Things are still not back to normal in Mumbai’s financial capital. The city that survived bomb blasts, terrorists and other disasters, was brought to its knees by a few inches of water. It speaks volumes for the sorry state of the infrastructure in this megapolis.

Schools have re-opened, thank goodness! Keeping a hyperactive 6-year old indoors all day is asking for trouble. But people are still pretty subdued and lots of shops and establishments are shut. It’s like they’re still in shock. Like they never believed this could happen to them.

Communications are still shaky. Mobile connectivity is weak and ATMs were ruined by the floods. You never realise how much you depend on electronic communication and gadgetry until it becomes unavailable to you.

Makes you realise that all that talk of electromagnetic pulses used in electronic warfare is not just science fiction. At such times, it’s the good old modes of communications - like landlines - that prove the most reliable.

The surburbs were hardest hit with the flood waters reaching up to the first floor in areas like Andheri. Some homes were flooded in Vashi, including those belonging to my friends. We were lucky because our sector is a little higher than others. The waters reached higher than they ever had, but our homes were spared.

Others were not so lucky. Fires and landslides followed the floods. Hundreds have died. A friend of mine was aghast to see fire engines being diverted, to pump water out of basements in the bungalows of ministers and the moneyed class, instead of rescuing people. Another example of the screwed-up priorities we live with.

Read more accounts of Mumbai’s Terrible Tuesday here.

I haven’t been blogging a lot about blogging nowadays, even though I do keep up with the news. I was just reading Shel Israel and Robert Scoble’s blogging book, which they’ve now christened “Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.” Very nice! It’s a welcome change from the previous “Blog Or Die” title. They seem to have 11 chapters written so far. I’m not one of those who likes reading online, so I guess I have to wait till the print version is out to read it in its entirety.

Via Steve Rubel comes these interesting little tidbits.

Reader beware of the truthfulness in blogs, warns an editorial in the Missouri Valley Times, noting that blogger’s have “a glorious freedom in their ability to simply “publish” whatever they please with no regard for accuracy or whether their diatribes cause pain and suffering.” Strange, because that’s the very reason I never joined Main Stream Media (MSM) - and people actually believe what they write.

If you’re a picky reader, Forbes Best Of The Web 2005 has a list of the best blogs in categories ranging from Art and Literary Blogs, to Small Business, Marketing, Shopping and Music Blogs.

Money Isn’t the Primary Motivation for Blogging, hits the nail on the head by noting that two out of three Web loggers maintain their online publications because they like to write. However, Kevin O’Keefe cites a survey by BlogKits that found 48% of bloggers do so with money as the motivating reason. Not very surprising, since BlogKits is a blog advertising program, whose audience largely represents those with interest in commercial blogging.

Video blogging or vlogging is in the news with the NY Times doing a piece on it and Videoblog, the first video-blogging service being launched for 3G mobile phones in Italy.

Podcasting changing the face of politics, says another report. Great! Now we don’t just get to read about slime-bag politicians, but also get to listen to them on our MP3 players. Ugh! The upside to that is that people who are clueless about terms like blogs and podcasting will now get an intimate introduction to them.

Even extra-terrestrials wont be spared the tedious prose and outpourings of earthling bloggers. Techtree reports that bloggers can now submit their blog feeds for transmission into deep space via an earth-based satellite broadcast using a free service called BloginSpace, which optimistically exclaims “Aliens Love Blogs!“. Hmmm, I wonder what sort of comments the little green men would have in response to that.

Maybe all ET really needs to read is Andy Wibbels’ post where he responds to 40 Questions About Blogging with just as many answers. Andy also offers a special report that’s a 20 page intro to the ins and outs of blogging and how it can fire up your business online.

Other blogging book releases include Tinu Abayomi-Paul’s Rescue Your Blog book that shows you how to boost traffic to your blog. She ’s also written a free download called “Why Blog? Quick Tips On The Ifs, Whys and Hows of Business Blogging in Plain English” (interesting title!) that you can download with a bunch of other blogging books when you subscribe to my Marketing With Blogs email course. I wish I was as prolific a writer as this amazing woman!

