What Is Article Marketing & Why You Should Do Article Marketing?

Introduction

What Is Article Marketing?

Entrepreneurs have an abundance of business building resources at their disposal. Each offers unique benefits.

Some boost awareness. Others help establish and strengthen credibility. Still others actually help sell products or services.

Article marketing is one of the few marketing tactics that actually accomplishes several very powerful business building and marketing goals in one fell swoop.

Of course article marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. (Though you may see results quite quickly.) With goals, a plan and a strategic approach you will see your business grow with your article marketing efforts.

So what exactly is article marketing?

It’s essentially the process of publishing articles on other websites. Most commonly people publish content on article directories.

We’ll get into how to compare article directories and choose the right ones for your strategy in a future chapter.

An article directory is a website that is devoted to publishing articles on a number of topics.

Some article directories have hundreds of categories ranging from pet care to internet marketing. Other article directories have a narrower range of topics.

Each directory comes with their own publishing rules and regulations. Some allow embedded links for example, while others don’t.

However, article marketing can also include several other article publishing mediums.

For example, you can publish articles in relevant ezines or online magazines. You can publish articles in print publications like magazines and newspapers too.

One great way to embrace article marketing is to create an ezine, publish articles and syndicate them – allow others to publish them on their websites or in their ezines as long as they keep all the links and give you credit.

What Article Marketing Is and How It Works

With so many other potentially effective marketing tactics available like social networking and email marketing why bother with article marketing?

What does it offer that other well planned and implemented tactics don’t?”

Article marketing offers a one, two, three punch for business owners.

And it also helps reinforce your other marketing efforts.

We’ll get into how to optimize your article marketing efforts in just a bit but imagine how much more effective your article marketing might be if you also linked to newly published articles on your social networking pages?

You’ll multiply your exposure.

Article Marketing’s One, Two, Three Punch

So what benefits does article marketing really offer?

Punch #1 Expert Status and Credibility

As a society we give great credence to people who are published.

Of course you can’t just throw up nonsensical articles or information and assume you’re suddenly considered an expert.

However, when you take the time to publish valuable and informative content, you will begin to establish a reputation as a knowledgeable expert.

What happens when you become a knowledgeable expert?

People will come to you for:

More informationAdviceProducts and services

Regardless of industry you’re in or your chosen business model, publishing content is a surefire way to establish yourself as a credible expert.

Article marketing helps you reach a broad audience. It helps you begin to create your niche and your position as an industry expert.

Consider, for a moment, the blogs you read, the companies you do business with and the brands you trust.

Many of them have earned your business because they’ve helped you find information, improve yourself or your life, or helped you solve a problem.

They’ve established themselves as a credible source and an expert in their niche and earned your trust and business.

The same is true for your prospects. Earn their trust through publishing, and other means, and they’ll buy from you.

Punch #2 Increased Awareness and Exposure

Article marketing directories provide a unique service.

They enable you to publish articles with the explicit purpose of having them republished across the internet and around the world.

You can publish one article and have it republished hundreds of times around the internet.

What does this “syndication” accomplish?

It provides you with a reach much broader and more vast than simply publishing an article on your website.

Instead of reaching a thousand visitors on your website you might reach ten thousand people as they interact with the websites that have published your article on their site.

Additionally, ezine or article marketing websites often come up on the first page or two of search engine results.

That means whenever someone is looking for your information, even if they don’t find your website through the search, they may find your article marketing content – which of course includes a link to your site.

So you’ll gain more visitors and increased awareness simply by using an article marketing website.

Now we’ve just touched on the traffic benefit so let’s move onto Punch #3, which is of course…traffic.

Punch #3 Traffic, Traffic, and More Traffic

Increased website traffic may be the single most attractive benefit for many internet business owners.

Here’s how it works.

You publish an article on an article directory. Ten other website owners in your niche (or a complimentary niche) publish your article on their website.

They retain not only any embedded links (per the publisher agreement) they also keep the author’s bio box and the link to your website.

All of their website visitors now see your article content and many of them will click through to your website. So you gain traffic by exposure.

You also gain traffic by increasing your search engine results. Each incoming link from a reputable and quality website helps improve your page ranking.

If you have one incoming link from ten quality websites, you now have ten incoming links. Your page ranking improves.

It should be noted that some article directories have “No-follow” rules in place. That means that the incoming links to your website from the ezine directory do not count with the search engines.

The spiders don’t follow the links and therefore they’re not counted. That’s one factor to research when comparing article directories.

Finally, article marketing can help you achieve any business building initiative you might undertake. You can monetize your articles to sell affiliate products, promote products or services or build your list.

For example, if you’re launching a new product you might use article marketing to draw attention to your promotion.

You can accomplish this both through the content you write but also the links you place in the article and in your author’s bio box.

A call to action leading to your sales page can help you achieve the sales you’re aiming for.

Conclusion

Okay, enough talk about the benefits of article marketing. You know that implementing a strategy will help you drive traffic, boost your credibility and increase awareness.

It can also help you sell a product or service, sell affiliate products, or even build a substantial opt-in list.

Now it’s time to move onto one of the key ingredients in an article marketing campaign – your publishing medium.

In the next chapter we’ll take a deeper look at article directories and we’ll explore a few other article marketing options.

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