Article marketing is still one of the most effective marketing strategies on the Internet. The reason is that surfers will always be looking for information. What also makes the Internet different from other forms of marketing is that on the Internet, users aren’t interested in being sold to. They really don’t care about advertising and will often ignore it.

That’s why, when you’re writing articles to promote your business, you want to make every step you take count. You want to get the most bang for your buck and the most bang for your effort.

Two techniques that will help you get the most from your article marketing efforts are: syndication and recycling. Syndication is about getting your articles on as many sites as possible. Recycling is about using your content in different ways so it may be posted on as many sites as possible.

Now there are a few ways to get started with syndication. The first step is to submit your articles to as many sites as possible. The easiest way to do this is to use a reputable article submission service that will submit your articles for you. Although you’ll have to pay for it, it’s worth it because it will save you a ton of time, time that can be spent on writing articles to submit.

When you submit to article directories, make sure that you use article directories that offer RSS (Really Simple Syndication). What RSS does is allow a site to display search engine friendly content that automatically updates.

If you find an article that you want to use on your web site, most article directories will also allow you to use the article as long as you include a link to the appropriate site. This is an option that will also be available for your articles, so you want to make sure that you post your articles on sites where they can be used. What’s important here is that users keep the resource box intact. You don’t want others swiping your articles without giving you credit.

As for recycling your content, there are many ways to do this that will help you increase your traffic to your site. In addition to submitting to article directories, you also want to submit to ezines that accept articles. If the site keeps an archive of ezines, even better because your article will have a permanent place on the site, and this will give you an additional backlink to your web site.

Create free reports. You simply organize your articles into free ebooks and then convert them to PDF. PDF is a universal form of document distribution that can be read on any computer.

Once you have created your free reports, submit them to ebook directories. Include the information about your free report in your resource box.

You may also want to consider offering your articles in other forms: podcasts allow you to offer your articles as an audio. Convert your articles to video. This can be a simple slide show or you can turn them into tutorials.

The point is, look for every opportunity possible to share your articles. The more you share your articles, the more traffic and sales you can get.

To your success,

Mike Lawson

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

Follow Us on Twitter: ContentCrooner

“Crooner Rocks”

The secret to getting a lot of traffic and sales from your articles is much simpler than you think. If you want a more effective article marketing strategy, then what you have to do is recycle your content. What this means is that you reuse your content in different ways to get more out of it.

There are many ways to do this. You can use your articles as a starting point for your products. In other words, adding more content and adding more in depth information is one way to create products. You may also offer your content in different forms like audio or video.

However, one of the most effective ways I have found to use my articles is to take them and create a free report I can give away to my readers. Doing this is really easy. All you need is a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Open Office that will allow you to create a PDF.

A PDF is a type of document that can be read on any computer. In other words, it’s universal. Because it’s universal, you can share your documents with anyone. This increases your chances of completely reaching your market.

The first thing you need to do is to choose the articles you will include in your report. Your articles need to be related in some way, and you will want to organize them in order that makes sense for your readers.

Then, create a title for your report. Try to choose something that is catchy and will get attention.

Don’t forget to include your resource box in your report. Better yet, because you are writing a free report, write a short biography about yourself and give more information about how you can help your readers. You also want to include a special offer for your readers.

The ultimate report will be brandable. This means that readers can add their web site or possibly brand the report for your affiliate program if you have one. This will help you increase the chances of being able to give it away.

Now, when you write your articles, mention this special report in your resource box. Tell your readers they can get further information about whatever topic you are writing about.

For example:

“John Doe is a freelance writer and Internet marketer who wants to show you how anyone can earn a 7 figure income from writing. Download his free report called: “How to Make $1,000,000 a Year Writing About Niche Topics.” To get your free report now, click here: http://www.yourdomain.com”

Make sure that all of the information you include in your resource box is relevant to your article. Don’t waste your time including information in your resource box no one wants to read.

