By
allen on October 8th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Other Websites | No Comments »
You’ve heard that article marketing is a good way to market your business. But what should you promote with articles exactly? Well, I can only think of two things that you should promote with articles. Anything that falls into the realm of web property that you own and affiliate sites that you’ve joined, but there is a danger in one of those.
Under the Web property category, I see two types of properties:
- Static Websites
- Blogs
If you own the static website or blog then they are great properties for promoting through article marketing. Don’t hold back. Be aggressive.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, you can promote companies for which you are an affiliate through article marketing, but I would recommend setting up a landing page for that affiliate that you are trying to promote and capturing a list. If you promote your affiliate products directly and send traffic to companies you want to promote and someone makes a purchase, you’ll get a paycheck, but that is all. You won’t get any information that you can use for future marketing. Quite frankly, future marketing opportunities are a lot more valuable than one-time sales. Unless the company you are promoting has a lifetime commission on customers you send to them, you stand to lose out on future commissions if that customer makes other purchases.
A better way to promote your affiliates is to set up a landing page for each specific product or service you want to promote and drive traffic to those pages with your articles. That way, you can capture e-mail and contact information for future marketing efforts before the customer makes the purchase on the company’s website.
What NOT To Promote Through Articles
There are some things I would not promote through articles. Here are some things you do not want to promote through articles:
- Social Media Profiles
- Other Articles
- Websites Where You Hold A Membership
- Product Review Sites
- Pages That Feature Your Ads
- Any Property Owned By Someone Else No Matter What Benefit You Get
- Your offline business
You are always better off promoting your own properties with articles. The problem with promoting sites where you are a member or have set up a profile is this: Any time you ask people to click a link you will lose some of your audience. Not everyone will click the link. So your profile or membership page may link to your site or landing page, but you will be much less effective than if you link to the landing page directly from your articles. Fewer clicks for your target audience = greater effectiveness.
Another thing, you want to build link popularity for your properties, not someone else’s. If your articles link somewhere else then you are essentially pay that other company for your work. Even if you make a commission on sales, you are paying through link popularity benefits. Build those links for you, not someone else.
By
allen on August 29th, 2008
Posted in Article Directories, Article Marketing, Other Websites, Reputation Management | No Comments »
If you Google my name, you’ll find that there are more than 2 million search results for Allen Taylor. In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, I’d like to say that not all of them are me. There are thousands of people in the U.S. with my name. I’m just one of them.
But the interesting thing is that out of 10 page 1 results on Google, four of them are me. The No. 1 listing is my personal poetry blog. As a published poet who has been blogging daily for 11 1/2 months, I’ve got quite a following on this blog and I’ve managed to move it up to No. 1 for my name. Given that my name is a very common name, that’s a pretty good achievement.
In position No. 4 you’ll see our sister site, Blog Content Provider. No surprise since I am the manager of that side of our business.
Two steps down is my profile at EzineArticles, where I am an expert author. Though I do not have as many articles published at EA as I’d like, I’ve got enough there it seems that just by Googling my name you’ll find me there.
Fourthly, all the way down at the bottom of the line, is a link to an Internet radio show where I was interviewed by Belinda Subraman for creating my poetry toolbar.
On the next page you’ll find my StumbleUpon profile.
The Importance Of Reputation Management
I share all of this not to boast of my accomplishments, but to illustrate how important it is to do some reputation management on your name (as well as your corporate brand or small business identity) and to use social networking, article marketing, and blogging as search marketing tools. I use them all every day and you can see the results I get.
Now, will people search for my name? I think maybe some of them will. It depends on what they want to know.
As a published author and poet, potential publishers may want to know a little more about me. They’ll be able to find it easily. If I’m ever unemployed (God forbid) then future employers will want to do a background check on me. Employers are now Googling applicants’ names to see what they can find. Potential clients, too, might have an interest. They’ll want to know just who they are doing business with and if they find something they don’t like, it could be a deal killer. Or how about potential creditors? Hmmm?
All of this is to say that if you have not started your reputation management strategy yet, now is the time. Don’t just approach it from a single mindset. Articles are good; I recommend them. But don’t rely on them alone. Use a multi-tiered approach to SEM and reputation management and monitoring to move your personal name and your company brand to the top of the search results so that you promote yourself in a positive light and keep the reputation killers out of your field. You want to be in control of your own image - no matter what business you are in.
By
allen on August 28th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Audio Articles, Other Websites | 1 Comment »
When it comes to article marketing, there’s more than one way to get it done. Here are some ways to use your articles you likely have not thought of:
- Read your article into a digital recorder and upload it to your website as a podcast. Distribute it to podcast directories.
- Talk your article in front of a video camcorder and upload it to YouTube.
- After distributing your articles to your favorite article directories, start a Blogspot blog and use your articles to link back to your website.
- Start a Google Knol and use your articles, linking back to your site.
- Post your articles to a Squidoo lens or HubPage and link back to your website.
Article marketing doesn’t always have to be done through article directories. It pays to get creative.
By
allen on August 19th, 2008
Posted in Article Marketing, Other Websites | No Comments »
If you are a Twitter user then you might be interested to know that I now have my own Twitter account. Follow me.
Here’s a quick way to promote your articles on Twitter. Write the article and distribute it to your favorite article directories the way you do now. Then, in 140 characters or less (because that’s all you have on Twitter), promote it. All you have to say is something like this:
Cool article: (copy/paste permalink here).
If your permalink is so long that your message goes over 140 characters then you’ll have to shorten the message. I’ve gone so far as to simply say
Nice.
then listed the URL. That’s OK.
Twitter will automatically turn long URLs into short URLs. TinyURLs to be exact. But your message still needs to be 140 characters or less even with the long version of your URL.
I’m learning that Twitter is a cool promo tool. Of course, I’m just getting started. More Twitter tips (Twips?) are on the way.
Follow me on Twitter.
