An Article Marketing Guide

Article marketing is a great way to promote a product, service, website or blog. The name says it all: article marketing means marketing yourself with articles and it’s easy to do if you know how. Here’s how to create a good article marketing article.

The Title

The title of your article is the most important part, because that’s what will grab the reader. The golden rule is to tell readers what the article offers and tell them quickly - within the first three or four words if possible. If you’re writing about buying a second home, then use this:

Buying A Second Home: Five Tips For Success

rather than this:

Five Tips For Success When Buying A Second Home

The first tells readers straight away what they will get from your article; the second focuses on the number of tips.

The Body

Article marketing articles are used on websites and blogs, so follow the rules for writing good web articles. Put the most important information at the top, keep sentences and paragraphs short and make good use of subheadings. And if you promise five tips, make sure that’s what you deliver.

I usually start with a rough plan which outlines my main points and then I expand on each of those points in a single paragraph. I don’t make these too long, as the average article marketing article is between 250 and 500 words long.

The Resource Box

The resource box is where you get to sell your product or service. It needs to contain your name, the address of your website, your elevator pitch and a call to action. The elevator pitch is a couple of sentences that say what you have to offer. It briefly answers the question ‘what’s in it for the reader?’ The call to action aims to get readers to your site to buy, join, signup or whatever you want them to do.

Other Important Information

Once you have completed the article, write a summary of between two and five sentences to hook the reader. This may be a repeat of the lead or something completely different that points out what the article has to offer. If you like, include an invitation to the reader to read on. Finally, craft an author bio that shows your expertise and you’re ready to submit your article.

Where To Submit

There are hundreds of article directories, so the choice can be daunting. Some of the best ones I’ve used are:

There may also be article directories specific to the niche you want to target, which may be a better option for some people. Once you have written the first article, it’s easy to write more. I have more than 40 articles on EzineArticles and they bring traffic to my site and serve as examples of my writing. Good luck with your article marketing efforts.

Sharon on October 2, 2008 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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15 Responses to “An Article Marketing Guide”

Saurabh on October 2nd, 2008 2:35 pm

OK! Nice tips, will take care of that.
jennifer on October 2nd, 2008 5:21 pm

Thank you for this post!!

My Web site is about to drop beta in a couple weeks, and I’ve been looking for ideas for marketing the site to business and HR professionals. Now I have one!

Thanks again!
Michael on October 3rd, 2008 2:35 am

As Sharon notes, article marketing can work well,for certain purposes. Buying syndicated articles, however, usually doesn’t increase search engine popularity. If Google can tell that it’s the same article that appears on other sites, it won’t bother to include it in its index. It’s redundant.
Angel Cuala on October 3rd, 2008 3:40 am

I have been an “expert writer” for Ezine Articles but since I felt that it is not helping me a lot, I stopped submitting.

Unfortunately, I just saw my account has been suspended due to “invalid author name” and I do not feel like recovering it.

I also submitted to other directories like GoArticles but totally got lazy. But then, I am starting to submit to Helium hoping that the results would be better since they are buying them and there is also a link to my blog.

By the way, I was convinced with your tip about the title and it makes sense to me. However, isn’t it harmful for an articles to use colon or dash in the title? I mean not being friendly to search engines?

Hoping to receive a valuable response from you, as always.

Thanks!
Los Angeles Movers on October 3rd, 2008 9:41 am

We experimented with writing blogs with titles that describe the exact search in google and had some luck wioth that.

Russell
http://www.melrosemoving.com
Sharon on October 3rd, 2008 2:16 pm

Sorry it’s not worked out for you Angel, but article marketing has really helped me. As a writer, I get double benefit from the strategy and I know others have had equal success.
Angel Cuala on October 3rd, 2008 2:36 pm

No regrets, Sharon. I think it was my fault as I am not really a good writer I suppose.

That is why now, I am reading a lot and realized that my older posts really need a lot of improvement. This is what keeping me busy now as I learned my lessons well.

This time I hope, they will do good at Helium. By the way, I have a pending question here about using colon and dash in writing titles. Are they SEO-friendly too?

Thanks for the concern.
Jeff Davies on October 6th, 2008 2:32 am

Really liked your tips on article marketing. I am just starting out and submitting to ezine articles. Do you recommend using an article submission service or are they spam?
Sharon Hurley Hall on October 6th, 2008 12:31 pm

I’ve used Article Marketer before, Jeff, which submits your article to online article groups and so on. While this can be useful, I get more value from limiting my submission to a few major ones.
Sean on October 23rd, 2008 3:49 am

Great Tips on Article Marketing…and a nice site. I agree with Sharon, I was mass submitting with some software and did not see the value. However, I did get some exposure. After some testing I found that submitting to the top ten was good enough.

Check out the “Article Marketing Blueprint” as well. It is a free report
that is jammed packed with some great Article Marketing Strategies

http://theimreporter.blogspot......-free.html

Cheers,
Sean
Sharon on October 23rd, 2008 11:43 am

Thanks for the tip, Sean.
Putra on November 12th, 2008 5:17 am

Thanks for the tip.

bye
ErikJ on November 14th, 2008 8:49 am

Nice siple tips thanks for the insight now how to get our articles or blog to the top of the listing like you did is the key
articolista on November 19th, 2008 8:19 pm

I vote EnzineArticles .