mariare Chances are, if your reading my internet marketing blog, your using article marketing as a key catalyst to building qualified online traffic. Most coaches, consultants, and solopreneurs alike are “familiar” with article marketing … But I dare say, MOST are NOT doing it right!
I know, I know, no one likes to hear they are wasting their time or spinning their wheels, but its likely you are — especially if your article marketing strategy is built on half the information disseminating across the Net! My tip for you today is to give you some ideas on how you could tighten up your article marketing game and the reasons behind them…
My hope is to bring about one realization in your mind:
There is a much bigger picture in article marketing, than just writing content and shoving it out into the big world of article hubs and directories… In fact, if your view is not focused on a much larger picture — your shooting yourself in the foot and killing the full potential that article marketing could have in your arsenal of internet marketing tools….
Check out these ideas and see if you know as much as you think you know:
- When you are creating content to publish/push online, and your crunched for time — make sure you produce a “content bucket” a week. This bucket will be full of one top, typically your topic will related to your overall focus as a company/entrepreneur. For example, if you are publishing your first book on “Time Management Skills” — make sure your pushing content that is relevant to marketing that book. (I will typically sit down one time a week and write as much as I can about one topic, using stories, statistics, etc.) Once you’ve completed as much content as you can, distribute your “content bucket” according to your publisihing needs. For example, from my “bucket” I am able to pull a feature article that I use in my ezine; topic ideas and segments for my blog(s); snippets for my social networking profiles; and more. Here’s what your accomplish:
- Your consistently publish content – consistency is critical to building solid online traffic.
- Your producing enough content to publish all over the Net, without penalizing yourself for publishing duplicate content. You SHOULD NEVER write one article and then publish it in all the article directories, your blog, your ezine, your website, and everywhere else you can think of. Your hurting yourself in publishing duplicate content.
- When you write a “bucket of content” each week, it is much easier to optimize the content at once. Throw in a snazzy, optimized title/headline, some relevant links, etc. — and you’ve got your optimized content done.
- Your focusing your marketing efforts. If you have relevant, good content out on the web that focuses on what you actually do/sell – your a head of the game by focusing your efforts.
- For each article you publish, make sure you issue a “reporter-like” press release for each one. Submit this to press release directories and submission sites immediately after publishing your article. The online press release should be written from a third-party “voice” announcing the article, the topics covered, and the value of reading it. Be sure to link to the article.
- Don’t just submit your article anywhere – find highly targeted niche sites. If you are a spiritual life coach, find holistic, spiritual based sites. If you are an SEO expert, find SEO specific places. The point here is to make sure your article is published within places that have targeted content, your article ranks better in search engines (etc), because their site does. This also gives you good link-backs to your website.
- Pay close attention to your article headline and resource/bio box. Optimize these as well. Stay away from “cute” headlines and give headlines that mean something — make your readers know exactly WHY they need to read it.
These are just a few of the ideas that you would be generating for yourself, if you really understood article marketing — how it applies to your overall strategy, how you can take advantage of SEO to get better results, etc, etc, etc.
My point? No, its not to point out all that you do not know — its to help you see that with the right understanding and knowledge, article marketing could be a very valuable resource in your internet marketing toolkit.
I’m aware of the massive amounts of information online regarding article marketing – blogs, articles (ironic, eh), ebooks, ezines, tele-seminars, and even mastermind groups focuse on them — many fall seriously short in deliverying information worth getting.
As with most things in your business, use your common sense and always do your research. If all you do is follow the lead of others, who may or may not really know what they are talking about — your marketing will never get you to the next level.