Article Advertising

Article advertising is a technique that enables companies to market themselves by writing brief articles that relate to the niche they are in. Many of my Advertising Agency clients use these as part of their PR marketing strategy. These articles are then put out for widespread syndication. Each article has a byline and a biography field that enables companies to incorporate references to their firm, website or contact information. By crafting well written content and distributing it, businesses can increase their industry creds and hopefully,  their market share.

Years ago, a boutique accounting firm put out an article during tax season in the local newspaper entitled: “The top 5 ways to be audit free”. The benefits were two-fold: a) the firm provided timely and valuable information and b) it positioned itself as a leader in the community for saving you money, time and stress come tax time.  This kept the firm top of mind and helped them to expand their business the following year.

Article advertising moved online right after Al Gore invented the internet Websites that are article-centric are known as article directories. Most are free for the article publishers and readers. Articles in these directories are indexed in Search Engines, and thus become found when someone is doing a related search, providing companies cheap and targeted exposure and traffic – and it doesn’t get much cheaper than FREE. So make sure good article advertising is part of your marketing arsenal and or that your advertising agency leverages this technique. Your converting traffic will thank you for it!

The Power of Blogging

It seems like almost everyone today blogs. Anyone trying to build a business should consider having their own blog. But just what exactly is a blog?

Well you are reading one now.  Blogs (short for WebLog) is a site that shares information. This particular blog you are now reading is about Online and Affiliate Marketing – but, my friend Matt, who manages a computer store, mentioned that the techniques found here can be used by his business too.

Matt could begin blogging about how frustrating it is to have a slow computer – he mentioned his customers have this problem and most don’t know much about optimizing, maintaining and defragging their computers. His business helps customers remove junk files, fix registry errors, protect their privacy by removing history tracks, and defragment their disk drives for better disk access speed. They call him their speed up computer guy!

How does this apply? Matt could share his experience on the subject on his blog and others who follow his blog may know and comment on something of value others may find useful, thereby providing a resource center on computer issues and how to address them.

The basic premise of a blog is to supply the reader with something of value. How? Chances are if you found something of value and shared it with like-minded people, they would find it valuable too. So start sharing! Blog good content and see how you now can connect with people – your trusted and engaged audience.

So if you want to establish and grow relationships with clients and add value to their lives, start blogging; your community will thank you for it…

Benefits of Article Marketing

Probably the biggest benefit of article marketing is the targeted traffic your site wil receive. But the amount and quality of the traffic will depend on the quality of the articles.

As an affiliate you know that if your site visitors are not interested in your products,  they are of no value to you (financially speaking). So get interested visitors!!! A well written article will attract a solid following of repeat readers who want to know more of what you are offering. People don’t show up randomly at sites – they landed on your site because they’re looking for some specific piece of information – so give it to them.

Good articles have legs – they can be spread around, getting you more exposure. The more your articles are shared, the better the potential for more traffic and sales. And something else you gain is backlinks, which are necessary to achieve high search rankings. So if you have your article in 25 directories, you just got 25 backlinks!

So start leveraging article marketing if you haven’t already.  Article Marketing Services provide fresh keyword-targeted articles which are published for members every month. And don’t think you have to be the one creating the articles. There are several talented freelancers who can write articles for you, such as on Elance. Then publish the articles that discuss the niche you are in and that will familiarize it’s readers to the service you’re providing. This in turn drives traffic and get you clients from all over the web…

3 Strategies For Higher Conversions With Google AdWords

We’ve been talking a lot recently about Adwords. In order to create effective AdWords ads, it helps to understand some basics of copywriting or classified ad construction. The principles of copywriting apply to Adwords ads, for sure, but the main challenge with the latter concerns the short amount of space to work with. There’s always room for improvement, and you can do that after you read the following tips for writing Adwords ads that have greater power and impact.

