Market
Your Articles
If you’re new to article marketing, it can be confusing at first. You might have questions, yet you don’t know where to turn for answers.
Well, if you’ve got a question about article writing or article marketing, ask it here in the comments section today and we’ll get an answer for you. Next week, we’ll post all the questions with all the answers, so ask away!
by Karen Cioffi
I have come to the conclusion that the most time consuming aspect of writing is keeping up with all the useful information that is made available through everywhere from business sites to personal blogs. It seems everyone is offering free information. I have already spent entire days just surfing through sites and reaming ideas, strategies, tips, and so on. It really is endless.
In the writing world everyone tries to and actually needs to keep their work and names visible. Providing information is a primary means of accomplishing this. New blogs are popping up everyday with free tips and advice. The blog has become a great vehicle to bring you to the reader. It is an excellent way to show readers what you have to offer. The information you provide will hopefully not only draw readers, but keep them coming back for more. Using my own blog as an example, I found that if I don’t offer beneficial information along with the hosting blogs I do, I lose followers.
Another vehicle to bring you to the reader is the free online magazines. This is where you can write articles and actually have them published – you don’t get paid, but you do get published. While it does not have the credibility of paying markets, it is a great way to hone your craft and increase your visible.
One more source of visibility is writing guest blogs or articles for other blogs or sites. Often the writers are looking for new and fresh content for their sites or newsletters. If the offer arises take advantage of it, or ask bloggers if they would be interested in a guest blog from you.
Every marketing teleseminar and workshop I have been to encourages writers to offer information through blogs or free online magazines. According to marketing experts the name of the game is visibility. Free information draws readers. I can confirm that this is true because I make it a point to attend all the free teleseminars and teleclasses I can. The businesses that offer this free information want to draw you there so they can sell you their services. This is understandable. It is a win-win situation; they acquire some new customers and you, whether you take advantage of their services or not, receive valuable information. But, to what extend should a writer offer their services for free?
While taking this path of visibility it’s important to remember that submitting to free ezines or guest blogging is not just a lack of financial gain, it’s the time loss incurred while preparing these articles and blogs. This is what the accounting field calls the “opportunity cost.” Always weigh the cost of one action over another in regard to money, time, and effort.
Since it does have a valuable use, the best strategy is to start out offering free tips and articles until you can provide your own expert information and advice. It’s important to remember that this free information will draw readers and show them that your posts and articles are a source of useful data. Once you feel comfortable enough that the information you are providing is of substantial value you can offer it in the form of ebooks, newsletters, teleseminars or other means for a fee.
You should be aware that even when you reach this point, it’s still a good idea to publish articles in the free ezines for continued visibility and as a means of drawing new readers/customers to your sites and services. And, don’t forget that while you’re providing free information you can also be submitting articles to paying markets.
***********
Karen Cioffi is an author and freelance writer; the creator and manager of VBT Writers on the Move; co-moderator of a children’s critique group; a reviewer for BookPleasures.com; a reviewer for Muse Book Reviews; and on the team at DKV Writing 4 U (dkvwriting4u.com). Sign up for the free monthly newsletter and get two free e-books. You can also find articles about writing and marketing on her blog at: http://karenandrobyn.blogspot.com.
Today’s Article Marketing Tip
from Donna M. McDine
You may think all you have to do is write your article and get it approved by EzineArticles, but to capitalize on your efforts you must promote, promote, promote.
How?
Post an announcement on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Email your network, and don’t forget about other blogs where you have author permission.
By Karen Cioffi
While it seems most writers don’t allow their articles/posts to be reprinted by others, I have come across a couple of writers/marketers who generously do allow this practice. They allow their posts to be reprinted by other writers to be used on their blogs or in their FREE newsletter. Obviously, anything being offered to reprint should never be reprinted in something you are selling, such as an e-book or report.
I’m surprised that more writers don’t take advantage of this reprint strategy. The benefits seem obvious – let’s look at four of them.
