All Entries Tagged With: "blogging"

Use Articles To Promote Your Blog, Website, Or Both?

If you have a blog and a website, which one should you promote with your articles? It’s a good question and one for which there is no easy answer. Rather than answer it outright, I’m going to take a more principled approach.

What you should really promote with your articles is the page where you want your customers to go to make a purchase. If that is your blog then promote your blog. If it is your website then send your traffic to your website. But you should make it easy for your customers to buy something and cut down on the number of clicks that get them to the end goal.

If you are using articles for lead generation purposes then send your readers to your opt-in page or the page where you capture their contact information. If you selling a product and you want to use articles to drive traffic to your sales page, landing page, or order form then send them directly to the place you want them to go to close the sale. If you are a service business and you use your blog as a marketing tool while your website closes sales, you have to decide whether you want article readers to go straight to your sales closing page or your blog for more information. Bottom line: You need to create a marketing funnel and get your article readers into the loop the quickest way possible. Define the funnel first, then start pouring traffic through the top of it.

Attention Article Directory Owners:
Partner With Us

If you are an article directory owner, we’d like to partner with you. I’m not talking about some cheap here today, gone tomorrow partnership. I’m talking about a real live long-lasting partnership. Something that will be mutually beneficial and not require too much commitment on your part. We know your time is valuable and you are busy.

First, know that Article Content Provider is run by well known, knowledgeable, and competent article marketers. Chris McElroy aka NameCritic, the CEO of the company, has been involved in Internet marketing since 1995. He is well known among members of ICANN and frequently addresses issues of importance with ICANN and other Internet issues. He has so many websites that he doesn’t know what to do with them all and is giving some of them away, but he still finds time for article marketing.

Allen Taylor is the operations manager for the NameCritic family of websites and runs Blog Content Provider. Allen (that’s me) is an expert organizer and manager with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a background in creative writing, professional business writing and journalism.

Article Content Provider is managed by Allen’s wife, Theresa Taylor, is the only one among us with a marketing degree. She spent five years at IBM working with small businesses in IBMs small business partnership division. She knows the article marketing process backwards and forwards and deals with all of our clients regarding their article marketing needs.

In addition to the three of us, we employ many freelance article writers who assist us in the daily activities of writing and distributing articles for our clients.

What Kind Of Partnership Are You
Thinking About, Allen?
Good question.

I’m a firm believer in partnerships. Before I hooked up with Chris to run his business, I was a struggling freelance writer making ends meet by bidding jobs big enough that only I could handle. But since Chris and I have teamed up together we have found that both of us can do more than either of us could do single handedly before we met. Many of the jobs we now get are so big that there is no way that either of us could handle them on our own and we find it challenging sometimes to do it together, if you can forgive the honesty. Still, we love what we do.

Let me assure you that the partnership we want to establish with you will not require a huge time or money commitment on your part. We would ask you to help us write our blog – a simple guest appearance once a week is enough. We will even link to your directory from this blog for helping us create unique content. Your expertise in article marketing would be a welcome addition.

But that’s not the extent of how we want to partner with you. That’s just one way. If you’ll take the time to contact us through our contact form and let us know you are responding to this blog post, we’ll get back with you privately to discuss the details. Please give us a phone number and an e-mail. Thank you.

Can Articles Be Used For
Non-Targeted Marketing?

Blog Content Provider wrote a post today about using your blog to blog outside of your niche and engaging in a little untargeted marketing. Can you do the same thing with articles?

Generally, no. Articles are the perfect targeted marketing tool, but I wouldn’t recommend you use them for untargeted marketing. The very nature of article marketing is to use it as a targeted marketing tool.

The reasoning behind this is very simple. Articles rely on the use of keywords to achieve high search engine rankings. Based on those keywords you’ll attract the target audience you want to reach. You then drive them to your website with links in your author bio. If you write about non-niche topics then you’ll attract people looking for information on whatever it is you are writing about. They won’t be interested in your niche. You’ll essentially be wasting your time.

A blog is different, though. With an article, it’s a one-time shot. An article is one page and one topic. A blog can attract people in a non-niche area to read what you have to say in a few words then, if you interest them, they may stick around to read another blog post. Either they’re interested in your niche or not. If not then they’ll leave an no harm is done. They at least got a good read on one post while they were there. But if your blog actually covers a topic that they do have an interest in then they could stick around to read more blog posts or subscribe to your blog. They’re already on your website. Since articles are found somewhere other than your website, there is no incentive to visit your site if it’s about something other than what your article is about. You’ll waste your time and your readers’ time.

Learn more about article marketing from an article marketing consultant.

Reputation Management: The Importance
Of A Multi-Tiered Approach

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.

Article Vs. Blogs: Which Are Better For Building Links?

Back before RSS and before blogging became popular, savvy Internet marketers wrote articles and published them online to drive traffic to their websites. Article directories sprung up to give Web publishers a place to publish their articles so that they could have them distributed to other webmasters and e-zine publishers in the same niche area. Many a successful webmaster relied on article marketing for traffic and sales. It worked.

Then blogging came along. Now, the hottest item on the planet is a company blog. Everybody, it seems, wants one. I still think there is a lot of room for growth in the business blog arena, but you don’t hear too many companies new to Internet marketing talking about article marketing. They all want a company blog instead. Does that mean blogging is better?

I don’t think so. I think the best online marketing plan for most businesses includes at least one company blog and a consistent plan for article marketing and distribution. Just how many articles you need to publish every month may be different for every company, but I’d say at least one or two articles per week is right for most companies. And that should be done in conjunction with blogging.

When it comes to blogging and articles, it isn’t a matter of which one is better for your business. It’s really all about how much of each is the right combination.