Author Archive for Bill Platt
Article Marketing Secret: Who Is Your Target Market?
Many people question as to what topic they should choose to write their articles… Fortunately, the short answer is simple… Write articles that appeal to your target market. But what does that mean exactly?
I always pose this set of three questions, when I am talking to clients about what they should write about:
- What do you sell?
- Who is most likely to buy what you are selling?
- How can you “answer a question” or “solve a problem” to help those people who are likely to buy what you are selling?
What Do You Sell?
Maybe you sell widgets, cell phones, car parts, or marketing services… It does not matter what you sell… There will always be a topic that you can write your articles about.
Do keep in mind that the point of article marketing is not to directly sell your products, but rather to educate, inform, or entertain your reading audience. So long as you stick to the idea of educating, informing, or entertaining your readers, you will never have a shortage of people who want to read the articles you write.
However, if you keep your focus on trying to overtly sell your products or services in your “article” copy, then it will be difficult to find publishers who WANT to publish what you have written.
This is important to note, in that publishers NEED content, but publishers tend to be very picky about the content that they want to share with their readers. In order for a publisher to become or remain profitable, he or she must always serve the desires of his or her readers. And readers do not want to be sold to, preached to, or criticized. Instead, readers want to improve their lot in this life and solve the problems that they face.
If you keep the needs of the publisher foremost in your mind, and the wants of the reader, then article marketing is a great tool that can help you to earn thousands of dollars.
If you lose focus of what publishers and readers want, then all you can hope for is a few links from your articles, from a few websites that very few people visit or read.
Who Is Most Likely To Buy What You Are Selling?
Just because you sell cars does not mean that anyone who has a drivers’ license is in your target market. Let us put this statement in perspective.
- If you sell $2000 cars, most of the people in your target market are the poor – including those in poverty and students.
- If you sell $10,000 cars, your market is mostly families in middle-class America. Occasionally, you will find the college kid coming to your store to buy a car for college, and sometimes you will see a bunch of tire kickers who can only pray to get financed.
- If you sell brand new cars, your target market will again differ by what kinds of vehicles you sell. A Cadillac-buyer is different from the SUV-buyer and the economy-car buyer.
There is not a car dealership anywhere in the world that tries to target its advertising to everybody with a pulse and a drivers’ license. It just does not happen. Either the dealership talks about its available cars and the benefits of owning a specific car, or the dealership points out that they can finance anyone.
Once you understand who is most likely to buy what you are selling, then figuring out what to write about has been made much easier.
Help Your Readers Solve A Problem
Before you start writing your article, you should try to get into the heads of the people most likely to buy what are selling. Those people as a general rule have common problems for which they seek solutions.
One way to get a handle on what those problems might be is to review the email correspondence and phone calls you have taken from your clients. If you read that email all at the same time, certain questions will be asked over and again. In fact, you might even have a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on your website that you can reference at this point in the brainstorming session.
Your email and phone correspondence and the FAQ page on your website can lead you to a better understanding of the kinds of questions your customers are always needing to be answered for them.
Once you have achieved the understanding of what problems your customers seek to have solved for them, then you have to come to the magic formula for writing articles that find wide publication and a large readership.
In your article, present your readers with the questions that people have, and then present answers to the questions and show people how to solve their problems.
In doing so, publishers who have heard the same questions you have heard will be strongly inclined to publish your articles. And when publishers agree to publish your articles, you will be able to reach the publishers’ readers and a huge network of already targeted people who are very likely to buy what you are selling.
Understanding The Mechanics Of Article Marketing
When you write your articles, it is important to remember a few key points while writing the articles. Those key points are:
- The title serves to get your article opened, so it needs to be good.
- The body of the article answers questions and sells readers on your credibility in the marketplace.
- The article should be easy to read, and it should easily carry the reader to your About The Author information at the end of the article.
- Once at your Resource Box (About the Author information), the role of the Resource Box is not to sell your products or services, but to get the reader to visit your website, where the real selling will take place.
Using the formula that I have outlined here, you are sure to find success with your article marketing endeavors.
Sure, I know some people might be thinking that the only reason for article marketing is building links, so all this extra effort would be unnecessary. But let me tell you something that I learn from time-to-time…
Did you know that if you write an article that gets published in a large newsletter that you can in fact earn $10,000 plus in sales from that single article? This is a lesson that I have learned more times than I can count. And to be honest, it is a lesson I like to learn.
