Article writing is one of the methods of advertising which is based on the power of content. You may have just arrived in the online-business arena or may be a seasoned professional who has realized that good content is king! Irrespective of the experience you have in the sector, or the clout you possess, article marketing is definitely one of the easiest and foolproof methods you can use to enhance your online presence today. However, you need to understand that in exchange of the free publicity and brand enhancement that you receive through article writing, quality is a ‘quality’ you cannot compromise on.
We often come across people who have mixed opinions about the effectiveness of article marketing. As a professional who likes to keep in touch with people’s opinions I decided to dig deep into the opinions that it does not work, in doing this I found that many of these people had not paid enough attention to creating the content in their article marketing strategy – instead they only focused on how to market their articles. Result – a complete failure of the campaign (and quite often-also resulting in sandboxing by search engines)! One of the most common mistakes that people make while formulating an article marketing strategy is forgetting that lead generation using these types of online marketing campaigns is initiated by the content and not the marketing strategies.
So what are the benefits that make writing quality articles following the ‘content is king rule’, important enough to draw your attention? Listed below are just some of them:
- Improved Brand Image – Once your articles are on the web (submitted to article directories and on your portal or blog sites), they are taken up by hundreds of people, read and used in more ways than one. Therefore, if you have a well-written article with quality content, delivering relevant information and an articulately conceived source box with a link to your company site, your brand image among consumers as well as within the industry improves phenomenally.
- Enhanced Search Engine Rankings – Hundreds of thousands of publishers and webmasters require articles. And if your articles are professionally written with an astute focus on the topic at hand, chances are that most will publish your article on their portals.. But, for this, all of them need to provide the resource of the article wherever they publish. This means that if you can incorporate a link into the resource box – you have hundreds of instant one-way links to your site – for FREE! And consequently (which is even more important!), your search engine rankings increase – and so do your lead generation statistics.
- Viral Marketing – Consider this: you publish a professionally written article to 100 directories – 50 publish it – 100 individual publishers pick up the article from each of these 50 directories – and 100 more pick it up and re-publish the same – repeat. What do you have? Yes – a viral marketing strategy without you even having to invest much time or energy! Within a short period of time, you have 50,000 publishers – which in fact means 50,000 back-links to your site! That’s viral marketing at its best, what more could you need?
- A Professional Viewpoint – Well written articles can provide a company’s official standpoint on sensitive issues in a concise yet straightforward manner. This helps SEO and SMO campaigns explain their point of view in a better way and also helps rivals and/or partners know about the company’s perspective on specific issues.
- Building Online Partners – Everybody wants to associate with an individual or company that is well-informed and knowledgeable. Not only is this partnership deemed to be enriching from the knowledge-sharing perspective but can also pave the way for great partnerships in future. For instance, two companies with the same take on a technological issue may decide to ramp up their business plans by joining hands. However, all of this depends on the quality of articles published, along with the impact they make on the reader.
However, in spite of these glaring advantages, many decide to wash their hands of writing articles. Why? Just because they do not possess the know-how or invest enough time to churn out high-quality articles.
Make sure that you are not one among them; there are many firms present online that offer article writing services, as well as provide article packs for a minimum investment. Take into consideration the competitive advantage that you get, including lead generation, a boost to your existent SEO campaign and professional admiration from partners – all this at a very small price!