10 Ways Article Writing Can Stack the Deck in Your Favor
I was talking with a email coaching client about some ways to shortcut the challenges of article writing. And then it occurred to me that I hadn’t really laid out the benefits of article writing. There was no “so what” to it. Anyway, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at why this is STILL one of the most beneficial, powerful and profitable ways to market your business online.
1. Generates Traffic That Can’t Be Turned Off
By writing and submitting articles to other sites, over time you’re creating a source of website traffic that can’t be turned off (unless ALL of those sites happen to go away…unlikely). If you’re currently getting most of your web traffic from a single source (Google, Stumbleupon, AdWords, etc.), what would happen if that source of traffic dried up? If Google de-indexed you or your rankings dropped? If the AdWords costs became too much? You get the point. Writing articles helps hedge against some of those low-likelihood, high-impact scenarios.
2. Can Be Repurposed Into Other Formats
This is one that a lot of people overlook. If you have a really well-written article, it could become the basis for a whole series of other products in a variety of formats. This is especially true if you tend to write “tips” articles.
For instance, say you have an article on 21 traffic generation tips. In addition to that being a killer article for your site, you could easily create a CD out of that info and go into more detail. Same goes for a quick Camtasia video or DVD on the subject, maybe showing more of a step-by-step guide to what was discussed in the article. How about a teleseminar that’s recorded and offered as a freebie to build your list? How about an EBook, or “real book”? If you can get into a bit more detail, you can repurpose that same content into any number of formats…all from one simple, little article.
3. Establishes Your Expertise
We all know that one of the (irrational) measuring sticks we use regarding “experts” is that a lot of us give more credibility to someone who has written a book. I would argue that the same holds true, in a more limited sense, when it comes to article writers. Maybe not if someone just wrote a handful of articles on a subject. But if you come across an entire website or blog full of articles written by someone about a particular topic, chances are you’ll be more inclined to pay attention.
So flip that around…by having your own articles, you’re establishing your expertise, showing that you know what you’re talking about. It also forces you to synthesize all the info in your head into a concise, usable format. That makes you even more knowledgeable about your area of expertise since it forces you to do some “critical thinking” about your topic.
4. Helps Maintain Contact With Your Visitors, Subscribers, and Customers
Writing articles for submission to other webmasters (or as posts to your own website) not only helps you get new visitors, subscribers and customers but also helps you keep in contact with them. That’s key since online, it’s so easy to click off to someplace else and never go back to that page again. Maintaining contact and giving them a reason to return is one way to guard against that.
5. Can Educate Your Visitors or Customers (Pre- or Post-Sale)
If you create your own products or offer affiliate products, more than likely you’ll have a set of frequently asked questions that your customers or website visitors ask. Those can be a great basis for an article. Not only is it valuable content that people are wondering about, but it can also reduce your support requests since those answers are already covered. You can just refer people to the FAQ. In addition, an educated customer is usually a better customer.
6. Makes Info Easy For People to Digest and Use
Articles are typically short and are easy for people to take in. Some topics call for more in-depth info…a special report or book might be more appropriate to cover things in detail. But an article can serve as a great way to give an overview for people to get the basics or as a quick refresher for a specific topic. It’s something they can take in quickly and move on, but if done correctly, they’ll be back for more.
7. Increases Backlinks / SEO Benefits
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that articles on other sites can also lead to backlinks pointing to your site. No need for a drawn out discussion of the search engine optimization benefits here, but to oversimplify it, more links are generally better and articles are one way to get them. However, that shouldn’t be your main focus for writing them.
8. If Done Correctly, Provides Good Bang for the Buck for Your Time
Using the right software, such as Unique Article Marketing, you can really get the most out of your time by writing articles for submission to publishers, article directories (if you choose to submit there) and your own site all at once. Other software allows you to mass-submit as well, but they typically don’t get around the duplicate content issues that Unique Article Marketing solves. There’s nothing stopping you from adding your own email address(es) to your external publishers list. That way, you get sent a unique, “Unique-ified” article too…perfect for your blog, newsletter, etc.
9. Gets You Noticed Within Your Target Market
Having your articles appearing on sites throughout your market helps get your name out there. I won’t get into a debate on the merits of personal branding, but no one can argue the benefits of being recognized in your particular market. Such exposure could lead to JV’s or other partnerships or just general networking and building contacts.