Anne Holland writes in a two-part report in Marketing Sherpa that “Blog Copyright Theft On The Rise “, something I whined about in an earlier post on spam-blogging. Part II of the article has some advice from readers and useful hotlinks. The must-read link I found here is the Bloggers’ FAQ on Intellectual Property.

I was pretty sceptical about Tagging ever becoming a useful tool for categorizing information because of the possibility of over-eager SEOs using it to spam search engines, a concern that was shared by Danny Sullivan. But it could be useful for those using blogging software like Blogger which doesn’t support the use of “categories” as Wordpress does.

Paul Chaney is using both categories and tags and points the way to a little tutorial on tagging by Technorati, which is very similar to a tagging tutorial by IceRocket, whose link I got via Steve Rubel. Thomas Pierce has compiled a lot very useful links for anyone wanting to learn more about tagging. There’s even a blog on tagging for the evangelists.

But it was Yahoo’s new social search engine, My Web 2.0, that really made me change my opinion about the benefits of tagging. It includes features that allow tagging and sharing tags between your personal group of contacts with whom you share web pages and knowledge. It remains to be seen if this really results in better searching, but there’s no doubt that My Web 2.0 is very interesting and might be fun to try - provided your friends are also using it.

Problogger Darren Rowse has some interesting observations on what he calls “blogging rythms” or daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly patterns that repeat themselves in the life of any blog. In other blogging news, blogs are helping people get book deals, get fired or “dooced” and get new jobs.

Business blogging is booming and many big companies have put rules in place for employee blogging. An article in the Chicago Tribune has experts like B L Ochman advising that before you launch your blog, research existing blogs, noting what you like or don’t like about other blogs. And make sure you have something to say.

If you think your blog is boring, make sure you read this article by Susan Solomon in Marketing Profs which offers useful tips to “make your blog sizzle.”

But the best advice I read about blogging this week came from Stephanie Klien whose blog “Greek Tragedy” landed her a lucrative book deal. “When you’re honest,” said Klein, “you can’t be boring.”

Mumbai is limping back to normal after what was recorded as the highest-ever rain in India’s history - a deluge that left the city completely paralysed.

According to the news reports (which I only just read as phone lines and all modes of communication were down), the city received the heaviest rainfall within a 12-hour span in the last 31 years.

The highest-ever rainfall recorded in a single day in India shut down the financial hub of Mumbai, snapped communication lines, closed airports and forced thousands of people to sleep in their offices or walk home during the night.

Troops were deployed after the sudden rains — measuring up to 94.4 centimeters (37.1 inches) in one day in some areas of Mumbai — stranded tens of thousands of people.

We’ve had no power since yesterday. The lights have only just come back on and I’m still unable to download my mail. Even the newspapers haven’t come in today, so I had no idea what’s been happening in the city.

Lucky for me and my family we were safely ensconced in the comfort of our homes, but the entire city was flooded, and shops in the market nearby had their goods destroyed by the water which seeped in.

In the meantime, you can read the news reports of how people coped with the torrential downpour here, here , here , here and here.

If you’ve written to me in the last couple of days, please be patient. I will definitely get back to you as soon as possible.

A few months ago, I created a site around the theme of self-improvement called Grow My Mind.

Not only is this one of my pet subjects, I also knew that self improvement products have a huge market online.

People actively searching for self-improvement courses and information online are also quite willing to spend on it.

So I was thrilled when I learned about a new Private Label Rights membership site with products related to self-improvement.

The Self Improvement Millionaires membership site is a joint venture of Mike Mograbi & Michael Lee.

I’ve already downloaded and put up the first set of products available to members. You can see a few of them here.

Goal Realization Made Easy

Boost Your Confidence! How to Succeed at Being Yourself

And there’s more where these came from.

One of the first things that struck me about the Self Improvement Millionaires site was the professional touch - the excellent quality of the products, sales materials and graphics.

While other sites expect you to create your own graphics - a time-consuming or expensive option - for their private resell products, Self Improvement Millionaires provides everything you need so you can set up your sales pages and begin selling the products in minutes.

