I have followed all the hype about Google Knol, and I decided to try to create a know to learn and see the potential of it.
What is Google Knol?
According to Google –
Knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic.
In my own words, I see Knol as a wiki-like site that allow users to share what they know about anything, and let others to comment on their shared info.
What differs from wiki site, like Wikipedia.org, is that a knol (refering to a topic of interest) can only be edited by you and the person you invite to edit it. What’s more, unlike Wikipedia.org, Google Knol allow others to comment on your knol, thus embracing the social element of web 2.0.
Why Google Knol is promising
I see Knol as a better solution than Wikipedia in terms of its capability to capture your visitors comment – more interactivity, more involvement and more social-friendly.
I also heard (unconfirmed) that somehow Google faves Knol – Purely logical, I guess. Just like others in Google network, such as Blogger.com and Feedburner.com.
What all this means?
Knol is the new promising land for Internet marketers and spammers alike – and this means business (and money).
Knol is said to be ‘easily’ searched with Google (just like Google News) thus exposing knols better in search engine result pages (SERPs).
Noobpreneur Knol
To put Knol into test, I decided to start my own knol about Noobpreneur – please visit my knol about Noobpreneur to see how it looks like and works.
Creating a knol is easy and editing is in rich text, meaning no need to know about HTML and stuffs :)
You can write your own mini book here, by simply creating a table of content structure automatically – just select the so-called <H2> and voila, you create yourself a section in your Table of Contents. You can use H3 and so on to create sub-title for your knol.
How to promote your business with Knol
Just like doing other Internet marketing, you can write on topic you know best that link to your business site or product pages. Although the potential of Knol is still yet to be found, it surely way much better than Squidoo or even Wikipedia.
I will keep you updated on what I found about Google Knol.
In the mean time, if you have tried Knol and have a clever way to use it for business purposes, please share what you know by commenting on this post.
Ivan Widjaya
Knol on Noobpreneur