched for mass adaption.

The history of Twitter is just beginning. Its uses and features are still expanding and its future seems like a bright one.

And here’s another History of X article for you:

The History Of Blogging

Blogging is a worldwide phenomenon that has taken the digital community into a media frenzy. From being an online diary to a marketing tool for different mediums, blogging is one of the most popular digital tools being used today. But how exactly did blogging start? Let’s step back a while and discover the history of blogging.

Jorn Barger coined the word “weblog” on December 17, 1997 as being a log published in the Internet. Peter Merholz shortened the term into the now popular word “blog” by breaking the word weblog into “we blog” on Spring of 1999. Evan Williams then extended the use of the term to being both a noun, that describes the weblog, and a verb, that describes the act of writing the weblog. The term blogger was also coined to describe the person creating the weblog.

Blogging evolved from online diaries, which was an account of a person’s daily activities and personal opinions. This started roughly around 1994 when the Internet was starting to be widely used. Those considered as the earliest bloggers are, Justin Hall, Jerry Pournelle, and Dave Winers. They came from different forms of life and wrote about different disciplines. Another form of blogging that came out during that time was something called sousveillance. It was made by combining text, pictures and video and transmitted through the Internet live via a device called an EyeTap that is connected to a computer. The first paid blogger was Steve Gibson, when he was paid to be a full time blogger in February 8, 1997.

Many websites that where popular often had a sections updating their visitors about what’s new about them. Most early weblogs were just parts of websites that posts updates manually. Modern blogs came into existence when tools that facilitate publication and maintenance of web articles evolved into something where articles can be posted in reverse chronological process and made it easier for non-technical people to understand and publish their own blogs. This spawned blog hosting websites where bloggers can just create their own blog, then access and edit their articles with a few clicks of the mouse.

After a slow start, blogging gained increased popularity starting 1999. With blog hosting sites adding tools where visitors of the blog sites can leave comments about the articles posted there, blogging suddenly become interactive. Linking to other websites and pages was now possible and with weblog search engines it was now easier to look for bloggers with the same line of interests or blogs which discussed the same topics.

By 2001, several blogs written by American writers, gained popularity. With most blogs inclined to the topic of politics, especially after the September 11 tragedy and the war on Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot people expressed their views and opinions through blogging. Blogs also became a platform for gathering news information. Since bloggers are from different walks of life and has access to different resources, information gathering became faster and with more bloggers affirming stories and data gathered the news became more credible. The history of blogging gave politicians and public figures that used blogging to reach out to their constituents and fans gave them more credibility and in turn they became more popular.

And, finally, the history of social media:

The History of Social Media

The increasing accessibility of the internet has integrated social networking into our daily lives. From phones, laptops and personal computers we are able to connect with friends and meet new friends on the different social network sites. The proliferation of different social network sites makes you wonder about the history of social media.

Websites like MySpace, Facebook, Plurk and Twitter, to name a few, evolved from Six Degrees over a decade ago. Six Degrees is where the history of social media started. The website innovated the same general principles that shaped social media of today with the purpose of bringing people together in the virtual world. The pioneering social network site utilized features available on different online technology. For instance, crating user profiles was taken from dating sites; list of friends was from ICQ and other messaging platforms at the time; and sharing friends with others was singularly taken from classmates.com.

The first social medium was not a success, though. The idea was too ahead of its time and people didn’t quite understand how they could use it to their advantage. And around that time, the internet is not as accessible as it is today. Members of the network are not online as often as they should. Add to that the uneasiness of users to put out information online and the weariness to interact with strangers. Because of these, Six Degrees closed down after just 3 years in operation.

The early demise of Six Degrees didn’t stop the history of social media from forging on. The early years of social media established its three main characteristics — public or semi-public profiles for users, ability to connect to others users with shared interest and ability to view, meet and make new connections with other individuals. Over the years, enterprising individuals helped revolutionized social media as we know it today.

Friendster, MySpace and Facebook are three important phases in the history of social media. They shaped the business, cultural and research landscape of modern social media. Friendster was the first social network site to hit the mainstream. Many of its users left because the site encountered several technical difficulties, disruption of social balance and rupture of trust between users and the sites.

MySpace capitalized on Friendster’s alienation of its early users. Additionally, MySpace regularly added features based on user demand and allows users to personalize their pages. This feature of MySpace started the copy/paste code culture in social networking.

The leading social networking site today is Facebook. It was initially launched as a private online community among Harvard students. Gradually it opened to other universities and colleges, businesses and high schools; until it eventually expanded to include everyone. The advantage of Facebook is its ability to restrict access in closed networks. And what attracts users to this site is its capability to allow outside developers to build “Applications”. These “Applications” allow users to personalize their profiles, perform other task and promote greater interaction among users.

Social media has become part of our daily lives the way cell phones did before. We use it as a way to communicate with friends and family, a way to express ourselves and a way to meet other people. We rarely let a day pass without checking in on any of our social networking accounts.

So, how much have you learned?  Are you up-to-speed now?  Are you educated?  Also, what do you think of the content?  Does it pass?  Is it worth five-dollars-per-post?

