Do you know the truth about blog and Twitter content syndication?  Here are 5 reasons you should learn the truth:

1. Syndication models: There are 3 primary types of online content syndication.  Make sure you pick the right syndication opportunity to reach your goals.
2. Increased exposure: Licensed syndication can put your content and name in front of influential audiences who might not find it otherwise.
3. Credibility: Licensed syndication can put your content alongside of content from major news and media organizations.
4. Money: You can earn royalties through licensed syndication.
5. More traffic: Licensed syndication doesn’t compete with your blog’s existing traffic stream.  It adds to it.

If you don’t already know the truth, you can learn the whole story in Newstex’s free ebook, The Truth about Blog and Twitter Content Syndication.

Here at Newstex, we’ve been putting a lot of thought into the authoritative voices behind the blogs and content we syndicate (watch for news about that coming in the next month).

In the clutter of the online world, it seems like everyone is claiming to be an expert, which makes it challenging for true authorities to stand out from the crowd.  Ultimately, the term ‘expert’ has lost a lot of its importance now that anyone can start a blog and call himself or herself an expert.

Brian Solis discussed this exact problem awhile back on his blog as it relates to social media expertise, but it actually transcends into all areas of expertise and authority across the Web.  In today’s world of self-proclaimed experts, you need to find a way to position yourself as the true expert.  How can you do that?  One of the easiest ways to establish yourself as a true expert in your field is to publish authoritative content.

Authoritative content is useful, meaningful and continual.  Readers can depend on it and trust it.  Newstex only syndicates editorially-selected authoritative content, because our distributor partners (such as LexisNexis) and our end-user customers (including influential professionals in the fields of business, law, government, academics, and more) need to know the content they’re accessing is not just coming from so-called experts, but actually produced by authorities — people who are truly knowledgeable and experienced.  In other words, authoritative content producers aren’t just ‘thinkers’, they’re ‘doers’.  They live and breath their topics of expertise and produce valued content.

How do you ensure the content you publish online is authoritative?  Simple — meet your audience’s needs by talking about the topics and concepts that matter to them.  Back up your content with your own experiences and personal knowledge.  Don’t just think, show your readers what you mean in your content.  That’s how you can differentiate yourself and your content from the self-proclaimed experts.

Follow the link to learn more about content syndication through Newstex and give your content an instant credibility boost.

Twitter is by far the fastest growing social Web site in history, and it shows no signs of slowing down.  Everyday, people are tweeting about companies, brands and products.  The problem is that there is no perfect way to search Twitter for this kind of information.

Even Twitter’s Twitter 101 for Business guide offers only slightly helpful advice by telling businesses to conduct a site search to find conversations happening “right now” on Twitter.  That’s great, but what about conversations that happened a few days ago?  And what about finding all of the conversations happening on Twitter about your brand, company or products?  A Twitter site search is not an exact science and doesn’t always deliver all of the results you might be looking for nor does the search function always deliver relevant results.

Instead of searching Twitter everyday (Twitter searches only go back a few days so repeated searching is a necessary evil to stay on top of brand and business conversations), Newstex offers an easier way to find company, brand and product information through its NewsTwits Twitter feed syndication service.  The Newstex feed of authoritative Twitter users’ content provides a complete archive of tweets allowing users to categorize searches and find relevant and comprehensive results faster and more accurately than a simple Twitter site search can provide.

With NewsTwits from Newstex, content distributors get a full text archival feed of tweets, and end-user customers get an answer to a common problem – finding and tracking online conversations about their companies, brands and products.  Since NewsTwits search results appear alongside other information already found in their search results from Newstex’s authoritative news and blog publishers, no extra steps are necessary to stay on top of those powerful and fast-moving online conversations happening on the social Web.

Distributors can contact Newstex to learn more about adding Newstex NewsTwits from Newstex’s Blogs On Demand publishers to their current feeds and provide another valuable tool to their clients.

And if you’re a blogger or online content producer, you can syndicate your content through Newstex Blogs On Demand and your Twitter updates through NewsTwits.  Contact Newstex for details (new Newstex publisher inquiries — click here; current Newstex Blogs On Demand publishers who would like to syndicate their Twitter feeds through NewsTwits can click here).

