How to Make Article Marketing Work For You

Information based marketing is one of the oldest and most effective techniques for bringingtargeted prospects to your site and converting them into buyers. This is part of the reasonthat software, and distribution services that make the process of article promotion easierare so popular lately.

Though the various tools you can use to make the process of distributing your articles moreeasily are invaluable in getting your content the most exposure, that’s only half of the story.

Getting article marketing to work for your site lies primarily in two things:

• The article you’re submitting, and• The preparation you do before a single word of your content is written.

Since those two determining factors make at least 50% of the difference in bringing yousuccess, let’s take a look at what the most common mistakes are in that area, and how toovercome them.

Mistake #1 - Confusing the Reason to Promote with Articles with the Reason to WriteArticles

There are three key benefits to promoting an article - branding, lead generation, and as acorollary, online promotion, particularly as part of your optimization efforts.

Yet there is only one reason to write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If yourarticle is not geared towards this as its primary purpose, you will fail to see the threebenefits of promotion - because no one will want to read your article.

How many links you’re able to generate by submitting your article to hundreds of sites willmatter little if you’re unable to get them picked up by publications, or read by people whosearch for information.

Sure, if you know what you’re doing all those links pointing back to your site will count forsomething in your search engine results - but remember that generating links to your site isonly one part of optimizing your site for Google, Yahoo or MSN.

To overcome this issue, you’ll need to figure out how to get people to read what is in yourarticle, and then click through to your site from your resource box. The best start to asolution is to produce better content.

In the end it’s a matter of choice. You can get a little exposure from increased link backs, ona very basic level, or enjoy massive exposure from a little extra work.

Mistake #2 - Starting The Article Promotion Process without a Plan

Not every article can fulfil all three purposes of promotion. Some will work better forbranding, others can generate leads and increase sales. But if you don’t start out with aplan for what the function of your article should be, you’ll end up unhappy with the results.

To overcome this issue, before you write a single word, decide what purpose the article issupposed to serve. An article meant to brand you as an expert should display yourknowledge. One for generating leads may need to be geared towards solving a very specificproblem.

An article that gets published every where and helps to make you known is not meant tohave the same level of exposure as hyper-targeted content geared towards a narrow groupof people. Learning the difference will help you know what kinds of articles to write.

Mistake #3- Publishing Content That Doesn’t Help Your Reader

Maybe you’re thinking: “All I want is links back to my site - any visitors the article generatesis gravy.”

Well guess what? Not all article banks and directories are going to accept your contentautomatically. You can double the number of sites you can submit to by writing articles thatthe directories want to share with readers. And all it takes is one publisher with a hundredthousand readers to increase your potential audience tenfold.

So if you want article marketing to work for you, write articles that publishers want in theirpublications.

This also means obeying the standard guidelines, running a spell check, researching a goodtopic to write about, or even hiring a writer to produce articles on your behalf.

Mistake #4 - Failing to Maximize the Promotional Opportunities of Article Marketing

You already know that articles marketing can help you generate additional links back toyour site. But did you know that you can get more visitors and better search engine resultsfrom articles in a variety of ways?

You can mention your desired keyword in strategic places, though you should take care notto overdo this. Some people will also tell you to make use of anchor text, which also is aneffective method. However, you should know that the majority of directories andpublications aren’t able to support this.

There are alternatives to this method that are just as effective, if not more so, but theyrequire more space to explain.

It’s not just about the links back to your site either. Part of doing well with article marketingis getting picked up by publishers with large audiences, or gaining the ability to leverageother brands due to the quality of your work.

Better search engine results are great.

But by themselves they don’t put money in your pocket - there are a myriad of factors thatcan turn your article marketing efforts into an opportunity to increase your income, not justthe number of visitors to your site.Tinu is a web site promotion specialist who writes about many differentways to get more visitors to your web site. If you want better search engineresults, more visitors and return traffic she invites you to take a freeeCourse on business blogging at http://www.freetraffictip.com/blogtraffic/ today!