The next step is to submit your free report to ebook directories. The more ebook directories you submit to, the more places others can find your free report. Once you submit your report, you only have to submit it one time unless it doesn’t get accepted.

There are also document collection sites like Scribed, as well as sites like Lulu where you may not only give away your free reports, but you can sell them as books. The point is, the more places you give your articles away, the more traffic, and the more sales, you will get.

To your success,

Mike Lawson

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

Follow Us on Twitter: ContentCrooner

“Crooner Rocks”

Although I believe that article marketing is the most effective Internet marketing strategy on the planet, I also believe that there are plenty of ways to make it more effective.

Although article marketing is my favorite way to market because it allows me to control just about every aspect of doing it, at the same time, it can become a very solitary pursuit. Although I can use article marketing to connect with my readers, more often than not, I will never connect with them on a personal basis.

That’s why I like to combine my article marketing with social media. Not only does it allow me to connect with my readers personally, it also allows me to leverage, in a major way, my current article marketing efforts.

Here are three techniques I use to get more from my article marketing by using social media:

1. Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites are like news sites with mini news stories. These stories are short and to the point, and if you want to read them, you’ll have to click through to the site. You’ll find millions of links to every type of story or article you can imagine.

Not only can you post your stories, articles, and blog posts to these web sites, but you may also connect with other users to share your stories.

Before posting to these sites, you want to study them and see how they work. Read the guidelines so you don’t post content or post in a way that might be considered spam. You especially want to study the headlines. See which stories are being read the most. Use what you learn to craft story and article headlines that will get you more traffic and sales.

Sites that allow you to bookmark your stories include Digg, Delicious, and others. Sites like Only Wire and Social Marker allow you to bookmark your stories and articles to multiple bookmarking sites.

2. Social networking and micro blogging

Social networking allows you to connect with your readers, offer them your articles, and socialize with those you have something in common with. Then there is also micro blogging. Micro blogging is similar to bookmarking, but instead, you display your current status or what you are working on through a post you make to your social marketing account.

Social marketing sites include Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. If you want to get the most from sites like these, then join a site like Ping.fm, which allows you to update all of your statuses on all of the sites, at the same time.

3. Blog comments

Blog comments should be an extension of blogging on your own blog. It’s an easy way to connect with others who are writing about the same topic as you are. It’s also a way to build backlinks to your blog or sites. Although it’s time consuming, it’s well worth the effort because you never know who you might connect with.

Sites like Comment Luv and Intense Debate will help you get more from your comments, and software like Comment Kahuna will help you find blogs to post on. Just make sure the comments you post are relevant and not spam.

Social networking is a natural extension of your article writing efforts. If you want to improve your traffic and build a loyal following, these techniques will help you do it. Although it takes time, it’s well worth the effort.

To your success,

Mike Lawson

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

Follow Us on Twitter: ContentCrooner

“Crooner Rocks”

Although there are hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of article writers on the Internet, most of these writers will never be read. For whatever reason, their articles will be accepted to the article directories, and there they will sit, doing absolutely nothing to help their writers get traffic.

This really is sad too because the purpose of writing and marketing with articles is to help you drive targeted traffic to your web site. The following tips will help you use your article writing as an article marketing strategy for more effective traffic:

1. The content you write must be valuable to your readers.

It really doesn’t matter how you feel about what you write. It’s a basic marketing 101 fact: it’s not about you; it’s about your readers. As an article writer, you must consider their needs. What are their problems? What do they want to know? Better yet, what do you know that they want to know?

When writing your articles, consider these questions. Do a little research if necessary. Check out forums, the search engines, and keyword research tools. Find out what your readers want to know and then answer their questions.

2. Don’t offer your reader a complete solution in your article.

In other words, don’t tell your readers everything you know. Unless you really don’t know much about your topic, you won’t be able to tell them anyway.