Four Benefits of Allowing Reprints
You have written something that someone else views as valuable.
You increase your visibility.
You increase traffic back to your site.
You never know who will see that article/post or where it will end up.
What About Giving Your E-books Away?
I have also seen this reprint practice utilized with e-books, and it peaked my interest. These informational e-books plainly state, in the beginning of the content, that readers may freely pass it along. This technique generates additional visibility and is a great promotional tool and marketing opportunity.
In fact, I recently started taking advantage of this practice with one of my e-books. All the writer needs to do is request permission to offer my e-book as a freebie on their site.
Yes, at present I require permission, but that may change as I begin to write more e-books.
Word of Caution Here
Please remember, it’s essential, when taking advantage of a writer’s reprint offer, to always keep the article or e-book intact. Be sure to use the author’s byline and/or any other text and links that they have as part of the bargain. It’s a win-win situation: the author increases his visibility and you get an article to use on your blog or in your newsletter, or you get a free e-book to offer on your site.
Drawback to Using Reprints or Offering Them
Obviously, there are a couple of circumstances in which offering or using reprints isn’t advisable, such as: you wrote the article specifically for a magazine or ezine and publishing elsewhere is restricted, or you may not want to use an article with a byline that will send your reader to a site that offers the same services you do (a competitor’s site). But, all-in-all, this is a practical marketing plan.
Why not utilize this practice. It will be a supplemental tool to be used along with your ezine article marketing. These two strategies combined will certainly generate and increase visibility and traffic back to your site.
Karen Cioffi is an author and freelance writer; the creator and manager of VBT Writers on the Move; co-moderator of a children’s critique group; a reviewer for BookPleasures.com; a reviewer for Muse Book Reviews; and on the team at DKV Writing 4 U (dkvwriting4u.com). Sign up for the free monthly newsletter and get two free e-books. You can also find articles about writing and marketing on her blog at: http://karenandrobyn.blogspot.com.
by Jeff Herring
Article Marketing allows you to create 4 different types of traffic when you submit your articles to Article Directories like EzineArticles.
1. Immediate Traffic
Every time you submit a new article to EzineArticles, you get the benefit of immediate traffic. It’s a fresh article and people are jumping all over it.
What you have at your fingertips with putting out an article is a powerful traffic generation tool. That’s where you get your immediate boost, with new articles, especially once you’ve developed a following. If people want to hear more from you, they’re going to be looking for your articles.
2. Regular, consistent traffic
Think of it this way. Each article - even if you’ve got an article that maybe only gets five new viewers per day, and then you stack another article on top of it that gets five new viewers a day, and then another article and then another article and then another article - and let’s say you’ve got 50 of those articles out there getting five new visitors a day.
That’s 250 new visitors a day, so it stacks upon stacks upon stacks upon. It’s a beautiful thing, folks.
3. Long term traffic
Once you put an article out there, it becomes evergreen. It’s there on the article directories like Ezine Articles to be used by people over and over again.
I have one article that was published in August of 2005 that still gets an average of 1500 unique views a month.
So you can use your articles as evergreen article agents to send people to teleseminars, and long-term evergreen article agents that are out there working for you. They don’t go away, so it just stacks and stacks and stacks.
4. OPT - Other People’s Traffic
The original intention behind having article directories was so people with blogs, websites, or newsletters could come and get that article and go use it on their website, blog, or newsletter, and that still happens. EzineArticles has gotten so big that people use it simply for research.
However, they still use it to go get content for their websites, blogs or newsletters. Most folks don’t have the ease of creating content like article marketers do, so they’re looking for content.
That’s benefiting from other people’s traffic.
Bottom Line? Get your articles out there to take advantage of these 4 types of traffic. And to help you get started, you can now claim your FREE Instant Access to two of my Instant Article Writing Templates when you visit http://www.TheArticleGuyBonus.com
From Jeff Herring - The Article Marketing Guy & The Great Article Marketing Network.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeff_Herring
If you’ve accepted our current article challenge, by now you should have many new articles posted to various article directories. So what is your purpose in marketing these articles? And where does your purpose come into play? In your resource box, of course. So, before you submit any new articles to article directories, figure out what your purpose is. What do you want readers to do when they click on that link in your resource box?
