If you’re just heard the phrase ‘Tag and Ping’ and scratching your
head in puzzlement — this article may be worth your time. Not that
Tag and Ping is some magic marketing formula that will deliver
untold riches. It won’t.
It is just one more marketing tool professional online marketers
are using to give their site or sites a competitive edge over
their competition. It will help put your site on the Internet
map and if done right, Tag and Ping will deliver plenty of
very targeted traffic to your sales pages. It will boost
your rankings and increase your sales.
Tag and Ping is one of those simple, yet relatively unknown
marketing techniques savvy Internet Marketers have been using
and trying to keep quiet for years. To truly understand how Tag
and Ping works, you will have to know some basic background
information on keywords, blogging, tags, and how all these
can work in sync to deliver traffic, links and sales to your site.
What are Blogs?
Most web users will know a blog is an online journal where bloggers
post their daily or hourly entries (their opinions, views, info, links)
on any subject that interests them. The most popular blogging systems
are Blogger.com (owned by Google) Bloglines (owned by Ask Jeeves),
LiveJournal, and many professional marketers use the free WordPress
software which they can host on their own websites.
Each blog has its own RSS feed — RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication
although its original acronym stood for Rich Site Summary. These
RSS feeds broadcasts the information in the blog posts to all
concerned parties — those who have subscribed and use an RSS reader
or aggregator to view the posts. Or more commonly, they use the FireFox browser,
Google Desktop, or MyYahoo to access their favorite RSS feeds.
The next version of Windows will have RSS embedded into its operating
system.
What are Tags?
Tags are really another name for keywords. Most surfers will know
keywords are the exact words Internet users type into search engines
to find what they’re looking on the world wide web. Tags work in the
same way and are a form of social bookmarking, a way of classifying
and accessing all that content in all those countless blogs.
Many major blogging directories such as Technorati use tags to
serve up the information to its patrons. One simple technique
to create a tag in Technocrati:
Laptops
(remove asterisks in actual code)
Or if your blogging software supports categories; this will
be recognized by Technorati as a tag.
What the heck is a Ping?
A ping is a simple way to notify the different search engines to let
them know that your blog has been updated. You call up or ping your
blog post.
You bookmark or place an entry in any one of the countless blogging
sites such as Technorati, Furl, del.icio.us, Blinklist, Flickr —
you go to these sites and click your blog or tag to inform them
you have updated your blog. Many blogging systems will automatically
ping your blog updates.
Or you can do this manually, for example Technorati’s ping form
is here: http://www.technorati.com/ping
Simple Way to Ping
If this is still confusing to you, one simple way to ping your
tags/blogs is to use a site like: http://pingomatic.com/
and it will automatically ping your blog in many of the most
popular blogging services.
Enter The Online Professional Marketers and It All Hits the Fan
Of course, online marketers have long discovered that the whole
blogging system — blogs, rss, tags, pinging — is an excellent
marketing vehicle. One great marketing system delivering
targeted traffic to their products and services.
It really is a corruption or commercialization of blogging
and this surely wasn’t the idea the original designers of
blogs had in mind. But the whole blogging system is
so lucrative, many professional marketers (the author is pleading
the fifth!) are using blogging systems like WordPress
to create mainly marketing sites that may have little resemblance
to a real blog. It just uses the backbone structure of
blogs, RSS, Tags to give their sites a slight competitive
edge in a very competitive world.
As we saw with the ‘comment spam’ there is a great
likelihood that Tag and Ping will be misused and further
antagonize the blogging purists. So if you are going to use
Tag and Ping make sure you’re creating valuable, usable content
— then most sites will want to link to your site anyway. Content is
still king no matter what tricks the professional
marketers want to use. Always will be!
Using a Simple Tag and Ping Marketing Technique With Technorati
To explain further the whole idea of Tag and Ping. Lets just
walk through a marketing system you can quickly create using
Technorati, one of the most popular blogging services.
First, sign your blog up with Technorati. This is quite a
simple procedure. Just upload a photo, doesn’t have to be of
you — your site’s logo will do. Register your profile with
your 20 or so tags relating to your blog. Make sure these
are keywords you’re marketing with your blog. Then you have to
place the Technorati code on your blog for a link back.
Next, you must understand that Technorati creates a landing page
for each tag in their system. This page is made up of
four parts:
– Flickr Photos
– Recent blog posts tagged with that keyword or phrase
– Who’s Blogging About sidebar which links to any profiles of blogs
that those same keywords or phrase in their profile
– Links from Furl for the same tag
So to take full advantage and to use this marketing technique you
have to sign up with both Flickr and Furl. Your aim is to get
your links in all four spots on this Technorati landing page
for your tag or keyword.
When signing up for Flickr, many marketers use their site’s name
for their Flickr username, just use a dash instead of a dot in
your site’s url. You can use a photo of the product they’re promoting
to get a link from Flickr in the top spot on the landing
page. Pick your tags and description for the product.
Set up a Furl account and download the Toolbar , bookmark a few
sites to get the hang of how its done.
Now You’re Really To Put Everything Together To Tag and Ping
1- You can start with the Flickr photos at top of the Technorati page.
Just post a photo or cover image into your Flickr account,
making sure you tag it and use a catchy headline in your description.
Link it to your landing or affiliate page url. Example:
Don’t buy another
marketing tool until your check out this site.
2 – Next, make the first of your blog posts on your particular subject
or product to your blog, making sure you tag it with your keywords and
then ping Technorati. Make all your posts good content, reviews,
product information or free downloads. Your entry will appear on the top of the
list for that tag shortly in Technorati.
3 – Furl your blog post and your landing/affiliate page with your tags
to make sure your entry/post is listed the bottom section of the
Technorati page for your tag.
To work this system, add another blog post every few hours, Tag and
Ping, plus Furl your posts. For better results you can sign up for countless
other social bookmarking sites and bookmark your pages. Here are just a
few good ones: del.icio.us, blinklist, moreover, icerocket, weblogs…
Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl
This is just one Tag and Ping method, professional marketers have
countless systems and sites working many variations on this relative new
marketing technique. But the information given above should get you started
on your own Tag and Ping marketing system.
Remember, blogging and RSS are the wave of the future, make sure you’re
geared up to take advantage of all they have to offer. You must
have at least one blog on your site. Use WordPress if you
can — Blogger will do in a pinch!
Just make sure you’re using some Ping and Tag marketing techniques
to harvest all those links, traffic and sales for your site.
This is one marketing technique you should now be using. Just
remember to Flickr, Blog, Tag, Ping, Furl – Rinse and Repeat!
