USING ARTICLE FOR MARKETING

USING ARTICLE FOR MARKETING

Article marketing is one of the most effective ways to promote your online business. Regardless of the size of your business, it is an inexpensive way to promote and will always be worth the time and/or money you invest in writing them.

Articles tend to be viral in nature. After posting to your own blog, you can post your article to numerous article directories which will provide backlinks to your site. Business owners in need of content for their own sites or newsletters will find your article on the directories. They will then copy your article, with your name as the author and your resource box intact, and post it on their sites or in their newsletters.

You want your article to act like a virus, spreading to as many sites and newsletters that it can. Every site where your article is posted creates another backlink to your site. Since your article will have your name as the author and your resource box at the end of the article, this can send a lot of traffic to your blog which you will have monetized. Plus, writing and distributing articles makes you an expert in your niche and helps to build a relationship with readers

In order for you to benefit the most from article marketing, you need to post a minimum of 2-3 articles per week (5 is better) to different article directories. You can use the same articles that you've used in your newsletter or your blog, but only after they have been indexed by the search engines. However, I suggest that you change the title and wording so that it is not exactly the same as the article you have already posted. This is to prevent another site from being higher on the search engine results page for it.

Articles are not supposed to be sales letters but should be an enticement for readers to visit your blog. An article should always provide helpful information and include a link to your blog in the resource box. If people like what you have written, they will want to read more.

Article marketing really does work and is not as hard as many people think. The first thing you need to do is to actually have an article to use in your marketing campaign. You can write the article yourself or hire a ghostwriter. Most ghostwriters charge $10 - 15 per 500 words although you may find someone who will write for less.

You will add a resource box at the end of your article which will contain information about you as the author and usually contains a link to your blog or website. It can also include a link for readers to subscribe to your newsletter. By the way, even if you hire a ghostwriter to write your articles, you are still considered to be the author.

When posting to your blog or newsletter, include a statement below the resource box giving others the right to reprint the article for free as long as the article remains unchanged and your resource box stays intact. This gives permission to others to use your article in their newsletters and/or on their sites which will make your article viral.

Once your article is ready (proofread and polished), you should distribute it to as many article directories as possible. You may also want to send your article to newsletter (or e-zine) publishers within your niche. If your article is well written and contains quality information, some of these publishers may reprint your article. PLEASE NOTE: There are many newsletter and e-zine directories available on the Internet which list the name of the newsletter or e-zine and the contact information for publishers.

You will eventually find that submitting articles to article directories yourself will be very time consuming. Your time would be better spent producing more viral articles or on other tasks related to marketing. There is software available that will submit your articles though some article directories will not accept articles submitted with software and I personally don't ever use them. However, there are also services which will submit your articles manually for you and is the method of submission that I suggest.

The whole purpose of writing and distributing articles is to drive traffic to your blog or website, to establish yourself as an expert in your niche, and to increase your sales. However, to achieve your purpose, you need for your articles to go viral. You do this by allowing others to republish your articles.

Newsletter/e-zine publishers, blog writers, and website owners in the same niche as you will find your article on one of the article directories and post it on their blog or website. From those three sources, other people may find and publish your article as well. From there it just keeps spreading and spreading like a virus, hence the name.

After your article spreads across the internet, you may come across one of your articles on a blog or website. Maybe you wrote that article two years ago and somehow it ended up on the blog or website that you're currently reading. You may be surprised to see that the website owner just recently added your article to their site. This is because once you have written an article and submitted it to the article directories, that article becomes available for reprint for many years. If you conduct a search five years from now, you will be amazed at how many times the article has been republished.

This whole process of the article becoming viral will never happen if you do not take the correct steps to make it possible. To ensure the spread of your article include a statement below your resource box that says the reprint permission notice is required in order to republish the article. Some people may be hesitant to copy the article because of copyright infringement. This way, anyone who is interested in reprinting the article will.

Donna L. Walsh is a recognized author of many web design and development articles and eBooks.