I am a huge advocate of article marketing. It is the most targeted form of marketing bar none. Why? Just think about it for a moment. What are you doing right now? You are reading this article I wrote about article marketing strategies.

This clearly means that you are:

  1. Looking for information about how to successfully use article marketing and
  2. Are probably interested in methods and tools that will allow you to improve your effectiveness at internet marketing.

Basically, if you are reading this article I know exactly why you are here and I know exactly what you want. That’s what I call a pretty targeted audience. That is what makes article marketing such an amazing tool for growing your business on the web. You always know what your audience is looking for.

I am going to come back to that thought in a moment. First I want to give you…

My 3 top tips for using article marketing successfully:

  1. Always say something meaningful - Do not turn your article into one long sales pitch. Do not fill your article with useless garbage just to get it out as fast as possible. This is something that new marketers have a hard time understanding. People are reading your article because they are looking for meaningful information. Stuff that they can actually use. If all you are doing is hyping up a product as the greatest thing since sliced bread or you are putting out articles full of worthless information, you are not fulfilling the desires of your audience and you will lose them.When consumers see a web page or article that is obviously a sales pitch their skepticism shoots through the roof. It becomes very hard to make the sale. However, if you spend some time giving them reliable, actionable information they are much more likely to trust you. Additionally, by actually giving out reliable information without asking for something in return (a.k.a going for the hard sell) you will establish yourself as a credible expert and start getting your article picked up by other websites related to your own. This will create a long term free traffic stream to your blog or website.
  2. Remember you are writing for the web, not for print – This line can be kind of blurry. Generally speaking you should try to be a little more succinct when you are writing for the web, you should always avoid long sprawling paragraphs, and when appropriate use bulleted or numbered lists to make your points, and use sub-headings whenever possible.There are a few reasons for this. Most people find it harder to read a computer screen than something printed on paper and people on the web generally have a short attention span (they have a lot of options to choose from, so they are easy to lose). By keeping paragraphs short and using bulleted / numbered lists you make the article easier to read. If you throw in some sub-headings that catch the reader’s eye it is easier for them to sort through the information in the article and find exactly what they are looking for. All of this has one really important effect – it keeps them on the page and will get them to the end of the article. It also makes the read more enjoyable so they will be more likely to want to read more of your articles in the future.
  3. Utilize the resource box - When you publish articles on any article directory they provide you with an author box (also known as the resource box). This is the place where you can really sell yourself, your expertise, your website, etc… So make the most of it! I don’t know how many times I have seen sad little one sentence “about the author” blurbs at the end of an article. You don’t want to turn the resource box into a long paragraph, nor do you want to make it into an obvious sales pitch. What you should do is pick 2 – 3 meaningful sentences that zero the reader in on the link to your blog, website, or wherever it is you want to send them.The point I am trying to make here is that if you are treating the resource box as an afterthought I can absolutely guarantee that you have cost yourself A LOT of traffic. My recommendation here is to go over to ezinearticles.com and look at the articles that are either in the same or similar topic as what you write about. You do not need to read the articles, just scroll down and read the “about the author” part. Make notes about the ones you like, the ones that really make you want to click through to the author’s website and use them as a template for your own. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here folks.

Now I want to go back to the thought I mentioned above.

I know EXACTLY why you are here and I know EXACTLY what you want.

That is an extremely powerful tool. Advertisers have been trying to get inside the head of consumers for decades now. It is incredibly hard to do and can cost a company a fortune to figure out. But it doesn’t cost me a dime because you are reading this article, so I know everything I need to know about you.

I know that you are looking for ways to really be successful with article marketing. I know that if I recommend a tool to you that will not only help you write your articles, but will save you hours and hours of time by posting them to the major directories for you, that you will be interested in that tool….

However I am not going to turn this article into a sale pitch, if you want to know learn about the tool I am talking about you can just click this link here to visit their website (scroll down until you see the video, it gives you a live demonstration of the tool).

Because I know exactly what you want I can easily market products to you in the course of writing the article. This applies primarily to articles written for your own website – if you are writing the articles to have them posted to the major directories you need to rely on your resource box to get the consumers attention.

Keep in mind here that you do not only have to market products that are directly related to the article itself…

Articles are amazing tools for cross promotion!

This simply means that if my target audience is women in their 30s and my article is about a skin care product, I can also be reasonably sure that a lot of those women are going to be interested in weight loss products, healthy diet, etc.

So if in the course of writing my article – probably towards the end somewhere – I said something like:

“Product XYZ will make your skin look great, but don’t ignore the other side of having amazing skin. I’m talking about your diet. Eating right and losing weight are crucial to reinvigorating your skin and keeping it looking young and fresh. You can read about one of my favorite diet plans by clicking here.”

Remember that most article directories do not allow affiliate links in the body of your article. So you have two options. First you can make the link go to one of your web pages where you give a review of the diet plan (once again make sure the review contains MEANINGFUL information.) If you do not want to write an article or put up a webpage about the product in question, you can put the affiliate link in the resource box and optimize the box for selling that diet plan. Personally I recommend putting up a webpage, in my experience you will have greater success, however experiment with both options to see what works best for you.

That about does it for today.

Follow the tips outlined above and you will definitely see positive results from your article marketing efforts.

Filed under: Marketing Strategies

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