Viral marketing is a methods of list building
Content is king. So, if content is king - and most of the internet marketing world would likely agree it is - then marketing an online business with content is certain to be a success if done right. Perhaps that's one of the reasons article marketing is arguably one of the hottest forms of marketing today.
If you don't have the skills or if you simply don't have the time to write your own articles, invest in hiring a professional writer to do so for you. Article marketing is popular for a reason: It's effective, and it gets results if you submit articles on a regular basis.
To increase the effectiveness of your article marketing, be sure to take the following ten tips into consideration when writing or outsourcing your articles:
Grab your target market's attention with a compelling headline. If you want people to read your articles, you must grab their attention with your headline. Writing effective headlines is something of an art form, but with time and practice, it is a skill you can acquire.
Write a powerful lede. The lede is the first sentence or paragraph of your article, and with the lede you have to convince readers to continue reading the article. (To see ledes in action, simply open your local newspaper and read some of the articles.) A lede should always answer the five basic questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? Writing an attention-grabbing lede is a skill that can be mastered with time and with practice.
It's all about the content. Internet marketers shout it from all corners of the internet: Content is king. If you really want your article marketing efforts to succeed, you must write articles that are packed with useful information. Of course, each article should also focus on a subject related to the product or service that you are selling, and each article should be related to your niche.
Choose the right keywords. Keyword rich content is essential to ranking high in the search engines. Make sure your articles are always rich with keywords. But, don't go overboard to the point where your articles don't make sense or are stilted because of the overuse of keywords and keyword phrases.
Call to action. One of your main goals with article marketing is to entice people to click on your URL and visit your Web site. Article marketing isn't designed to blatantly promote your business within the context of the actual articles. Rather, you can embed links, when allowed by the article directory, in the article itself, saving the outright promotion for the bio or author box.
Submit articles regularly. You can't just submit a few articles to different article directories and forget about it. You must regularly submit articles to article directories if you want to drive traffic to your Web site.
Carefully plan your bio box. Your bio box is your opportunity to directly promote your Web site to prospective customers. Be sure to include your Web site link in the bio box and a call to action to encourage readers to go to your Web site.
Always post your articles on your Web site, too. Some experts recommend posting your articles on your Web site before you submit them to article directories. Wait until the articles on your Web site are indexed by the search engines then submit them to article directories.
Shorter is better. The best articles are a minimum of 400 to 500 words. You don't want to write articles that are so short they offer no value, and articles that are too long will lose your audience. Your articles should be packed with useful information to your target market and should be as concise as possible.
Hire a writer. Some entrepreneurs simply don't have the time to write the articles needed for article marketing while others don't have the skills or they just don't enjoy it. If you fall into one of those categories, consider hiring a professional writer or ghostwriter to write your articles for you.
About the Author:
Tim Godfrey is the founder of the exclusive internet marketing tips resource, RocketTheProfit.com To learn how to grab top Google positions writing articles, check out our free 3-part article marketing course
