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Article Marketing for the Beginner

June 1, 2007 | Filed Under Online Marketing 

I thought everyone had heard of article marketing, but over the last few events I’ve attended there have been more than a couple blank looks. This is good for you because it means your competitors aren’t all doing the same thing.

First thing first. Write an article. You cannot use an article for marketing if you haven’t written one yet. Write it about your business, but don’t make it a sales piece. Try to pick something interesting about your company. In lieu of something interesting, ask your receptionist what the most asked question is when people call. Write it on something your customer would want to know.

For example, if I was writing an article for Marketing Curve, a good topic would be (wait for it, you’ll never guess) article marketing. You have to keep in mind that in the article you need to focus on the "give" and NOT sell your services. Make it helpful, make it relevant, make it readable. Do not make it 700 words long, for goodness sake. Make it around 400 words and use lists and bullets where appropriate to make your information more digestable for the masses.

Then, write a few sentences about how amazing your company is. Example time!

Jennifer Gniadecki is the owner of Marketing Curve, a relationship marketing company specializing in creating customized internet marketing plans for small businesses.She can be reached at jennifer@marketingcurve.com or (708) 957-1479. Make the call, you’ll be glad you did.

(You may have noticed that each one of those links goes somewhere different. Take them to where on your site they’ll be most likely to WANT to end up based on what they click! It keeps people happy once they’ve arrived to your site.)

That’s called your resource box, and it’s very important stuff. That’s your "take" at the end of the article.

You see, once you put your article out there, it can be reproduced or used for free by anyone. The trade off is they cannot reprint it without putting your resource box at the bottom. TaDum! Free marketing! Also, I hope that makes it crystal clear why it needs to be a good, interesting article. So people will want to use it in a newsletter, on their blog, as an email to their list. So many ways it can be used.

Oh, and don’t forget to make the title good. Take the main idea of the article and use that in the title. You want the title to include words that someone would actually search for to find your article. If you have a keyword…the title is the place it needs to show up.

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