You may think that testing your ads is not important to increased conversions, but we assure you it is far more than important and lies in the realm of critical to success. Indeed, the only way to make intelligent choices for improvement with your ads is through testing. It’s really just that you’re walking away from a lot of profit if you don’t test. The only way, really, anyone who knows about testing and doesn’t do it is because they are lazy, pure and simple. Once you know what’s working for you, then you can model your other ad copies based on your previous success. The second important AdWords ad writing tip that you should keep in mind is to try and make your ads stand out by bringing out the unique selling point of the product you’re promoting. Every product has some kind of major benefit, which means even yours will have one too. You can pick the best two and write an ad for each one, and then do split testing with them to see which one performs the best. Your ad needs to present one main benefit in a very compelling way so people read and instantly want to click through. Be careful and avoid any words in your ad that really do not need to be there. Also be sure to test your primary keyword in your headline because when someone uses that keyword, it will become bolded and will stand out more.

Ideally, each group of ads will have their own display URL extensions containing the appropriate keywords. The best approach is to use the keyword in the headline, ad copy if possible, and the display URL because Google will consider it more relevant.

Don’t be afraid to try Google AdWords, but also don’t try it without learning as much as possible beforehand. We actually think Google AdWords is fun, and you can too after you properly prepare for it.

Don’t Make These Article Writing Mistakes

When you write articles to get traffic to your website, be sure not to make a some common mistakes that prevent your articles from giving you the results you want.

The first mistake is providing info that is too vague or generalized. Your readers were most likely drawn to your article not because they want to read random thoughts on the topic, but because they hope you can give them an answer to a question or problem they have. If your article is about department store coupon codes, don’t waste their time talking about how important it find good deals online – they already know that. Instead, give them a Macy’s promo code or show them where to find them. Readers should come away feeling they received at least one good tidbit of advice. Do enough research so that your articles are up-to-date and reliable. People search online to get the very latest information, not outdated material. Verify your information from multiple sources, such as well known news sites and specialty journals.

A second faux pas has to do with your title. If you don’t have a title that really captures your reader’s attention, your hard work may not pay off. The headline is the first thing people see and it’s the only reason people read your articles. Don’t make your headline too long or too difficult to understand. Maintain a headline that is as simple as it is effective. You can always use keyword research tools that can help you come up with titles that are effectively optimized. Your headline should grab your reader’s attention and pull him into the rest of your article.

And finally, it is true that writing the article can be difficult and that’s where research comes into play.  Never just cut-and-past someone else’s article, unless you give them credit.  Plagiarism is  a problem that can destroy your credibility and even get you delisted from search engines. So research, learn, internalize and express yourself.  And even if you have the right to post content, such as with Private Label Rights articles, why have the same, EXACT information everyone else has with the same PLR? If you use the info, switch it up with your own writing style.  Better yet, go with a ghostwriter who can give you exclusive content.

People who haven’t considered the finer points of article writing often make the mistakes we just covered. Remember that your readers are looking for specific information, not generalized advice. Give them content that solves their problems, and they’ll thank you by becoming a paying customer…

Making Money With Articles

Article directories are internet sites that house free articles. These articles are normally place by whoever owns the trademark to them as a promotion method. Each article has the owners byline placed under it so that people who eventually read the article will know who wrote it ( or at the very least who owns it) and will be in a position to get in contact with or visit their internet site for further facts.

Articles directories are a great place to put your articles so that they will make you cash. By utilizing this technique, people who are interested in your product or service will see your article, view you as an expert in the subject, and will visit your website. Even though you cannot write or do not have any knowledge on the subject on that you are promoting ( for example for you run an affiliate website), you can always employ a writer to do the work for you. Getting quality articles written will be costly up front, but they will pay for themselves in no time, either through affiliate sales or selling your own services, and everything from then on is pure profit.

Let us take a real life example. Imagine that you are an accountant working out of your home. You write a piece on an accounting topic and put it on different article directories. People who are searching for the subject you wrote about will read your article, see that you have the knowledge and skill that is required to do a job for them, and go to your internet site or speak to you via e-mail. Your article just gained you a new customer who may make use of your services regularly, but will surely give you a nice profit at least once.

Moreover, as you have posted it on a free article directory, other people who have affiliate internet sites about accounting will in the end use your article for their web site. Since they need to attach your byline to it, this will bring you even more exposure for every website that re-posts your article. This since you will be benefiting of off the traffic that they get to their website.