Consider this… You can spend a few dollars and very little time to create an article that will generate a few back links, hopefully helping you to rank in the search engines for your target keywords. Or, you can spend a few more dollars and a little more time and create an article that could generate back links for the search engines AND find a wider audience for your article in newsletters – newsletters that could potentially deliver thousands of visitors to your website and generate thousands of dollars in sales in the next couple weeks. Which strategy makes more sense to you?
If you are wondering if I practice what I preach, then read this article again and then see my resource box below. I provide article distribution services to my customers, and my customers frequently ask me what they should write about in their articles and how to best construct those articles to reach a wider audience, and more specifically, their target audience. If I have answered these questions to your satisfaction, then visit my website and let me help you to promote your articles too.
About The Author
Bill Platt has been writing about article marketing and SEO for a number of years. If you have written an article that you feel is good enough to get publication in a major newsletter or website, then you owe it to yourself to use Bill’s article distribution service at http://www.thephantomwriters.com/ If you are interested in learning about coop article marketing, then visit Bill’s newest website: http://www.sponsorarticles.com/
Google Hates Cookie Cutter Systems
As a professional article marketer and someone very interested in winning the Google ranking game, i pay real close attention to what Google likes and dislikes. I pay attention to their mouthpiece Google Guy, Matt Cutts says; I read Google’s blogs; and I read blog posts and news stories posted about Google.
As with any industry, it is important to be well read and open to all viewpoints relative to the work you are doing. When one is interested in getting good google rankings, it is generally very wise to absorb everything that can be learned about the inner-workings of Google. In gaining knowledge about your industry and your adversaries, you are better prepared to meet the challenges you will face.
Article marketing is a promotional method that when used well, is a very powerful tool in the search engine ranking challenge. There are of course right ways and wrong ways to use article marketing to build traffic to your website and to improve your website’s ranking in Google‘s search results pages (SERPs).
But, when one takes the time to work article marketing in the way that is was first developed, then the sky is the limit. The way article marketing was designed was to create content that people would want to publish, and then to give people the right to publish it for free, provided a bio and link is given back to the author of the article.
From the inception of Google (the college thesis that explained how Google would produce better search results), the focus has always been on organic inbound links to a website. From the beginning, the founders of Google knew that a website should be ranked according to how many people create links to it, and the ranking should take into account the quality of the page presenting the links.
When done correctly, article marketing can generate links from websites of all sizes, from around the world. When your work impresses its readers, you can find your articles translated to Italian, Russian, German, and many other languages. How much did it cost me to get my articles translated into these other languages? Not a dime. The people who did the translation liked the content so much, that they did the translation for me for free, just so that they could share my message with their readers!
Your articles will end up on domains from around the world and .ORG, .NET, .EDU, all from websites of various topics and sizes, and from webistes in dozens of different countries including the UK and the Philippines. Some sites that will print your articles have hundreds of thousands of articles on every topic, while others have two dozen pages on just a few specific topics. You may even find your articles on College Websites that have dot com domain names.
When you write great articles, people of every class, race, location, business model, and domain type and location will publish your articles, as demonstrated by the links in the above paragraphs.
I truly believe that this is what Google wants to see, when they see us using article marketing as a link building procedure. They want to see your articles published a little bit of everywhere. When they see that, then they know that what you write has value in the eyes of many, so therefore, the links from your articles deserve to be given real merit. I wrote another article that described this in much greater detail, as seen here and on dozens of other websites.
Some people are willing to argue that article marketing is a promotional method looked down upon by Google, as described here. But frequently the people making this argument are the ones who make a half-assed attempt at article marketing, and when they have done their article marketing badly or in a lazy way, they prefer to blame the technique, rather than to look in the mirror for blame.
The people who have “bad luck” with article marketing are frequently those who either write really bad articles, with poor grammar or no real value for the reader, they use some cookie-cutter system to distribute their articles, or a combination of both.
Cookie-cutter article distribution systems are those that send all of the articles they distribution to exactly the same websites, every time they process an article. When the article is cookie-cutter distributed and the article has no real value to its readers, then every article by that author will have the exact same footprint in the linking portfolio as the next article. Google has always complained about and tried to wipe out the value of any cookie-cutter linking system.
Over the years Google has been successful at wiping out many cookie-cutter link building systems. Do you remember the FFA craze (Free-For-All pages)? It doesn’t work anymore. Do you remember those “paid link” services? Most of those offer no search ranking value anymore. Do you remember those paid blog post services? Yep. We have been advised against those too.
