As communication is the lifeblood of any relationship -business or personal- targeted traffic is the lifeblood of your business online.

Every part of your online business must be part of your strategic marketing plan.  It therefore means that for article marketing success, you must have a plan and a goal.  Your goal is to generate traffic to your website; your blog.

Your Plan

Rather than writing and sending directly to article directories, I recommend writing your article and posting it to your blog first. Even if you need to combine two posts or add an introduction and conclusion to your post to meet the desired length for the article directories, there are advantages to doing it this way:

1)  Your loyal readers and subscribers get to read firsthand what you’ve written.  They do this through (more…)

Recently someone communicated to me that he felt Article Marketing was not an effective marketing strategy for online marketers.  How about for those of us who are in Direct Sales?  Do you feel that Article Marketing can be an effective part of your marketing strategy?

It’s important to keep in mind that regardless of what type of business you’re in, as long as you are marketing on the Internet there are four basic things that all businesses need:

1.  Content Creation: This is the only way people will get to know what you do and what you have to offer.  Your blog should be your main home for your content.

2.  Traffic:  Traffic or readers are essential to our business.  We want to invite and encourage visitors to our website to read and comment on our posts.  At the same time we want to return the compliment by commenting on the blogs of fellow bloggers.

3.  List Building:  This takes traffic a step further because it’s a way to capture this traffic so that we can build a relationship with them and market to them.

4.  Product Creation: The goal for which everyone who markets online should strive is to create your own product.  If you are in Direct Sales, you realize that this means your own product, and not one that the company you market for produces.

All of the four basic needs mentioned above can be met through Article Marketing.  Let’s look at the first need:  Content Creation.

As noted previously your blog should be your main home or hub on the Internet.  Every time you write a blog post (more…)

As someone who is doing business on the Internet you recognize that the Internet provides lots of resources for people to get information quickly.  In addition, when someone is looking for something they want that information right away.  After all it’s been said that we live in a microwave generation where everyone wants everything NOW!

What this means for your business and mine is that we have to spend the time making sure that the information on our websites is current and relevant to the needs of people.  One of my Mentors, Connie Ragen Green,  makes the point that we have to give our readers what they want, not what we know they need.

The problem with all of this is that content creation takes a lot of time and it can be challenging to find topics and material that are relevant to what our readers are looking for. One solution is re-purposing or sometimes called recycling your content. This is a great time-saver (more…)

In my last post the focus was on making the best use of your time with blog posts.  Today we will look at utilizing our time effectively with articles, creating videos, and other product creation.

Points to note from comments received on the previous post:

(a) Do indepth research on a topic in one sitting

(b) Write a long article and then divide it into two or three blog posts

(c) Write a series on a topic you’ve researched

(d) Use templates or copy and paste your format.

Articles:

(i)  You can re-purpose your post by submitting it to your favorite article directories.  You will need to verify the acceptable minimum number of words as some article directories will accept as low as 250 words, whereas some will accept a minimum of 500 words, and at least one that I know of will not accept less than 700 words.

(ii) Because you have written a series or done research extensively on a specific topic, if your individual posts (more…)

A report can can give you a clear overview of your progress.  It can show you where you are, where you’ve been, and help you to decide where you want to or need to go so you can set your goals accordingly.

I received my first Monthly Article Performance Summary  for July 2010 from ezinearticles.com and this came at the perfect time, since I’ve decided to re-focus on Article Marketing as part of my concentrated marketing strategy for the next 6 months.

Features of the Report:

1.            It shows: (i) number of live articles submitted over ‘lifetime’ and for July 2010;  (ii) article views for the month and over the lifetime; (iii) clicks delivered for the month and over the lifetime.

2.            It also shows the Top 3 Performing Articles (Lifetime) and Top 3 Performing Articles for July 2010.

3.            The summary also gives the keywords and key phrases used to find the articles

Why are these important?  Because they are indicators of what topics readers may be looking for in the niches I write for and which keywords I should focus on for future articles.  The report will also be a way to measure my progress.  For example I submitted only two articles during July.  Since my goal is to focus on Article Marketing at the end of August I should have at least 8 articles submitted; based on two per week.

You may have set a goal for yourself to improve in a particular area of your business (more…)