By now you’ve probably noticed the bot accounts I created to automatically post content from the RSS feeds of some of the more popular blogs in the SEM/SEO industry. The original purpose for the bots was to help me work out the kinks in the new automatic RSS feed submission feature but I left them enabled after the feature development was complete because I felt they added value by providing more content for the community to read and vote for. Since I enabled them, I’ve been batting around several ideas of what to do with them because I feel they need to be removed from the general queue of user submitted stories. So many submissions come through the bots (even though there are only 4 of them) that user submitted stories tend to get buried in the queue faster than they should be and therefore don’t get the attention they deserve.

Soon I’ll be implementing whatever change we agree on as a community. I don’t want to make the decision myself; I want to hear your thoughts and ideas. I think if done correctly, the bots can add real value to PlugIM, perhaps by narrowing down the number of sites you need to visit during your daily routine. By adding some sort of aggregator section to PlugIM, not only can you read up on what users are finding and sharing, you can also read up on what you’re favorite blogs around the web have been posting. If handled correctly, hopefully we can add many more feeds to the aggregator based on your suggestions.

I invite you all to read Jason Murphy’s excellent article on bots and their place in a community and then ask that you add your thoughts and ideas in the comments section of either this blog post or Jason’s article. Help mold PlugIM into what you want it to become.

Development on the latest PlugIM feature is complete. Now you can attach an RSS feed to your user account and every item that comes through the feed will automatically be submitted as an upcoming story on PlugIM. All you need to do is login to your account (or if you don’t have an account yet, register) and go to your profile settings. There you’ll see a new section of settings for the RSS feed.

First and most importantly is the URL, make sure to include the full address to your feed. Then select the category that best describes your feed. It doesn’t need to be a perfect fit for every post, you can always individually edit posts on PlugIM after they’ve been submitted if need be. Then select how often you want your feed to be checked for new items. There are values to choose from ranging from 15 minutes up to 24 hours. Just keep in mind if you set this to 15 minutes, your feed is going to be accessed 96 times a day, however if that doesn’t bother you, that’s the best way to get your submissions posted to PlugIM as soon as they arrive on your feed. Finally you can also add tags to your feed. The tags will be applied to every PlugIM submission off your feed. Again, they don’t need to be perfect but can better narrow down the scope of your category.

The rules for adding an RSS feed to your PlugIM account are:

1. You are the owner of the feed
2. Internet marketing feeds only! Sure you can post off topic occasionally, but the overwhelming theme of your feed needs to be related to internet marketing in some way. SEO, SEM, blogging for dollars, Adwords, traffic generation, link baiting etc.

*Please note: feeds need to be activated by an administrator. This is to avoid getting bombarded with off topic spam. Most feeds will be approved or denied within 24 hours so please keep this in mind when activating this feature. Changing your feed URL will reset the approval process. To deactivate automatic feed submission, simply delete the URL.

We’re giving away a link for a month on PlugIM. For the entire month of February, every time you contribute to the PlugIM.com community you increase your odds of winning. Every post, comment or plug from February 1st through the 28th counts. At the end of the month, we’ll tally everyone’s points, and for each point you have, you’ll receive 1 entry in the drawing (which will be done electronically). Here are the point values:

• Every news post: 2 points
• Every vote (plug): 1 point
• Every comment: 5 points!
• Mention PlugIM in a blog post: 50 points! (Must post a link to the blog entry in the comments of this post.)

So if you make 5 comments and post 10 news stories in February you’ll have 45 entries in the drawing.

Why are comments worth so much more? Simple, the goal is to get more conversation going on the stories that are submitted. My personal request: please don’t just post every internet marketing related story you can find on the web. Don’t plug every story that’s submitted. And don’t make comments on every story such as “Wow, that’s really cool” or “Awesome info, thanks for sharing!” While these comments may in fact be true, the goal of this giveaway isn’t to encourage spamming, it’s to encourage constructive participation. I have no easy way of policing this, so I ask that everyone play responsibly and if it’s a success, this could become a monthly event.

Why are you just finding out about this half way through the month? Well the giveaway was announced in the newsletter February 1st and the subscribers were purposely given a head start. If you want to make sure not to miss out on similar newsletter-subscriber-only opportunities in the future, simply signup for the newsletter in right sidebar menu of PlugIM.com.

Now for the prize details:

• 1 Month Front and Center on 3400+ Pages of PlugIM.com
• Your Choice of Anchor Text
• Direct Link – No nofollow tag – No redirects
• Google PR 4 – Alexa Rank 28,059
• $60 Value! (Current package price through Text-Link-Ads)

A few key points of interest:

• No points will be awarded for comments or stories that are deleted
• The winner’s text link will be displayed during the month of March
• Text links may not promote gambling, alcohol or tobacco, firearms, adult sites, gambling sites, etc.

If you don’t win, or don’t want to wait to get your link on PlugIM, just go to Text-Link-Ads and search for PlugIM. If you’ve never used Text-Link-Ads before, clicking on this link will get you $100 off.