When it comes to staying on top of the ever-changing world of Pay Per Click it is nearly impossible to keep up to date on the latest PPC news, findings, features, and other PPC paraphernalia. There are many vehicles great PPC information can be found in, but perhaps the greatest two resources are blog posts and Twitter updates from fellow PPC folk. These two types of resources not only provide advice and experience from real life PPC’ers (unlike newspaper articles from say the New York Times, which is still worthwhile in its own right) but they give a sense of humanity behind them thus making the information provided within each resource that much better.

Imagine for a second reading a blog post that has no personality and is simply dribble talking about the latest greatest AdWords extension. Sure you’re interested but is it really going to keep your attention long enough to get the writer’s thoughts, ideas, experience? Probably not. Compare this to a blog post from Alex Cohen or Brad Geddes and immediately you’ll see a difference and be more likely to take that information and apply it to your own PPC work.

Twitter vs Blogs

Let’s face it, PPC managers usually have limited time to spend on activities outside of their PPC work. This is why following PPC experts on Twitter is better than relying solely on blog posts for PPC information in my opinion. My opinion is based off of the following reasons:

• Twitter is real time, blog posts take time to write, optimize and post.
• You can have actual conversations on Twitter compared to only commenting back and forth on blog posts (if the author approves your comment).
• Feedback and comments from a wide range of Twitter folk can happen in a matter of minutes compared to reading endless comments on a blog post.
• Unless you’re subscribed to blogs, Twitter delivers the blog posts to you via PPC tweets rather than you having to search for them or be completely oblivious to their existence.
• Typically PPC Twitter folk only tweet relevant topics and posts so you’re only reading those blogs most likely to be of high interest to you and not those that are the same old story just on a different day.
• Twitter allows you to develop relationships with fellow PPC’ers, thus creating a lasting experience compared to a typical one time deal if you comment on a fellow PPC person’s blog post.

To summarize, following PPC folk on Twitter incorporates the blog posts themselves but at a greater scale of relevancy due to Twitter’ers (actual word? It is now.) typically tweeting only those posts that are interesting, relevant and important. In addition, Twitter allows for a greater sense of interaction and relationship building in comparison to simply commenting on a blog post. This is why I feel Twitter is a greater resource for PPC news compared to just reading blog posts.

My Dirty Dozen of PPC Twitter Folk

Photo Courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

I follow a bunch of PPC folk on Twitter (just check out my list of those I follow sometime), but there is a certain set of individuals who I find to contribute some of the most thought provoking, relevant, and highly important information in the PPC realm. So without further ado, my dirty dozen PPC Twitter folk are in no particular order…

• Alex Cohen
• Robert Brady
• David Szetela
• Richard Fergie
• Brad Geddes
• Paul Broomfield
• John Lee
• Melissa Mackey
• Matt Umbro
• Peter Gould
• Amelia Dawson
• Andrew Goodman
• Andy Groller (self-less plug LOL)

Although there are a few individuals that weren’t in my dirty dozen, please don’t think I value your information and tweets any less.

For those who aren’t following these individuals, you should really check out what they say on a daily and weekly basis when it comes to PPC because in all honesty these PPC experts provide perhaps the most up to date, highly relevant and best insight and interpretations of PPC across the entire world of Pay Per Click.

Do you think I’m missing someone from my dirty dozen? What are your thoughts when it comes to attaining PPC news and information? Let me know by leaving your comments, even if it does go against the basic premise of this blog post.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Pay-Per-Click, PPC Management Related. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.