There are many webmasters using article submission sites to find content to use on their own website or newsletter. If you have a link to your website or business opportunity in some of these articles you will be rewarded with a backlink when they make use of the content you delivered on their web sites.

It’s a pretty sure bet that anybody can do if they for instance write about their favorite hobby or passion. If you can tell a short story you can write an article!

If you decide to write an article you want it to draw peoples attention and gets them to act by for instance signing up for a newsletter (and thus building your list) or doing something else what you might want to mention in the resource section belonging to your article.

A great way to get people click through to your web page is to offer them a sequence of articles (after you have let them taste your first free article enabling them to get hungry for more) if they are willing to perform an act of lets say signing up to your newsletter or subscribing to for instance your members only site. It makes perfectly good sense for your visitors to take action if they enjoyed the first (free) article you offered and they want to learn more on the topic you presented.

Most articles miss the logic of this emotional driven appeal to find out more. By offering a 300 to 500 words appetizer you are appealing to peoples curiosity. Taking action for your audience is only a small step by then.

If you want to publish you article you can chose Article Directories. There are very many on the internet. But as a matter of caution I suggest that when you approach an article directories a good advice would be not to treat your article as a sales piece in stead of a content piece. The Article Directory might not be willing to accept the article you offered for inclusion in their directory. And you will go back to your writing board again.

By submitting your articles to article directories, article announcement lists, and ezine publishers, you accomplish several things.

First, you establish yourself as an expert in your field. Readers are more likely to listen to you if they feel you know what you are talking about.

Second, by attaching a resource box to your article, you are giving the reader a link to your website. If the reader is impressed with your knowledge, they will likely click on your link to see what it is that you are offering.

Third, you increase your search engine page rank by providing a non-reciprocal link to your website. Search engines seem to give extra weight to non-reciprocal links in their page rankings.

But many marketers are not comfortable writing their own articles. They just do not know how to put their thoughts into words. Or worse yet, they do not have any thoughts worth printing.

That is why private label articles are in such high demand these days. There are several of these services available and more seem to be popping up every day.

Therein lies the problem. Depending on how these articles are used, the results can be good, bad, or downright ugly.

The Good: As stated previously, private label articles, when used correctly, can give the non-writer a big advantage over other marketers. They can increase your traffic, sales, and opt in subscribers. That is good.

The Bad: A common mistake made by marketers using private label articles is getting lazy. They simply copy and paste the article and submit it, as is, with no personalization.

At the very least, you should change the title. Most article directories require that your article be approved before they are posted. But do you really think they read every article that comes in? Not likely.

They get dozens, even hundreds of submissions every day, so it’s unlikely that your article will actually be read.

But most directory software will automatically search their database for duplicate titles. If the title of your article matches one in their database, yours will be rejected.

So do yourself a favor and at the very least, change the title. It might also be a good idea to change the wording in the first paragraph.

The Ugly: Many marketers load so many links in their article that it becomes one long ad. This will not only get you rejected, but eventually banned if you do it often enough.

A good article contains useful information to the reader whether they buy your products or not. Give them good content and you will increase the chances that they will click your link in the resource box.

Private label articles are a great tool, but do not get lazy!

Your article needs to relate to a subject people are looking for information about. Some one wants to know how to take care of their animals (care, training, etc.); or maybe they want information on building a simple bookcase; or the basics on choosing a car; or…

Writing on a subject you know is the usual way to go about producing an article but with the advent of the Internet we can write on any subject of interest to us, whether we have full knowledge of the subject or not. Why? Because today we have the ability to fully research any subject through the Internet, put that information into our own words and publish that information.

For instance, one fellow bought a 1969 Roadrunner muscle car – a real wreck! With his knowledge about this, and other cars, he fully restored the car to prize-winning condition. He knows where every nut, bolt and screw goes. His knowledge can be turned into articles that help others.

Putting something of yourself into your article is a great way to get people interested in you and your subject. Not your life story just something simple, maybe an anecdote on something that happened to you. Remember; always be honest with your readers. You are creating a picture with your words, not just of your subject but also of you.

Just put the information down on paper – or word processor. Don’t worry about the grammar or sentence structure, or anything else. Make the article somewhat light – but informative, as you want your readers to follow up by going to your site for more information. Once you have the words on paper then you can go back and rewrite to make corrections and polish the article. Spend time on this aspect – this tells your readers something about you.

Now, admittedly that writing is hard for a lot of us. Using an outline can be one of the easiest ways to put an article together. Whatever you are producing will practically write itself with the use of an outline.

