Who Else Wants to Get Flocked on Valentines Day?

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(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/violator3/)

Ok, I can't be the only guy who is spending Valentines Day with my favorite shaggy four legged friend and an anatomically correct 5 foot 6 Jessica Alba cardboard cut out movie sign.  So in this post we are going to take a quick look at a few free and easy tools I use everyday to getting my sites some content love…all while giving the same back to many of the quality publishers and content providers in my niches.

When I'm working with people privately…..invariably, when they see how many different markets we are playing in, and publishing in, I'm often asked to share my PLR article resources - or what content spinning programs I use, recommend…or otherwise. 

And very simply - I have never used one.  Or them.  ( I think a few years ago I tried to figure out "article bot" or something like that…and I found my cognitively challenged brain was having SUCH a hard time figuring out how to "spin"…that by the time I got it to work, I probably could have written 15 articles already - and that didn't sound like they were cooked up by Dolph Lundgren after taking one too many kidney punches in Rocky 5)

The bottom line is this:  I believe in building good, high quality, white hat sites that are a growing and evolving asset with each new piece of content created.  I want links…both the kind that point to me - as well as the kinds that show my readers, in each of these markets  that I care about their experience…and will point them to better, fuller and richer resources when I am only skimming the surface of a topic.  So I use tools that allwo me to do this - quickly, cheaply ( for the most part free ) and accompish this task with simple harmonious effort.

1) Flock:  If you haven't been flocked lately…trust me, it gets better with age..;-)  Flock is very simply a social networking browser that allows you to pull, cull and collect great posts and content from the around the web..pull it into their native editor..comment, add and mark up the content in any way you want, or feel would be beneficial to your readers..and then publish that content, directly from the editor to the blog ( or blogs) of your choice. 

Flock allows you to publish to pre-defined categories..which is huge ( that it fills in for you in the editor..right from your blog) and allows you to tag your content with technorati tags as well…right from within the editor.  The net result of all of this very simply is this:  You can set up google alerts, news feeds or just pull from your bloglines account - information that seems interesting or appealing in your niche.  Open the story…..bring up the "blog this" editor - drop and drag text - add your own comments…..and publish! 

Flock will take you right to your site ( if you elect) where you will find your new post…properly formatted..tagged…and with a nice piece of blockquote text and an attribution link right back to the content source.  They win - you win.  Everyone wins.  Plus I get more time with Jessica - so she wins too.

2) Feedwordpress:   This  is a completely auto pilot solution for building "planet" style sites...Essentially allows you, once you have the plugin configured ( it's free) to syndicate other peoples content in your niche and republish it on your own automagically - you tell feedwordpress what content to "pull" - it will go out to these sites and when they update their content, well….so have you..:-) 

There are a few more issues regarding how this program can be potentially abused by Wordpress spam style sites for obvious reasons ….It will pull posts, pictures, et all into  your blog and natively - point back to the originating source ( giving them a good share of link love and your visitors attention if you do it properly) which again…is a win/win for everyone.  You can make some setting changes within feedwordpress though that sort of nullify the good will/netcitizen part of this process…by keeping all of the "link love" for yourself.

  Which of course is not very nice - and why you won't  find many spammers in the blissful, Bardo realms  with the rest of us when this life is over.  None the less - I have built entire sites - huge sites - with my own solid content…in combination with a solid stream of updated content from other publishers in my own niches...pointing back to them, and all the while - keeping my visitors coming back as they believe mine to be the launching point for their browsing in these areas.  I recently put one of these up for a diet niche, simply placed some affiliate diet videos, about 15 of my own articles on static pages - and the rest of the site is simply comprised of aggregated posts from 4 or 5 content providers within this niche.  It's very easy to do…and truly - an autopilot solution for making a big splash in a new niche - and doing it fast.

3) Without going into a ton of detail on this as I'm going to making a more lengthy post on this topic within the next week - You need to check out clipmarks.com - it has a lot of very similar functionality to flock's blogging tools…it lets you "clip" content from around the web - it stores it for you in your account…and you can publish it the very same way as you would with Flock..as described above.  It has some distinct advantages ( VERY easy to collect your content - even easier than flock) ….and some quibbling but pain in the ass  points as well ( the clipped content is relatively short - I believe 1000 characters is the present limit - which in practice, is not that much).  You can clip videos, pictures, etc - all is formateed very nicely ( I have some clipped content on this site) and again…is totally free. 

The advantage of tools like clipmarks and feedwordpress - and how they are being properly monetized by people in the marketing community….( note - in my mind, a VERY different demographic than the blogging communtiy) is that they make great feeder site content.  Ie - you can quickly create satellite feeder site networks that have this sort of content…and simply use this stuff not for your primary domains, but rather…to provide incoming links to your primary site.  So even a feedwordpress "planet" style site can be built quickly, easily and effortlessly - and while it updates itself on autopilot ad infinitum - you simply have one or two well placed, solid links pointing from that site - to your "money" site per se - or your main diet niche site in my above example.

Clipmarks essentially provides similar function - while Flock..for me - I have used to create..mas o menos - entire small niche "news" sites that I will eventually sell to niche specific buyers who need eyeballs in those arenas.

( an example of a site I've created almost exlusively with flock - Gotokeywest.com - a project I threw up last winter while wasting away in paradise for a month or two - with the intention of simply selling this site to a local business interested ( a realtor/bar owner, etc ) in the eyeballs that this site can provide - which is for the most part, the exact same strategy I try to teach other people to encapsulate with their "blog building" efforts.   It becomes a meaure of simple scale - 100 of these types of sites, as a long term strategy…each worth a thousand or two ( or more) to someone who wants some page rank and an existing aged domain - rather than outsourcing their creation of the same - ( believe me..even with no monetization strategy in place..to these non internet marketing/savvy folks - this is a HUGE bargain) is a nice safety net for when your adsense checks dry up)

So…to wrap this up - you can get flocked on V day after all.  It's quick, easy and free, which…well, you can fill in your own punchline..:-) 

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