The Four Points in Your Article Marketing Journey
When planning a journey it makes sense to map your route so that you save time and get the most rewards, perhaps a scenic route or one that allows you to visit friends along the way.
In Article Marketing there are different routes you could take to reach your destination, which is to bring your readers back to your home on the internet – your blog; but here are four points on your journey that can bring rewards quickly:
1. Starting Point - Your Blog: Some article marketers recommend writing your article first; however, I believe that it's better to start with the post on your blog. This is what I do and recommend. In my traffic post I highlighted several benefits of proceeding in this order.
2. Second Stop – Social Media – Twitter: There are different plug-ins available for WordPress blogs that allow your posts to be sent to Twitter automatically. Each time you publish a post, you'll want to make sure that your Followers are updated immediately. You may also do this manually with a direct tweet from the web or other software like Tweetmeme or Hootsuite.
Your Social Media stop would not be complete without notifying your Friends on Facebook and your network on LinkedIn. Software is available to make this process very easy so that all of these platforms can be connected. If Twitter is your starting point, your post will go out to the other platforms automatically. You can later go into each site and take it a step further by uploading a particular post that you feel can be of benefit to any Group/s you may be a part of.
3. Third Stop – Forums:  First, you want to become a member of two or three forums in your niche where you're allowed to create a signature. Some allow you a maximum of two lines with links as part of your signature. You could make one of those a link to your specific article. You may also be allowed to post a paragraph or two of your article and direct members back to your blog to read the rest.
4. Fourth Stop – Article Directories: Submit your post to your favorite article directory. Once it has been approved, submit it to other article directories. If you are new, start with free ones (and there are many). Later on you can submit to paid directories for more visibility. In your Resource Box at the foot of your articles, you'll want to make sure that one of your two links (you're allowed two on ezinearticles.com) take your readers back to your blog, and a specific, relevant blog post is even better.
When you do all of the above, you've completed the four points in your article marketing journey, and at each stop your goal is always to drive traffic back to your blog.
Please share with us if this order has worked for you, or if there is another route that works better.
Great points Yvonne! I use much the same route as you.
The only thing I think I could possibly add is a caveat on duplicate content. The search engines penalize duplicated content. If you submit to multiple article directories, it pays to change things up a bit. You can write a piece, then reword it two or three times to create new articles that say the same thing without using the same words and phrases. Thus you can capitalize on search engine traffic without duplicate content penalties.
1Great article. These are steps I’ve been following for several years now and they work very well.
2Thanks for mentioning those important points, Sandi. The issue of duplicate content seems to be so complex and confusing but to avoid any issues, I would agree that it’s best for writers to make these simple changes.
Many of us write in a more informal style on our blogs, so before submitting to the first article directory I’ll make some minor changes and revisions to make the article a little more formal, yet not stilted or hard to read.
Your comment enhanced the post, Sandi. Thank you.
3Jan, I appreciate that you shared that these steps have worked for you because as the author of over 500 articles on ezinearticles.com you do have a great deal of experience with the value of Article Marketing. Thank you.
4This is very helpful to me. I hear soooo many people say to post the article on ezinearticles.com first then after it is approved, it is okay to post it on the blog.
In theory that works but what about the hundreds of posts that are already on the blog. The answer I get regarding re-purposing the blog posts requires changing a certain percentage of the post content. When I ask what percentage, the responses vary greatly.
Since this system has worked for you, what do you suggest be done to my blog posts before submitting them to ezinearticles. The posts are 350-700 words.
Thanks for the guidance.
5Linette M. Daniels
http://EmpoweringYouthForSuccess.com
Hi Linette,
Thanks for reading the post and your questions. One of the first courses I took when I first came online in November 2008 was on Article Marketing and the presenter promoted the idea of posting to ezinearticles.com first. Since then I’ve learned from others and my own experience that there are many benefits to posting it to my blog first then the article directories and the other points in between.
You have a lot of valuable information on your blog and I see over 200 articles already on ezinearticles.com. What I’d suggest :
– Go through each post and make sure that you have a keyword-rich title using Google Keyword Tool External
– Some persons recommend changing the information about 20% prior to submitting to the article directory. I’ve done that, but I’ve also just changed the title to a more keyword-rich title
– Usually blog posts are written in a more informal style. If that’s true of you, you may want to remove or add phrases. I’ve seen pretty informal style writing in the article directories, but since your articles could be reprinted or used in other publications…
– I almost always add an introductory paragraph to the original post.
You are a fantastic writer, Linette, and I enjoy reading your posts.
6Yvonne