Creating an Article Marketing Strategy:21 Tips

Posted on 28. Jun, 2010 by Michael in Online Marketing, entrepreneurs, starting a business

If you are promoting your business or your knowledge and information online then an article marketing strategy is essential for your internet marketing campaign

Article marketing strategy is what any person or business trying to sell something online or start internet marketing should have. If you don’t have one yet then make sure you develop one. Why? Well, before I give you the key reasons. Let’s explain what it is exactly.

Article marketing strategies have been used by advertisers and promoters of business almost since the invention of the printing press. So it isn’t new and is not unique to internet marketing or internet marketers. An article marketing strategy is normally a way of getting free press for a service or product promotion. Because print and other media are expected to present content on a budget, this arrangement is generally considered a ‘win/win/ for all parties involved. But what makes an article marketing strategy even more appealing now is that you can do it easily on the internet.

For example, a law firm may ‘article market’ itself by writing a series of articles based around “The Top 10 Ways to claim Compensation” and offering that to some local newspapers. Similarly, a building company may develop an article marketing strategy for a local magazine around a “How to Make Home Improvements”. If you are a consultant, trainer or coach you would think of other topics that would appeal directly and immediately to people who would be your customers.

An Internet article marketing strategy is a series of articles on your topic submitted to the internet via online article directories. These are places that host articles. Many directories get a high volume of traffic and are described as ‘authority’ sites by search engines, which can mean your articles getting a lot of free traffic.

So here are some things you should consider when starting an article marketing strategy:

1. Understand that an article gives you authority. It shows a viewer that you are knowledgeable about your topic and not just trying to sell something.
2. One of the most important aspects of ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO) is backlinks to your site. Articles provide a great opportunity for these.
3. Make sure the content is valuable in your article so that readers get good information from it. That is more likely to lead to them clicking on your link and arriving at your site.
4. Because article directories are great ‘authority’ sites this means they will get good traffic and if your article is there then you get a share of that traffic
5. Because you are getting backlinks and free traffic to your site, this means you will improve your rankings in the search engines.
6. There are some dos and don’t when it comes to creating an article marketing strategy. Let’s begin with the dos:

7. Do begin with keywords in your niche. What are the key words that people are searching for in your niche?               You can find this from Google’s free keyword tool.

8. Do spend a little bit of time researching your article, but only enough to get around 300 words written

9. Do try to provide really good content and valuable information and not just a salesletter

10. Do try to make it interesting and even fun

11.Do upload your article to several article directories

12.Do provide a link in those articles to your site

13.Do look for others to produce articles for you if you are uncomfortable with this yourself. You will find                      people at elance.com to help you for a fee

14.Do open an account at www.ezine.com and submit articles there. This is the best of the free article directories

15. Do find a time in the day when you can best produce good content quickly – mine is first thing in the morning

Now let’s look at the don’ts:

16. Don’t spend ages putting your article together – try to get your time down to one hour. 10 minutes on                         keyword research, 10 minutes on layout. 35 minutes on writing quickly, then 5 to upload it.

17. Don’t spend hours doing it – you only need 300 words

18.Don’t be a perfectionist! Yes Give good content but don’t spend trying to make it perfect

19.Don’t think too hard – just write!

20. Don’t be too formal, over- serious, or boring

21.Don’t put yourself under too much pressure to produce

So here is your plan: find a topic, look for high search keywords and phrases (preferably with low competition. Sit down and plan your article. Write about 300 words on it (write, don’t think). Make some corrections. Upload it to your article account in ezine.com with a link to your site. If you don’t want to do any of this then go to elance.com and post it as a project for someone else to do and pay them – but get an article marketing strategy going.

Good luck!

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Tags: article marketing, article marketing strategy, ezine article marketing, ezine marketing, internet article marketing, internet marketing, marketing with articles