Be sure to read the rest of the 99 Cent Articles posts

I recently spent about $100 on 20 500-word blog posts from a company called 99 Cent Articles — about a fiver-a-post. For $46, I received 10 posts on any subject I can imagine.  I am going to share these in a series of posts and I would like you to tell me what you think about the quality of these posts.  This is not an endorsement of 99 Cent Articles, although their service was fine. I paid for these articles out of my own pocket.

Twitter is changing the way television interacts with viewers

Over the decades, televisions as a form of communication media and its effects have been topics of communication theorists.  This, of course, is comprehensible because television has had always been a source of influence— both good and bad.

But with the world in the 21st century, television has transformed into a social media where a quick and real two-way interaction becomes easy and possible. Twitter, a social networking and micro- blogging website, provides a relatively new but potentially viable media channel where one can update his friends, family, co-workers, and anyone who’s on tweeter about his activities for the day.  Update is limited to 140 characters and can be posted via e-mail, text message, or instant messenger. Just like the word tweeter, twitter is a “loudspeaker” that announces daily updates to its millions of subscribers.

Its widespread popularity has convinced CNN to join twitter as its first broadcast official network. Partnering with Twitter makes it easy for CNN to receive responses, or comments on its various segments. Major tv networks and productions had also joined Twitter and are now gaining millions of views and comments in the real time those tv programs were aired.

Although people used media for different purposes, Twitter seemed to have a momentary monopoly on this trend—hooking a wide range of people from the internet addicts down to people who merely have an e-mail account. Twitter incidentally captures the theory of uses and gratification where research conducted on television had the following result: People used television for building relationship, intimacy, communication, and structuring the day, while the gratifications are named into four categories: Information (People are hungry-knowledge and always yearn for reasoned perspective or at least for logical connection), Personal Identity (we normally look for famous personalities whom we can relate to in-terms of our behaviour or aspirations) , Integration and Social Interaction (our ability to sympathize and empathize with tv characters —their journey and experiences both fictional or real allow us to appreciate tv programs  and develop similar likeness and opinions) and  , and Entertainment (we once in a while want fun and enjoyment).

Whatever the members of Twitter are up to for counting their names in, one thing is certain there is a need that yearns to be filled in. Lull’s theory is patterned on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs where basic needs is found at the foot of the pyramid while at the top is the need for self-actualization. Twitters do twitter possibly because of the urge for knowledge, for belongingness, for esteem and for realizing one’s full potential since one can post blog entries, upload music or composition videos, or market your products.

Twitter appears to be a lot more interactive because it combines the principle of both mass communication and social media. Single person can post update on himself and send it to a large, usually anonymous audience. This social media platform may be relatively new in the cyber world but it has nonetheless posed issues which will make good topics for researches on media communication.

Here’s another one, also on the topic of Twitter.

Twitter is an Effective Way to Promote your Business Online

Like most social networking sites, Twitter encourages its users to interact with each other. The aim here is not just to advertise yourself or your activities but to respond in other’s Tweets. You can ask questions to followers and keep them track of them. The RT symbol enables you to rebroadcast a previous Tweet of someone if it’s worth the spreading. The process of Tweeting is like a ripple effect that requires a motion in order to make waves.

Think of Twitter as tool that notifies clients of your business news, not as a direct promoting site. It would be more fun and effective that way. By following your friends’ posts, you are given the chance to answer questions and eventually get noticed. The more people who notices you, the bigger chances of selling.

This micro-blog is very simple to understand. The approach they use in making your life more fun online is through sharing a line that suggests your current activity. Status updating enables you to let everyone know what you are up to, so if you get popularity here, why not use it to make your business bloom? Through Twitter, business promotion could be as quick as a tweet.

Fast as a wildfire, the Internet Marketing hype is spreading. Big names made use of this method to gain popularity among consumers, raking them great incomes in return. Companies like Apple and Intel has thousands of followers in Twitter and your business too can have as much, maybe even more given the proper marketing strategy. Sign up and start your own wildfire. If you already have a list of business contacts outside the cyberworld, make use of them and import e-mail addresses to Twitter. Send them invitations to make them sign up for their own account and have them add you, follow your Tweets and follow them back. Post links to your official website where they can process orders and browse your products. Doing this gives your business the opportunity to be known worldwide.

The secret in effective promoting through Twitter is to never treat it as a promoting tool for it is originally designed a networking site. Again, have fun, and start slowly. Don’t follow thousands of anonymous accounts, instead, introduce yourself to a few, maybe 50, then make friends and comment on how you liked their posts. Wait for their replies to build a bond and further strengthen it by constantly updating and Tweeting, then have your business promoted. Mention it in a status and be noticed by your followers. When they make a comment, comment back and the process is as unending as the flow of your success. After creating connection with a few clients, it is now time to expand your market. Repeat the method you used in finding followers and by word of mouth, you could get referred if they are satisfied with your service, making your business grow.

Having a positive image gives your business the same impression. Be an active follower and do regular Tweets. People love returning favors so do them a favor by being courteous enough to at least click that little star at the right side of a Tweet and they might return that little favor by doing business with you.

In all cases, my only guidance was the title of the article.   So, I defined the title and within 3-weeks (they promised ten-days), they sent me the articles.

I will post more soon, and you can see all of the 99 Cent Articles articles here.

Please pop me your feedback in comments — I would love to hear what you think.  I have not edited the articles in any way.