Having said that, it is a good feeling when you put your words to paper and know that others are interested in what you have to say. You and your information are valuable because no one in the world has your exact viewpoint on the subjects that interest you – because no one has your exact experiences!

Once an article has been completed, you submit it to sites that specialize in free content. In turn, others that have an interest in your particular subject pick up your article and the article gets passed around the web. It becomes – very Viral!

How does this help you? Well, at the bottom of your article is a little box called a resource box. This little box has a small bio on you with a website link. It contains your name, who you are and a link to the website you want people to visit.

A link which takes your readers where ever you want them to go: a website with information you are providing such as books, ebooks, manuals, services you provide, etc.

Just go for it – start researching your subjects and writing, putting information into words that have meaning to you and your readers and – PUBLISH!

There are several ways to incorporate your affiliate links in an article submitted for publication. The most common and acceptable way to do this is by including a short bio of yourself as author of the article along with a link to the site of your choice.

This will usually include you expressing yourself as an expert and suggesting that your readers go to a certain site for more information. You can also just tell readers that as an expert you highly recommend this certain product and have used it yourself.

This is called the author resource box and is standard practice with almost all article directories and submission sites. If you are submitting to individual sites make sure to include a disclaimer along with your article that the resource box must be included if the article is to be republished in any blog, ezine or newsletter.

But another, albeit sneakier, way is to write a review of a certain product or service and tell the reader that they can have a look at the product by following the link in the article.

Many article directories will allow up to three such links within each article as long as the article itself is not just a blatant advertisement for said product.

This can work to your benefit as you may join several different affiliate programs within the same niche and do a comparison between them and include your link for each.

Another approach that works great is to weave your affiliate links into your articles by simply being creative with the wording.

By just describing a product or service within your article and using an affiliate link to take your readers to a page as an example that can better describe your points will more likely be accepted and also greatly increase the chances of the readers clicking your them.

Research has proven that the most effective affiliate links are text links. They far exceed banners and flash animations when it comes to click through rates. By adding these links into your articles and distributing them across the web and also using them on your own sites and blogs you will see more clicks and more affiliate sales.

The key to effective article marketing is to offer useful and interesting content that is optimized for the search engines.

To start the article, choose a topic that pertains to your affiliate offerings and find the best keywords related to the topic. You can use a free resource such as Keyword Playground to research the popularity of certain words and use Google to research the competitiveness of the keywords.

Informative, well-written content with a keyword density of three to five percent is a good step to getting your article ranked in the search engines. Do not, however, overuse keywords or else your articles will be ranked lower due to the spam flag.

Make sure to research the topic you are writing about through Google searches, encyclopedias and/or library research so you offer meaningful content.

Choose an attention-grabbing title to raise interest, such as posing a question or a challenge to your readers. As you write the article, check your spelling and grammar so your writing has a professional appearance.

If you find the process difficult, you may choose to invest in a program such as Fat Content that guides you through SEO writing step-by-step and includes an optimized search engine browser for outstanding research.

Unique articles providing outstanding information will bring the most traffic to your affiliate pages. Once you prepare an original, well-written article, proofread your work or ask someone else to read your article so you know it makes sense.

Once the article is perfect, it’s time to submit it to article directories such as Ezine Articles, Article City and Go Articles. You can also feature your article on blogs, forums and newsletters. Make sure, however, that your bio box includes the link to your affiliate website before you submit to the directories.

Although it can be time-consuming, writing great articles is an affordable way to boost your affiliate profits even if you have a small advertising budget. And if you’re able to to write an over-the-top article that goes viral, you’ll be amazed at the traffic it will bring you.

Keep in mind that while posting articles to article directories can help to improve your search engine rankings and increase the visitors to your sites, all the work you spend writing and posting will be in vain if article directory owners choose to not post your article.

Let’s take a look at how you can stay on the good side of article directory owners and increase your chance of getting your articles posted:

1. Follow the rules. You stay on the good side of article directory owners simply by reading the submission guidelines posted on the article directory site. These guidelines explain the rules that you will need to follow in order to get your article posted. At minimum, they will describe the types of topics the directory owner will accept, formatting requirements and even word length.

2. Show your expertise. By writing extensively on a particular subject or similar subjects within a broader category, you become respected as an expert – often allowing you the privilege of having your articles automatically accepted. However, submitting articles on a number of different topics might send an alert to the article directory owner that you could be a possible spammer. You could have good intentions and simply want to submit articles reflecting the variety of different sites that you own, but having many articles on many topics could send a flag that you are aiming mainly for a high number of backlinks and the quality of your articles may not meet the requirements of their site. If you want to submit articles on a variety of topics, try submitting certain topics to certain directories or sign up with multiple usernames or pennames (if allowed by the article directory).