I believe that cookie-cutter article distribution services are coming to the same end, if they have not already lost their value in the algorithms of Google.
Does that mean that since I own an article distribution service that I am quaking in my shoes? No – I am not worried. Why? Because my article distribution service has NEVER been a cookie-cutter service. By design, we do not force feed articles to article directories. (If you want your articles placed in article directories, then we suggest you also use Isnare.com in addition to our service.)
Our article distribution processes rely entirely upon the publishers’ democracy of choice. When one puts an article into an article directory, one must hope that a web publisher happens to be browsing the article directory where your article is published. In our approach, we strive to send your articles directly to the publishers / webmasters who are most likely to want to publish your articles.
We have established long-running relationships with publishers going back to 2001, and we are recognized as a company that consistently sends its publishers the most appropriate content to meet their desires. We have been complemented frequently for only sending content to publishers that they want to reproduce.
Because we hand select which publishers / webmasters we feel would appreciate receiving and publishing your articles, no two articles will have the exact same footprint in the algorithms of Google or any other search engine.
If you want to rely upon a cookie-cutter system for the distribution of your articles, then that will be your choice to do. But, if you are looking to also use a non-cookie-cutter article distribution service, then you should seriously consider also using The Phantom Writers for your article distributions.
.
My name is Bill Platt and I would be happy to serve you for your article distribution needs. I have owned and operated ThePhantomWriters.com since its inception in 2001. I also operate the Links And Traffic Pay-For-Ranking Organic Link Building Service.
You Know… If You Can Speak It, You Can Write It
So often, I hear people say that they do not have the talent or skill to write their own articles. Yet, they speak the English language fluently and can convey a message in a way that not only makes sense, but it is also very convincing.
People seem to make the mistake of believing that writing is somehow different than speaking. It is not.
Where most people make their mistake when trying to write is that they seem to think they need to add a bunch of fancy words to their written words, but it just ain’t so. (smile)
If you write exactly as you speak, then you can be a writer too.
If you can organize your thoughts in such a way as to convey a message to another, then you can be a good writer.
Even if you can’t spell, Microsoft Word and many other applications have built in spell-check. Use the software with the Spell-Checker and you can be sure to sound like you actually can spell.
The worst case scenario should be for you to do your own writing, and then ask someone to edit your work for you.
In the end, the only reason you should consider having someone else do your writing for you would be because you don’t have the time to do it yourself, or you find yourself constantly at odds with writer’s block, unable to decide what story to tell.
If you decide that you simply need or would prefer someone else to do your writing for you, then consider hiring the ghost writers that you can find at both http://www.articlecontentprovider.com and http://www.thephantomwriters.com . These two companies are competitors, but their owners are friends. Both could do you a nice job if you are interested in having someone do your writing for you.
Bill Platt, Stillwater, Oklahoma
Read more of what Bill has to say, by tuning into his other blogs: Karma SEO Blog or The Phantom Writers Blog.
Geraldo Rivera Can Teach You A Lot About Article Marketing
Haha! I got you to read this post didn’t I? But really, Geraldo Rivera can teach you something about article marketing… He can teach you “what not to do”.
I don’t know if you took the opportunity to follow the Hurricane Coverage on Fox News or not, but I did. Everytime I watch Geraldo, I am torn between trying to appreciate what he does right, cringing at his commentary, screaming at my TV when he is being a moron, and frankly, being embarrassed for the poor folks he interviews sometimes.
Today’s “Geraldo At Large” program was one that left me embarrassed for Billy (the Corp of Engineers fellow who dove into the Industrial Canal to retrieve the diesel tank floating in the canal at the height of the storm).
Geraldo was simply gushing about how Billy was the newest superhero, while Billy tried to play down his comments. Geraldo talked too much, as usual, and he tooted horns to the point of utter embarrassment, suggesting that he would recommend to President Bush that Billy be given a medal by the President.
The lessons are two-fold.
One, when your audience is too embarrassed to keep paying attention, then you have gone too far. Your audience should never squirm to read what you have written or to listen to what you say. There comes a time in every article where the best thing you can do is to shut up.
Two, no one wants to hear you toot your own horn for the entirety of your presentation, as Geraldo is always quick to do.