There is a section full of products that come with master resale rights and giveaway rights.

Members also get access to 10 self-improvement related articles with private label rights every month. You can edit and use as these as your own to promote the products.

There are also discounts on self-improvement products and some very savvy tips for profiting from your products in the member’s area.

If your target audience is looking for self-improvement information online, this is one membership site you just HAVE to be part of.

Copyright © 2005 Priya Shah

Article marketing is the latest buzzword for marketers looking to promote their sites and products online. But how do you measure the success of your article marketing campaign?

It probably depends on what you expect your article to achieve for you - better branding, more sales, or more publicity.

One way to measure article performance is to check how many times your article has been picked up and reproduced on various sites.

To do that, just copy and paste the article title in quotes into a search engine like Google, and you’ll see how many sites it’s been reprinted on.

My article “How To Get To The Top Of The Marketing Food Chain” shows 1061 links in Google.

That means Google has indexed 1061 sites on which this article appears.

This gives me about 1061 quality links to each of the sites I included in my resource box.

As you can see, this makes article marketing a very powerful way of building quality links.

So how do you ensure that your article gets picked up and reprinted by as many publishers as possible?

1. Pick A Topic That’s Hot Or Always Fresh

For instance, my article on Neuromarketing got picked up pretty quickly because it was a hot topic.

The problem with hot topics is that they also tend to cool off quickly. So while they may get a lot of reprints over a short time, they may get very few reprints once the craze is over.

There are some articles that are slow starters but eternally fresh, like the one I wrote here.

To Be A Champion, Become A Child (591 links in Google)

These are the ones that will give you reprints over a longer period of time. I think in the long run, these are more valuable.

2. Target A Large Audience

Another way to get a lot of coverage is write an article for a large target audience or one that is very active online - like bloggers.

This one gave me 164 links back, mostly from other blogs, even some for which I had to use a translation service

This shows 248 links back . 316 links for this one.

But again, it’s the quality of links back that matters - not the quantity.

Another large target audience is the health market. I get a lot of links back from my health articles.

3. Craft A Catchy, Relevant Title

A catchy title ensures that your article gets the attention of publishers - the first step to getting your article published.

Follow the basic rules of copywriting to make your article interesting and readable.

Publishers are more likely to pick up an article if its title includes the keywords that they (and you) want to target.

Use your main keywords in your title, preferable in the first half (like I did in the title of this article), to ensure better rankings for those who reprint it.

4. Offer Publishers A Monetary Incentive

Give people an incentive to publish your article. I have an affiliate program and I allow publishers to use their affiliate link for my ezine in the resource box.

Allow publishers to earn by publishing your article and they will gladly reprint it.

5. Write An Article Series

Break up a long article or report into a series of articles like I did with my “Marketing With Blogs” series here.

Marketing With Blogs - Part 1, 2, 3 and 4.

These gave me 5270 links back in all. As you can see, a series of articles can be a very powerful link-building technique.

6. Distribute Your Article Widely

Ensure that your article is distributed to the best and most appropriate article directories and announcement lists online.

Feel free to browse through my own collection of article directories and announcement lists.

_______________________________________________

Priya Shah is the CEO of eBrand360. She writes the Marketing Slave blog and publishes an internet marketing newsletter. Subscribe to her free Marketing With Blogs eCourse.

This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.
_______________________________________________

Jason DeVelvis has some excellent tips on how to write good articles in his new article: Writing Articles, But Still Not Getting Traffic? That’s Because Your Articles Suck But I Can Help! (Part 1).

He advises writers to follow the basic rules of online copywriting when writing articles, especially the headline, and that your article must not be a blatant sales pitch.

I agree, as does Chris Knight who also writes the following on his blog:

Article marketing is a qualified lead generation system, a targeted web traffic creator, it’s a public relations tool to help you build credibility in the marketplace and an SEO tool to help you build credibilty and trust with the major search engines.