3. Rewrite your PLR articles. If you use private label rights (PLR) articles, be sure to rewrite your articles. Do not use them straight out of the article pack, because many others who have the same article packs will not rewrite theirs! Duplicate articles are always deleted from article directories, therefore if yours does not get in the directory first; there is a good chance your article will be deleted. Furthermore, not all article directory owners understand the use of PLR for article marketing. Do not take a chance that the article directory owner might accuse you of copyright infringement!

Remember, if you have questions, ask the article directory owner(s) because it is much easier to do it right the first time than to spend time and effort rewriting it or just being taken off the list of qualified writers for that article directory. Always submit high quality work, do not try to cut corners once you have established a rapport with the website owner.

Knowing your SEO hats

Article marketing makes up a big chunk of online marketing strategies. Businesses online depend on websites, and the blood work of all websites is content. You need to keep your content relevant if you want to attract costumers. However, costumers aren’t the only ones you need to write for.

To raise the page ranking of your website in popular search engines and directories, you need to keep your content optimized. This means knowing how to place the right number of keywords within the article. These “keywords” or key phrases will then be indexed by search engine “spiders”. Since these spiders are programs, they cannot initially gauge the quality of your articles depending on the value of information included in it. Most pages are ranked on search engines because the right keywords are frequently mentioned in the same article.

While this is good for the search engine, being too redundant in the article (e.g. saying the word “hormonal imbalance” 30 times in a 400-word article) is annoying for the human reader. Keyword stuffing this intense is also referred to as black hat SEO or bad SEO. While this may result in top page ranking overnight, you can also lose your slot in no time once your irrelevant content was found out by human editors.

Other people use the term white hat SEO for article marketing that is more focused on human readers than search engine spiders. However, no online marketing strategy today can claim to be purely white hat SEO. Because of the tight competition of businesses online, companies are bound to make use of a little black hat SEO trick once in a while, but probably not to the extent that they are risking being banned from search engines.

The most common form of article marketing today makes use of gray hat SEO strategies, which is a well balanced scheme which considers both the human readers and the search engine spiders.

Email marketing ethics

If you are personally annoyed at spam mails, then you might immediately want to cross email marketing off your list. You should not do this just yet. Email marketing is an effective Internet marketing strategy if you know how to do it right.

Sending out advertisements and newsletters to a random number of email addresses will not help you gain customers. Instead, you will be putting all your hard work in the trash bin of someone�s email. Think about your target audience instead. Do not simply blast your advertisements everywhere.

What you are looking for here is a list that is more focused on quality, not quantity. A targeted list of 20 clients, or prospective clients, is more effective than 200 strangers who might just see your unsolicited newsletter as an annoyance.

Getting the list right

Targeted lists can be formed from databases in your website. People who visit your website could simply drop a line, and voluntarily give out their email addresses where you can send product catalogues, newsletters, and whatnot that is related to your product.

If you are a traditional business who also trades offline, you can collect emails during tradeshows. If you have a shop somewhere in the city, you can ask your clients to fill out a small survey form, which also asks for their email addresses. It can be a simple line at the bottom saying: Would you like to be updated about out latest products? Tell us where we can find you in cyberspace so we can drop a line.

Reason #1: Article marketing is free. Every business owner knows that advertising isn’t cheap. Every newspaper or magazine ad you run costs you dearly. By spending just a little extra time writing and submitting several articles each month, you’ll save quite a bit of money. Best yet, article marketing doesn’t cost you a dime–just a few hours every week.

Reason #2: Article marketing brands your business. Have you ever wondered how some businesses seem to become so well known in such a short amount of time? They’re getting their name out there. They’re giving away something of value for free to their potential customers. Your articles will brand your business and make it a well-known name.

Reason #3: Article marketing makes you an expert. If you write articles about the subjects you know well, you’ll quickly become known as an expert in your field. Do you run a website on bird watching? Writing and submitting fifty articles on bird watching will show people that you know what you’re talking about.

Reason #4: Article marketing teaches you how to relate to people. You can’t write a bunch of articles without learning how to communicate effectively. The more you write, the more you’ll learn how to get your message across in a friendly, personal tone.

Reason #5: Article marketing creates back links to your website. Without getting into the technical details of this, back links to your website are good and you’ll want lots of them. Back links help boost your rankings in the search engines, thus gaining more exposure for your website.

Remember that article marketing isn’t the cure-all answer to advertising your business; it’s one piece of the pie. You also can’t submit a handful of articles one time and expect to see results.