If your only call to action in your resource box is for readers to visit your blog or website, then you’re probably disappointed that you aren’t getting more clients or customers from your articles.
However, if your call to action says something like “visit my website and find out how to receive two free e-books for writers/widows/nature lovers/you name it here,” then you’re probably thrilled at the way your mailing list is growing, and you’re making good use of your articles.
by Nelson Tan
The typical form of newsletter is a one-way communication where you provide information to customers, such as product updates and announcements. Creating a successful newsletter can be extremely rewarding. Subscribers and customers respond with glowing feedback, online sales jump and your customer relationships and brand loyalty deepens. Here are some useful tips that might help in creating a successful newsletter.
Define Success
Ask yourself “What is the purpose of your newsletter?” A newsletter is a substantial investment of company resources in terms of time and energy, and you need to define in as tangible terms as possible the purpose of your Newsletter.
Voice and Personality
Establish a voice or editorial personality-whether newsy, serious, gossipy or funny-that is synergistic with the image you want to portray and connects with your audience. Remember that e-mail newsletters aren’t e-mail promotions designed to stimulate immediate action. Sales and promotional copy don’t suit e-newsletters. Nor does the traditional tone of broadcast corporate communications. Think of your newsletter as a one-on-one conversation. Just imagine sitting in a coffee shop talking informally with a customer. That’s the starting point for your approach-a more personable and appropriate “human” voice will come naturally. Drop the jargon, drop the sales pitch, be as honest as you can, and talk like a human being. You can have as much or as little personality as is appropriate. Consider adding a brief editorial, a comment or two, an editor’s note, a couple of lines of commentary, a touch of opinion; adding a little human element here and there. Sign editorials, give authors a byline, or list some names down in the administrative section of each issue to which your readers can relate to.
“From” Line
Whether it’s a person’s name, name of the newsletter or company name, determine what will resonate best with your readers and stay with it.
“Subject” Line
“Vol. 1, Issue #8″ or “Company News” are not enticing subject lines. They are certainly consistent and simple, but they don’t tell your readers anything that will motivate them to open your e-mail. Your subject line is your calling card-entice your readers with the most interesting or intriguing information in your Newsletter. Use attractive headlines as a means to summarize a section of content.
Style/Format
Establish a format and layout of your Newsletter that is clean and simple, with elements of the Newsletter (table of contents, “Tips”, subscription information, etc. located in the same spot each issue).
Content and Relevancy
Figure out what your readers want and give it to them. Seek continuous improvement by obtaining reader feedback and monitoring click-through rates to determine what types of articles are most popular. Another dilemma that we all confront is too much information and too little time. The newsletter’s job is to keep readers on top of trends and the latest developments in the industry. Aim for articles and feature stories to meet one of the following criteria by including either: major industry occurrences, forward thinking industry ideas, education on issues or new techniques, or business opportunities.
Whether your customers work out of a corporate or home office, or employees need answers to questions and tips for improving business activities, e-newsletters provide you with an opportunity to point out work inefficiencies, and share relevant best practice. When you create a newsletter, try changing your focus from selling products and services to solving your customers’ problems. Think about what they need and give options they don’t know exist.
The greatest thing about the electronic medium is that you can quickly add new hyperlinks and include updates on old material should new information surface without incurring another round of cost for a new issue (that happens in the real world).
Don’t Wait Till the Last Minute
Begin compiling newsletter information in advance. Ask fellow marketers to contribute articles. One great source of information is none other than your inbox where you can quickly search for worthy nuggets from the past week and relay the same essence in your own words.
Quality Sources
Where can you get quality content for your newsletter?
Graphics
Use graphics that print well on your printer. Using a good mix of photographs and art work makes for interesting copy. Too many graphics can leave the newsletter looking cluttered.