There are numerous article directories out there for you to use. Your bet best is to put a copy of each of your articles on every person for maximum exposure. It will eventually help to bring lots of traffic and customers to your website, that will result in new sales and profits…

3 Information Product Ideas that Work

When you think about information product creation, what comes to mind? Do you get stumped at some point and can’t think anymore? One of the greatest problems that online marketers have is that they don’t think differently and don’t come up with new product information ideas. However, it’s really not that difficult to create an info product if you look into varied directions. In the following article we shall be looking into 3 unique information product ideas that you can use to get your creative juices running.

Recording an information product on your own is one of the easiest ways to create such a product! All that is required for you to do to quickly create an information product, even if you don’t know what you are doing, is to record yourself as you talk about the subject in question. Let’s presume you are a “Dog Training” expert but aren’t really happy with the idea of writing a book or something similar. All that is required is for you to download a program like Audacity and record any information you wish your customers to have. It doesn’t matter whether they are a few ideas, some tips or a strategy they can use. You can offer virtually anything you like. As long as you offer value people will be quite happy. Pick that microphone up and start talking because your information product could be ready in a few hours.

You can also provide your customers with individual coaching for a price. This is a very popular business model because everyone wants to be shown how to do it. If you have information in a particular area or a skill that you can show others how to do, it would be easy for you to start personal coaching times on the phone. If you want to advance to the next level, you can also give out internet coaching sessions where you teach many people all at one time. This is an extremely good way to make high value info products because giving lessons is usually seen as being valuable. You can get more cash from clients than from other types of things. The best part about this is that it doesn’t take much of your time and all you need to do is help others with your knowledge and get paid for it.

Last but not least; if you’ve conducted a few teleseminars or webinars over a course of few months, you can actually sell them as a package. people love to get information products that are recorded in a live format. You can give them great content by giving out these bundled up webinars.

In conclusion, this article has presented some extremely effective ways to put together effective, unique products. It requires little time to create a product and the best bit is that you work only once and you keep on earning. Besides that, once you start creating information products, you’ll discover that there is a never ending demand for knowledge and you’ll be able to sell it for a price.

Google Alerts Has Unlimited Applications

How do you keep abreast of new information on your marketing niche? Google Alerts™ is really an excellent tool to build your business intelligence. Here are some great ways to use this tool!

Learn When You Appear in the Search Engine Results

For instance, I have my name and company name entered into Google Alerts. So every time it sees those parameters in the Search Engine results for Google and its partners, alerts sends me an email and shows me the referenced URL and a summary of my information. I can quickly see what blogs and article sites are publishing my articles, who is linking to our website and blog, as well as see, the buzz and conversations about me and the company I work for.

Keeping Up with Your Competitors and Partners

You can enter any set of parameters into Google Alerts. Things like: product names, new services, company names, people’s names- the sky is the limit. This will in turn provide you a wealth of information in real time. You can keep track of what your partners and employees are doing. This is a fantastic tool to gain that intelligence you need to keep competitive edge. It helps with your market positioning as well.

SEO Keyword Tool

Getting alerts in certain keyword strings can quickly help you determine whether the keyword string is good for you and if so, how to approach your Online Marketing Strategy so you can take advantage of the market opportunity. The internet changes quickly, but these alerts can keep you ahead of these changes, capitalizing on the opportunities presented.

Industry and Market Trends

See what the experts are writing about concerning your industry and market. Another great data input for your Effective Business Plans.

Tracking Social Media and Networks

Social media changes minute by minute. How do you track and keep up with results? Understanding how your social media strategy is working is really important and sometimes hard to define and quantify. Google as a search engine pays close attention to the social networks in real time. Use alerts to gain that critical intelligence about what is happening and hot in the social networks. You can find and apply real time data. This gives you great opportunity to address any problems or emerging opportunities immediately. All this with a free tool!

Unlimited Applications

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I am sure you have a bunch of ideas on how you can use alerts to bolster your company’s business intelligence. Ask your Business Plan Company about it today!

About The Article Author – Frank Goley is a Business Turnaround Consultant for ABC Business Consulting. He is an expert in business planning, marketing, strategic planning, business turnarounds, online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). Frank has written over 135 Business Success Articles and E-Books. He is author of a Business Plan Book and writes the Business Success Blog. Frank really enjoys helping companies to succeed!