By
allen on April 3rd, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, viral marketing | No Comments »
Two days ago I posted on the Blog Content Provider blog how you can use articles in conjunction with blogging to deliver a whopping sucker punch to the search engines and increase your search marketing mojo. Well, did you know you can have a similar effect with article marketing and social bookmarking? No kidding.
Article marketing has always been considered one of the forms of viral marketing. Now, with the advent of social bookmarking, you can take that viral marketing to the extreme. Social bookmarking is viral marketing on steroids.
Try this little marketing experiment for 30 days:
Write 10 articles. Distribute those 10 articles to 10 article directories, one per day for 10 days. After that, bookmark each article at at one of the many bookmarking websites online. You effectively have 100 articles (10 X 10). If you bookmark 5 a day for the next 20 days then you’ll have them all bookmarked at the end of the 30 day experiment.
I suggest that you pick 10 bookmarking websites and focus on those 10. Create a spreadsheet to track your bookmarking. On the top of the spreadsheet, list all 10 article directories where your articles were submitted. Along the left side of the spreadsheet, list your 10 articles. You can use a service like www.socialmarker.com. Go down your list of articles and pick the sites you want to bookmark that article at. It won’t take long using the SocialMarker site. When you’re done, move on to the next article. Do five one day then the next day do five more until all of your articles at each of the directories have been bookmarked.
As you are doing this, check your traffic stats daily and see how much traffic you are getting from each of the websites. If the article directories have stats that allow you to check traffic, even better. That way, you can see how the bookmarking is affecting the articles. But you should expect some of those articles to be picked up and published by others within your industry or niche. Before they publish your article, they’ll likely visit your website. Not everyone who reads your article will visit your website so be prepared for a trickle down effect. But it does work. Viral marketing added to viral marketing equals super viral marketing.
By
allen on April 2nd, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing, Article Writing | No Comments »
I read an article today that was titled, “Seven Top Article Marketing Websites“. Obviously, the article promises to tell its readers where they can publish their articles for article marketing purposes. But I found some problems with the article.
Before I get into, however, here are the seven websites the author recommends:
- EzineArticles
- IdeaMarketers
- GoArticles
- iSnare
- Article Alley
- Associated Content
- Constant Content
How Article Marketing Works
Speaking of traditional article marketing, only four of these seven websites can be considered article directories. That’s not to say these article websites can’t be beneficial in your article marketing efforts, but there are really two types of article marketing and this author is mixing the two.
The first kind of article marketing, traditional article marketing, is when you write an article and distribute it online through several directories, which serve as repositories for e-zine editors and website owners who visit the directories to find articles that they can publish. The article directories are not your end goal in getting published. They are simply the “middle man” in the article marketing chain. You don’t get paid for your articles - that is, there is no monetary compensation. Your reward for getting your article published is that when e-zine editors and website publishers like your article and use it they will publish your article with a link back to your website. Those links are your payment and result in higher rankings for your website and more traffic. That’s traditionally how article marketing has been done.
In the above-mentioned article, the websites that are mentioned that are article directories and can be used for the purpose described in the last paragraph are EzineArticles, GoArticles, IdeaMarketers, and Article Alley. IdeaMarketers is a little bit different than the other three because it’s focus is more tightly centered around business marketing and offers article marketers an opportunity to bid to be on the front page of the directory.
iSnare is a little bit different. It’s not really a directory, though it does contain a directory. The real benefit to using iSnare is that for $2 per article you can have your articles distributed to hundreds, even thousands, of other websites and directories online, supercharging your article marketing efforts tremendously.
Article Markets For Everyone
Associated Content is not really an article directory. Associated Content is like an online magazine that gets its content from writers who submit it then get paid based on the number of views their articles attract. In order to benefit from this type of article marketing, you have to be a good writer and write about topics that are popular. The goal is not to drive traffic to your website or increase your website’s link popularity. It is to get paid, which is more like traditional freelance article writing.
Constant Content is in its own unique category. It’s more like an article broker. Article writers write their articles then offer them up for sale on Constant Content’s website. If you get a buyer, they will pay you for your article and Constant Content will take a small part of that payment as a commission for brokering the sale. Again, the focus is on something else entirely different.
Which Type Of Article Marketing
Is Right For You?
So which type of article marketing is right for you? Well, it depends on your goals. You can benefit from them all. If you want to promote your website or blog and use articles to drive traffic and increase the link popularity of those sites then the traditional article marketing route is for you. If you’d like to get paid for your articles then maybe you should market them through Associated Content or Constant Content. But I would not try to publish the same article through EzineArticles that I tried to publish through Associated Content or Constant Content. The two types of article marketing don’t mix well. The reason I say that is because a publisher is not going to want to purchase an article that you gave away for free on EzineArticles, and he may even get mad if he finds several other websites using your content for free. So you need to choose a route for your article - either free distribution or paid distribution and stick with it.
Nevertheless, either way you go, you can benefit from an article ghostwriter. You especially should use a professional ghostwriter if you want your article content to shine. If you don’t have the writing skills and you want to have your article published in the finest magazines for pay then you should definitely use a skilled article ghostwriter.
So there you have it, the difference between traditional article marketing and article freelancing, or article directories and article markets. Both have benefit, but don’t mix the two. Use them both in your marketing plan, but know the differences and know what they can each do for you.
Hire A Ghostwriter Today
By
allen on April 1st, 2008
Posted in Article Writing | 1 Comment »
“Traditional” writers don’t understand. They ask me, “How do you write that fast? Your articles can’t be that good.” The fact is, I write better articles than most writers who only write one article per hour and charge $50 for it. Here’s how I do it.
- I’ve got my list of keywords already planned
- I write all 10 articles on the same topic using related keywords for each article
- I do all of my research for all 10 articles at the same time
- I focus all of my writing energy at one time on those 10 articles
It’s a very simple recipe. I focus all of my energy on one task at a time. First comes the keyword research. Without keywords, it doesn’t matter how many articles you can write. You’ve got to choose your keywords and make sure they are relevant to your topic. After doing my keyword research, I pick the best keywords for my topic and decide which articles I’ll write with those keywords in mind. Then I do my research, targeting the research around the keywords that I’ve chosen.
I can do research for 10 articles in about 30 minutes using this formula. Much of the research that I’ll perform in any given area will be relevant to a handful of articles. Sometimes I can use the same information in several articles as long as I write about it differently enough and use different keywords so that the information and sources do not appear too similar. It’s easy if you know how.
After the research phase, I start writing. I can write a 500-700 word article in six minutes using keywords as anchors. I know beforehand how many keywords I need for each article. I just make sure that I sprinkle the keyword throughout the article without overdoing it and write a decent article about the topic. I can do that 10 times in one hour, and I’m betting my left arm you can too.
Get the lowdown on article ghostwriting at ACP