The July 2009 Blogger in the Spotlight is Esther J. Cepeda of 600 Words.

Blogger in the Spotlight is a monthly series where Newstex turns the spotlight on our publishers with in-depth interviews that give you a glimpse into the stories, tips and secrets of successful bloggers and content producers.

This month’s interview is with Esther J. Cepeda who is an opinion journalist and expert on the issues of U.S. Hispanics/Latinos. She writes about that and much, much more on www.600words.com.

Newstex: How did you get started writing your current blog?

Esther J. Cepeda: I was a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times when the print media industry started to melt down because of the migration of advertising dollars to the internet.

When the newspaper had its second round of mass layoffs I was let go and the city lost the only metro columnist who regularly wrote about Hispanic and Latino issues, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from reporting and opining on news, sports, and culture. So instead of mourning the loss of my printed perch, I decided to keep writing on-line where all the action is anyway.

Newstex: What makes your blog unique?

Esther J. Cepeda: “600 Words” is unique because its foundation is laid on first-hand reporting of stories that are unique and relevant to a mainstream audience – news, politics, sports – yet also focused on Chicago and on Hispanics, who comprise such a large share of the internet traffic these days.

My readers – who write to me from all over the country and are young, old, black, white, Hispanic, male and female – honor me with comments such as “you tell it like it is,” “you’re never boring,” and “why isn’t everyone talking about this?” (more…)

If you’ve ever wondered whether or not blogs are a source of authoritative and influential content, then that question was answered this week when President Barack Obama held a special conference call with a group of bloggers to discuss health care reform.

Some of the bloggers on the conference call with President Obama syndicate their content through Newstex Blogs On Demand, and we’d like to give them special recognition today on the Newstex blog.  You can also follow the links below to read more about their experiences on the historic call.

John Aravosis of AMERICAblog

David Dayen of D-Day

Jane from Above Average Jane

(you can read more about Jane from Above Average Jane in this Newstex Blogger in the Spotlight post)

We truly live in an amazing time where authoritative content from sources outside of traditional news media are getting the recognition they deserve.  Newstex is proud to make the content from these blogs available to a wider audience through Newstex Blogs On Demand licensed syndication.

Image: Flickr

The free ebook from Newstex, The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication, passed 1,000 downloads this week.

The Newstex team is very happy to hear feedback from readers that the ebook has cleared up a lot of confusion about licensed syndication and started some interesting conversations about the subject.   We’d also like to thank everyone who has helped us to spread the word about the free ebook.

If you haven’t downloaded the ebook yet, follow the link and get your free copy of The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication.  It carries a Creative Commons license, so feel free to share it, tweet it, email it, post it on your blog, and help clear up the confusion, myths and hearsay about content syndication.

State governments are looking for ways to make some more money, and sales tax on affiliate program links is an easy target.  Already, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Hawaii have passed new tax legislation that requires companies which use Internet affiliates (including bloggers) for online sales to collect sales tax on purchases when the affiliate link that generated the sale originated on a Web site or blog whose owner lives in one of those states. 

The new sales tax is a matter of intense debate with states claiming affiliate Web sites and blogs are acting as salespeople vs.companies who use affiliates, Web site owners and bloggers claiming the relationship is an advertising relationship.  However, states claim that not charging sales tax on sales that are generated from an affiliates site who lives in one of these states causes unfair competition with local businesses who must charge sales tax by law (remember, prior to this legislation, companies only had to charge sales tax to consumers who lived in states where the company maintained a physical presence — an office, warehouse, manufacturing plant, etc.). 

According to the American Marketing Association, the definition of affiliate marketing is:

An online marketing strategy that involves revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople. Compensation is typically awarded based on performance measures such as sales, clicks, registrations or a combination of factors.

Looks like this argument is going to continue for quite awhile.

In the meantime, Overstock.com responded to this new state legislation by dropping its affiliate programs in those states that enacted it.  Amazon.com also responded.  First, Amazon agreed to collect sales tax when this legislation passed in New York.  However, the process must have been a big burden (bigger than the sales generated from New York affiliates according to Amazon representatives), so when North Carolina, Rhode Island and Hawaii passed similar legislation in June, Amazon dropped its affiliate program in those states. 