Frequency
Determine how frequently your readers want to hear from you/receive your newsletter-and what you can commit to. As a rule, a weekly newsletter is ideal. However, don’t launch a weekly newsletter if you are not absolutely certain that you can distribute a quality Newsletter every week. A fortnightly newsletter is a good option too.
Length
A newsletter should be a quick read. Readers expect to finish reading it in 4 to 5 minutes. Short articles increase the probability that your reader will find something of interest to them.
Timing
Test and pick a day and time that works best…and stick to it. Readers should almost be able to set their watches by the receipt time of your Newsletter.
Penetration
You have the option of formatting your e-mail by including colorized text and a variety of fonts, but not all e-mail software supports HTML mail. Consider writing your newsletter in plain text or offer two mailing lists-one for plain text mailings and the other for HTML e-mail.
Make it Viral
Provide information readers can act on or that stimulates reaction-forwarding it to friends and peers, stimulating purchases or requests for additional information. Make it easy for readers to forward articles and information to peers and friends. Provide a “Tell a Friend” link that enables readers to forward the Newsletter with a personalized note.
Search
Make it easy to find articles of interest and back issues. Provide a table of contents and links to articles within the newsletter and to resources and past articles on your site.
Printability
If you want to give readers an option to print, consider providing “printer-friendly formats” on your website. Make sure your newsletter is physically readable. Avoid anything less than 12 point fonts for the article text. Fancy fonts may look good but can be hard to read when printed. Heading and text fonts should be consistent throughout the newsletter.
If you lack experience in print media, seek out assistance if you know someone in the field. If not, don’t worry-the abovementioned basic principles apply. Plan to research your material thoroughly and avoid factual or editing errors, as they will make you seem less credible.
Personalize
At the very least, address the reader by name. The most successful newsletters have a human being associated with them…and a personality. If possible, your Newsletter should be “written by a person” at your company…not the company.
Language
Not everyone has the range and depth of vocabulary as teachers and linguists do. Use words that are easy to understand, and if you do use technical terms, provide a definition that people can relate to. There is nothing more frustrating then a definition that makes less sense than the word itself. Just write in layman terms and keep it short, simple and straightforward.
Spelling and Grammar Check
Sending out copy with numerous errors creates a negative image to your readers. Aside from using a spell checker, have an outsider edit your final copy for readability, grammar and content.
Test and Track
Test the newsletter on few e-mail addresses to check for errors and other issues before sending to the entire distribution list. Keep track of results and reactions to your newsletter to come to an understanding for further tweaks and corrections.
Lastly, to summarise the key fundamental features of an e-newsletter, make sure you include:
E-newsletters can take up a good amount of time if not managed correctly. The use of a list server (a piece of software that runs on your Internet provider’s computer or on your own web server) is a good option. It will automatically manage a list of e-mail addresses. Once you send your newsletter to the list server, it distributes the letter to the stored addresses. For more information on list servers, contact your Internet service provider. If you opt to use another method, make sure you have a plan for handling incoming and outgoing mail when your customer base increases.
In conclusion, your newsletter can serve as an extension of your business that will reach out to your customers. It will allow you to maintain regular contact with them and serve as an effective and rewarding addition to your marketing arsenal. These tips should help you put it all together and help you create an exceptional newsletter.
Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nelson_Tan
http://EzineArticles.com/?How-To-Create-An-Effective-Newsletter&id=892729
Tags: LK article challenge, suzanne lieurance, kristen king, article marketing, monetization, information products, email newsletters, viral marketing
You already know that one way to monetize your article marketing efforts is by creating and promoting ebooks with your articles. Another easy and inexpensive means of monetizing your work is through an e-mail newsletter.
Do you have an e-mail newsletter? I publish a twice-a-week ezine called Build Your Business Write, with tips to help freelance writers, coaches, and other solopreneurs write their way to business success. You can subscribe for free at www.fearlessfreelancewriting.com.
