Article Marketing - How to Make It Work For You

Information based marketing is one of the oldest and most effective techniques for bringing targeted prospects to your site and converting them into buyers. This is part of the reason that software, and distribution services that make the process of article promotion easier are so popular lately.

Though the various tools you can use to make the process of distributing your articles more easily are invaluable in getting your content to the places that have the most potential to bring you exposure, that's only half of the story. Getting article marketing to work for your site lies in two things:

- The article you're submitting, and
- The preparation you do before you a single word of your content is written.

Since those two determining factors make at least 50% of the difference in bringing you success, let's take a look at what the most common mistakes are in that area, and how to overcome them.

Mistake #1 - Confusing the Reason to Promote with Articles with the Reason to Write an Article

There are three reasons to promote an article - branding, lead generation and as a corollary, to promote your site. Yet there is only one reason to write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If your article is not geared towards this as its primary purpose, you will fail to see the three benefits of promotion - no one will want to read your article.

How many links you're able to generate by submitting your article to hundreds of sites will matter little if you're unable to get them picked up by publications, or read by people who search for information.

Sure, if you know what you're doing all those links pointing back to your site will count for something in your search engine results - but remember that generating links to your site is only one part of optimizing your site for Google, Yahoo or MSN. And if everyone is doing it, the effect will be dulled.

To overcome this issue, you'll need to figure out how to get people to read what is in your article, and then click through to your site from your resource box.

Mistake #2 - Starting The Article Promotion without a Plan

Not every article can fulfil all three purposes of promotion. Some will work better for branding, others can generate leads and increase sales. But if you don't start out with a plan for what the function of your article should be, you'll end up unhappy with the results.

To overcome this issue, before you write a single word, decide what purpose the article is supposed to serve. An article meant to brand you as an expert should display your knowledge. One for generating leads may need to be geared towards solving a very specific problem.

Mistake #3 - Content That Doesn't Help Your Reader

Maybe you're thinking: "All I want is links back to my site - any visitors the article generate is gravy."

Well guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your content automatically. You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles that the directories want to share with readers - and all it takes is one publisher with a hundred thousand readers to increase your potential audience tenfold.

So if you want article marketing to work for you, write articles that publishers want in their publications.

This also means obeying the standard guidelines, running a spell check, or even hiring a writer to produce articles on your behalf.

Mistake #4 - Failing to Maximize the Promotional Opportunities of Article Marketing

You already know that articles marketing can help you generate additional links back to your site. But did you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine results from articles in a variety of ways?

You can mention your desired keyword in strategic places, though you should take care not to overdo this. Some people will also tell you to make use of anchor text, which can also is an effective method. However, you should know that the majority of directories and publications aren't able to support this.

There are alternatives to this method that are just as effective, if not more so, but they require more space to explain.

Mistake #5 - Trying to Make One Article Do Too Much

An article just can't do the same job as a short PDF report, an entire web site, your book, or DVD series. And it wasn't meant to either. Stick within suggested word counts, and keep your resource box as simple as you can. Also, only about a third of your articles need to have the motive of enhancing your SEO efforts.

Remember, you can get penalized for over-optimization as well, particularly in the case of uniform anchor text.

It's not always a great idea to pepper your article with links either. When all the links are to your own site, they probably won't get hyperlinked anyway. Even if they do, the more your article appears to be purely about promoting your site, as opposed to providing information, the less likely that your links will be clicked.

If the links are to other sites that you're reviewing as resources, this can work, but in the case of more than a handful of sites, it's often a better idea to offer a free ebook from your site containing the full reviews.

Yes, your article should be as informative as you can make it, but if you find yourself near your word limit, save the rest of the tips for next time, or continue at your own site.

Mistake #6 - Leaving Them Wanting Less

What's the point of submitting every day if your objective is to get your article picked up by a publisher? In a way, you have to think of your potential ezine publisher as a prospect as well - a confused prospect just goes away. Shoving 20 articles under their noses gives them 20 times the amount of work to do.

The issue of confusing your prospect can also be an issue if you're only submitting to article directories as well. Think of what happens when you see a commercial for a show you'd like to see on television too often. What happens when your favorite song gets played on the radio a bit too much?

No matter how much you may love that TV show or your favorite song, there's a point of over-saturation that causes you either to begin to ignore it - or worse yet - actually hate the very mention of it. You don't want this to happen to your content.

There's also the issue of pacing yourself. Every writer eventually runs into one of two problems - a lack of ideas for new material, or a lack of time to write them up. You could derail much of your efforts of increasing exposure to your site if you aren't able to keep up the supply of content you produce.

The most common advice is to submit an article a week. Through a distribution service, or to publications that are geared towards ezine publishers who want content, this is probably best. If you're submitting directly to article directories, more often than that may be okay if the site's guidelines allow it - but more than that is overkill.

If you really want to send out content on a daily basis, you're better off syndicating yourself through a blog or RSS feed at your own site and generating your own group of subscribers.

Mistake #7 - Stopping Half Way Through the Promotional Process

This has got to be the top mistake of marketers who say "This just doesn't work for me." True, you may start to see links or even traffic within 24 hours of your article being submitted, however, if you don't promote your articles deeply and widely enough, you're probably not going to see your desired results.

First of all, particularly when you're just establishing yourself as an expert, you need to submit to as many places as you can.

Most people only submit to ten or fifteen high traffic article banks with high Google PR, not realizing that there may be up to 100 sites that will take their articles that get most of their readers via RSS , ezine publications, or even through distribution offline. My short list of places that have brought me publicity contains over 400 sites, most of which take articles on just about any topic.

So not only should you be submitting your article to more places, doing this for two weeks and then stopping is not going to bring you any long-term effects. Your first four weeks as an article marketer should see you submitting at least one article a week.

If you don't have it in your schedule to write and submit that often, then get a ghostwriter and hire a distribution service. (Just be aware that even a distribution service won't be able to send your articles to every single place you want to submit to.)

You could also write many articles in advance, and get someone else to do the submissions for you.

Mistake #8 - Improper Use of Past Content

One trick that some article marketers use is to attempt to recycle an article they've already written. That's not to say that this technique doesn't have potential. But you also can't possibly expect publishers to accept content that is simply a re-hash of what they've already seen before.

So don't just change the title and re-submit. Change your content as well. You can do this by re-targeting to another audience. Maybe your business tips for work at home moms could be geared towards small business if you add, remove and change a few things.

Article marketing is one of the simplest and easiest ways to increase visitors to your site if done correctly, and has inherent search engine benefits as well.

It's not just cheaper than regular methods of advertising - proper article marketing provides you with a type of publicity that money can't buy.