Article marketing requires persistence and patience. You should plan to spend a certain number of hours each week writing and submitting articles to promote your business. Pencil in this time faithfully and stick to it. Within a few months (maybe even a few short weeks!), you’ll begin to see the results of your hard work pay off.

Search Engines are constantly on the “look out” for freshly written content that has been submitted online. So how do you come up with ideas for your next article? Here are several suggestions that may help…

* Hang out in online forums. Watch what people are talking about. Look at the questions they are asking. The topics that are bringing the greatest number of visitors would make for an excellent article.

* Take a look at what information is being broadcast on TV, radio, newspapers, and online. This information is usually a hot topic.

* Read blogs. What are people posting about? What kind of comments are they leaving? What questions do they have? Blogs are the hot internet marketing medium right now and you can literally find them everywhere on any topic. This is an excellent source for your next article idea.

* Survey your current customers or website visitors. Ask them what kind of article they would like to see in your next ezine or published on your website.

* Check bookstores online. What are the top sellers? This can be a good way to come up with an article that catches the attention of what people are reading.

* Be seasonal. Write about what is going on that time of year. Holidays, festivals, sports, graduations, etc. all make for an article that someone will want to read.

* Write an article about a current fad. There is always something that is hot at the time and could make for interesting reading from you.

* Keep track of what your customers and prospects are asking you. If you get an email or phone call with a question this may make for a good article. Others may have the same question, but are afraid to ask it.

* Start a swipe file on what others are writing about. If it is of interest to you it will probably be of interest to others. Never plagiarize the work of others, but you can certainly get good ideas this way. The biggest benefit of a swipe file is having it handy to refer back to over and over whenever you are ready to write your article and are not sure what you want to write about.

Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to come up with your next article. The internet marketer who can write interesting articles has a huge leg up on their competition. If you can master this strategy there is no limit to how much money you can make online.

An article is usually composed of around 500 or so words, on a single topic that will be of interest to your target market. A resource box is included at the end of the article. This contains your bio plus details of the product or service that the article is promoting.

Writing an article doesn’t have to be hard work. All that is required is to carry out your research, then write the article summarizing your research in your own words.

Having completed your article, your next task is to get it publicized. Submitting your article to selected article directories normally carries this out. These serve the purpose of introducing the article gatherer to the article writer. If a publisher sees your article and wants to include it on their website or in their newsletter, this is allowed on the condition that the resource box is also included. This way, the publisher gains valuable content and the writer gains publicity. Everyone is happy!

So, is that the end of your task as an article author, or is there more that you can do to improve the results from your article writing?

If you have submitted your article to more than one article directory, how will you know which directory your website visitors have come from? How will you know if you are wasting your time submitting to hundreds of article directories, when the results may only be coming from a handful of them? You need to be able to track the results of each and every article submission that you make in order to find the answers to these questions.

Web hits and keyword ranking are useful stats to have, but you also need to track the number of pages indexed and the number of back links each article has obtained. These stats are also available to you, but only at the expense of a lot of time or five levels deep into some SE software.

With time being the valuable commodity that it is these days, we all need to spend as little of it as possible carrying out mundane tasks. I ask you, which is more likely to be the more profitable for you – time spent checking stats, or time spent writing another article? Exactly!

It is only by tracking the results of your marketing that you can determine the steps you need to take in order to see your website rise in the search engine rankings. If you are not already tracking your results, then it is high time you started. Simply submitting one article after another and hoping for the best just doesn’t cut the mustard these days.

Once you decide to use articles to help promote your business, keep a notebook with you and start jotting down ideas as they occur. If you don’t you will find that you forget your great ideas just a few minutes later. Don’t think that you will remember, your ideas will likely be lost to you forever.

Once you start listing what you know that other people would like to know, you will begin to realize that you have expertise that is worth sharing.

Everybody is an expert at something. You are the expert on your business; it’s your area of expertise, and you know a lot about it.

If you are stuck for how to get started with writing articles to promote your business try answering these questions.

What questions are you always being asked?

Write out your answers for the most frequently asked questions and you will have the foundation for many articles.

Begin by writing out the question, then write a few lines that sum up your answer. Once you’ve done that you can expand on your points. Add in an example, or a relevant quote and you will have a good enough article.

What do people want to know the most?

Once you identify the most searched for information, use the internet to research further facts and figures and you will have the material for a series of articles around that theme. It is always easier to write a series of articles; once you get started, the words will begin to flow, and you will find that you get ideas for more articles as you write.

Are there foundational processes that you could write a how to guide for?

A how to article is probably the easiest article to write. You could begin by creating a working title and deciding what your reader will be equipped to do when they finish reading your article.

Next, simply list the steps in order and then flesh out each of those steps with the details.

