Automation in business is a good thing, but it has its place. Nothing beats human communication when dealing with people and creating partnerships. Do you want to talk to an autoresponder? No, and I doubt anyone else does either.

Some of new programs designed for automation of article collection have legal issues to consider. The biggest being copyright infringement. Not every author wants their work reprinted, or they require control over where their work is displayed. (Which is as it should be.) Without manually seeking your content, you could very well find yourself being served papers for publishing someone else's work without permission.

Plagiarism is another issue. If you don't follow certain rules for reprinting contributory work, you stand to be hounded for plagiarism. Yet another sticky issue.

Some of new programs mock safelists, or resemble FFA sites. Before long, those types of blog pages will become banned as well. Search engines will figure out a way to block non-informational blog pages, those that carry nothing but links or classifieds. (Is your head sore from hitting that brick wall yet?)

Still, there are other programs designed to post spam to blogs using comments feature. This is referred to as comment spam. The only solution thus far, to battle comment spam, is to disallow your readers option of leaving comments. This is a bad thing, because allowing your readers to interact with you is supposed to be one of benefits of using this form of communication.

The makers of these programs may have had good intentions to start with, but have ultimately created Frankenstein's Monster. Many are stating that their programs are not spam, because they do not involve email. That is a cop out if I ever heard one. Spam is transmission of unwanted stuff, whether it is sent to your inbox, or your blog, or even search engines themselves. Search engines want relevant content, not pages of of keywords, or links. So feeding them page after page of nonsense is spam.

Everyone hates spam, except spammers, so why be a part of something loathed by so many and embraced by a few? Bad business if you ask me.

The only real way to combat these issues is to simply not use programs themselves. Do your due diligence and create a reputation as a trusted information provider, not a blog bomber, and your business will prosper. Using these programs will ultimately diminish your reputation and your livelihood.

Your customers are looking for information, a solution to a problem. Give that to them, not just endless pages of links. You will achieve your rightful spot in ranks, and you stand a far better chance for longevity. There are good RSS tools available, you just need to look beneath sales copy to find them. And if you are new to RSS and blogging, do some research. Find someone who knows, really knows what RSS is and how to use it, and ask some questions. Don't go out and spend buckets of money on something you're not sure how to use, because you could be doing yourself more harm than good.

A few good books to read some solid information on RSS and blogs... RSS, Blogs and Syndication http://www.ads-on-q.com/RSS.html Unleash Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS http://hop.clickbank.net/hop.cgi?trii65/mrktstudy RSS Advertising Secrets http://www.ebookadvertising.biz/products/rssad/ Taming The eBeastie http://www.feedyourhungrymind.com/Taming-the-eBeastie.html

Copyright © 2005 The Trii-Zine Ezine www.ezines1.com

Know who you are playing against.

The more information your have about your opponent and how they play can greatly increase your chance of beating them. The same can be said about search engines. Understand how they work and how they find sites. Knowing your opponent can help you to win. But also keep in mind that as time moves on, your opponent is getting stronger. They are constantly changing their game to keep up with new breed of chess players. You may be able to beat them today, but in 6 months, they may have a new strategy. Keep a close eye on them and change your game to adjust to theirs.

Keep in mind that your opponent will never tell you how they are going to play game. There are secret strategies that only they know. Many will guess as to what those are, but nobody will ever know their strategy 100%.

Do Not Take Shortcuts Just To Get The Game Over With

The same can be said about using spam techniques to get your site listed quickly and to top. Spam techniques may work for a short time but once you get caught, you are banned from playing game. Google states this about spam, "Trying to deceive (spam) our web crawler by means of hidden text, deceptive cloaking or doorway pages compromises quality of our results and degrades search experience for everyone. We think that's a bad thing."