The third lesson has nothing at all to do with article marketing. The third lesson is that if you have any sense at all or any fear at all, then you should say “no”, when Geraldo asks you to be his guide or camera man or anything else. Did you see how he sent his camera man right to the edge of the canal, when water was blowing heavily over the wall? OMG. I feel for his support team… That guy is flat nuts! It is one thing when he is a danger to himself in the field, but he pushes his crew into the danger zone far too often.
—
Bill Platt
P.S. Read some of Bill’s other blogs at: Karma SEO and The Phantom Writers Article Marketing Blog.
Micro Business Owners and the Annual August Downturn in Online Sales
Historically, August has always been a slow month for online marketers. I look at my own businesses and historically in 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004, my wife was always on edge thinking I need to quit my online business and get a job. But in every year, September is also my bounce back month. By the middle of September, my wife forgets about all of the “job” talk.
In 2007, I learned something that may be of interest to you. All of my businesses took a sales down-turn in March of 2007 and bounced significantly in September of 2007. In October, it was reported that “consumer sales” had dipped from March to September of 2007.
You know I had never thought of my business as a business driven by “consumer demand”. I had always thought of my business as a business-to-business (B2B) provider. Since I sell services that other businesses use to promote themselves, why would my business be “consumer-driven”? But now it all makes sense.
Most of my customers have daytime jobs, and they work their online businesses on a part-time basis. My customers are small business owners, but many are “micro business owners” or one-person, part-time operations.
People who work a business part-time from home, are people who still have jobs and are swayed by factors in the “consumer market”.
2007 was defined as a down-turn, and 2008 is frightful. When gasoline prices passed $3 per gallon and kept on climbing, the writing was on the wall. People currently have less spending money than they did during the 2007 downturn. As a result, “micro business owners” are struggling to figure out how they can pay for the advertising services they need for their business. (Tips for Improving Gas Mileage)
Article Marketing is important for many businesses, as it is a method to provide large numbers of inbound links to the Author’s website. Links are the tools that drive new visitors to websites of interest.
When I first started in my online business, I was also one of the “micro business owners”. I struck on a concept that changed my life and my financial future. I had an online newsletter. I created a new issue on a weekly basis. Many people republished the information contained in my newsletter in other newsletters and on various websites. (It was good information that many people appreciated having access to.) One day I was searching on a search engine to figure out how my website ranked for the keywords important to my newsletter subscribers.
I realized that although my website was not on Page One of the search results, information that I had created was in 6 of the Top Ten spots in the search results.
I suddenly realized that it did not matter if my website was in the number one spot or not. What mattered most was if people who linked to me were in the the top spots in the search results. This way, I did not have to spend all of my time trying to optimize my website for the search engines. I could simply provide my content to people who had already been optimized for the search engines, and they could provide a link to me.
For example, if you go to Google and type in the search term “article marketing”, I am not on page one or two of the search results for that keyword phrase. I am actually on page three of the results in spot #24. But the website which firmly holds the #1 spot in Google for “article marketing” is a web page that links to my website!
It is not always important for me to be ranked on page one of the search results, but if the folks on page one link to me, and people continue to see my name in connection with the top results in the search engines, then people will start to notice me and remember my name.
See the trick of article marketing is to get your articles in the top results for relative keywords, when your articles link back to your website. If you are not in page one of the search results on a specific keyword phrase, you can actually accomplish page one results with your articles.
Here is another example. I wrote an interesting article one time that got a lot of publication in high-powered websites. The article was talking about one’s “SEO Linking Portfolio” and was published in SEO-News.com, among other reputable websites. If you do a search in google on the search term “linking portfolio”, you will find that although my website does not rank for that keyword phrase, links to my article hold three spots in the top five search results.
My website does not rank well for “linking portfolio”, but that is okay. It is not a term that will make or break my business, but in the same breath, it is a key term that may be important to the people most likely to buy my services.
That is one of the keys to successful article marketing: write content that may be important to the people most likely to buy your products or services.
While August is typically a down-month for online businesses, it is also an ideal time to develop new content leading into the sales growth cycle of the fall and winter.
Gas prices are still high, so people are not buying much now. But it is also the month people have to buy school supplies for their children. That is the primary reason why August is typically a slow month. Any business that caters to the “consumer market” has to deal with the reduced money availability as parents are spending money on school supplies and school clothes.
But, if you take the opportunity to get ahead of the pack, you can have new content going out onto the internet while other people are starting the content creation process. If you were to make the investment in your content creation in August, you could find yourself light-years ahead of your competition as they begin to think about gearing up for the Christmas season.
Bill Platt – owner of The Phantom Writers