10. Can Lead to Other Article/Product Ideas
Another one that people overlook. Most likely, as you’re writing your article(s), you’ll come up with ideas for other topics to write about, or ideas for how you could go into more detail on a specific point you’re trying to make. That can lead to another great article idea and helps get over the writer’s block that many of us face when trying to come up with fresh content. Just be sure to capture those ideas somewhere, like creating a list of article topics to write about.
17 Responses to “10 Ways Article Writing Can Stack the Deck in Your Favor”
[...] Newby presents 10 Ways Article Writing Can Stack the Deck in Your Favor posted at [...]
Hi Kenton,
I have a question for you about Article Marketing.
How often do you submit articles pointing to your blog or sales pages using Artemis Pro? What have you found has been most effective: Every day? Every other day? Every week?
Just curious about your frequency since your blog seems to be doing very well.
Great content!
Thanks,
James Lee
James,
That’s a great question. Actually, I’ve been having problems lately with Artemis Pro and my ISP not sending emails. I’m still trying to troubleshoot things and see if I can get it working…already tried Postcast and another solution with no luck.
That said, consider the fact that with Artemis, you’re submitting articles to REAL publishers via email, versus dumping them in an article directory. How many emails like that would YOU want to get from the same person?
I’ll caveat this by saying that I haven’t tested it yet, but I’d probably only send Artemis articles 2 or 3 times a week…MAX! And probably more like 2 times.
Also, keep in mind that because of the way Artemis Pro works, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t also add a couple of email addresses to your external list that send articles to yourself. Then you can add stuff to article directories that’s also unique.
Just create additional email addresses like ezinearticles@yourdomain.com, isnare@yourdomain.com, etc. Then you’ll have additional articles you can use on those sites too…or your own blog….or in your autoresponder…and so on. May as well get the best bang for the buck out of it, right?
~Kenton Newby
Oh, and thanks for the feedback about the content you’re finding here James. I really appreciate that.
~Kenton Newby
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I run an article site and I’d say the frequency can kill you. Think quality instead.
I say this because I have a few people that submit about 100 articles every day but and I don’t take them seriously any more.
It’s always the same stuff regurgitated over and over.
On the other hand there are people that submit one or two *well written* articles a week and I always look forward to their articles because I know that their pages will rank well on the engines and will eventually get some google PR and traffic.
So, when writing articles spend some time on them, give some unique info and you’ll be rewarded.
Think quality.
forgot to add, mine was a reply to James Lee
We used to do a lot of article marketing. Mostly submission to article directories. From some of my early works I can see a huge number of backlinks and some of the subjects I wrote on which had not been talked about online at least became popular subjects.
But in the last few years I don’t see our articles getting picked up except by a few sites that seem to publish everything. I suppose this is due to the spammers filling the directories with the same old regurgitant. Is that your opinion too and does this Artemis Pro get around that. I’ve never heard of it before.
Thanks
Phil
Phil,
The spam thing is definitely an issue with articles. Most of the articles I submit to directories that get put on other sites end up on spam sites. The traffic that results from those articles is mostly from the directories themselves. Since only a few of those directories get decent traffic, I limit the ones I submit to.
Regarding Artemis Pro, I had problems with this software since it uses your ISP to send emails to publishers in your list. Many ISP block mass mailings because of spam. I updated the post with a new solution (www.uniquearticlemarketing.com).
It’s based on phpList, runs on your own server, allows you to send to any number of publishers, lets you schedule mailings ahead of time and a bunch more stuff. It’s free, but you have to sign up for the guy’s email list. But not to worry. I’m on it and he’s a pretty stand up guy…doesn’t blast you with umpteen offers per week, a bunch of affiliate stuff and so on.
I suggest giving that one a shot.
Kenton
The main reason to post articles in my mind is that they give you backlinks to your site. Most article sites have a resources box where they allow you to drop 3 related links about the article. These links are “follow” links. If you use that as a chance to target keywords, then you are onto a winner. i.e. write an article about email coaching, then link to your post on email coaching, using “email coaching service” or whatever word you want to rank in Google for….then bobs your uncle…a backlink from a high authority site.
Articles are not as effective as they used to be. So we have replaced our articles campaign with a different campaign that is working really well. However, I do wish that Articles served the purpose that they could have (if they were not overly used by the SEO community.) Create a level of dialog in the SEO community but in a peer review sense.