Those who screw this up, pitch and sell themselves hard in the title, body and then they bore us to tears with huge resource boxes filled with every sales pitch they can think of, will find themselves banging their heads on the wall wondering why it’s not producing the results that are possible if they would shift their thinking to “lead generate” instead of “sales pitch.”

More Article Marketing Tips
Article Marketing Tutorial

I just bought Dina’s Giolitto’s new manual “ARTICLE POWER: Create Dynamite Web Articles and Watch Your Sales Explode!“ and plan to write a review of it soon.

In the meantime, do join Dina’s new Article Marketing Mania Network on Ryze.

Another article marketing tutorial I recommend wholeheartedly is Turn Words Into Traffic by Jim Edwards.

More Article Marketing Resources

I received a copy of the ArticleAnnouncer software and tried it out. (I didn’t order the package because there’s no guarantee of the CDs getting thru the customs here - I’ve had stuff disappear down that hole before).

The software is not completely automated, but neither is Jason’s Ezine Announcer software (which I also own).

You need to submit articles to each directory manually, but it will fill the forms for you automatically and it did save me loads of time that I would have otherwise spent just copying and pasting the article into the form.

I actually see the manual thing as a benefit because each directory or submission site has its own rules (for instance some accept HTML submissions, some don’t) so you can check if your article is being submitted the right way.

I like the software - would not pay so much for just a piece of software, but since it comes with a bunch of article marketing CDs and tutorials, it might be worth it.

You have to create a log for each article, enter all the artice information and save it.

The software then fills in this information (like the TypeItIn or other form-filling software) into the form everytime you click to a new submission site.

All you do is check the information to see if it meets the submission guidelines, modify it if it doesnt, and click submit.

ArticleAnnouncer also has an automailer function that mails out your article (using a template) to article announcement lists and ezine editors.

There’s information about what sort of articles each announcement list and ezine accepts so you can select the ones appropriate to your article and mail it out.

The downside is that you may be accused of spam complaints and get a lot of bounces from lists. So far I haven’t experienced the former, but the latter does occur from time to time.

In terms of the time and effort it saved me when submitting articles, ArticleAnnouncer is very efficient - definitely one of the most useful pieces of software I’ve used in recent times. I’m going to be using it a lot.

Wishlist: The software doesn’t always fill in the resource box correctly. It would be nice if we could choose whether we want to submit a text or HTML version of the resource box. Right now the default seems to be HTML, which all sites don’t accept.

I also think Jason should consider offering the software by itself, because someone is bound to create a similar software and for much less.

If you prefer to do submit articles manually, check out my big list of article submission sites.

Well, like I thought it was a bandwidth problem. Here’s Jason’s explanation for why the Article Announcer site was on the blink for a while.

My website articleannouncer.com got a sudden massive traffic spike. This continued for several hours. It appears that a few of my “heavyweight” affiliates were promoting the website and this generated a huge traffic surge.

But, that is not the problem…

These thousands of visitors were streaming my “shocking” video like crazy. Every few seconds someone new would hit the play button and view the video. My web server slowed to a crawl.

You can view this same “shocking” video here yourself:

http://www.articleannouncer.com

Wait, it gets even worse!

As a result of hundreds of people watching the video every hour, I hit my monthly bandwidth quota in only a few days. This shouldn’t have been a big deal..

BUT..

The “bimbo” web hosting company that I have been using panicked and shut down the website almost immediately.

Strangely some people actually thought this was a “slick marketing trick” by Jason to boost sales of Article Announcer.

One of the things worth investing in when you are serious about your online business is a good web host. I know this from experience because I faced a smiliar problem a couple of years ago during the peak holiday season.

Since then I upgraded my hosting package and worked out a way with my webhost, 5 Dollar Webs, to avoid it happening again.

I just received a message from a subscriber who was concerned that the ArticleAnnouncer site is down.

The page it redirects to says that the account for that domain is suspended. My subscriber wanted to know if it was a scam.

My reply:

Jason is not a scamster. It may just be that the domain has exceeded its bandwidth and he has not upgraded his hosting package.

Please have patience. I’m sure he will send us an explanation soon.

These things happen. Lets give Jason some time to respond before jumping to conclusions, guys.