Although it’s been a tried and true strategy for years, it seems that bloggers are now catching on to the benefits of article marketing as the competition for traffic intensifies. For those who may not be familiar with the technique, article marketing involves submitting short articles to directories such as Ezine Articles, with permission for others to republish your work on their blog, website or in their email newsletter. In return, you get one or more links back to the site of your choice.
Article marketing was mentioned in strategy ten of the Viral Copy Report. Since it’s an important part of any traffic-building strategy, article marketing is the focus of my next viral marketing update. An article that hits a nerve can end up republished all over the ‘net, each with a nice back link to your blog or free resource.
This time around, I’ve teamed up with Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey. Yaro provides insights into his initial experiences as an article marketer, and his piece serves as a great introduction to the strategy. I follow up with specific tips that can help you get the most out of your article production efforts.
The result is a free 10-page PDF article marketing report. Feel free to leave any feedback here in the comments section, or share your own experiences with article marketing.
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The pdf is a very interesting, if somewhat shallow read. I am doing article marketing for seo puposes, not exactly for my blog. In ezine artcles you can never overestimate the importance of titles. I have 10 articles published, with a platinum status at ezine articles. If I write an article with a catchy title(a howto or a call to action), it gets 10+ publishes(is that a word?), if i donot then it barely gets 2. And yes most places it gets published is splogs.
Hey Shabda, thanks for the comment. Yep, as you, Yaro, and I have all found, article titles are crucial.
Sorry if you found the report somewhat shallow — we tried to cover everything without actually writing the articles for people.
It sounds like you have some good article marketing experience, so when you release a more in-depth free resource, let me know by email, and I’ll review it.
Hi Brian,
I was introduced to you via “Ezine Articles”after publishing my first piece called “What Does Avian Flu, 7 Eleven, and Sauerkraut Have in Common? I wrote this article since I was continually getting questions about the sauerkraut link to the avian flu issue being prominent on the internet and papers.
After one week my article received 121 views and I was really surprised.
I have ideas on more articles and I really appreciate your 10 page PDF Article Marketing report since it is written for a person like me who is just getting started. If you have any more tips I would appreciate them.
One question: Should you publish in as many article directories as possible? Or focus on a handful of popular ones?
Thanks again for the encouraging notes.
Monte
Hi Monte, thanks for your comment.
Your question about number of directories is a good one, and I flip-flop on it. You’ll get the majority of your results from submitting to the one or two largest directories, and often that’s all I do. But, if you use the article submission software mentioned in the report, you can fairly easily submit to over 200 directories. I certainly wouldn’t bother doing that manually, though.
I’m new to article marketing, but I’ve been watching others do it over the last couple of years.
This year, I decided that article marketing was going to be one of my primary techniques for 2006.
I like to learn by doing, so I opened an article directory specializing in business, communications, and technology topics. I get a regular flow of articles submitted, and I’m learning, from a webmaster’s and blogger’s perspective, some of the differences between what I think are good and bad articles. I try to accept only articles that I would be proud to reprint on my network of sites, blogs, and forums.
Then, I reprint some of the best.
Hopefully, this exercise will provide some exposure for the authors whose articles I accept and some education for me that will help when I start submitting my own articles later this month.
There’s no doubt that Chris Knight’s EzineArticles.com is the best place to submit your article and I’m doing my best to learn from Chris.
Even though the top two or three directories will probably give you the best exposure and the highest number of reprints, it may be a mistake to overlook niche directories that cater to your target audience.
As with everything else related to marketing and promoting, it’s not the number of items in your inventory, it’s the creativity, persistance, and effort that’s applied to letting people know what you offer that makes the difference. Some of the niche directories may have better penetration into your target market than the largest general directories.
At least, that’s a theory I’m testing.
All the best,
JD
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