All Entries Tagged With: "original content"
Interviewing As Article Marketing
People love interviews. Especially celebrity interviews. If you have any ability at all to carry on a conversation, all you have to do is contact a celebrity in your field and conduct an interview. Then publish that interview on your blog and as an article in your favorite article directories.
Carl Ocab, the most famous child blogger online, recently conducted a Twitterview – that’s an interview on Twitter. Twitter makes access to celebrities so much easier. All you have to do is find the celebs in your industry and follow them. Retweet their tweets. Respond to their tweets. And connect with them online. When the time is right, send a polite DM and ask for an interview. You can conduct the interview over Twitter like Carl Ocab did or do it through e-mail. Whatever works for you.
The next step, after conducting the interview, is to blog about it. Post the interview on your blog. That will get you immediate attention for your exclusive celebrity interview.
Next, take your interview and turn it into a 300-500 word article. In most cases you can run the interview just as it is. But I’d recommend writing a paragraph introduction that is unique to the article along with another paragraph summary at the end – again, the summary should be unique to the article. Then submit that article to about 10 article directories.
The benefit here is other publishers get access to your exclusive interview to use on their web properties. Since people love interviews with celebrities, you should have no problem getting it picked up by several publishers who will send a link back to you. There will be no duplicate content issues since you are distributing the interview through article directories, but you published it first on your blog so if there was any issue then Google knows that you were the first. All you’re looking for is the link value in re-publishing.
Article marketing allows you to give other publishers an opportunity to repurpose your original content according to your rules. It works like a charm.
My recommendation to Carl Ocab: Repurpose the Twitterview as an article and distribute it through article directories.
Should You Use An Article Template?
Article templates are nothing more than a quick way to ensure that you get the right amount of information in each article you write. If you stick to basic principles, you should be able to write any article without a template, but an article template can keep a new writer or new article marketer on track. I would, however, stear clear of any type of boilerplate text as suggested by one blogger.
Boilerplate text is designed to provide simple “copy and paste” versions of text which is easily edited and manipulated into your article. When you open an article template, all the boilerplate text is ready to use.
If you do article marketing that way then your articles will be written sub-par. You don’t want to use the same text over and over again or rehash text from previous articles. Readers will know that’s what you are doing and not want to read your articles. Instead, create a template that is the length of an article that you know will be accepted by any article directory and that has all the features necessary for article submission. Each time you write an article, pull out your template and include the same bit of information but original text.
Original content always wins out over boilerplate copy/paste rehashes. That’s a sure way to kill your article marketing.
Kill Duplicate Content Before It Kills Your Business
EzineArticles is light years ahead of most article directories today, but I do believe that there will be a fall out in the the number of article directories in the next 2-3 years. One of the things that EzineArticles has done that will up the ante for all article directories in the near future is to adopt search engine-like qualities that allow it to filter out duplicate content. The EA duplicate content filter allows EzineArticles to identify content that may be duplicated or recycled PLR articles or derivative of other works and the EA staff can decide whether to accept or decline them.
I think this is a great system. It’s good for the directory, but it’s also good for the article authors and marketers who use the system. Even more importantly, it’s good for publishers who look in the article directories for content to use on their websites and in their e-zines. I believe that article directories that wish to remain competitive will have to adopt similar algorithms and keep out the duplicate content.
When it comes to article content, EzineArticles CEO Christopher Knight hits the nail on the head when he says this:
Read This Tip A Few Times Please: The absolute best way to beat duplicate content filters is to create unique article content in the first place!
What this means for article marketers is PLR will die. That’s something to cheer for. If you want to ensure that your articles are accepted by reputable article directories, picked up by reputable publishers, and read by targeted consumers then the best way to do that is to write the best unique, original content for your niche possible. If you can’t that on your own, who are you gonna call? Try a ghostwriter. Original content is our business.
