The purpose of Article Marketing is to promote you, your business, and your products. It's about getting your name in front of people in a way that makes them want to know you better.
People want to know that you are trustworthy. They want to know that you share well-written, quality information: information that will benefit them. The Internet Marketing industry followed the Amway model for many years and, unfortunately, many marketers still do. "What are you doing today? I’d like to show you something I think you’ll be interested in. No, I can’t tell you about it now. Why don’t we get together later and I’ll tell you all about it."
I’ll say it again. The purpose of article marketing is to promote you, promote your business, and promote your products. The first contact you have with a potential customer means this: you, your business and your products are one-in-the-same.
You have only one chance to make a good first impression. There is a reason that is called an old cliché. A phrase becomes a cliché because it is steeped in time-honored truth. It is as true today as it was when it was first uttered.
Properly written articles have three basic parts.
- Title - A properly written title draws your reader into the body of your article.
- Body - This should contain good quality content from the expert: you
- Resource Box - Your self-promotion is limited to the resource box. That makes this a very important part of your article. It fulfills the purpose of article marketing.
You see, the keys to effective article marketing first require you to have an effective article. Only after you meet that requirement can you step forward into effective marketing
There is a difference between properly written articles and properly written effective articles. The effective article contains quality content that indicates you are an expert on the subject. It is also written in a way that beckons other webmasters to include it on their website, increasing your exposure to whatever marketing niche you have chosen.
Webmasters marketing product XYZ do not want an article promoting product XYZ clone. Funny thing about Internet Marketers not wanting to promote competing products!
Ken Evoy writes in the Netwriting Masters Course, "Use content to PREsell your targeted visitors." In other words, sell yourself as an expert. Sell yourself as someone who writes good, quality articles. Sell yourself as someone who provides the information your potential clients are seeking.
That PREselling will convince people to visit your website for more information and quality articles.
"What’s in it for me?" Okay, I hear you shouting. Dang, money-grubbing people! You remind me of the movie, The Lookout. In it, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does an excellent job portraying Chris Pratt, a young man who received a brain injury in an automobile accident. Chris is having a very difficult time keeping things in sequence. You know, step one followed by step two followed by step three, and so on.
Lewis, played by Jeff Daniels, is Chris’ blind roommate. He tells Chris to start with the end result and work his way backward and, sure enough, Chris finds that to be an excellent strategy for developing steps. So, why don’t you and I follow that example and begin with the end result.
Resource Box - Essential Article Marketing Tool
The Resource Box is where you promote you. This is where you convince the reader that you have more to offer. This is where you put a link to your website: a link that beckons them to check you out. This is where you add that additional uummph! to make the reader want to come to your website. This is what’s in it for you.
Promote you by including a very short biography that shows why you are an expert. Are you the author of a book on the subject? Are you the author of dozens of articles on the subject? Have you been doing whatever for how many years?
Let me give you a personal example. Every 23 seconds someone in the United States suffers a brain injury. There are a lot of people seeking information about brain injury, over 200,000 Google searches in June 2008. My wife suffered a brain injury many years ago. Together we developed numerous strategies for dealing with daily life, and she moved from “probably never work again” to being a networking analyst for a Fortune 500 company. We wrote a book, Brain Injury Survivor’s Guide, explaining what we did and how we did it. And we are certainly pleased that the book has received many 5-star positive reviews on Amazon. |
If I write an article about brain injury, some of that “why I’m an expert” information goes in the resource box. The resource box is an extension of PREselling yourself and should include an incentive for coming to your website. That incentive could easily be additional quality information, or it could be a free report or free eBook: in other words, a real, physical incentive.
If you choose to give a physical incentive, try something that no one else is giving. Uh…something you wrote!!! Certainly you may have a download page with dozens of free reports, free software and free eBooks (most of which are encoded with your affiliate link). But your draw to that page should be something no one else is offering.
Over the past five years, at least two dozen marketers have offered me a free copy of the same eBook. I’m not saying that’s bad. But – I got it from the first one I visited. And that meant that those other people were not offering anything of value to me; I already had it. The draw to your page should be something no one else is offering…the draw to your page should be something that no one else …
The second requirement for your free offer is that is be something your visitors want. They must perceive value in what you have to offer.
Something all of us seek to put in our resource box is this: “Discover why 5,000 people visit our website each day!” Now, wouldn’t that be a powerful pull? Getting there involves a plan. Your plan should involve article marketing. Article marketing requires a plan of its own. Work your sequence backwards.
I want 5,000 visitors each day on my website. Therefore, I must properly write effective articles. I must become known as an expert on social networking sites. I must have a blog that I update several times each week. I must participate in forums with other webmasters, get to know and trust them, and get them to know and trust me. I must have a content-rich site of high quality information.
