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There are many ways that you can market your home business so others know what you are doing. The obvious is placing ads in newspapers, mailing flyers and brochures to potential customers, and setting up a website where you can direct people to see your business online. If you are not using article marketing as a tool to promote your home business, you may be missing out on a lot of potential customers that otherwise would not know how to find you.
Understanding
Article marketing is a campaign that you undertake by writing articles for the Internet. These articles are then distributed to various article directories. Once your article is approved, it is listed in the article directory and picked up by search engines. Thus, when a potential customer types in keywords that pertain to your home business niche, you have a better chance of them finding your website. Many people will also search directly for articles within article directories, making the chances of them finding you even greater.
How to Set Up a Campaign
There are a few points that you must adhere to in order to make an article marketing campaign work for you. First, you have to make sure that your articles are original and written solely for you. You cannot copy someone else’s article, slap your name on it as the writer, and expect article directories to pick it up. In fact, if you do this, chances are you will be banned from many article directories. You can write the articles yourself, or have someone else write the articles for you, but they must be original.
The next step to a successful campaign is to avoid selling yourself in your articles. You want people to find you and buy your products or services. That is the whole point behind article marketing. But, your articles cannot sound like sales ads. They have to be based on good quality information that customers are looking for. You will have the opportunity to direct people to your website through an Author Box at the end of your article. This is where you put your name and website address and highlight any promotions or sales that will drive traffic to your website. Articles that are written to sound like sales ads are often rejected by article directories, and your efforts and time are wasted.
Finally, you must write informational articles often. Article marketing is only successful when you write on a consistent basis. Depending on the popularity of your business niche, it can take time to develop traffic to your website. The more you write good articles, the more you are setting yourself up as an expert in your niche. Writing only two or three articles will set you up for disappointment. On average, it takes about 20 or more articles to generate the kind of traffic that makes an impact on your website. Be patient.
Getting Your Articles Submitted to Directories
Submitting articles to directories can be a cumbersome task. Many directories require that you sign up with a user name and password before you are allowed to submit any articles. The actual act of submitting articles is very tedious as well. Many directories manually review each article before posting it to their site.
Thankfully, there are services that will submit your articles for you to hundreds of directories. These services come in the form of software programs and submission service websites. You just need an account, and they will do the work for you. You submit your articles to the service, and they take care of the registering and submitting of articles to the article directories.
Article marketing has become a very popular and proven marketing tool for home business owners over the past few years. It does take time to build yourself up as an expert in your niche, so give article marketing time to work. Most directories will give you stats on your articles, such as how many times it was read, so you can gauge whether or not your article marketing campaign is successful. The more articles you write on a regular basis, the better the chances that you will soon reap the rewards of your efforts by generating more traffic to your website.
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by Tom McMullen
