Article Marketing Exposed: Professional “How-Tos” for Promoting with Articles

By Karon Thackston ©2009, All Rights Reserved

Once upon a time, there was a savvy public relations person in the mid-1800s who wanted to get his client some additional exposure. He had the brilliant idea to contact The Saturday Evening Post, or some other popular magazine of the day, in order to offer a guest article to the publisher … a guest article written by his client. The magazine accepted, and article marketing was born.

The benefits of marketing with articles that appealed to early publicity hounds still hold true today. Article marketing offers two longstanding perks that have been proven to bring success for over 110 years.

1. Free Exposure Before Your Audience

Let’s say you work for or own a company that produces organic dog food. A significant segment of your client base will, no doubt, be pet owners. In order to reach them, you can either pay for advertising or you can use any number of publicity techniques (including articles) that are low cost or free.

2. Positions You as an Expert

Only those who are knowledgeable and successful are accepted as guest authors, right? That means – as a guest author – you are viewed as an expert. To have another publication allow you to speak to its audience lends a great deal of credibility to your name.

The Internet Influence

As with most things on the Internet, the idea of article marketing was adapted from the original, offline publicity technique. Website owners began to publish electronic magazines called ezines that required regular, quality content. That necessity led to the first article distribution (AD) websites.

These sites were (and still are) designed as article supermarkets. Once you upload your article to an AD site, it is made available to countless website owners, ezine publishers, bloggers and more. You provide quality content free-of-charge in exchange for promotion in front of the site’s or publication’s audience. It’s a win-win situation.

Once reprinted on other websites or blogs, your article can:

· Position you before your particular target market

· Increase your link popularity (depending on the link quality of each site)

· Open new doors for social relationships

· Drive qualified traffic to your website through direct clicks

· Provide an infinite source of free advertising

· Propagate almost instantly throughout the Internet

· Achieve global reach

· And more

When done correctly, online and offline article promotion works wonders.

The Dos and Don’ts of Effective Article Marketing

You will see the word “quality” repeated throughout this article. That’s because those who publish quality articles have dramatically greater success than those who churn out shallow, mass-produced “junk” articles. If the content isn’t suitable for being republished, you’ll be wasting your time and money on efforts that won’t bring the desired return.

Here are a few dos and don’ts to keep in mind when writing articles.

The Most Common Mistake – Writing self-promotional articles is the most common downfall of authors. Publishers have no desire to run a piece that reads like an infomercial transcript. If you hope to have your articles picked up and reprinted, you’ll need to write like an unbiased professional.

DO: Write articles that provide solid, helpful information.

DON’T: Try to pass off articles that sing the praises of you personally or your company.

Choosing a Topic – Another mistake: choosing weak topics. Chances are, an article entitled “The History of Disposable Trash Bags” isn’t going to thrill too many people.

DO: Select specific topics that allow you to give instruction, reveal something previously unknown or explain a difficult process. Other popular topics? Unbiased reviews, case studies and “how-to” articles.

DON’T: Write articles about broad topics that have little overall value to the reader.

Headline Creation – Headlines are attention-getters. Make them pop! Would you rather read an article entitled “The Importance of Your First Sentence” or “5 Proven Strategies for Writing Opening Sentences that Close the Sale”?

DO: Learn to write great headlines. Some of the most effective headlines use numbers, are very specific and make use of enticing “power” words.

DON’T: Take your headlines for granted. Buy a book on headlines or go to social media and news sites and see which headlines grab your attention.

Distribution Methods and Mediums

You have numerous options for distributing your articles once they’ve been written. Obvious choices include publishing your articles on your own website, blog or ezine. However, you can get the word out by also using one or more of these methods.

Standard AD Sites – ArticleDashboard.com, SearchWarp.com and hundreds more will host your article free-of-charge, so others can find and reprint it.

Social Media Sites – Sphinn, Digg and other such sites allow you to publish your headline, a summary and a link back to the article on your blog or website. Squidoo, MySpace and more let you include your entire article on their site. All social media sites give others the ability to comment on your work.

Bidding for Placement – You place a flat-rate bid for weeklong placement on the site’s home page. While most standard AD sites put your article on the home page while it’s new, your front-page exposure is very time sensitive. Bidding for placement allows you to keep your positioning for as long as you have the highest bid and offers other perks. So far, IdeaMarketers.com is the only site I’ve seen that uses this innovative approach.

Twitter – If you’re on Twitter, you’ll want to announce your article to your followers, giving a link to where it can be read.

Creating a customized distribution list that consists of the above, along with individually researched websites and offline publications, is the key to getting effective coverage.

The SEO Equation

For search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, all articles published online need to include a keyword-rich anchor-text link in the bio section. This is the primary element that will give your link popularity a boost.

There has been some debate lately about the link quality of AD sites. Whether or not the link quality of AD sites themselves has degraded over time is really a nonissue. Directories have always been a jumping-off point. They should never have been viewed as the final destination of articles. The goal has always been to have your article picked up from directories and reprinted on authority sites or blogs. That’s where your linking benefits are found.

Bio

Whether published online or off, a standard form of bio is usually added at the end of the article. This is your chance to publicize your company, products or services. You should include your name, what you do and a short plug. A typical bio reads something like this:

Karon Thackston is President of Marketing Words and author of the Article Marketing & Distribution course at Search Engine College. Visit Karon’s site at www.MarketingWords.com or click to www.SearchEngineCollege.com for course details.

It’s not a complex process. Article marketing consists of writing quality articles (or having them professionally written), finding appropriate online and offline distribution outlets, and then posting your work.

For over 100 years, article marketing has been an effective way to gain publicity and encourage new business. By combining proven techniques of the past with a few online strategies, you can make this century-old marketing method pay off for you.

Karon Thackston is President of Marketing Words, a copywriting agency specializing in natural-sounding SEO copy and online article marketing. More information, including Karon’s copywriting blog, can be found at www.MarketingWords.com.