There is no word on the ultimate fate of the New York Amazon Associates affiliate program.  We’ll have to wait and see.  In the meantime, rumors are buzzing that California is considering passing similar legislation and other states might follow suit.  In other words, the fate of online affiliate programs as we know them today, might be very different a year from now.

For those Web site owners and bloggers who publish authoritative content that professionals are looking for to do their jobs, licensed syndication through Newstex is a great way to not just earn money through royalties but also provide broad exposure to new audiences that traditional Web searches don’t provide.  Check out The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication for more information about licensed online content syndication, or contact Newstex to learn how you can make money and broaden your exposure through licensed syndication.

If you have a Kindle wireless reading device from Amazon and enjoy reading books and ebooks on your Kindle, then you might be interested in hearing that the new ebook from Newstex, The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication, is now available on Amazon Kindle.

The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication is available at the lowest price point available through Amazon Kindle, $0.99, which includes free wireless delivery.  You can follow the link to download the ebook for your Amazon Kindle.

You don’t need to have an Amazon Kindle to read The Truth about Blog and Twitter Syndication.  If you’d prefer, you can view the free ebook here.

The term syndication has a variety of meanings depending on who you ask. For example, Newstex provides licensed blog syndication as part of its package of Authoritative Content offerings to professionals and influencers.

But what does licensed blog syndication mean, and how can it help bloggers? What makes it different from other kinds of syndication?

A new FREE ebook from Newstex, The Truth about Blog Syndication, makes sense of all the myths, confusion, and hearsay about blog syndication.

For example, did you know that there are three primary syndication models and they all affect bloggers differently? The truth of the matter is simple — blog syndication offers a variety of benefits to bloggers, but first you need to understand what those syndication models are and weed through the rumors to get to what’s real.

You can download The Truth about Blog Syndication here. Feel free to share it, tweet it, link to it, blog about it, and talk about it.

The only way that people will really understand the truth about blog syndication is by learning the facts first.

If you have any questions about blog syndication or licensing your blog content for syndication through Newstex, contact Newstex today.

Click to View Free eBook – The Truth about Blog Syndication

The June 2009 Blogger in the Spotlight is Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.

Blogger in the Spotlight is a monthly series where Newstex turns the spotlight on our publishers with in-depth interviews that give you a glimpse into the stories, tips and secrets of successful bloggers and content producers.

This month’s interview is with Jeremy Goldkorn who is the founder, editor-in-chief and publisher of Danwei, a blog about media, advertising and urban life in China, where he has lived since 1995.

Newstex: How did you get started writing your current blog?

Jeremy Goldkorn: Danwei is about Chinese media and Internet — industries that I have been working in for more than a decade.

I caught the blogging bug during the SARS panic in China of 2003 when I  noticed that a few blogs were more comprehensive sources of information than the WHO, the Chinese government and media reports about the disease. Soon after the end of the SARS panic, I had figured out how to set up a blog and launched Danwei, initially as a one man show.

Danwei has always been primarily about observing changes in the Chinese media and Internet, and translating noteworthy articles and blog posts by Chinese writers. There are now four of use who work on the site.

Newstex: What makes your blog unique?

Jeremey Goldkorn: We have a mixture of content ranging from daily summaries of important stories in Chinese newspapers to tracking Internet censorship and following the changes in China’s media in terms of business, government regulation and content, political and cultural. We do a lot of translation from Chinese media and Internet writings and use Chinese language and Mainland sources very heavily in our research.

Although we do comment on certain issues, Danwei has never been an opinion blog: the emphasis is always on high quality information. We also produce our own video shows which attract a different group of people from our articles and blog posts.

Essentially, if you follow Danwei, you will stay on top of developments in the Chinese media and Internet, and that is what draws most of our readers.

Newstex: To what do you attribute your blog’s success?

Jeremy Goldkorn: Persistance, good writing, and focusing on specialized content area that big media companies are not well positioned to produce.

Newstex: What are the top 3 tips you can give to bloggers looking to develop successful blogs?

Jeremy Goldkorn:

1. Choose a subject area where you have real expertise, or enough passion to educate yourself into an expert.
2. Do original writing and research, not just commentary on what other bloggers or the media publish.
3. Your personal life is not interesting.  (more…)