The Dos and Don’ts of Article Marketing

You have heard the term “Article Marketing” many times and are hopefully publishing your articles to many websites and educating many people. Article marketing is an art and there are dos and don’ts when it comes to their success.

Electronic article marketing is not any different than traditional marketing. The principles upon which it stands are identical to traditional marketing. The objective of the articles that are being published is to promote your business. Additionally (as always), the main purpose is to build relationships with prospective and existing clients.

When you submit your articles to article directories, you are allowing them to get noticed by search engines, which in turn, will generate more website traffic for you. It is really quite easy to be successful when it comes to submitting, publishing, and syndicating articles. Here is a list of “dos” and “don’ts” when it comes to article marketing.

Dos

• Do as much research as possible. It is essential that you know your target audience before you write a single word. You need to identify what your audience wants and needs. You must also try to acquire as much knowledge as possible about the particular subject that you are discussing.
   
• Do make sure that your article content is compelling and informative. Always remember that the articles that you share with others should always be geared toward solving their problems.
   
• Do market, not sell. Always bear in mind that article marketing is not advertising. What you are doing by sharing articles is offering a solution to the reader’s problems, which consequently will incite them to want to buy from you eventually.
   
• Do make full use of search engine optimization tactics. Always make sure that you use strong and appropriate keywords and key phrases, choose the best title possible, make sure that you place your keywords where they will be most effective, put in strong links, and make sure that you have an appropriate author resource box in your articles so that you can optimize your traffic and search engine rankings.
   
• Do choose quality over quantity. It is much wiser and more effective to writer fewer articles of high quality than many articles that are of mediocre quality. You really won’t be doing yourself or your business any favors if you don’t concentrate on the quality.

Don’ts

•  Don’t give the impression (ever) that you are trying to sell something. Blatant self-promotion is never a good thing. There are many other more discreet ways to get your point across when it comes to your offerings. The hard sell will be resented and a possible consequence for you might be that you will be banned from those particular directories. It also detracts from your credibility and from the trust that others have in you. It is just not worth it.
   
• Don’t use links carelessly. You need to consider your articles as a sales tool but at the same time, you need to be very careful (and very discriminating) about how you use that tool. A good approach is to put your links in the resource box. If you spread the links throughout the body of your articles, you are putting the article in danger of being rejected. It is just too promotional.
   
• Don’t be too verbose in the resource box. If possible, you should avoid words such as “click here,” which you have hyperlinked. It is important to make sure that your words in the resource box really count. You should put high-quality keywords in the resource box as well as other appropriate content and create links through them. This is your golden opportunity to really state what you do and how it connects with all of the great information that you have given to your online connections.
   
• Don’t write excessively long paragraphs. Article directories don’t like long paragraphs. If that is what they receive, they will most likely reformat the content. It is recommended that you use phrases in the form of bullets, whenever you can. If you use that kind of a format, even if the people at the article directory switch things around, your content will still be easy to understand.

Conclusion

Article marketing is critical to the success of your business. You should consider it a great opportunity to educate others about what you do and what you have to offer. It also gives you the opportunity to position yourself as a subject matter expert in your field. Your content should always be fresh, original and compelling. If you can succeed at that type of writing, you will acquire a large number of loyal fans who will want to do business with you more and more.

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