Leave the link to your newsletter subscription page in the comments! And keep your eyes on the blog all week long for great tips on improving your newsletter for maximum results.
It’s a beautiful spring day in my neck of the woods, which makes it even more difficult to get any writing done. I’d much rather be outside taking a walk or having a picnic in the park. Still, I find that the weekends are my BEST time for generating new article ideas, so here’s my article tip for today.
Schedule an hour or so at your favorite bookstore this weekend and spend that hour looking through the magazine racks. First, just skim the headlines you see on the covers of the magazines. When you see the topics that are currently being covered by many popular magazines, you’ll probably realize that you know a thing or two about some of these topics yourself, so you could turn some of these same headlines into your own articles for article directories.
Next, depending on the type of site you’re trying to lead readers back to in the resource box of your article, flip through a few of your favorite publications to see if there are any new products or services you could review in a short article. For example, since I’ve often written articles to generate traffic to my small gourmet food business, I often look through all the food magazines to see what types of new cookbooks, cooking utensils, and even new ingredients are hitting the markets. Then, I write a short article about one of these items.
When I spent at least an hour in the magazine section of Barnes and Noble or one of the other large bookstores in town, generally I come away with dozens of new article ideas.
Try it yourself and let me know how this tip works for you!
Happy Writing!
Suzanne
by Lynne Lee
Article Writing is one of the most useful skills you can master. Keyword rich articles are a proven tactic for getting lots of free search engine traffic to your website. Once you can write your own search engine traffic generating articles you will have the key to an ever increasing stream of free search engine traffic.
Writing keyword rich articles is a lot easier than you might think
The first step is to find the right keyword phrases. This is the most important step. You need to identify keyword phrases that are searched for enough but don’t have many competing pages.
If you choose a keyword phrase that has too much competition, you will be wasting your time because you will struggle to attract much search engine traffic. Instead, concentrate your article writing efforts on targeting phrases that will give you a good chance of being ranked on the first page of Google.
Choose a keyword phrase that is searched for enough but doesn’t yet have a lot of competing pages
You will generally have more success with longer keyword phrases.
For example:
To research keywords you could use http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends Wordtracker will suggest related keywords and if you click on the G at the right it is easy to see how many competing pages there are. Or you could use the Google Adwords tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal It will give you a lot of information and suggest many alternative keywords.
If you want an excellent keyword research tool that will take away any guesswork, I highly recommend Keyword Elite
When identifying keyword phrases worth targeting, look for keywords that lend themselves to creating a good title. The title is very important when you’re writing articles with a view to getting on the first page of Google so that you can get lots of free search engine traffic.
And the title is crucial if want to harness the viral effect of article writing. Other webmasters won’t be tempted to use your article if you have a boring title.
You need an article title that contains your keyword phrase and also promises really useful information. Your article title needs to suggest that it will draw a large enough audience to encourage your readers to link to your article or re-post it on their site complete with the links to your site in the resource box at the bottom of the article.
Action Steps
If you would like to get your articles into lots of directories quickly, consider using an article submission service like Article Marketer and get masses of exposure and lots of search engine rank boosting exposure.
If you follow these steps and make sure every article you write is written around the right keyword phrases, you will get a steadily increasing flow of free search engine traffic to your site.
If you have a website or blog and you’d like more vistors, or if you plan to have a website soon, I’d like to offer you How To Get More Visitors To Your Website for free so that you can discover where to put your keywords for maximum SEO effect.
And if you’re a coach or counselor and you’d like to know your best keywords without doing the keyword research yourself, take a look at http://www.seoissimple.com/coachingmasterkeywordlist.html
And lastly, remember to download your free guide to making money with articles. All you need to do is go to my blog www.articlewritingandmarketing.com put your name and email address in the box at the top on the right, and you’ll have your guide in minutes.
Now go and do some keyword research, write lots of keyword rich articles, submit them to directories and get watch yoru vistor numbers soar!
Lynne Lee
Article Writing and Marketing and SEO Expert.