Give your readers a few tips that they will find helpful and then lead them to your web site for more information. It’s easy to do this by using your resource box to tell them what you have available for them on your web site. Again, offer them something valuable here: a free report or ezine they can’t get somewhere else.

3. Use your resource box effectively.

In other words, use it to get the click. If your readers don’t click through to your web site after reading your article, then you have just wasted your time writing the article.

Don’t waste your time filling your resource box full of useless information. No one really wants to know how many children you have, where you are from, or what you do when you aren’t working.

Although you may find your life interesting, the truth is, most other people don’t, and if all you want to do is talk about yourself in your resource box, then you’ve wasted your readers’ time. They don’t care.

Make your resource box as relevant as possible. Show your readers how they can find more information on the topic at your web site. Be very clear about what you want your readers to do. Don’t just tell them to click on the link in your resource box; tell them to click the link to receive a free report at your site, or sign up for an ecourse that will teach them more.

In other words, give them specific instructions on what you want them to do. Take them by the hand and lead them exactly where you want them to go. You only have a certain number of words in your resource box to communicate your message. Communicate it effectively.

There are many ways to improve your articles so you create an effective article marketing strategy. Add these three tips to your article marketing mix, and you will get more traffic and sales.

To your success,

Mike Lawson

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

Follow Us on Twitter: ContentCrooner

“Crooner Rocks”

One of the most important elements of a total article marketing strategy is building backlinks. A backlink is a link from another site that is pointing back to your web site. This link pointing back to your web site is like a “vote” for your site. It gives your site credibility in the search engines and improves your search engine rankings.

To create an effective linking strategy, you have to do more than just write articles. You also need to create resource boxes that are effective in helping you build backlinks. There are also other elements I’ll mention in this article that will help you build a complete linking strategy.

Your first step in building an effective linking strategy is to create an effective resource box. The way to do this is to create the right anchor text in your HTML resource box. (This is the resource box you will use when submitting your articles through an article submission service.)

The anchor text is the text that your readers will click on to visit your web site. What you want to do here is to choose keywords that searchers search for when searching in the search engines. Choose keywords that searchers are searching for to create your anchor text as this is what will help your web site get found in the search engines.

The way to do this is to use a keyword research tool to help you find this information. There are several free tools available you may use, but the best way to find a tool that works best for you is to do a search in your favorite search engine. Search for the keyword term “free keyword suggestion tool” (without the quotes).

Use different anchor texts for your articles. By varying your anchor text, you keep your link building strategy from looking like search engine spam.

Submit to as many article directories as possible here. The easiest way to do this is to use an article submission service so that you can post your articles quickly. The more article directories the service offers the better too because this will help you build your links quickly. A good article submission service will also help you build backlinks, gradually and naturally over time.

Another way to build backlinks is through syndication. Syndication is where you allow other sites to publish your article by including it on their web sites or through RSS (Really Simple Syndication – This is a search engine friendly form of content). Depending on how you have your RSS feed set up, only part of your article may display and your link won’t appear. Make sure you offer full RSS syndication of your article.

If possible, set up your RSS feed to syndicate the whole article. The best way to do this is to add your article to your blog, and then set up the RSS feed to offer the complete article in the feed. Your link will then display in the feed, and this will help you build backlinks from the sites that syndicate your articles.

Finally, use social media to help you build backlinks. This includes blog comments, social bookmarking, and micro blogging. This will allow you to get a lot of one way backlinks to your web sites from high traffic sites. The best part is that this will also allow you to share your content more easily with others.

The more ways, and the more places, you post your content, as long as it’s relevant, the more likely you are to connect with your audience. Although it can sometimes become time consuming, in the long run, you will increase your traffic and sales, and improve your rankings in the search engines.

To your success,

Mike Lawson

Mike Lawson is a freelance consultant to internet marketers. His Professional Writing Service provides quality content for article marketing automation programs.

Follow Us on Twitter: ContentCrooner

“Crooner Rocks”