Greetings All,
If you have been with our MBA digest for a length of time, you shall learn lots of things till now towards the techniques I recommend you to use for marketing your business online, among of them, the most effective one is article writing.
Unlike some marketing techniques, like joint ventures, where you have to depend on others to help you, with article writing, you are in control. All you have to do is write good articles.
For those of you who hate writing, this probably sounds like an enormous challenge. However, if you really want to succeed online, this is an easy way to do it. I will tell you in second towards how to do it. Let’s do our first thing first, weekly recap:
* Do this When You Feel Stuck
* Thoughts for Marketing Your Biz on the Net
* How to Get Your New Site Index Quickly
* Top 20 PMN and Exchanges
* The Right Niche WP Theme for Your Site
Now, let’s get back to our article marketing technique.
Your first step should be to decide what you want to write about.
If you optimized your site for the search engines, you should already have a list of keywords you can use in your articles. So start from there.
If you need help getting ideas, then sign up for several lists on your topic. See what other people are saying. Sign up with Google News to receive notifications on your topic, you’ll find a wealth of information here, including new products, articles, press releases, and other information about your industry.
You can also study article directories like Ezine Articles, http://www.ezinearticles.com, Go Articles, http://www.goarticles.com, or a specific topic article directory, or you can just go to your favorite search engine and simply do a search.
For example, if you’re looking for articles on gardening, do a search for the term, “gardening articles”, or “gardening article directories”. Read several articles on your topic. This isn’t about copying someone else’s work. This is about helping you find ideas for your own articles. You can also use the information to help you create products.
Maybe the articles you read don’t answer the readers’ questions. You can use your articles to answer your readers’ questions. This will get you read.
Now, once you have several ideas for articles, your next step should be to write a good headline. You can use the toolkit like Push Button Marketer. It helps you automates tasks like email, writing, creating websites, checking stats, blogging, website maintenance, posting ads, research, product reviews, and so much more.
Your title, like a headline, will help readers determine whether or not to read your article. In fact, like a good classified ad, where you should spend 80 percent of your time writing your headline, you should spend a lot of time constructing a good title for your article. Make sure you include your main keywords in your title as this will also affect the ranking of your article.
There are several formats you can use:
How To – This is one of the easiest ones to write, and it’s also one of the most effective. You are showing others how to do something.
Question – Although question titles, like question headlines, are tricky, they are very effective. Just make sure the answer to your question is yes. If it isn’t, readers will think your article isn’t for them and click away.
Tips/Lists – This is an easy to write title. You can offer the “Top 7” on a topic, or write it as X Tips for …. This is where you add your topic. When writing your topic though, be specific. If you write about gardening, internet marketing, or any other topic, they are pretty broad, you need to narrow your focus here.
There are others. You won’t have any trouble identifying good titles by searching for good headlines. Keep a swipe file of titles you have found. (A swipe file is simply a text file or any type of file you use to keep headlines, snippets of text or anything else. You can organize your information any way you like).
Once you have chosen your title, you need to make a list of tips. This will help you further define your article and make it easy for you to write your article.
Writing you list of tips will also help keep you on target for writing your article.
Once you have your list of tips, you need to flesh out your article. Write two to three sentences about your tip to further explain. The more tips you have, the less you have to write. Also, you will have less explanatory material, so you need to keep your list of tips between three and seven, but always less than 10.
A note about including resources in your articles: If you are using resources in your articles, you need to be very careful about what you include. Despite what a lot of marketers may say, it’s very difficult to include affiliate links in your articles, especially if you use your affiliate links. The only way around this is to buy a brand new domain and point toward the resource.
Even if you do this, article directories like Ezine Articles may not accept your article. Article directories are getting strict about what they will accept because too many article writers are more interested in promoting their products than providing good information to attract readers.
If you include links, make sure you include links that are valuable to the reader and reinforce your message.
Try not to include too many links either. The more time the editor has to spend checking your links to see what they really are, the less likely your article will get accepted.
The most important link in your article will appear in your resource box anyway. This is where you want to send your readers to get more information.
Someone once said that when writing a sales letter, you need to tell your readers what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them. Articles are much the same way.
You should include a summary at the beginning of your article to give readers a taste of what’s to come. Since this summary may be the only things readers see in ezines (they may have to click through to read the complete article), make sure you write an effective summary, and it should include your keywords.
Don’t go crazy with your keywords either. Three to five times throughout the article is plenty already.
Once you’ve written your beginning and conclusion, you need to write your resource box. More article writers fail this step than any other because they don’t have any focus.
One of the reasons I took my article directory down before is because I got so sick of getting the same resource box under different names.
No one cares how old you are, how many children you have, or that you like cats. (This is just an example).
Your resource box is there to provide more information, offer a reason to visit your website, and ultimately get you the sale because you’ve built a relationship with your readers.
Give your readers a reason to want to visit your site. Offer more information, a free report, ezine, tutorial, software, or whatever. Just make it something valuable readers they can use, and convince your readers to visit your site, without traffic, nothing will come out.
When readers get to your site, make it easy for them to subscribe to your list. You should have your list subscription box on every page of your site, use Aweber service to help you get this part work done. If you don’t, readers may never visit your site again, and you’ve lost that traffic. Recycle it.
Study resource boxes of other article writers and use what you learn in your own article resource box.
After you get your article writing done, then submit it to Content Crooner , they are offering the article distribution services, help you submit your articles to thousands of publishers and content sites, build backlinks, drive traffic, and improve your search engine exposure.
Someone once told me there are are no real secrets in life, just sound principles. If you want marketing success with your articles, just write good articles, submit regularly, and build a following. Get your name out there. Being the best isn’t what will help you succeed. Taking consistent action and telling everyone who you are is what will build your reputation. Keep doing it, and you will succeed.
Till next time – happy sharing ..
Cheers
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