LinkShare Blog

“The only marketing left is content marketing.”
–Seth Godin, Marketing Guru

Content marketing is providing useful, helpful, interesting, authoritative articles, audio podcasts, videos, images, and other rich media that engage people. The content can be online or offline; however, we’re focused on the online publishing aspects for advertisers and publishers in performance marketing. Outstanding, fresh content is one important factor to distinguish your merchant or affiliate website in the search engines and with online searchers.

Marketers are all publishers today. You need to think like an editor.

Here are some ways you can get in on the content marketing revolution:

• Create video, audio, slides, rich media and article content that is helpful, informative, fun, and engaging.
• Develop a marketing plan for each key piece of content; it can be reworked and repurposed into a different form, such as article to video to podcast to slide show.
• Publish the content on your site and blog, as well as on syndication and sharing sites such as YouTube, iTunes, SlideShare, and eZineArticles.
• Promote the content on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter and in online news releases
• Use tools to automate updates to social media. For example, now you can easily import your blog posts into your Facebook fan page, then automate Facebook to send an update to Twitter, and automate Twitter to update your individual  LinkedIn profile page, use services such as Posterous or Ping to update all your social media outlets at once.
• Update your LinkedIn company profile page and other directory listings with content that has changed or is new.
• Generate links and additional traffic back to the site for conversions by commenting on key influencers’ blogs and forums, answering LinkedIn questions and other Q & A sites with a helpful link back to an article on your site or in your email signature.
• Continue to build Web traffic organically as it is viewed, shared, and promoted by others.

With a little bit of creativity, some time and effort, and not a lot of money, you can attract visitors to your website and make them fans of your business before they even buy. Then, when they need your services, you will be “top of mind.” That’s the beauty of content marketing–another useful tool in your online marketing toolkit.

By Sally Anne Dishong,  SEO + Social Media Content Editor

As you build your business in the LinkShare Network and increase the number of partners you work with, you’ll want to be aware of all the different ways to promote, find and get links. One way is to login to the Publisher Dashboard and browse an Advertiser’s available links in the “Get Links” area.

But did you know there are other ways to find and get links and with many you don’t even need to login! Whether Publishers are looking for specific product links or certain types of promotions – get to know all these tools and get working smarter and faster than ever.

Publishers, click here for a quick overview on the various ways you can get Advertiser links.

Advertisers, click here to learn all the ways LinkShare helps your Publishers find and get your links!

Ian Rosenwach, Product Manager

SAVE THE DATE
Symposium East 2010
New York City, June 22

Mark your calendars, Symposium East 2010 is shaping up to be the best ever! We’ll kick off the day with presentations on the latest trends that will help you drive sales followed by LinkShare’s Annual Golden Link Awards Luncheon, which you won’t want to miss! Stay tuned for additional details. Registration opens March 22nd.

If you have any questions please contact us at events@linkshare.com.

Best Regards,
Sara Gorlick
Events and Tradeshows Manager

Keyword Research:  Quick Tool & Tip

Keyword research at times can be a real pain, but alas, it MUST be done.  I have found a site that has helped me to make it a rather painless and quick task, but also make it effective when doing keyword research for SEO. Along with this tool, I will share with you a tip to  aid your keyword research, and find more information about your vertical or industry as well as other competitors, trends and news that you may have missed.

Keyword Tool:   Keyword Smash

Keyword Smash is a free online tool that lets you research everything under the sun when it comes to your keywords.  Simply go to the keyword research tool site and type in a word in the box.  You can then choose a category like offers, keywords, trends, demographics, articles, images and MUCH more.  If you use it strictly for keyword research, go to that tab, enter a keyword and then click select.  It will give you information on that keyword from various keyword tools.  This tool will make things go quickly as it opens up each keyword tool into a different tab, saving you from having to go to each site.

Tip:   Use Twitter Search

Twitter is not just a social media micro-blogging network.  You can also use their keyword research tool to find out popular present trends and also see what your competition is doing. Go to search.twitter.com and then simply type in a keyword.  Doing this you can find out if it is being used, find people to engage with who are possibly in the same industry or vertical, as well as find other versions of a particular keyword that could be more effective.  This tool is also a really neat way to find out other sites, blogs, news and trends in your industry.

Victoria Edwards, SEO / Social Media Marketing  Specialist

What if you could get all your coupon codes, all together, all in one spot?

With the release of the Coupon Web Service last year, all this information became available to you in XML format.

Now we have taken the Coupon Web Service one step further to bring you the first Bento Box tool of 2010 - the Coupon Finder! All your coupons, plus your code, in one big easy-to-read interface!

How does it work?

1. As the Coupon finder is built on the Coupon Web Service, you need to apply to the Coupon Web Service.

2. One you’ve been accepted into the Coupon Web Service (this can take up to 24 hours), you’re ready to go. Just copy your Web Services token from here.

3. … and paste it into the Coupon Finder

4. That’s it! If you want to view all the Coupon Codes your partners have available, just click the “View Coupon Codes” button, and  all your promotional information, codes, valid dates and tracked destination URL appear in the table below.  If you have something more specific in mind, you can also search by Category and by Promotion Type.

What else?

The  Coupon Finder is about more than just Coupon Codes. You will also find many other current consumer promotions in the Coupon Finder.  If you need more than just the tracked destination URL, just click the “Get Link Code” link and a new window or tab will open up with your personal linking code.

Do you need to be logged in to the Publisher Interface?

Well, yes and no…

Yes, in order to grab your Web Services token & Yes, if you want to view full linking code with “Get Link Code”.

Otherwise, to see all the codes as well as your personal tracked destination URL, NO! Just plug in your token and search through all your codes and promotional information.

Meytal Markman, Marketing Communications
Ian Rosenwach, Product Manager