Do you begin to see how easy this is? The only thing that can stop you from getting started with writing articles is thinking that you can’t do it.

Article marketing works. Now that you know how easy it is and that you can do it, what is stopping you getting started on drafting your first article?

You can write articles. Use simple language, just write as you talk and let the words flow. Don’t censor as you write, you can make changes later. Now, go and write some articles and see for yourself just how easy this can be. The rewards are worth the effort.

]]> http://infogogetter.com/article-marketing/use-article-marketing-to-promote-your-business/feed 0 http://infogogetter.com/article-marketing/using-articles-for-viral-marketing http://infogogetter.com/article-marketing/using-articles-for-viral-marketing#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000 admin http://infogogetter.com/plr/using-articles-for-viral-marketing Viral marketing methods are used today for one good reason – they work. There are many different techniques that you can use, but it tends to be better to focus on one strategy at a time and work at it until you get the results you want. If you are already into ‘bum’ or article marketing, a great strategy is to turn your articles into a viral marketing report or eBook.

As you have already written the articles, it requires very little work on your part to develop something that will bring in traffic (and sales) for years to come. Compiling the articles into a single document is relatively easy although you may need to do some work in re-branding and making it aesthetically pleasing. In addition, there may be some effort required in adding viral elements. Many authors are not so subtle and put in blatant advertisements. You may get more success by adding some value to the reader and disguising the marketing component. A popular technique is to add a review of several products in the particular niche. You will need to include your own affiliate links, but to make them less obvious you should consider cloaking them.

Distribution can be done in many ways. If the resulting publication is of high quality you could consider selling it. In order to make it viral you would need to include reprint rights. Not only do you get sales from the book (which is practically written already), you get others spreading it around on your behalf.

If you really want the material to spread you should consider giving it away and encourage others to do the same (with the proviso that the material is not changed in any way). You can advertise your giveaway in forums and in list emails. One area that can be very useful but is often neglected is on the download page of any related products you sell. People love to be provided with unadvertised bonuses. Because it is on the download page, it is seen as a part of the actual order and most people will download it.

A viral marketing campaign costs a lot less to implement than traditional advertising. It needs to be remembered that viral marketing is just one component of your marketing repertoire. It should be linked with other strategies such as setting up squeeze pages to collect opt-ins. When combined with other essential business building strategies it can help to generate traffic to your web site, build a huge and solid customer base, add to your sales and contribute towards your success.

The basics in writing the article are much the same, no matter where you use it. It should be written to make the best use of keywords without being obvious. Information is what the reader wants so don’t just write one big commercial. Readers have gone to your article because they want to learn something. If they do, they are more likely to click on your site to see what else you have to offer. Gradually you can steer them towards your promotions or products.

The writer needs to be sure there are no grammatical errors. Break it into manageable paragraphs and keep the line length about 60-65 characters so the reader doesn’t have to use his mouse to see your writing.

Another area is who writes the article. Some people can publish them very easily but others either don’t have the time or don’t feel comfortable enough to do their own. Research is important here, including trying out someone who offers to write them for you. Try him out and if he performs to your satisfaction you can continue with him. Eventually a hesitant author may decide to try it himself, as he gets more experienced with his marketing skills. A good place to get recommendations is on a forum.

Where are articles placed? One of the most obvious is article directories because they will submit them to hundreds of sites. The author’s link is then sent out with the articles and hopefully many readers will click on it to find out more about this author, especially if the subject is in his area of marketing.

Your own website is a great venue for your articles. A good example would be to put the article on affiliate marketing on a web page. Then links on that page can offer the reader a route to one or more of your affiliate sites. Or write one on the benefits of using autoresponders and have a link to one or two.

Make sure that your articles not only use keywords that relate to whatever subject about which you are writing, but remember that content is king. Commercials are fine but save them for your blog or a broadcast to your subscriber list. Well-written articles can help you build an opt-in list. Your readers will be anxious to read more of your material and we all know that subscriber lists lead to income opportunities. Your site’s reputation will increase as well. Soon some of your subscribers may recommend your site to others.

Be sure to stick to subjects that either pertain to your type of business or if you are promoting affiliate products and sites, aim your subject to whatever you are promoting. Not an ad, maybe more information on the general subject of that product. For example, if the product is a vitamin, write an article on the need to supplement your nutrition.

A good way to advertise articles is to set up each article on a web page and then make a master list on a separate page with a link to the article. Using an autoresponder for the same method is good too. Then take out an ad, either paid or unpaid, and advertise the master list.

Articles obviously can be used in various places and with a little imagination your business will greatly profit from them.