I think that writing and marketing articles is a great way to get free publicity for your business.  If you haven’t looked into it before, you should.  The below is an interview with Christopher Knight, the founder of EzineArticles.com, one of the premier article publishing sites on the Internet.  Another article site you may want to check out is ArticleCity.

Guest Article:  From Scott Allen, Your Guide to Entrepreneurs at About.com

Christopher Knight is founder of EzineArticles.com, the Web’s largest community and content distribution system for articles by expert authors, with over two million monthly visitors. He is widely considered one of the top experts on the practice of “article marketing.” I got some time this week with Chris to get his perspectives on how entrepreneurs can best make use of article marketing to grow their business.

SA: I think the term “article marketing” is sufficiently self-explanatory, but if you want to have an actual meaningful strategy, rather than just kind of tossing out an article randomly every now and then, what does that consist of? What does a good article marketing plan strategy look like?

CK: There are two types of “Article Marketing” strategies that I see every day:

1. Intentional and consistent distribution of quality original articles every month to a small list of highly relevant publishers.  About 15% of the market does this.
2. Stab, stick and blast. In other words, they take a stab at writing articles without a plan, they stick it anywhere they think they should and when this doesn’t pay off in traffic attraction dividends, they blast it to everyone (relevant and not so relevant sites).

A good Article Marketing plan really depends on what the end-outcomes are . . . and how many qualified leads or qualified visitors an author or expert wishes to attract.

If a business person was serious about achieving results via article marketing or the distribution of quality original articles, they would write the content themselves or hire someone to write original articles that would be exclusive to them, meaning, no PLR (Private Label Rights) content. The articles would be 300-700 words and they would be distributed to two different select tiers of sites:  Tier 1, high traffic distribution sites such as ourselves and Tier 2, highly-relevant niche publishers that won’t have the same high-level of traffic as the first tier, but they will have a highly relevant and qualified visitor base to refer to the author.

For infopreneurs or consultants, the benefits of article marketing may be more readily obvious. What about other businesses? What if I’m, say, a restaurant owner, retailer, etc.?

Article writing and syndication or marketing can be applied to any industry, but it is true that there are a few industries that won’t benefit the same.

Example: A B2B highly complex multi-million dollar paper-machine manufacturer who wants to write about the inner workings of how their paper machines operate. It’s not that they couldn’t, but that their market normally expects white paper PDFs that go into great depth and detail that just can’t be done in a less than 500-word article format.

Another example: Anyone who needs to cite references or source material for their article . . . isn’t a good candidate for article marketing. You want to limit and control your exposure to risk and I’ve found that footnotes in an article are better left for article content that is not syndicated in full.

What if my business is local only? How can article marketing help me? And how can I get my article seen and re-published by local-oriented publications?

Restaurant owners and local retailers can benefit from article marketing, big time!

In fact, about six months ago I did research into how entrepreneurs/marketers could leverage the growing trend of localized search. The solution is to include your locality in the article title and near the top of the article and you’ll increase your chances of being found by those who are searching for localized content. This market is just getting started and is at the foothill of an emerging market that is only going to attract a larger audience.

Your chances of getting competitors from your industry to run your localized article content are pretty slim . . . so I’d recommend focusing on the intelligence of your article titles as they relate to what your local audience is searching for.

How does a service like EzineArticles differ from conventional web or print publications? What are the pros and cons of each approach, and can they work in complement to each other?

We’re quite a bit different than print publications because, in most cases, we don’t go very deep in any of the articles. This is not about writing a book and giving away all of our expertise, but rather Article Marketing or “educational marketing” is about offering a sliver of your expertise and a resource box at the end of each article to tell the reader how they can learn more if interested.

A major differentiator of article marketing vs. conventional print or web publications is in the level of syndication that accompanies the article content. The standing order in the conventional world is that no content is to be reprinted without written permission, whereas in the article marketing world, full reprint rights permission is granted for anyone to use the content provided the follow the reprint rules as outlined on the website.

Conventional non-syndication published content reaches the audience it was written for only in the time frame it was released while article marketing content takes on a viral nature and drives qualified visitors for many years to come.

The major con to article marketing is that a very small percentage of unscrupulous publishers will use your content without giving you proper credit or an active link in your resource box at the end of each article.  Our seven years in article marketing has taught us that the positive avalanche of traffic each author receives from article marketing activities far outweighs the losers who don’t follow the reprint rules terms of service.

Let’s say I’m not much of a writer myself. I’ve got good ideas, but just don’t know how to put them together effectively. Can I get help with that? And how much will it cost me?

If you want to be the originator of the content, then I’d recommend hiring a local college student with a journalism or similar major to help clean up, put in order, and organize your thoughts. Many can be hired for $6-$12/hr USD. Another option is that you could create an outline for yourself and then speak into a microphone for 15-20 minutes per article.

Transcription specialists charge about $40-$90 USD per hour to convert your MP3 to written transcripts that could be converted into excellent article marketing content.

You could also outsource the entire project to either an in-house part or full time editor/writer, or you could outsource to an article ghost writer. Expect to pay between $4 to $40 per article for quality original content, and make sure you get an exclusive right or license to use that content under your name or a pen name.

I’ve learned the hard way that publicity does not automatically equal lead generation. Do you have any tips on how to generate more leads from article marketing? In that regard, is it more important what you write, how often you write it, or where and how you distribute it?

Some short tips:

• The article headline will determine 90% of how much traffic and viral distribution your article will receive. Be sure to optimize this with relevant keywords that your potential reader will be searching for.
• Be sure to include at least two active URLs in your resource box and make sure they include the full http://your-company-name.com/ format instead of an anchored text link – this will maximize your ability to get active links back from publishers who reprint your content.
• 100 articles distributed to five sites or ezine publishers will normally produce far greater results than five articles sent to 100 sites.
• Consistency is key. You market or advertise your business every month, right? So why not write articles and distribute them monthly also?

How do I get started?

Identify the web publishers and/or ezine publishers who have an audience that you want to attract. Study their websites or ezines, read their editorial guidelines, check to see if they have an editorial calendar (to increase your chances of writing timely relevant content) and create an account with them to send in your first set of article submissions.

Of course, I’d invite you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to our high-traffic EzineArticles.com project. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links in tact, giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your articles, set up a free basic membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit.

 

Popularity: 5% [?]